[SSD raid 0 or M.2 SSD with share bandwidth?]

[dagiccross]

I'm currently looking for M.2 SSD for them speed at around Read 3,000MB/s and Write 1,900MB/s which is amazing! But it costs more and it had to share bandwidth with GPU I've heard. I'm using Z97 board Intel i7-4790k, motherboard itself has a M.2 slot with only 10GB/s limit. Someone recommended me to get a pcie extension for my M.2 SSD if I ever get one, so it uses 32GB/s on my PCIe slot. After thinking twice, I might get the SATA ssd instead with raid 0, there's Black Friday deal Crucial MX300 525GB costs £105, so if I get two of those I can do a raid 0 setup which offers better performance than a single SSD (I don't mind losing my data since they often backup on cloud) but it is worth it? Should I get Samsung SSD SATA instead? They cost 1/3 the price more though, or should I just go for the M.2 SSD with PCIe slot? But it shares the bandwidth though? Any suggestions please?

CPU- Intel i7-4790k
GPU- EVGA GTX1080 FTW
MB- MAXIMUS RANGER VII
RAM- 16GB Corsair Vengeance

TL;DR: I need to know which one is better; M.2SSD or SATA SSD RAID 0 on my Z97 board because M.2SSD is sharing bandwidth with my GPU? Or not true? If you recommend SATA SSD RAID 0 then what SSD brand? SAMSUNG or OTHERs? Thanks!

 

[BinnsY]

Two SSD's in RAID wont match the M.2 Drive. The 550MB/s sustained read limit on most SSD's is simply because that's the most the SATA port can do. Even with two drives using two ports and assuming utterly perfect RAID speed doubling you would only end up at about 1100MB/s.

Although you only have 16 PCI lanes as long as you dont plan to go SLI you will still have plenty of performance with your GPU running in a 8x port rather than 16. Although you start having big hits when you go down to 4x the difference between 8 and 16 is negligible.

 

[dagiccross]

Two SSD's in RAID wont match the M.2 Drive. The 550MB/s sustained read limit on most SSD's is simply because that's the most the SATA port can do. Even with two drives using two ports and assuming utterly perfect RAID speed doubling you would only end up at about 1100MB/s.

Although you only have 16 PCI lanes as long as you dont plan to go SLI you will still have plenty of performance with your GPU running in a 8x port rather than 16. Although you start having big hits when you go down to 4x the difference between 8 and 16 is negligible.

Alright thanks! I might go for the M.2 with PCIe extension card then, can I use it on my 8x lanes tho?