NVMe SSD advice please

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Hi guys,

I currently have a 3TB SATA-III 7200RPM HDD and considering buying an NVMe SSD (specifically Adata XPG SX8200 Pro 1TB). My motherboard has a compatible slot.

The main use for my PC is gaming. Read/watched reviews and some have said whilst NVMe has excellent technical specs for moving large files - that in real life most ‘gamers’ won’t see much benefit.

Was after some advice please. Is anyone on this forum using this tech and if yes would you recommend it to other gamers?

Thanks for your help

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Your will definitely see an improvement over a HDD.

I went with a cheap model as I needed the space and bought the Intel 660p 2TB.

While it won’t win any benchmarks it’s still plenty fast and I really don’t think I would notice the difference in real-time if I had bought one of the more expensive models.

It’s said to slow down significantly if You fill it up but I just keep around 100GB to 200GB free at all times and haven’t noticed anything.

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Ah …
Firstly - maybe I misread, will double check if it said gamers would not see much benefit between SATA 3 SSD (rather than my SATA 3 HDD) vs NVMe SSD. Which might make more sense.

Secondly - did you keep your HD system drive and then just move some games across to NVMe SSD or did you use it to replace your system drive? If the latter then maybe I should consider the 2TB version.

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This may help, went from Hdd to ssd to an nvme m.2 ssd the major benefit of an ssd is the faster load speeds for gamers. For example GTA V is known for its long load speeds. Instead of a minute to 2 minute load speed on a hdd it’ll only take 20seconds or so. I’d say keep the money from buying a m.2 ssd as a normal ssd will improve the load times significantly on its own. You also have an option of a 16gb optaine which will work with your hdd and improve speeds to an ssd like speeds. Hope this helps!

Tldr ssd great for gaming as it has quicker load speeds by an significant margin.

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I have a few Adata ssdds. 2 512g NVMe drives. They do indeed make a difference with load times etc…

Just even checkout the earlier days with folks putting ssdd in ps3 and such.

Still good though to have a good HD for storage like media or some games that don’t really need the extra speed.

On the plus you can move steam games from one steam library to another. I use this to save on downloading the same game on multiple setups.

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Thanks that does help - what initially prompted me to look into this was Half-Life: Alyx.

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I ditched my old system drive (4x Samsung EVO 850 250GB SSDs in Raid-0)… :wink:

You’ll notice it in the overall feeling of the system being snappy. No lagging (loading). And bootup is considerably faster.

I didn’t want to have two drives and just wanted an all-SSD simple setup… :+1::upside_down_face:

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Thanks, this is the way I am now thinking. Maybe buy a 2TB NVMe SSD to replace my HD system drive. Then either deactivate my HDD (like DrWilken said above to keep things simple) or keep it as a second drive to store media on.

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Or use it as a backup drive.

Disk to disk backups are really fast… :+1::upside_down_face:

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I have a 1 TB NVMe SSD as my system and game drive and 3 standard SSDs for a total of ~3 TB. Games load really fast, so yes, it’s worth it. If you have a lot of games installed, a 2 TB unit is definitely worth considering.

I kept my 2 original hard drives (~5 TB) for use as backups for the SSDs. They are installed in my PC, but are usually disconnected (no power, but still connected to the drive cables). This is just in case I ever get hit by malware that deletes or encrypts my files.

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Bought and installed a 2TB NVMe SSD (using my old 3TB HDD for backup). I definitely notice a substantial performance improvement.

Thanks for your help :call_me_hand: This thread can be closed now.

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