Advice on upgrading SSD

[James Pacey]

Hi all,

Would appreciate some suggestions about SSD upgrade as slightly out of the loop about what I can get.

I am looking to upgrade my hard drive. I currently have a 500GB Samsung 970 EVO PLUS M.2 and am really looking for bigger - games loading from my backup hard drives seem to take an age in compairison! I have two 2TB 7200 RPM hard drives so wouldn't be averse to swopping one of those out for a faster SSD.

Would really appreciate your advice: not entirely sure what else my motherboard can support! I have a Asus ROG STRIX Z390-E GAMING Motherboard.

With thanks and best wishes,

James

 

[Snapshot]

Your motherboard supports two M.2 slots of which you have one empty plus four empty SATA ports so you have a few choices.
What I'd do would be to add a 2TB NVMe SSD and clone one of your HDDs to it.
Almost as easy would be to add a 2TB SATA SSD instead. This would be slower than the M.2 drive but much faster than the HDDs although whether you'd see much difference between the different SSDs is debatable.
Obviously, the optimum solution is to do both to get rid of both HDDs.

If you want to replace the system drive then you'd put the new one in the second M.2 slot, clone the original to it then move it to the first slot. If you wanted to move your games to this new drive then you'd need to re-install them.

 

[James Pacey]

Thanks very much, that's really helpful.

There seems to be a far bit of price difference between the various 2TB NVMe SSD's out there. In layman's terms, what is the actual difference?

With thanks.

 

[mickyflinn]

Thanks very much, that's really helpful.

There seems to be a far bit of price difference between the various 2TB NVMe SSD's out there. In layman's terms, what is the actual difference?

With thanks.

Speed, type ,etc but this is a cracking price for a 2tb drive.

Crucial P3 2TB M.2 2280 PCI-e 3.0 NVMe Solid State Drive

Order Crucial P3 2TB M.2 2280 PCI-e 3.0 NVMe Solid State Drive now online and benefit from fast delivery.

www.overclockers.co.uk

 

[Snapshot]

Thanks very much, that's really helpful.

There seems to be a far bit of price difference between the various 2TB NVMe SSD's out there. In layman's terms, what is the actual difference?

With thanks.

Mainly speed. as mickylinn says, but there some quality differences as well. There are currently two generations of drive available, PCIe 3.0 and 4.0 (also called Gen 3 and Gen 4). Your mobo only supports 3.0 so you can ignore the more expensive 4.0 although some are now down to 3.0 costs. There are some cheaper drives that use QVO technology and this has lower life-expectancy and resilience than the usual TLC (?) drives. You have to hope that the description tells you whether it's QVO or not. Then you have to decide whether you want a 'gaming' drive or not. A standard drive is something like the WD Blue SN570

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/wd-b...-solid-state-drive-wds200t3b0c-hd-58d-wd.html

and a more gaming-oriented drive would be the WD Black SN770

WD Black SN770 2TB SSD M.2 2280 NVME PCI-E Gen4 Solid State Drive (WDS200T3X0E)

Order WD Black SN770 2TB SSD M.2 2280 NVME PCI-E Gen4 Solid State Drive (WDS200T3X0E) now online and benefit from fast delivery.

www.overclockers.co.uk

 

[James Pacey]

Mainly speed. as mickylinn says, but there some quality differences as well. There are currently two generations of drive available, PCIe 3.0 and 4.0 (also called Gen 3 and Gen 4). Your mobo only supports 3.0 so you can ignore the more expensive 4.0 although some are now down to 3.0 costs. There are some cheaper drives that use QVO technology and this has lower life-expectancy and resilience than the usual TLC (?) drives. You have to hope that the description tells you whether it's QVO or not. Then you have to decide whether you want a 'gaming' drive or not. A standard drive is something like the WD Blue SN570

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/wd-b...-solid-state-drive-wds200t3b0c-hd-58d-wd.html

and a more gaming-oriented drive would be the WD Black SN770

WD Black SN770 2TB SSD M.2 2280 NVME PCI-E Gen4 Solid State Drive (WDS200T3X0E)

Order WD Black SN770 2TB SSD M.2 2280 NVME PCI-E Gen4 Solid State Drive (WDS200T3X0E) now online and benefit from fast delivery.

www.overclockers.co.uk

Thank you.

What would the difference between a gaming oriented version be compared to a non gaming one?

James

 

[Tetras]

There are some cheaper drives that use QVO technology and this has lower life-expectancy and resilience than the usual TLC (?) drives. You have to hope that the description tells you whether it's QVO or not.

QLC, QVO is Samsung's term

To give a literal example: the Crucial P3 (QLC) can write 440 TB in the 2TB capacity before the warranty expires, the SN570 (TLC) can write 900 TB in the 2TB capacity before the warranty expires. For a drive you're only storing games on, it doesn't matter quite so much (I definitely would not use QLC drives as a boot or scratch disk), but I really dislike buying drives that hide what they use (just out of principle). That said, I don't think WD state what the SN770 uses either (the SN570 is explicitly TLC), but it can write 1200 TB in the 2TB version, which is better than the SN570, that is guaranteed to be TLC

What would the difference between a gaming oriented version be compared to a non gaming one?

You might want to check this review out.