Question Which type of SSD would work with my rig?

[nevada51]

Hi, I'm asking the above question to hopefully gain some knowledge and some opinions on what I should (or should not) do regarding my current rig.

In short - I have 2 mechanical HDDs, they work well but I've just bought my first AAA game in a while and realised it requires an SSD. Thankfully, this isn't a huge issue as I have 2 M.2 SSDs, so while this will solve the immediate issue, I feel that more games will undoubtedly benefit/require SSDs going forward. I'm an older gamer (I'm 46) and am not conversant with much of the newer technology that may be available.

I've been looking at how to address the above issue in a way that would solve the problem, rather than 'fix it for the moment' - if a job is worth doing, it's worth doing well.

Specs:
CPU: Intel i7 9700K @ 3.6GHz
Board: Asus ROG Strix Z390-F Gaming
Video: 1x Nvidia Geforce RTX 2080 Ti 11GB (Using first of three PCIE x16 on board)
SSD: 2x Samsung 970 EVO Plus 1TB (Using both available M.2 slots on board)
HDD: 2x WD Black 7200RPM 4TB (Using SATA ports 1 and 2 on board)
No SLI and no plans on doing this.

Due to having poor eyesight and the fact that most games tie their UI elements to resolution without a means to adjust these independently, I don't game in 4K or even 1080p. I use a resolution of 1600x1024 - this matches my desktop, it keeps text and UI elements large enough that I can see them clearly, but not so large they make games unplayable. I include this detail only to explain no desire for SLI or 4K/UHD gaming set-up.

I've done a lot of my own research and reading but am ultimately unsure as to what the best option might be.
I see I have 2 options:

1) Replace the HDDs with SATA SSD drives.
2) Purchase a PCIE extender card that permits additional M.2 slots and add 2 more M.2.

The first choice is a drop-in replacement, clone the data and drop in - done. But does this really future-proof things enough for the next 5 years?

The second choice is where my real confusion comes in - I know that some boards do not support bifurication and that for such a PCIE card to work, my board must support this. The card I did look at was the Asus Hyper M.2 Gen 4 V2.
The confusing part is Asus suggests that my board supports this card fully, other places suggest this is not the case, that my board does not support any kind of lane-splitting. The issue is, I do not know which is true.

I know that if I went for the M.2 drives, it'd be more future-proofing to an extent that I could take the drives and use them in a new PC in the future without too much difficulty.

In terms of price, either option is roughly the same (£550-£600) and there's no real difference in price between the M.2 SSD and SATA SSD drives.
I know I could take my existing M.2 drives and upgrade those, but I deliberately want to keep them separate as they are as one contains my OS and the other contains basic applications and resources I use for my job.

So, I guess what I'm asking is - given what I've written, which option would you choose and why?
If any of you happen to know the answer regarding the Asus PCIE card and my board compatibility, I'd appreciate that information - I do realise placing the card on the second PCIE would turn my first 2 PCIE slots from having 16 lanes, to 2 slots with 8 lanes each. From what I've read, this wouldn't be noticeable with my graphics card unless I was doing some seriously high end stuff - but again, I don't know for sure.

I hope that what I've written here makes sense.

 

[Eximo]

Your system I believe is capable of 8x/8x, but dumb drive sleds need the board to also handle a 8x/4x/4x, which is not common on consumer boards. Expensive M.2 expanders have onboard switches and allow for more than 2 drives. (Dumb ones with four slots, would only maybe allow 2 M.2 drives to work, and two slots with no connections.)

All that is complicated and tricky to look up.

SATA SSDs will work fine for gaming. The key is to go from like 120MB/s max to 500MB/s max so that your games don't take a long time to load or have annoying pop-in textures and the like.

The other option would be to install larger M.2 SSDs. You could clone your drives one at a time, or use a hard drive as an intermediate target and drop in a 4TB drive, or two, but that would be quite pricey.

 

[JayGau]

All current games already benefit/require SSDs. Gaming with a HDD in 2025 is just wrong.

