HardAct Posted January 31, 2021 Share Posted January 31, 2021 I know the second M.2 slot on my Asus Z-390A motherboard shares bandwidth with the data 2 port or something like that. There are 6 Sata ports and I have a 500gig Ssd plugged in the bottom middle row, pretty sure it's not the shared one. So in the bottom M.2 slot with the motherboard heatsinks houses a 500 gig 970evo. I've been watching the process come down quite a bit on M.2 so I'm eyeing a 1 or 2Tb m.2 drive just for gaming that's currently empty just above my 2080Ti and just below my cpu. Will a be waisting bandwidth or speeds if I put another m.2 driven there? I'm confused a bit by the manual. My 390 motherboard is also gen behind if wanting the fastest speeds? With a plan Jane HD ssd 2 tb be better for the money because that slot is sharing bandwith with a pci slot? I'm confused. Am I better off with just a second data ssd like a 970evo or a second M.2 1Tb speed wise strictly for gaming? Thanks guys Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr.Vic20 Posted January 31, 2021 Share Posted January 31, 2021 I'm currently running 2 NVME m.2 drives off my mobo and 2 SSDs off my SATA ports and I'm having no negative performance impact, so I'd say you are good to go! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spork3245 Posted January 31, 2021 Share Posted January 31, 2021 It should affect the second PCIE port, not the SATA. (Modern) M.2 drives typically run off PCIE channels, sata would be slower. There are some mobos that do disable a sata port when m.2 is used, iirc, but, the simple solution is to not use the disabled sata port in that scenario. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cusideabelincoln Posted January 31, 2021 Share Posted January 31, 2021 According to your manual, you shouldn't lose any speed or access to other ports, besides the SATA6G_2 port, if you use your top-most M.2 slot. You can put any type of M.2 drive into that slot. The fastest type with be NVME, but a SATA type will also work. Right now, for gaming, there's only a few seconds of difference between an average SSD and the fastest SSD. The bottleneck for load times comes from other places in the computer. So for cost effectiveness, a SATA type drive is the best right now. For absolute speed, an NVME is best, and will be more future proof especially if you have an Nvidia RTX 3080, 3070, or 3090. Nvidia is working on a feature called RTX IO that will speed up load times. It's at least a year a way, and even longer to becoming mainstream, and it needs to be implemented on a per-game basis by the developers. And no, you can not take advantage of the new Gen 4 SSDs. So if you get one you'll be stuck at Gen 3 speeds until you can upgrade your CPU/motherboard. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HardAct Posted January 31, 2021 Author Share Posted January 31, 2021 Perfect, exactly what I needed to know. So I will be buying a 2Tb NvME M.2 4th gen for future Proofing then. As in a year and a Half I'm doing a complete new rebuild anyways with hopfully a 3080Ti if there announced and a new Z-490 Mobo. Hell by then I might just go AMD CPU for the very first time. So to be strait, as long as I don't have a SSD drive in my #2 Sata port The top M.2 Slot is good to go losing only the Gen 4 speeds for now until an upgraded Mobo right? But still faster than a say 970 SSD square black ones? I get confused at times as there both called SSD right? lol Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cusideabelincoln Posted February 1, 2021 Share Posted February 1, 2021 11 hours ago, HardAct said: Perfect, exactly what I needed to know. So I will be buying a 2Tb NvME M.2 4th gen for future Proofing then. As in a year and a Half I'm doing a complete new rebuild anyways with hopfully a 3080Ti if there announced and a new Z-490 Mobo. Hell by then I might just go AMD CPU for the very first time. So to be strait, as long as I don't have a SSD drive in my #2 Sata port The top M.2 Slot is good to go losing only the Gen 4 speeds for now until an upgraded Mobo right? But still faster than a say 970 SSD square black ones? I get confused at times as there both called SSD right? lol Yep you have it all figured out correctly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spork3245 Posted February 1, 2021 Share Posted February 1, 2021 10 hours ago, BlueAngel said: This is why I need an upgrade badly my motherboard is ancient with standards. My NVME is limited to 750/750 roughly due to being limited by the SATA bus, should be getting like 3500/3200 lol. You could just get a PCIE m.2 adapter card so it avoids your limited SATA bus, iirc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HardAct Posted February 5, 2021 Author Share Posted February 5, 2021 On 2/1/2021 at 3:07 AM, Spork3245 said: You could just get a PCIE m.2 adapter card so it avoids your limited SATA bus, iirc. Might do that to get rid of my 860 Evo in the future. The difference in speeds actually wow'd me..... I Just ran two different Disc benchmarks on my drives to see just what speeds I would be losing and what I'm gaining from my NvME M.2 vs my SSD. The 970 Evo {500 GB} that houses the Operating system is getting exactly what you said, 3500 read and 2400, and the Regular 860 Evo {1TB} is only like 550 read. I thought I would be held back far more than the 3k reads wow! M.2. Bench.JPG - Google Drive DRIVE.GOOGLE.COM Capture.JPG - Google Drive DRIVE.GOOGLE.COM I'm tired of how much I'm currently using for a gaming drive to, only like 500 gigs of the 1TB is games. I really have been wanting a dedicated Game drive since I built this PC. The cost though from 1TB - 2TB is tough right now with bigger purchases on the horizon! But Even a 1TB 970 Evo again would be wonderful, it's 7x the speed of the 860 evo! I had no idea it was that slow, it's just I can't seem to click buy on the 2TB and that's what I really Really want! Knowing I have nothing plugged in my 2nd sata port thus making the top M.2 drive ready to go is pushing me to buy this weekend. I just deleted about 200gigs of games to install a few ne Gamepass games...lol Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HardAct Posted February 12, 2021 Author Share Posted February 12, 2021 After going round and round and round again almost daily on whether to get the 970 evo, or the 970 evo plus / 970 evo pro and on top of that the 1TB at 159.99 or the 2TB 300+ bucks! I just went with what I have in the system already as the boot drive all-be-it only 500G the 970Evo. I know I will be building a brand new system within 2 years and man did I want the 2TB badly but I just couldn't justify the purchase. So after making my FU#$ing head hurt for a month I did it, Monday I will have a new Gaming NvME M.2 1Tb Samsung 970 Evo and I can go on to much more important things like: Should I buy Super Mario Maker 2 and should it be Digital or not, see...Brain still hurting just as much LOL! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HardAct Posted February 21, 2021 Author Share Posted February 21, 2021 Finally Bought the 1Tb 970 Evo as a dedicated gaming only drive It finally got here and for once I waisted no time installing it! Everything went perfectly and benching the drive came out to be almost exactly what the top numbers were for the 500 gig version of same drive! Amazon also decided to give me a handout sort of...lol. I bought the drive and am a Prime member so it shipped with a window of 3 days, after the 3rd day I tracked the drive and it just stopped short of the out for delivery part. I called amazon and they said to give it another 2 days, but it might be lost in the mail. So the next day I called back pitched a fit asking where the package was, it doesn't show it's even being delivered, and the gave me the option to either refund or replace and that I was no longer liable for the first drive, the new drive would be there in 2 days! OK THEN! The new drive arrived on time, with the first 1TB 970 Evo coming in the following day. So thanks Amazon for once, the 139.99 dollar extra M.2 is a nice compensation for the many packages not arriving on time! So far it has just Flight Simulator installed, many more to come..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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