Using an old PCIe 3.0 NVMe in a PCIe 5.0 build

[GreyPlayer]

Just building a PC on an MSI B850M motherboard, which has two PCIe 5.0 M.2 slots on it (plus one on the back of the board for some sneaky reason).
I have a 1TB PCIe 5.0 NVME for the new build, plus an older 256GB PCIe 3.0 (x4) NVMe SSD from my current machine.

Questions:
1) I'm assuming the M.2 slots will be backward compatible with PCIe 3.0 NVMe's, but just work as PCIe 3.0 - is that correct?
2) If I used the older PCIe3 SSD just for my OS, would I see any noticeable performance hit anywhere? (The new PC is intended purely for gaming with a Ryzen 7 9800X3D and a 9070XT GPU)
3) If I don't use the PCIe 3.0 for the OS as a dedicated device, would it be worth using it for anything at all in the machine?

All suggestions would be appreciated!

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[brendy]

Just building a PC on an MSI B850M motherboard, which has two PCIe 5.0 M.2 slots on it (plus one on the back of the board for some sneaky reason).
I have a 1TB PCIe 5.0 NVME for the new build, plus an older 256GB PCIe 3.0 (x4) NVMe SSD from my current machine.

Questions:
1) I'm assuming the M.2 slots will be backward compatible with PCIe 3.0 NVMe's, but just work as PCIe 3.0 - is that correct?
2) If I used the older PCIe3 SSD just for my OS, would I see any noticeable performance hit anywhere? (The new PC is intended purely for gaming with a Ryzen 7 9800X3D and a 9070XT GPU)
3) If I don't use the PCIe 3.0 for the OS as a dedicated device, would it be worth using it for anything at all in the machine?

All suggestions would be appreciated!

​

1. Yes
2.most likely not, you get to a point where the drive is not the bottleneck anymore.
3. Why not, storage is storage.

 

[hornetstinger]

256GB is a bit useless now tbh, I have a couple of 500GB but at least enough for Windows and a few games

 

[GreyPlayer]

1. Yes
2.most likely not, you get to a point where the drive is not the bottleneck anymore.
3. Why not, storage is storage.

Mmmm...pretty much what I was hoping. I think I'll go ahead and use the smaller one for the OS and the larger one for the few games I generally keep at any one time.
Cheers for the reply!

 

[freddie64]

Personally, i would ditch the 256GB drive and get yourself a 2TB drive.

Use your 1TB for Windows and the 2TB for games.

You could put the 256GB drive in the rear of the board for extra storage, if you wanted to use it.

 

[GreyPlayer]

Personally, i would ditch the 256GB drive and get yourself a 2TB drive.

Use your 1TB for Windows and the 2TB for games.

You could put the 256GB drive in the rear of the board for extra storage, if you wanted to use it.

Thanks for the suggestion, but even if I could afford an additional 2TB drive I doubt I would use it and 1TB would seem a little overkill just for Windows. I generally keep all my games on the cloud and just download one or two that I'll play most often. Even a 150GB game is very quick to download via my FTP. Just think how much beer I can buy if I don't get the extra 2TB drive!!! ))

 

[freddie64]

Thanks for the suggestion, but even if I could afford an additional 2TB drive I doubt I would use it and 1TB would seem a little overkill just for Windows. I generally keep all my games on the cloud and just download one or two that I'll play most often. Even a 150GB game is very quick to download via my FTP. Just think how much beer I can buy if I don't get the extra 2TB drive!!! ))

That's fair enough then, think it should work as you intend it to. (256GB for Windows and 1TB for games)

Enjoy your extra beers.