Is it worth putting m2 with pcie expansion board in my PC?

pjo123 · 17 Dec 2023 at 15:20

Hi all. Am going to buy a new PC but wont have the funds until at least 6 months time.

I use my current PC mainly for hobby music making.

Some things are taking too long (for me) to load from ssd but I suspect I'm stuck due to the age of my PC.

Specs:
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Intel I7-3930K 3.20 GHz (lga2011)
64GB DDR3 Patriot PV316G160C9K Viper 3 Black Mamba RAM
Asus P9XZ79 Socket 2011 ATX Motherboard

XFX RADEON RX480 Black Edition OC

Win 10 Pro

Focusrite Saffire Pro 40 Audio interface

Have the following internal drives (although I haven't used this PC for gaming for a couple of years) and an add on sata 3 card.
Corsair Neutron GTX SSD 240GB (C drive, System)
Samsung 500GB EVO SSD (D drive, Games)
SanDisk SSD Plus 480GB (E drive, Steam Library)
Samsung 500GB EVO SSD (F drive , Music S/W )
Samsung 500GB EVO SSD (G, H, I drive, Docs, More Programs, Email)

Have the following external drives
Toshiba HDwe140 4TB (Only plugged in to backup things, normally not connected)

Crucial X8 2TB Portable SSD (main music software and sample drive, currently have 500GB free)
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I purchased the Crucial X8 2TB Portable SSD as when researching, it appears usb 3.0 is the same speed as sata 3.

The slow loading is all coming from this external drive, but there are some big samples on there

If what I read about USB3.0 and Sata3 being the same speed is correct, there's little point me replacing one of the unused internal gaming SSD's with a 2TB ssd as it wont improve things?

I do have:
Two pcie 3.0 x 16 slots (Dual at x16/x16 mode)
one is used for the graphics card so I presume by the 'dual' wording, they are in someway shared?

I also have a spare pcie 3.0x16 (pciex16_3 at x8 mode)
From what I read, this can do a max speed of 16GB/s compared to USB 3.0 being GB/s?

That being the case, would getting one of those pcie x8 or x16 controller cards and putting an M2 ssd in there give me a big boost in load speed or am I wasting my money?
I notice that my external SSD contains what looks like a Crucial P1 M2, if the controller card is a good idea, could I simply dissassemble my external drive and put it in the controller card?

Alternatively I could buy a decent m2 and use that as I can also use it on my new PC when I build it later next year

Many many thanks

nlel1975 · 17 Dec 2023 at 15:45

Just get a PCIe x4 M2 card as x8 cards require a PCIe Bifurcation Motherboard

pjo123 · 17 Dec 2023 at 22:33

Thanks,

I've ran some disk tests on all my PC drives, I'm getting between 450 and 510 MB/s read speed on my internal ssd drives but only 118 MB/s on my external ssd, so replacing the external with a M2 should make a big difference

Quartz · 18 Dec 2023 at 00:12

Do be aware that you will not get full performance from a PCIe v4 or v5 NVME drive because you will be using a v3 slot, but if you get a v4 or v5 drive you will get full performance when you move it to your new PC.

Given your use case you might want to look at the Lexar NM790 4 TB drive for £205. It has no cache but I'm guessing that you're not going to be doing intensive read-write operations, just mostly reads of music samples followed by writing the finished music at the end. If you want one with cache, look at the Samsung 990 4 TB drive for £345. Sabrent do 8 TB drives but OCUK don't sell them and they cost over £1100. Similarly Corsair's MP 600 comes in a 8 TB version at over £800.

At the other end of the scale there is Micron's 30 TB U.3 drive at over £4k. Plus adapter.

nlel1975 · 18 Dec 2023 at 12:08

nlel1975 said:
Just get a PCIe x4 M2 card as x8 cards require a PCIe Bifurcation Motherboard

Yeah the x8 ones I’ve seen host 2x M2 drives but you need PCIe Bifurcation to split it into two x4 lanes. They don’t seem to make x8 ones which will run at x8 on a single drive. PCIe x4 ones are the norm.

Armageus · 18 Dec 2023 at 12:42

pjo123 said:
but only 118 MB/s on my external ssd, so replacing the external with a M2 should make a big difference

A Crucial X8 is essentially a basic NVME drive in a USB shell - it's easily capable of ~1000MBps - I suggest the bottleneck is actually your USB controller, so it might be better to just get a PCI-E USB 3.1 card

Crucial X8 Portable SSD Review: a Speedy Value (Updated)

QLC helps make this a fast, affordable external.

www.tomshardware.com

My basket at OcUK:

1 x Silverstone ECU05 USB 3.1 and USB 3.0 PCIe Expansion Card (SKU: CC-008-SV) = £32.99

Total: £32.99 (includes delivery: £0.00)

Or brands like Akasa and Startech do USB3.2 Cards e.g.

USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C and Type-A to PCIe Host Card | Akasa Thermal Solution

Akasa branded products including cables, cases, card readers, coolers, external enclosures, fans in many colours, hubs, and power supplies |USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C and Type-A to PCIe Host Card |

akasa.co.uk

nlel1975 · 18 Dec 2023 at 13:16

I've got a Crucial X6 2TB Type-C external SSD drive and plugged into a USB 3.0 Type-A port with an adapter I get these speeds...

However when connected to the USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C port on back panel I get these speeds...

Faster than an internal SATA SSD drive but not as fast as an M2 drive on a PCIe x4 adapter even if that PCIe slot is only running at PCIe 2.0. Such as mine...

So still worth buying a PCIe x4 M2 adapter and using that with an M2 NVMe drive. By the way my PCIe x4 M2 adapter was only £13.99 and it came with a heatsink.

nlel1975 · 20 Dec 2023 at 16:20

I've decided to leave my 2TB External SSD permanently connected to the USB Type-C port on the back panel of the motherboard as its a pain trying to reach down behind it to plug it in all the time.

Gives me more permanent space and I've only got a backup of my main 4TB partition on there at the moment.

Rroff · 20 Dec 2023 at 16:31

In my old Xeon 1650 V2 PC with PCI-e 3.0 I'm using a Samsung 970 Pro M.2 on a PCI-e adapter board and it gets full speeds 3000+MB/s, I've also got a 990 Pro on a gen 4 PCI-e adaptor in my 14700K PC which more or less gets full speeds though I've had to do some tinkering to get there.

nlel1975 · 20 Dec 2023 at 16:40

Rroff said:
In my old Xeon 1650 V2 PC with PCI-e 3.0 I'm using a Samsung 970 Pro M.2 on a PCI-e adapter board and it gets full speeds 3000+MB/s, I've also got a 990 Pro on a gen 4 PCI-e adaptor in my 14700K PC which more or less gets full speeds though I've had to do some tinkering to get there.

I've got a five year old motherboard so its good that it even has a Type-C USB port and the second PCIe x16 slot is only PCIe 2.0 so I don't get full speed from my gen3 M2 drive when on a PCIe Gen4/Gen3 x4 adapter. It defaults to PCIe 2.0.

I probably should have bought a more expensive x470 board instead of the B450 but I didn't envisage having a second redundant M2 drive in the future.