Humour me... 'Fast' PCI-E 4.0 drives...

Removed User 345456

Removed User 345456

Removed User 345456

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Right so TLDR, building my first rig since a 2008 era q66 stepping 1st gen quad core... I've had mac's since but all are circa 2008-2012 retrofitted with sata3 ssd's... This will be my first 'modern' pc with a m.2...

I've got a B550m pci-e 4.0 m.2 motherboard...

Now I was going to splash out on either a 2 or 4tb 7300/6800mb/s 'fast' m.2 drive for it... This rig will ONLY be turned on for gaming, nothing else.

I thought sweet it'll boot super fast and loading times in games should be rather snappy - now I've recently heard this isn't the case?

Am I better off just getting a 3500mb/sec m.2 instead and saving myself a third or more off the price? The price doesn't bother me but I would be VERY angry if I literally don't gain anything and think I have when I could have just got a 'slower' m.2?

Any feedback is welcomed!

Ta!
 
Mcnumpty2323 said:
direct storage is the one thing that games might
make benefit of say 7000 over 3000MBs
but of course you need all games to support it
and probably a good level gpu
is it worth the extra cost of a gen4 m2 that i dont know
as for pcie 5 drives so far they look to run very hot
and require beefy heatsinks even a tiny fan on some
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I reckon I'll just pay the extra third and get the 7000ish mb/s drive then, no biggie.
 
Mcnumpty2323 said:
i doubt the difference is very much between them tbh
but if cost isnt an issue
i would probably just get gen4
as games will probably get bigger and have more data
in loading screens etc
plus if you ever add a second drive (assuming motherboard supports it)
copying files between them is noticeably faster than gen3
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Yeah, I may as well, I bought a gen 4 mobo after all :)
In for a penny in for a pound lol
 
mattyfez said:
Faster drives will come into thier own if you copying big chunks of data between drives 24/7. Not so much in home office or home gaming use.

That said, Nvme drives are reasonanly well priced at the moment, so I'd Probably go for a decent gen 4 drive as a system drive... but as secondary media drives, I wouldn't worry about it, save some money. I've still got a SATA SSD in my main PC as a game drive, and my secondary PC is only running on older SATA SSDs.
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This literally is only going to be used for gaming. I have macs for everything else mate. So it'll just be the one m.2 drive :)
 
mrk said:
I have a 3500MB/s gen 3 1TB, 7000MB/s gen 4 2TB, 7000MB/s gen 4 8TB and a SATA 8TB, so 550MB/s.

Between them for normal use inc gaming, there's little to tell them apart if you blindfolded someone and told them which seems faster to load etc.

90% of games I have played barely breach 250MB/s read speeds when a game is loading, and in the few games that state a minimum req of a PCIe SSD, I have seen around 1500MB/s read speed give or take (Dead Space remake), which is still well below gen 3 specs.

You also don't need Direct Storage to leverage PCIe bandwidth, as evidenced by games like Dead Space remake which load the moment you click the mouse button to your save location in the game, with no further "loading" throughout the rest of the game.

Windows does not boot any faster either, and applications might load slightly faster on the faster gens due to the slight bump in random 4k reads, but again without measuring, it would all feel the same.
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Cheers mate!
 
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mattyfez said:
Yeah, it's a bit like... if you forgive the brutal analogy...

Having a 5 foot wide sewer pipe, but if you're only pouring a trickle of water through it, the water isn't going to arrive any faster.
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yeah I get you, I just thought in this day and age having pci-e 4.0/5.0, mass amounts of ram and vram paired with fast cpu/gpu it'd be stupid quick and benefit from the added speeds, it is mental that a sata3 ssd is not very far behind a 7000mb/sec pci-e 4.0 m.2 for gaming load times etc...

I get the whole but if you're transferring files from drive to drive but that's irrelevant in gaming usage which is all this rig is turned on and used for. shame.

I guess I was just hoping for a bigger leap in tech since my last q66 stepping first gen quad core - last rig I built, but have run macs since but obviously don't game on them and have multiple consoles.
 
mattyfez said:
Yeah, I'd go for a decent gen4 Nvme drive as a system drive, but for storage, or even a steam games drive, any SSD will be fine as long as it's not a bargain basement ali-express special...

...don't worry about it too much, put the extra money into CPU/RAM/GPU if you are building a new system or upgrading an older one.
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It's going to be my only drive mate as it's purely used for gaming, so screw it I'll just go ott and get the 7XXXmb/sec one. I've got everything else bar the psu/ram/gpu which I'll be getting in the next 2-6 weeks, so ready to rock haha, cheers for your help mate.
 
Troezar said:
Yes, prices have really dropped. I bought SN770's for a gaming build, very snappy on a W11 build. The "better" drives are so cheap now you may as well buy those.
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Yeah 2TB and the mad spec that mine has along with the proven not to throttle even after nailing it for hours heat sink etc was a no brainer. way better than any of the crappy heat sinks I've seen that you can buy, and I didn't want one of the ones with a silly fan on that'd end up failing knowing my luck.
 
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