No one told me about these m.2 SSD drives

[Masterbagger]

My PC is approaching 9 years old. It's been a trooper but it is starting to chug on recent games X4 included. I recently started looking into upgrades and then learned about these little SSD drives stuck directly onto the motherboard. I think I need that. More than one of them. More faster and more betterer in all ways. This has put me over the edge and into spending money territory. That isn't an easy feat. I normally loathe spending money and therefore have a stash of it waiting for a day just like this. I've been doing a little catching up.

I want to build a new PC. I am leaning toward the i9 9900k cpu. The last time I did this 4 cores was the bees knees. I am way out of date. Lost in the sauce. I need to pick out a motherboard and video card. Got a case and cooler picked out already. I just looked for the biggest ones. The rest of the things I don't even know what to look for anymore. I'm going to order the case and cooler and have them shipped to my workplace. The people there won't steal the boxes off my porch but they might open them and draw wieners on my stuff. I can live with that and probably deserve it. No hurry here on the rest.

9900k. What go with? I need a video card that will crush X4 and a few years from now X5. Need a motherboard too. The rest of the stuff will just fall into place once those are decided on. What do? Plenty of time to think on it. I'm not in a hurry.

[pjknibbs]

You should seriously consider AMD Ryzen. Third gen Ryzen near enough matches Intel clock for clock and you get a lot more cores for your money.

[Terre]

If memory serves me well, you also flight sim., which needs cores, middle of 2020 should see the Ryzen 4700X released.

[Chips]

I just upgraded with the brand new AMD Ryzen 3600, motherboard and 16Gb of memory and SSD for less than you're about to splash on the CPU alone; mine was also 9 years old but I don't play new games so didn't really chug - just felt it was time - especially as windows would no longer update 1803 to 1903 or whatever is new version (it kept trying repeatedly and failing repeatedly, and no amount of following guides would help it - bloody annoying).

I'd seriously consider checking out benchmarks to get a feel and then read reviews. The 7 or even 9 series Ryzen can perform as well, and may cost slightly less or even significantly less while giving way more than you need. But don't just surf the CPU's using the comparison below (it's pegged for yours vs mine, but the price difference is huge!) I'd pick a few out and then find a decent review site whereby they go over the performances in games.

Of course you may be buying to keep going for the next 9 years - I would love to say I have, but that was never original intent.

https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/I ... 4028vs4040

One thing to note - if you ever had windows OEM - a big upgrade will mean invalid Windows edition. Make sure your windows is activated to account if it's an old windows 7 upgrade-to-10-for-free and even then OEM won't reactivate anyway. Need to get a new windows 10 *I think* which is annoying, but the risk of buying the budget version OEM editions.

Going to see if all my games / steam can run via Linux. And graphics drivers. Or whatever. Fed up with windows.

[jlehtone]

I recently started looking into upgrades and then learned about these little SSD drives stuck directly onto the motherboard. I think I need that. More than one of them. More faster and more betterer in all ways.

Yes, they are compact. Awesome in, say light laptop.

However, some are concerned about heat in them. Not sure how bare chips would cool off worse than 2,5" boxes.

Another detail to pay attention to is that there are two distinct systems that both use (some version) of the physical M.2 connector:
* SATA drives
* NVME drives
Some M.2 connectors on some motherboards have support for both. Not all.

[pjknibbs]

However, some are concerned about heat in them. Not sure how bare chips would cool off worse than 2,5" boxes.

Precisely because they *are* just bare chips. In a 2.5" drive you could attach the chips to the casing and thus get a much larger area to dissipate heat--I don't know if any manufacturers actually do that, but the option is there. Plus, 2.5" drives will generally be attached via a SATA connection which limits their speed compared to an NVMe m.2 drive.

[Masterbagger]

I just upgraded with the brand new AMD Ryzen 3600, motherboard and 16Gb of memory and SSD for less than you're about to splash on the CPU alone; mine was also 9 years old but I don't play new games so didn't really chug - just felt it was time - especially as windows would no longer update 1803 to 1903 or whatever is new version (it kept trying repeatedly and failing repeatedly, and no amount of following guides would help it - bloody annoying).

I'd seriously consider checking out benchmarks to get a feel and then read reviews. The 7 or even 9 series Ryzen can perform as well, and may cost slightly less or even significantly less while giving way more than you need. But don't just surf the CPU's using the comparison below (it's pegged for yours vs mine, but the price difference is huge!) I'd pick a few out and then find a decent review site whereby they go over the performances in games.