You are right that prices are pretty much the same for SATA and NVMe SSDs. Replacing your current NVMe with two 4TB ones would be more future proof but would also require more work (you would have to create an image of both drives and restore them on the new drives, then extend the partitions to use the remaining space). Replacing your two HDDs with SATA SSDs would be much easier and more straightforward and it would work fine too, but forget about next gen techs like direct storage.

By the way, as a 46-year-old guy myself, I can assure you that the fact you are "not conversant with much of the newer technology that may be available" has nothing to do with your age. It's more a question of interest. I'm pretty sure that several of the biggest contributors on this forum are 40+.

 

[Eximo]

You also don't have to replace your hard drives. You could just add the SATA SSDs. They don't really need to be mounted, and a little double sided tape and they can be stuck down anywhere they fit. It is quite common to mount 2.5" drives behind the motherboard tray these days.

 

[SkyNetRising]

given what I've written, which option would you choose and why?

Your board has 6 sata ports. Two used by mechanical HDDs.
You can add another four 2.5" SATA SSDs.

If any of you happen to know the answer regarding the Asus PCIE card and my board compatibility, I'd appreciate that information.
I do realise placing the card on the second PCIE would turn my first 2 PCIE slots from having 16 lanes, to 2 slots with 8 lanes each.

Only two M.2 slots on HYPER M.2 X16 CARD V2 world work.
Each drive requires x4 connection. With x8 connection available it's enough for only two drives.

Here's an option without bifurcation requirement.
https://www.amazon.com/Dual-Adapter-RIITOP-Support-22110/dp/B08P57G1JW

 

[evermorex76]

The Asus Hyper M.2 Gen 4 V2 has an onboard switch just like the one you linked. That card should be compatible with the motherboard (they don't list any Z390 boards but they do mention them at the top of the page regarding this). Bifurcation between the two slots is the only requirement.

The Asus card (I can't find any mention of a V2 anywhere) is only $70 on Amazon compared to 80 for that RIITOP model, so even if only 2 drives are needed that would be cheaper, and it's Gen4 instead of Gen3, which would future-proof it.

I question the actual performance of drives in either of these low-cost adapters. The ASMedia 2812 in the RIITOP card for example only has FOUR lanes for the upstream side (to the motherboard slot), but it has 8 lanes on the downstream side (SSDs). The only reason I can see for using an x8 slot is to ensure it provides enough power, as that ASMedia chip is apparently pretty power-hungry. Two drives on that card would only have half their maximum bandwidth if they both were active at the same time, but during normal use with data transfer to only one drive at a time, it would be enough. There's no information available about which switch chip is used on the Asus card, but given the price I doubt it's a model that actually supports 16 lanes on the downstream and 16 on the upstream. Their marketing does claim 256GBps of bandwidth, though.

As far as I can tell, the switch chip does not require the lane count to the downstream devices (SSDs) to match the number of lanes of the PCI slot. The switch chip is a packet switch so upstream and downstream are electrically and logically not connected. The ASMedia 2812 allows the 8 lanes to be divided up among up to 6 slots, and the division is determined at boot time. If that chip were used with a 4-drive card and 4 drives installed, this would necessitate x2 lanes to all of them. I assume if there were 6 slots, four of them would have to be wired as x1. In the support page for the Asus card, they specify the order that you should use the slots for the drives as you increase the count because of the way the switch chip bifurcates the lanes.

All the listings and product support that say you need x16 for 4 drives or x8 for 2 drives are just based on the bandwidth, I believe, not the actual functionality. If you're doing things that require data transfer to multiple drives at once on a slot that doesn't have the bandwidth, you'll be bottlenecked, but if you just needed many drives because you needed the storage but only will be working with data on one at a time, then the slot bandwidth doesn't matter.

