Extra storage SATA or M.2

[sybaris]

Hi
I have used both my M.2 slots and am needing more storage.
(M.2 slot A is for boot drive, M.2 slot B is my Data drive and partitioned for games).
I want another drive for games and storing movies.
Is it worth going for a PCIE card and another M.2 or Should I save the hassle and
go for a SATA but its a much slower drive compared to the M.2s?

Using an Asus Crosshair Hero VIII and Ryzen 9 9500x

 

[Zeebedy]

Hi
I have used both my M.2 slots and am needing more storage.
(M.2 slot A is for boot drive, M.2 slot B is my Data drive and partitioned for games).
I want another drive for games and storing movies.
Is it worth going for a PCIE card and another M.2 or Should I save the hassle and
go for a SATA but its a much slower drive compared to the M.2s?

Using an Asus Crosshair Hero VIII and Ryzen 9 9500x

I have a 500gb m.2 boot drive, a 2tb m.2 games drive, and for some extra storage, I purchased a 2tb SATA SSD, and its still pretty quite in comparison..

 

[Donnie Fisher]

It’s fairly established now that an nVME drive versus a sata drive makes in the region of less than a few seconds worth of a difference when loading games and levels etc…. Ie negligible difference in real world actual usage.

If it’s just a data drive with gentle use then sata will be fine.

 

[Joxeon]

What size is your boot drive?

With limited M.2 slots on a board your best off only using atleast 1~2 TB nvme's, it's a waste having boot only drives with just 250/500gb.

 

[sybaris]

This is the thing. The drive will be for games and movies. My M.2s are lightening but will I notice a lag if I put a SATA SSD in instead of a 3rd M.2? Is it worth the extra cost?

 

[Dg834man]

but will I notice a lag if I put a SATA SSD in instead of a 3rd M.2?

Lag? define this a little more.

 

[sybaris]

Lag: A longer and noticeable delay in response times or load times using SATA SSD vs NVMe SSD.

 

[EsaT]

This is the thing. The drive will be for games and movies. My M.2s are lightening but will I notice a lag if I put a SATA SSD in instead of a 3rd M.2? Is it worth the extra cost?

For movies SATA SSD would be perfectly fine, because bottleneck is playback speed.
Also typical old games aren't good at using fast transfer rates with difference between even HDD and SSD being far less than difference in technical capability.

But for current heaviest games and especially coming games there's difference.
DirectStorage won't even work with SATA SSDs and I can see MS pushing for games to fall back to some dog slow routine if not having that available.
Just to force people to update Wintoys to latest bugs, even if very fast loads are possible without it.

As for cost there's little difference between NVMe/PCIe SSD and good SATA SSDs. (M.2 can be also SATA)

 

[EsaT]

It’s fairly established now that an nVME drive versus a sata drive makes in the region of less than a few seconds worth of a difference when loading games and levels etc….

While average games have some god knows how old crap code doing the data loading job, some games are designed to be able to use faster transfer rates:
https://www.realhardwarereviews.com/silicon-power-us70-1tb-review/11/

 

[Armageus]

Why store movies on an SSD at all? They don't benefit from random Io so are ideally suited on a big cheap hard drive or nas

 

[Tetras]

I'd just stick the old games on a SATA drive and new ones on the M.2, but you have plenty of PCI-E slots on that board so doesn't really matter either way.

 

[Orcvader]

SATA. In terms of response times it's still very low, the only time I've ever noticed bad response time is on HDDs waking up from sleep and spinning up, or a really bad SSD (work loves to cheap out).

As above though, if it's for movies, a normal HDD is completely fine. My current setup is m.2 for boot and games, SATA SSD for documents, pictures and music, and an external HDD for movies.

 

[sybaris]

I can add a SATA SSD and still have a PCIE NVMe slot for later on

 

[sybaris]

Still have 6 SATA connectors spare and 12 bays

 

[sybaris]

Hmmm your are probably right with read times. The odd couple of seconds is not goin* to be noticeable in real word terms on a home PC. But then again to have the ability to read data at lightening fast speeds it tempting.

 

[Robert]

Just got an 870 qvo 2tb for 125 - seems like a great deal