Of course you may be buying to keep going for the next 9 years - I would love to say I have, but that was never original intent.

https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/I ... 4028vs4040

One thing to note - if you ever had windows OEM - a big upgrade will mean invalid Windows edition. Make sure your windows is activated to account if it's an old windows 7 upgrade-to-10-for-free and even then OEM won't reactivate anyway. Need to get a new windows 10 *I think* which is annoying, but the risk of buying the budget version OEM editions.

Going to see if all my games / steam can run via Linux. And graphics drivers. Or whatever. Fed up with windows.

I'm not worried about the cost that much. I plan to get a lot of mileage out of a new system. It really isn't unreasonable to get something that won't need much upgrading. In 9 years I changed out a video card and replaced a broken power supply and a cheap fan. That was a lot of usage. I have far less cost effective hobbies than this.

I don't know if I'm going to go to Win10 yet. I still have win7 discs and I actually like 7. I use 10 at work and it has not won me over.

https://www.amazon.com/Cooler-Master-Ma ... to_dp&th=1

I'm ordering this case today. Handle on top. Winner. I need to cram in at least one full size hard drive for music and movies.

https://www.newegg.com/cooler-master-ma ... -_-Product

Probably going to go with this cooler. I'm going to sleep on that choice. I'll order something tomorrow.

I talked to some people and learned a little more about these nvme ssd cards. The M.2 slots aren't always both higher speed. That gives me something to look for in a motherboard. I think that will be the next step. Video card is going to be the toughest so I'll save it for last.

I recently started looking into upgrades and then learned about these little SSD drives stuck directly onto the motherboard. I think I need that. More than one of them. More faster and more betterer in all ways.

Yes, they are compact. Awesome in, say light laptop.

However, some are concerned about heat in them. Not sure how bare chips would cool off worse than 2,5" boxes.

Another detail to pay attention to is that there are two distinct systems that both use (some version) of the physical M.2 connector:
* SATA drives
* NVME drives
Some M.2 connectors on some motherboards have support for both. Not all.

I just got a little more info on that. They said using the m.2 slots can also disable some of the SATA slots which isn't a big problem.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07HRZKSX4/?c ... _lig_dp_it

That motherboard there has 3 m.2 slots and two of them are nvme. That is about the extent of what I guess I would need. I'm going to take one more look based on nvme slots before I buy anything.

[jlehtone]

I just got a little more info on that. They said using the m.2 slots can also disable some of the SATA slots which isn't a big problem.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07HRZKSX4/?c ... _lig_dp_it

That motherboard there has 3 m.2 slots and two of them are nvme. That is about the extent of what I guess I would need. I'm going to take one more look based on nvme slots before I buy anything.

The manual of that board describes the M.2 connectors on pages 20-21.
All three support "PCIe SSD". That is NVMe. Two support SATA SSD.

The "M2P" does not support SATA devices. It shares PCIe lanes with the "PCIEX4" adapter card slot. If both are populated, then each gets two lanes. If you have only either NVMe on M2P or a card in PCIEX4, then that device gets all four lanes.
The "M2A" can have NVMe or SATA. If you put SATA device there, you effectively use the SATA3_1 port with that device. NVMe won't affect the SATA3_1.
The "M2M" can have NVMe or SATA. If you put anything there, you effectively disconnect SATA3_4 and SATA3_5.

In other words, motherboards have multiple ways to provide "connections".

The "lanes" to all three come from the chipset (aka southbridge). The "PCIEX16" and "PCIEX8" are directly connected to the CPU.


Anandtech's review https://www.anandtech.com/show/14605/th ... ng-the-bar
has a table titled: "Comparison: Ryzen 9 3900X vs Core i9-9900K"

The AMD CPU has 16+4+4 PCIe lanes, while the Intel has 16+4.
The "16" go to those PCIEX16&PCIEX8 slots where you put graphics card.
A "4" connects CPU to the chipset.
The additional "4" on AMD could offer x4 PCIe slot and/or M.2 NVMe connector. One NVMe drive directly connected to the CPU.
Furthermore, more recent generation PCIe offers more (theoretical) bandwitdh.


Theoretical is the operative word. Something is always the "bottleneck" and you are not likely to notice a (significant) difference between the options.

[Masterbagger]

The manual of that board describes the M.2 connectors on pages 20-21.
All three support "PCIe SSD". That is NVMe. Two support SATA SSD.

