I recently bought a 12700k and MSI PRO Z790-A WIFI, DDR5 motherboard.
NVME drives will be the next purchase.
A 1tb for Win11 and 2tb for downloads/temp-storage.
My data files will move over with a pair of 6tb spinners that are part of my current system.
MB Storage specs are:
4x M.2
M.2_1 Source (From CPU) supports up to PCIe 4.0 x4 , supports 22110/2280/2260/2242 devices
M.2_2 Source (From Chipset) supports up to PCIe 4.0 x4 , supports 2280/2260/2242 devices
M.2_3 Source (From Chipset) supports up to PCIe 4.0 x4 / SATA mode, supports 2280/2260/2242 devices
M.2_4 Source (From Chipset) supports up to PCIe 4.0 x4 / SATA mode, supports 2280/2260/2242 devices
6x SATA 6G
I’m interested in hearing from others more knowledgeable than myself on which M.2 drives to buy for this specific setup and what is best use for the M.2_1 slot(from CPU) OS or storage drive?
Criteria for consideration when making your suggestions.
Personal experience - Endorsements of specific drives you actually own and use with similar LGA 1700 mb are appreciated.
Longevity - I typically run my systems for 8 to 10 years before replacing.
Value - Avoid overpaying for features that the hardware can’t support(unless the newer model is cheaper than legacy part)
I don’t overclock
I don’t game
Typical use is: emails, spreadsheets, downloading from web, rendering video files with DvdFab and burning bluerays.
Looking at the current market, there are two different kind of NVMEs - Boot drives and bulk drives.
Boot drives usually cost more, but should have:
A DRAM cache - ideally 1 GB per 1TB of storage
A big SLC cache - the bigger the better
PCIe 3.0 or PCIe 4.0 are not really important, as random reads are barely improved, only how fast you can copy data from drive A to drive B. Unfortunately most sites do not advertise the size of the DRAM cache sizes, only SLC cache sizes - if even that. Price is also not a good indicator at the moment, I’ve seen cheap boot drives and expensive bulk drives for the same PCIe generation and capacity.
Personally I have had good experience with ADATA Swordfish, Kingston KC3000 and Samsung 980 on the boot drive side, and Kingston NV2 and Crucial P3 / P3 Plus on the bulk side.
With that in mind and looking at current PC Part Pickers:
thanks for your reply.
I bought a Solidigm drive last night just so that I can load an OS and make sure the hardware is operational.
The motherboard has four m.2 slots so I figured if its sub par then I can always use it
in 3rd or forth slot as a working storage/tmp file drive.
Prior to the purchase I did more reading research on NVMe’s and if necessary will swap out the Solidigm boot drive with a Crucial P3, P5 or Samsung 980 pro.
The downloads drive purchase will probably be a 2tb drive. Since this will be the drive with the
most writes happening I am concerned it may get worn out easily. I’ve had excellent success with every Crucial SSD purchase made over past 10 years. The P3 and a PNY CS2140 were being looked into and per your advice I’ll add to that list the Kingston KC3000.
Only one M.2 slot on the motherboard has a built in heatsink cover. Any suggestions on aftermarket heatsinks or have you found them to be unnecessary?
Sorry, I cannot in any good conscience recommend a 120 GB drive for daily driving. It’s just way too small compared to the 512 GB - 1TB you can get for a decent bootdrive these days.
Though, might make one heck of a Linux swap drive…
I saw the videos Wendell posted a few months back about the dramatic price drop of Optane.
I wasn’t considering it because I am really not a power user. The only reason I bought the 12700k was due to the cost, I seemed dirt cheap for what it is and good bet I’d be happy using it for the next 8 years or more. I paid $75 for the 1tb Solidigm. My current PC is a 4th gen 4770K that has served me well but recently I had a stick of ram go bad and that was the reason I decided it was time to build a new machine and move onto windows11.
Thanks for the suggestion , its always fun to dream about being that kind of power user.
