New gen 4 M2

Kiro-San · 27 Dec 2023 at 16:52

Currently have a pair of 2021 1TB WD Black SN850's acting as boot/OS/misc and gaming drives respectively, in a ROG Strix B550-F. The gaming drive is constantly short on space and so I'm looking to replace it with a 4TB drive. Was looking at the Samsung 990 Pro or SN850X, is there any other drive worth considering? Also, how to I reuse the replaced SM850 in the system? Can you get a caddy and SATA adapter, the drive would only be for misc storage so speed is not required.

Snapshot · 28 Dec 2023 at 08:37

The SN850X is a great choice but you could also consider the Lexar NM790 which is DRAMless but much cheaper.
Yes, M.2-to-SATA adapters are available although M.2-to-USB are more common. You can also buy M.2-to-PCIe adapters if you have a spare expansion slot on the motherboard.

Kiro-San · 28 Dec 2023 at 14:44

This will be my new gaming drive so looks like the 850X is the winner. I've checked out the PCI cards, looks like the best solution as the only thing connected to the mobo is a 3090FE. Cheers.

megatron · 28 Dec 2023 at 22:08

I just bought a Seagate Firecuda 530 4TB on black Friday. It reviews well on storage review on youtube.

Kiro-San · 29 Dec 2023 at 11:28

Cheers for the tip, I'll check the reveiw out.

PaulM · 29 Dec 2023 at 11:55

If it's just for a gaming drive I'd just go for the cheapest one you find. I have the 4TB Lexar NM790 suggested earlier, it's not the fastest when it comes to huge write operations but for a storage/game drive it's perfect. Zero measurable game load time differences between that and PCIe 5.0 T700 I have as my primary drive (for DB work, but I tested installing some games on it), if DirectStorage takes off in future there might be a little difference but even for that the NM790 should be a very capable drive

Kiro-San · 29 Dec 2023 at 13:40

I'm sold on the Lexar. Watched some video reviews and read a couple of articles and it looks like a great option, so much cheaper compared to other drives.

Snapshot · 29 Dec 2023 at 18:12

I have two NM790s in my NAS. They're only running at PCIe 3x1 so not really stretched but the instant response across a 10Gb/s or 2.5Gb/s link (depending on the PC) is lovely.

Bito · 5 Jan 2024 at 06:36

I've just bought an NM790 too after seeing the reviews, mainly as a games/storage drive.

Kiro-San · 6 Jan 2024 at 22:24

Got it installed a couple of days ago. Swapping data between the drives was a breeze thanks to the Akasa PCI card I bought. Swapped the drive letters around in Windows and now I finally have loads of room on my gaming drive. Cheers all.

Caracus2k · 7 Jan 2024 at 14:17

As per my comments in the other threads I too can recommend the 4tb NM790's.

I have three of them in my PC (x670e / 7800 3d/ 32gb DDR5 6000Mhz cas 30) separately accessible as 1) boot and main program drive 2) steam and other games loader drive and 3) file storage.

The only caveat I would provide is that their performance is supposed to be much better whem the percentage of space on the drove utilised is lower (i havent tested this scenario personally).

I understand this is because the drive uses it's memory cells in either a 'SLC' (single layer) or MLC (multi layer - but reffering to two) mode when the drive has less data on it then the advertised usage of 'TLC' (triple layer).

Basically the amount of bits stored per cell with lower bits per cell generally resulting in quicker access times when all other drive parameters are accounted for.

I don't know how much this affects other drives with it without DRAM on them but worth considering if you expect to be using a lot of the capacity of the drive.