The "M2P" does not support SATA devices. It shares PCIe lanes with the "PCIEX4" adapter card slot. If both are populated, then each gets two lanes. If you have only either NVMe on M2P or a card in PCIEX4, then that device gets all four lanes.
The "M2A" can have NVMe or SATA. If you put SATA device there, you effectively use the SATA3_1 port with that device. NVMe won't affect the SATA3_1.
The "M2M" can have NVMe or SATA. If you put anything there, you effectively disconnect SATA3_4 and SATA3_5.

In other words, motherboards have multiple ways to provide "connections".

The "lanes" to all three come from the chipset (aka southbridge). The "PCIEX16" and "PCIEX8" are directly connected to the CPU.


Anandtech's review https://www.anandtech.com/show/14605/th ... ng-the-bar
has a table titled: "Comparison: Ryzen 9 3900X vs Core i9-9900K"

The AMD CPU has 16+4+4 PCIe lanes, while the Intel has 16+4.
The "16" go to those PCIEX16&PCIEX8 slots where you put graphics card.
A "4" connects CPU to the chipset.
The additional "4" on AMD could offer x4 PCIe slot and/or M.2 NVMe connector. One NVMe drive directly connected to the CPU.
Furthermore, more recent generation PCIe offers more (theoretical) bandwitdh.


Theoretical is the operative word. Something is always the "bottleneck" and you are not likely to notice a (significant) difference between the options.

Thats some solid stuff to digest. My wallet definitely isn't the bottleneck so we'll put a ryzen 3900x on the table. I'll plan around a single nvme drive but make it a big one.

So if I go with the ryzen this mobo can do an nvme drive. And it has wifi.

https://www.amazon.com/ROG-Crosshair-VI ... op?ie=UTF8

And all the rest of the stuff should be simple.

[burger1]

Get at least 2 sticks of ram is all I have to say on buying a new computer. You'll probably be limited by the gpu more than a cpu. My 2012 i7-3770k works fine with a evga 1660 gpu and probably works well with higher level video cards. They also keep pumping out new versions of video cards. I think super are the latest nvidia cards.

https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E1681314426 ... -_-Product

Asus rog boards in general might be not the best quality? They also don't seem popular. I usually go with popular boards that have high ratings. That and an intel/nvidia combo.

https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?d=asus+rog

[Masterbagger]

I got the ball rolling today. I went AMD after doing some more reading. The AMD motherboard supports pcie4 for the nvme drive and I got one that will use it. The ryzen 3900x isn't in stock and that will be up to a week delay. No problem. I need a video card. I have two 144hz 24 inch monitors that have been great. I recognize the hdmi port on the video cards I have looked at but not these display port things. I see there are cables to convert them to hdmi so shouldn't be an issue. I'll attack that front tomorrow. I can't spend anymore today without a phone call to my bank and I don't like the phone center in India they use.

I'm actually tempted to get a bigger monitor and plop it down between the two I have. I'll save that for last. I don't know if you can mix 1440p with 1080p.

[pjknibbs]

I'm actually tempted to get a bigger monitor and plop it down between the two I have. I'll save that for last. I don't know if you can mix 1440p with 1080p.

You can run multiple monitors at any resolution you like--several of the people where I work have a laptop with a native 1366x768 display attached to an external 1920x1080 monitor, running both as a dual monitor setup. Windows will even allow you to drag the virtual monitors around so they link up where you expect them to. The one thing you need to check is if whatever graphics card(s) you get will support a triple monitor setup in the first place.

[linolafett]

And also keep in mind, that the support for win7 ends in two months. So better install win10 right away.

[Masterbagger]

And also keep in mind, that the support for win7 ends in two months. So better install win10 right away.

https://imgur.com/a/3Ddhe35

I threw this together in mspaint real quick to illustrate my decision here.


Parts are trickling in. Case arrived intact. Cooler, power supply, ram, monster nvme ssd drive all present and passed the dog dog sniff test. Cooler was easy to install. I discovered that I have to have it blow air out from the front of the case or the lights on the fans will look bad. Maybe not ideal but I can cram fans all over this thing it is so big. The coolermaster cooler comes with a hub for the RGB lights that can make the reset switch on the case control the lights. I would rather have a button than use a program here. Maybe. I am not sure how this will all work out. I have no idea what I am doing with this RGB hardware.

I'm looking at delivery of the motherboard and CPU on either Friday or Monday. On hold until they arrive. Still need to select a video card. I know I'm not going to make the jump to a 4k resolution gaming system this time when not enough games support it and the highest end video cards can't handle it with ease. Probably going to go with a lesser form of the nvidia 2080. I have nothing against radeon but in this category I think nvidia has them beat. Ordered the cables for my two monitors. Still on the fence about getting a massive monitor to put between them. My eyes suck and I should absolutely compensate. Time for better speakers too as much as I love music and my ears also suck. Hate you, tinnitus.

