Better to use 2 NVME drives or 1NVME and 1SATA SSD?

Andr3w

Andr3w

Andr3w

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Use 2 NVME. OCUK's summary of the board is wrong, it has three (not 2) M.2 slots which is confirmed in the longer description.

If you do buy SATA, don't get the QVO since it uses QLC with poor performance & endurance (& I wouldn't get the EVO either, because it is unreliable).
 
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Tetras said:
Use 2 NVME. OCUK's summary of the board is wrong, it has three (not 2) M.2 slots which is confirmed in the longer description.

If you do buy SATA, don't get the QVO since it uses QLC with poor performance & endurance (& I wouldn't get the EVO either, because it is unreliable).
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Ah cool I’m happy to use 2XNVME then. I’d seen online that using more than 1 can cause issues with the GPU or PCIe slots, something to do with how many channels they take up. Is that a legacy thing?
 
Andr3w said:
I’d seen online that using more than 1 can cause issues with the GPU or PCIe slots, something to do with how many channels they take up. Is that a legacy thing?
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It depends on the board, but technically it is feasible for Zen 4 to use 8 lanes (2x M.2) from the CPU without any impact on the board lanes whatsoever. The B650 Gaming X uses all 8 CPU lanes and 4 chipset lanes.
 
Tetras said:
It depends on the board, but technically it is feasible for Zen 4 to use 8 lanes (2x M.2) from the CPU without any impact on the board lanes whatsoever. The B650 Gaming X uses all 8 CPU lanes and 4 chipset lanes.
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That means absolutely nothing to me :cry:, but i'm going to hazard a guess that 'it doesn't matter on this board' is what I need to take away?
 
Andr3w said:
That means absolutely nothing to me :cry:, but i'm going to hazard a guess that 'it doesn't matter on this board' is what I need to take away?
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PCI-Express is divided into lanes, your graphics card uses a slot that has 16 lanes, for example.

The CPU has a fixed number of lanes available, so does the chipset.

Every slot (including M.2) has to get those lanes from either the CPU, or the chipset.

Intel 13th gen CPU:
16x PCI-E 5.0 (Graphics)
4x PCI-E 4.0 (any other use)

Z790 Chipset:
0x PCI-E 5.0

So, any Z790 board with PCI-E 5.0 M.2 slot loses lanes from the graphics card (it actually always loses 8, because the CPU can only split the graphics card into 8 and 8, not 12 and 4).

AMD Zen 4 (7000) CPU:
16x PCI-E 5.0 (Graphics)
8x PCI-E 5.0 (any other use)

So, AMD boards lose nothing if they use the CPU's 8 spare lanes (PCI-E 5.0 can be repurposed into PCI-E 4.0, which is what the B650 Gaming X does).
 
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Andr3w said:
but i'm going to hazard a guess that 'it doesn't matter on this board' is what I need to take away?
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yes

i personally use 2x nvme on my ryzen 7600/b650 combo
high performance 2tb sn850x as my boot/games drive
lesser performance 2tb sn770 for my pr0n :cry: media drive

main advantage is that the build looks cleaner, and also less wiring from the psu (assuming you don't need to connect anything else)
i just have the 24pin/8pin eps and 2x 8pin pcie coming from the psu, and none of this extra sata/molex cable malarkey
 
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Tetras said:
PCI-Express is divided into lanes, your graphics card uses a slot that has 16 lanes, for example.

The CPU has a fixed number of lanes available, so does the chipset.

Every slot (including M.2) has to get those lanes from either the CPU, or the chipset.

Intel 13th gen CPU:
16x PCI-E 5.0 (Graphics)
4x PCI-E 4.0 (any other use)

Z790 Chipset:
0x PCI-E 5.0

So, any Z790 board with PCI-E 5.0 M.2 slot loses lanes from the graphics card (it actually always loses 8, because the CPU can only split the graphics card into 8 and 8, not 12 and 4).

AMD Zen 4 (7000) CPU:
16x PCI-E 5.0 (Graphics)
8x PCI-E 5.0 (any other use)

So, AMD boards lose nothing if they use the CPU's 8 spare lanes (PCI-E 5.0 can be repurposed into PCI-E 4.0, which is what the B650 Gaming X does).
Click to expand...
That's great thanks for explaining it to me, I understand now :)

I'll go ahead with another (new) 1tb NVME drive that I will use as my boot/game drive, then use my current older one as just media etc.
 
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