NVMe Question

computerman2

Hello All

Should i invest in a 2TB NVMe for My Game Drive? Right now have 1TB Samsung 990 Evo Plus Boot NVMe, and Samsung 990 Pro 1TB Game NVMe

Trying to keep it not more than 58 percent full, if i added more games to it, i fear it will be too full. So left it like it is for now, and left Starfield uninstalled for now

Maybe i’ll leave it uninstalled til i get the newer Gaming Laptop lol

PL1

computerman2 Should i invest in a 2TB NVMe for My Game Drive?

NVMe is a lot faster than SSD. So, if you are running games off of them that should speed things up. Boot times are faster if you go that way.

https://www.liquidweb.com/blog/nvme-vs-ssd/
NVMe SSD is an absolute winner when it comes to data transfer rate. NVMe PCIe 3.0 connector can reach up to 3,600 MB/s, while the newer NVMe PCIe 4.0 generation can reach a transfer rate of up to 7,500 MB/s. By contrast, SATA SSD drives can reach a maximum transfer rate speed of just 600 MB/s.

computerman2

Yeah right now I got 2 NVMe drives, I’ve just always kept them less than 50 percent full, as I tend to worry on writes a tiny bit still

Drive #1 is just OS and small applications, Samsung 990 evo plus 1tb

Drive #2. Samsung 990 Pro Game NvMe, 1tb

Drive #3 Samsung 860 Evo Sata 1tb for extra storage currently

real_aurgathor

I think you could go up to 75% without worrying too much about write amplification – once you get over 90 - 95% that’s when things can go bad quickly.
I’m not sure if all that data needs to be on an NVME drive – you could use a much cheaper HDD for items that are not frequently accessed
I would go to 4 TB instead of 2 TB. (And that is exactly what I did)

computerman2

Ok Will look into purchasing a 4TB NVMe when i can in that case, and use that for the updated Game NVMe

I do have a Sata SSD Samsung 860 Evo, i could look into when i purchase updated NEW Firefighter Ignite Simulator game in the fall, and store that one on the Sata 1TB drive, and maybe Move Police SImulator as well, as i wasn’t even sure that game needed Fast NVMe with Direct storage when i installed them originally lol

Music for my SecondLife Djing, think will just keep on External, and only connect it when i need to use it, as most of the time i stream my music with Spotify anyways lol lately when i wanna listen to some

Overall think in my head got it pretty much figured out what gonna do in the future now, just need to save to afford 4TB NVMe if and when needed lol

real_aurgathor

computerman2 just need to save to afford 4TB NVMe if and when needed lol

The majority of my SSD/HDD purchases were made on Black Friday, especially when buying new – either by postponing purchases, or more likely, predicting future needs.

Jbob

For some perspective…….the real difference in speeds between a SATA SSD and NVMe SSD is really with large file Reads/Writes. In other words to see those impressive NVMe speeds you really need to be transferring large files between NVMe drives. Or running a speed test utility like CrystalDiskMark.
There were plenty of Youtubers that posted tested speeds back years ago as the NVMe drives were gaining in popularity. When it came to general everyday PC usage there was actually very little difference in transfer speeds between SATA and NVMe drives. For instance they tested game load times between HDDs, SATA SSDs and NVME SSDs. In general there was actually very little difference between the SSDs for game load times. Sure HDDs were much slower.

If using the CrystalDiskMark utility you can see the differences in speeds depending on what test it’ss actually performing. Again performing large file Reads/Writes between like drives will show the best speeds while testing everyday OS performance Reads/Writes will not show that much of a speed advantage.

The real advantage is ANY SSD over a HDD for everyday usage. Otherwise Price should be a deciding factor. Compare the price of a good 4 TB SATA SSD vs a 4 TB NVMe SSD. And in many case over the years to prices have gotten smaller so there’s that.

aaronwt

computerman2
You are using Samsung drives. It should be fine. For over twelve years I’ve run a Samsung 1TB SSD 24/7/365. It’s still working fine with being constantly 95% full. In a Blue Iris machine that aggregates the video from my seventeen cameras. And I also run a couple of the 500GB Samsung 970 EVO plus NVMe drives, 24/7/365 in the Blue Iris machine. They are also 95% full. But they have only been in use three years or so. But all those drives are constantly being written to and read from 24/7/365 with no issues.

And I use several other 970 EVO plus drives, 2TB and 1TB, in my Plex DVR. They are being written to around 22 hours a day. From multiple concurrent recordings.

I’ve tried other SSDs and NVMe drives from other manufacturers. But I always came back to the Samsung brand since they have never caused me any issues. I currently use around thirty Samsung drives in my unRAID setups and PCs. Using a combination of SSDs and NVMe drives. With sizes ranging from 500GB to 4TB

urbanriot

computerman2 Right now is a great time to get the 1TB Samsung 990 Evo Plus as they keep going on sale, currently $79.99 US on Amazon. I’m guessing that you only have two slots on your motherboard like most people and what I’d probably do if I were you is get a PCIe NVME expander card to add a few more 1TB drives.

I have 6 × 1TB Samsung 990 Pro’s in my main PC, two on the mainboard and 4 on an ASUS expander card and what I do for games that fill up my Steam games folder is I use a Windows Junction (mklink /j) to junction games to the second or third drive, so the Steam platform believes all the games are in one folder but they’re spread out on a few drives.

I also have a couple 2TB SATA SSDs I picked up on sale which I use for storage.

computerman2

Well already One Samsung 990 Evo Plus 1TB NVMe–currently using as Boot Drive, along with a Samsung 990 Pro 1TB with Heatsink as Game Drive, and Samsung 860 Evo Sata Drive for Extra storage

May look into PCie NVMe expander card in the future

But if and when you need to Do a clean install of the PC, how heck would you tell which one is the boot drive lol?

I have hard enough time right now figuring out making sure Windows installs on the Right Drive, hence why holding off on my next clean install, then i got time to remove the current Other 2 Drives lol, leaving only 990 Evo Plus as Boot lol

Lately had Problems with MS App store always wanting to update the same apps–did a System Reset for Now, hopefully fixed it, but i will see in coming days

Jbob

computerman2 That is why many suggest disconnecting all drives except for the drive you wish to install the OS on. During the installation process you need to look at the Disk number as in Disk 0, Disk 1, Disk 2, etc. You can check the drive number using various Windows tools.

In your case it makes more sense to use the 990 Pro as the Boot/OS drive as the Pro has the better cache structure. Then use the 990 EVO as the game drive. In practice however you may not notice much difference.

computerman2

Well i can switch them around just before i’m ready to do the next clean install of system. Though motherboard has no Heatsink, and 990 Evo Plus did not come with one, so hopefully it would still stay cool in 2nd M.2 slot if i did switch them sometime.

As i think the Boot drive probably work best in slot closest to CPU. Though think both slots are PCie 4 from CPU if Motherboard spec sheet is right

MSI Pro B650 VC WIfi Rev 1.0

Honestly did consider switching them around months ago, but then didn’t for some reason

Definitely gonna disconnect the extra drives before next clean install for sure, though about doing one when i had problems with Microsoft App store, but then decided well Townhome Inspection Tuesday, and not much time to fiddle around, so i was like ok Full Reset, and hopefully fixes it

it seems to so far, but still have alot more things to test, and such