Separating your OS from your apps and then keeping your games separated from those does not provide a huge performance gain, and if it does it's only in certain games, and there's really little benefit from an organizational standpoint. Putting your work stuff on a separate drive doesn't guarantee some of their data isn't ending up on your OS drive due to caching and temp files, and wiping or removing the drive would just mean your OS now has a lot of garbage about installed apps that aren't there anymore, and if your OS gets corrupted you have to reinstall all the apps anyway. You also of course should have backups of all your work and data files. I imagine you're wasting a considerable amount of drive capacity by having things separated this way. If you could consolidate, you might not even need to add more storage, or not as much (remembering to allow for the need to have at least 10%, preferably 20%, of the space on an SSD that you will never use so that it's available for the controller's management and maintenance activities). Are those two HDDs actually full of games that you need to keep installed? Would it make more sense to consolidate and put the OS, games and apps on a fast NVMe SSD or two and the "work resources" on a slower SATA model?

Some games will benefit from NVMe over SATA, some won't. They'll all benefit from an SSD of any kind. When there's no cost difference, going with NVMe is a no-brainer. When you have to add the cost of an adapter then it becomes a question of whether the extra cost concerns you, or how much extra cost concerns you. If you were able to consolidate and only needed one more drive, an adapter with a single M.2 slot is only $8. Or do that plus a SATA drive for stuff that won't gain much more from NVMe.

As far as the graphics, given the resolution you use, no, the PCIe bandwidth limit shouldn't make any difference. You might be able to just go into the BIOS and manually switch the slot mode to x8/x8 so you can try it out even without an add-in card. Your third x16 slot also operates at x4, so if you only needed to add one drive, that would be a good place for it.

 

[thestryker]

I used 1x NVMe with 2x SATA SSDs for 3 or so years without issue no matter which drive games were on. I think the best solution for you would be to clear off one of the NVMe drives of anything other than games and just use it as a game drive.

Should you need more space perhaps pickup a decent SATA SSD or replace one of your two NVMe drives with a higher capacity one. I don't think investing in solutions to make more NVMe drives work on an older platform like yours is particularly worthwhile.

 

[nevada51]

All current games already benefit/require SSDs. Gaming with a HDD in 2025 is just wrong.

You are right that prices are pretty much the same for SATA and NVMe SSDs. Replacing your current NVMe with two 4TB ones would be more future proof but would also require more work (you would have to create an image of both drives and restore them on the new drives, then extend the partitions to use the remaining space). Replacing your two HDDs with SATA SSDs would be much easier and more straightforward and it would work fine too, but forget about next gen techs like direct storage.

By the way, as a 46-year-old guy myself, I can assure you that the fact you are "not conversant with much of the newer technology that may be available" has nothing to do with your age. It's more a question of interest. I'm pretty sure that several of the biggest contributors on this forum are 40+.

I was entirely unaware that gaming with an HDD in 2025 is wrong, things seemed to work just fine until now, but I take your point. Tech evolves quickly.

I will admit I never considered the idea of replacing the M.2s I already have, this has given me something new to think about, thank you

The comment being 46 and not conversant was partly about age, yes - but also the fact that in my youth, I was far more passionate and interested in tech, then working in it burnt me out (I didn't realise at the time I had a whole host of mental health issues which contributed) and as such, my passion for tech died but I still game and still enjoy it.

 

[nevada51]

I used 1x NVMe with 2x SATA SSDs for 3 or so years without issue no matter which drive games were on. I think the best solution for you would be to clear off one of the NVMe drives of anything other than games and just use it as a game drive.

Should you need more space perhaps pickup a decent SATA SSD or replace one of your two NVMe drives with a higher capacity one. I don't think investing in solutions to make more NVMe drives work on an older platform like yours is particularly worthwhile.

I do like this idea, replacing 1 NVMe SSD with a much larger one would let me put games on it and the very few apps I have, I'm reluctant to put OS + all apps on a single NVMe, although even if I wanted to do that - I'm unsure how I'd move the applications themselves, I know there used to be pieces of software that could do this and I could probably get around it by using a tool that would mount a folder as a drive letter.

