My first NVMe drive - advice please

[Havana_UK]

I've finally upgraded my ageing i7 4770K system to a 12600K and now I have the possibility to add an NVMe drive to the system.

I'm looking at two options (both 1TB):
- WD SN770 @ ~£70
- WD SN850X @ ~£85

I understand that the SN850X has DRAM which improves drive performance, but considering I'm coming from a SATA 6G SSD I've no doubt that the SN770 will still seem blisteringly quick by comparison.

Is there a compelling reason to spend the extra on the SN850X over the SN770? My primary use for the PC is gaming, but typically not the latest titles.

Finally, would I be able to clone my existing SSD (which is my Windows/boot drive) on to the new NVMe drive? If so, what's the best method to go about this please?

TIA!

 

[Havana_UK]

Thanks both, I ended up ordering the SN770. I put the SN850X in my basket for £85, but by the time I pressed "checkout" it was back up to £110

 

[Havana_UK]

While you can I wouldn't recommend it. W10/11 does handle it better but sometimes you get driver conflicts and other issues when moving OSes between systems with major changes. Best to do a fresh install. Could always use your current SATA SSD as a storage drive anyway.

Thanks for the advice! I did actually swap all my CPU/Mobo/RAM out of the system without a reinstall at all - Windows 10 seemed to handle it with no issues.

I don't have a physical Win10 disk, but I have a genuine licence (a free upgrade from a Win7 original copy). I've got it tied to my MS account. Do you know if I can I download a new copy of Win10 installer from MS and use my existing MS account to activate it without having to buy new?