For the other stuff I will wait for black Friday. I'll complete the RGB fans when I understand how that system works better. The case came with unlit fans. It also has room for only one hard drive or DVD drive but not both. The last few days I have been deleting junk I don't need anymore and it turns out that I need far less storage than I have now. I see that SSD drives now go up to 4GB and that will hold all of the music and movies I anticipate wanting. I look forward to not hearing the ticking of a hard drive anymore. That will also happen next month during a sale. For now things are coming to together and looking very good.

[Ronald Sandoval]

dude they invented these great new gadgets they call them external hard drives i have loads of them

[jlehtone]

It also has room for only one hard drive or DVD drive but not both. The last few days I have been deleting junk I don't need anymore and it turns out that I need far less storage than I have now. I see that SSD drives now go up to 4GB and that will hold all of the music and movies I anticipate wanting.

I assume the "4GB" is a typo. Samsung seems to have a 30TB SSD. 2.5", but SAS rather than SATA (and enterprise pricing).

Nevertheless, doesn't your case boast room for four 2.5" devices on display, i.e. on the side / not conflicting with the cooler?
(+1 "hotswap slot"?)

dude they invented these great new gadgets they call them external hard drives i have loads of them

You sound like Dr. Strangelove. Haphazard heap of externals is like floppies all over again; scary.

[Masterbagger]

It also has room for only one hard drive or DVD drive but not both. The last few days I have been deleting junk I don't need anymore and it turns out that I need far less storage than I have now. I see that SSD drives now go up to 4GB and that will hold all of the music and movies I anticipate wanting.

I assume the "4GB" is a typo. Samsung seems to have a 30TB SSD. 2.5", but SAS rather than SATA (and enterprise pricing).

Nevertheless, doesn't your case boast room for four 2.5" devices on display, i.e. on the side / not conflicting with the cooler?
(+1 "hotswap slot"?)

I was surprised by it too but there is a 4GB drive out there.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07864XY8B/re ... =UTF8&th=1

I can wait for a sale. My main nvme drive is 2TB so I don't need a dedicated drive for games anymore after trimming away what I had installed. The hotswap port is kind of nice and I may use it. I periodically image my windows drive and store a backup in case I ever have to recover. Been doing this long enough that I have needed it once already after an SSD failure. It is completely worth the effort.

Amazon unexpectedly delivered the motherboard and CPU today. Not going to assemble them tonight. I have all the lights turned off while hiding from trick or treaters. I ordered a video card. Got the nvidia 2080 super. That should last me a long time and still have some value as a hand me down in a few years. I'll have it in hand tomorrow and that should be everything needed to be up and running. It's going to be a sad thing to finally turn off this computer and yank the drives.

[pjknibbs]

I was surprised by it too but there is a 4GB drive out there.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07864XY8B/re ... =UTF8&th=1

That's a 4Tb drive, not a 4Gb one--that's why jlehtone assumed your original "4Gb" was a typo, because 4Gb is less than most USB pen drives have!

[Masterbagger]

I was surprised by it too but there is a 4GB drive out there.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07864XY8B/re ... =UTF8&th=1

That's a 4Tb drive, not a 4Gb one--that's why jlehtone assumed your original "4Gb" was a typo, because 4Gb is less than most USB pen drives have!

I see where the confusion was. My fault. Lack of caffeine.

Video card was a no show. I had it shipped to my workplace to eliminate the risk of porch pirates. That means it ain't coming until Monday because we're closed and new PC isn't motivation enough to go to work on a weekend. This is it then. One last weekend of using this old dinosaur. I intend to make the best of it.

I did make the mistake of shining a black light on it. I should never have bought a black light. The case is fine just needs some scrubbing around the power button. I will have to add a rug to the list of stuff I need to replace here. My fault there too. I should never have fed dog dog whatever made those stains. I know he can't handle pepperoni.

[Masterbagger]

It is done. I assembled everything yesterday using my old video card. The new one arrived and completed it. I set all the RGB stuff to red and have it slowly pulsing on and off. It is glorious. It is very very quiet, runs cool, and it boots stupidly fast.

All of this has been so worth it. The last thing to figure out is the monitors. The outside rims of these monitors are not small. I would not be happy running them in a triple setup. I can either stay with 1080p monitors and get 3 new ones to go to a triple monitor setup as close to frameless as possible or just get one monster of a 1440p to be the main. I'm going to wait on that.