This would allow me to put the games on a decent storage device, future proof it (at least for now without doing anything too crazy) and would be a relatively cheaper option than 2 SSDs to replace the mechanicals (as most of what is on the HDDs wouldn't benefit from speed of an SSD as it isn't that mission-critical) - simply replacing a single NVMe drive.

Thank you, I knew my rig was old and tech was past its' prime and I guess there comes a point where trying to add newer tech can be an uphill battle, so I appreciate this being pointed out.

 

[RARRAF]

"Macrium Reflect" free easy to use watch a Youtube vid will clone what you have to your new drive or drives.

 

[Bob.B]

Hi, I'm asking the above question to hopefully gain some knowledge and some opinions on what I should (or should not) do regarding my current rig.

In short - I have 2 mechanical HDDs, they work well but I've just bought my first AAA game in a while and realised it requires an SSD. Thankfully, this isn't a huge issue as I have 2 M.2 SSDs, so while this will solve the immediate issue, I feel that more games will undoubtedly benefit/require SSDs going forward. I'm an older gamer (I'm 46) and am not conversant with much of the newer technology that may be available.

I've been looking at how to address the above issue in a way that would solve the problem, rather than 'fix it for the moment' - if a job is worth doing, it's worth doing well.

Specs:
CPU: Intel i7 9700K @ 3.6GHz
Board: Asus ROG Strix Z390-F Gaming
Video: 1x Nvidia Geforce RTX 2080 Ti 11GB (Using first of three PCIE x16 on board)
SSD: 2x Samsung 970 EVO Plus 1TB (Using both available M.2 slots on board)
HDD: 2x WD Black 7200RPM 4TB (Using SATA ports 1 and 2 on board)
No SLI and no plans on doing this.

Due to having poor eyesight and the fact that most games tie their UI elements to resolution without a means to adjust these independently, I don't game in 4K or even 1080p. I use a resolution of 1600x1024 - this matches my desktop, it keeps text and UI elements large enough that I can see them clearly, but not so large they make games unplayable. I include this detail only to explain no desire for SLI or 4K/UHD gaming set-up.

I've done a lot of my own research and reading but am ultimately unsure as to what the best option might be.
I see I have 2 options:

1) Replace the HDDs with SATA SSD drives.
2) Purchase a PCIE extender card that permits additional M.2 slots and add 2 more M.2.

The first choice is a drop-in replacement, clone the data and drop in - done. But does this really future-proof things enough for the next 5 years?

The second choice is where my real confusion comes in - I know that some boards do not support bifurication and that for such a PCIE card to work, my board must support this. The card I did look at was the Asus Hyper M.2 Gen 4 V2.
The confusing part is Asus suggests that my board supports this card fully, other places suggest this is not the case, that my board does not support any kind of lane-splitting. The issue is, I do not know which is true.

I know that if I went for the M.2 drives, it'd be more future-proofing to an extent that I could take the drives and use them in a new PC in the future without too much difficulty.

In terms of price, either option is roughly the same (£550-£600) and there's no real difference in price between the M.2 SSD and SATA SSD drives.
I know I could take my existing M.2 drives and upgrade those, but I deliberately want to keep them separate as they are as one contains my OS and the other contains basic applications and resources I use for my job.

So, I guess what I'm asking is - given what I've written, which option would you choose and why?
If any of you happen to know the answer regarding the Asus PCIE card and my board compatibility, I'd appreciate that information - I do realise placing the card on the second PCIE would turn my first 2 PCIE slots from having 16 lanes, to 2 slots with 8 lanes each. From what I've read, this wouldn't be noticeable with my graphics card unless I was doing some seriously high end stuff - but again, I don't know for sure.

I hope that what I've written here makes sense.

Only you know what storage config you want to end up with.

A simple method is to add a ssd for game use and move on.

 

[raytompson]

If you decide to clone your old drive, there is nothing better than MultiDrive.

It's a fully free software compared to Macrium with their trial. And super-easy in use!