New fast pci-e storage for sabertooth z87?

Narada

Narada

Narada

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23 Apr 2010
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Hi guys,

I have the following.

https://www.asus.com/uk/Motherboards/SABERTOOTH_Z87/
https://www.asus.com/uk/Motherboards/SABERTOOTH_Z87/specifications/

I currently have a 256GB Samsung 840 Pro SSD as my only drive and it just ran out of space once I installed COD Black Ops 3 (I know, I know - I was desperate for a few quick kills and compromised).

I want to get another storage device. I want it to be fast and roughly half a terabyte in size to make it my primary drive. If you look at the specs link above you'll see that I have the following slots.

Code: 
2 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 (x16 or dual x8) 
1 x PCIe 2.0 x16 (x4 mode, black) 
3 x PCIe x1

This mobo doesn't have M.2, U.2, Sata Express, Hyperkit or any other fancy feature. All it has are pci-e slots. And the only pci-e slots it has available are, counting from the top, slots #1 and #3, both of which are x1 I think. The two pci-e 3.0 slots are taken by 2x980 SLI and the slot under the bottom gpu would get too hot.

So I wanted to ask - what can I get that's fast for a x1 slot or alternatively do you think I should just get a regular SSD as the difference in speed is minimal?

Cheers.
 
I have a Sabretooth Z87 and I run both a NVMe SSD and a regular SSD.

For normal Day to Day you are better off going for the Samsung 850 as you wont have any issues booting from it, or Bios recognising , it will just work.

You will probably need to flash your Bios to get it to recognise the NVMe drive.

They are supper fast but you just wont notice the difference in every day use, stick with a SSD ;0)

The Sabertooth has 3 PCIe POrts, 1 and 2 will both work at the Maximum rate x4, but the 3 rd one you will need to change a setting in the bios to get it to run at 4x and this will disable some of the Onboard USB3 ports.

Only an issue if you are running SLI I guess.
 
^ I found a great improvement in noticable speed using a NVME drive over a SSD in daily use. Especially file moving. Everything else is a dream too.
 
harry5522 said:
^ I found a great improvement in noticable speed using a NVME drive over a SSD in daily use. Especially file moving. Everything else is a dream too.
Click to expand...

Which one did you go for - is it pcie x4? My concern is that the even the latest bios which is a year old won't support pci-e boot and that I only have x1 slot available.
 
Don't forget that for best performance you would put such a drive in one of the PCIe 3.0 slots, which would reduce your GPU to x8 mode and mean you could never do SLI/xfire.

Buy an 850 and leave nvme until you upgrade mobo imho.
 
CCleaner, this is great at clearing out old temp files

Disk Cleanup (part of Windows), run this, then click' Cleanup System files' often a lot of space can be recovered in here

Disable System Restore, large restore points


Also..

Install TreeSize Free, this will tell you exactly where your space is being eaten.

Probably a ton of files you can remove.
 
Thanks guys. Yeah that's true. I could probably clear files and move stuff to my NAS as well. The main problem is steam games - each one is like 45GB. I don't want to put them on a really slow HD as I like fast game and level loading. But at least I can remove/move other stuff. Regarding SLI I do have it and would prefer to keep it.
 
bledd. said:
Install TreeSize Free, this will tell you exactly where your space is being eaten.Probably a ton of files you can remove.
Click to expand...

This was the best space saving tip. Running treesize made me realise just how much stuff I had on there in odd locations that I'd forgotten about. The way it visualises the space consumption is nice. Now I have 75GB free! So although this wasn't what I asked originally I definitely appreciate the tip! Thanks. (P.S. Cleaning out system files also freed 10GB!).
 
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