Expanding storage - what do I look for?

Snakeweasel

I need to expand my PC's storage as I currently just have a 240gb Sata SSD and a 1TB HDD that is regularly getting close to full.

I wouldn't mind picking up so extra SSD storage today in sales but really dont know what to look for in terms of what is good vs bad for SSD. For a gaming PC would I even notice much difference between a high end SSD and low end, or m.2 versus sata.

I have an m.2 slot on my mother board and would be my preference for ease of access and no cable management. I would be afraid that there are different types of m.2 SSD and I could spend over 100 quid on something that doesn't work.

BloodBath

Pretty much any NVME SSD is going to be a lot faster than a sata one. It won't make much of a difference for games atm but that looks to change in the coming years with gpu's gaining direct access to these nvme drives bypassing system ram and the cpu which the consoles are using to speed up loading times. PC will be able to do it next year as well.

I'd look for a good deal on any reasonably fast 1tb NVME SSD and use that as your main system drive as windows will benefit. Stick all of your software on there and you will still have room for some games.

You can use the old 256gb ssd then to store a few games as well. If you need bigger mass storage a 2tb 7200 RPM hard drive isn't a bad buy either. Most current games will still run just fine from these and they are dirt cheap.

GHOST MGG

Snakeweasel wrote: »

I need to expand my PC's storage as I currently just have a 240gb Sata SSD and a 1TB HDD that is regularly getting close to full.

I wouldn't mind picking up so extra SSD storage today in sales but really dont know what to look for in terms of what is good vs bad for SSD. For a gaming PC would I even notice much difference between a high end SSD and low end, or m.2 versus sata.

I have an m.2 slot on my mother board and would be my preference for ease of access and no cable management. I would be afraid that there are different types of m.2 SSD and I could spend over 100 quid on something that doesn't work.

If you give us your motherboard model we can advise you on what m.2/nvme drive you can use
EDIT! NVM bloodbath posted above at same time as me

JoyPad

You need to check the specs of your motherboard and see what it supports in that m.2 slot. If you know the exact model, post it here, and we can google the manual.

With regards to speed, there's a video by Hardware Unboxed on YouTube that shows that differences in loading times for games are small between the various types of SSDs, and still massive between HDDs and even the lowest spec SSDs (SATA models, whether connected to SATA interface or m.2 interface).

So, things to keep in mind:
- The m.2 connector allows you to plug either SATA or NVMe SSDs.
- The SATA SSDs have speed limited to that of the SATA interface (on paper, 640MB/sec Read; in practice, expect around 550MB/sec for Reads, and lower for Writes, depending on Brand/Model).
- The NVMe SSDs are more expensive, but higher speeds. For PCIe 3.0 models, depending on Brand/Model, you can get anywhere between 2000MB/s to 3400MB/s read speed. PCIe 4.0 models (supported by the newer Zen2 and Zen3 platforms) are even faster than this, but scarce and very expensive right now.

BloodBath

The hard drive used in that test was an extremely low speed 5400rpm mass storage option. A 2tb single platter 7200rpm drive would be significantly faster.

I still use a HDD for a lot of games and long loading times are not an issue. It's often just the first load that takes long in games anyway.

Snakeweasel

This is my motherboard ASRock AB350M Socket AM4 AMD B350 DDR4 SATA3&USB3.0 M.2 MicroATX Motherboard.

I had considered a larger HDD for storage either, but I have misplaced the rails for installing an additional one so would be worried about leaving it loose in the case.

BloodBath

Definitely don't do that :P If you're stuck with 1 you could just swap it out for a 2Tb drive either and sell the old 1 assuming you had nothing stored of private value on it. People can recover deleted info from HDD's.

Main thing to look out for is make sure it's NVME as mentioned above and not a sata drive using m.2 interface. I'd stick with seagate or western digital for HDD's a well. I don't trust the other brands.