Confused on m.2 drives

sleepyone

Like a lot of people it seems lately i'm looking to jump into the new 3600 Ryzen boat to upgrade my current rig.

I haven't touched pc components for at least 5 years so I'm a bit lost with the new (to me at least) m.2 format.

Looks like the MB comes with 2 m.2 slots so should i go with a small boot drive and a 500GB for my Steam Installs? Not realy sure what all the NAND, V-NAND etc fits into all this.

It will primarily be a gaming rig by the way

I've put together the current list on eBuyer: link if you want it

Gigabyte X570 GAMING X AM4 DDR4 ATX MotherboardAMD Ryzen 5 3600 AM4Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 DRAM 3200MHz C16 Memory Kit Corsair CXM 750W Semi Modular 80  Bronze Power SupplyFractal Design Node 804 Black PC CaseAcer Nitro VG270U 27" WQHD IPS LED 75Hz
Will be bringing my GTX1070 and my 3TB and 4TB Data Drives from my current rig.

Bonus question: will i be ok for 1440p gaming on that monitor?


Cheers,
Mark

EndlessWaves

That case doesn't take ATX motherboards like the one on you're list. You'll need to downsize to a Micro ATX board (4 expansion slots instead of 7) or go for a different case.

Also bear in mind that 27" is on the small size for 2560x1440, consider the 32" models as well.


NAND flash is the general term for the type of memory used in SSDs (and USB sticks and various other things). The vast majority of SSDs anyway, some of Intel's drives use 3D XPoint memory (aka Optane), and it was co-developed with Micron/Crucial so we're expecting a few models from them to launch this year too.

V-NAND, 3D NAND and other stuff are various manufacturing technologies for NAND. It's just one of many factors that go into the end result so only of interest as background information, it shouldn't affect your choice of model.

techquest

As @EndlessWaves has said, your motherboard is wrong , you need a micro ATX for you case.


Something like this one:

ASRock AMD Ryzen X570M Pro4 AM4 PCIe 4.0 MicroATX Motherboard

ASRock AMD Ryzen X570M Pro4 AM4 PCIe 4.0 MicroATX Motherboard

An article on M.2

What is M.2 SSD? - Definition from WhatIs.com

Two things you need to be really aware of is that M.2 drives generate lots of heat and they eventually fail due to the number of writes, they don't last forever.  Nand vs V Nand, they're just different types of memory cells used in SSD's or flash drives. 3D is where they stack the planes of NAND cells vertically in the form of a V, hence V NAND for more capacity and lower production costs.

What’s the difference between NAND and V-NAND? - Answers - UserBenchmark

EndlessWaves

I wouldn't have put it like that.

SSDs generate very little heat, two or three watts at most. That's lost in the background noise - individual CPUs and GPUs of the same model vary by that sort of amount.

What techquest is likely referring to is that M.2 is a very small and slim form factor and even with the very small amount of heat generated some drives will throttle back their performance due to temperatures when under a sustained load (15 minutes ).

But gaming isn't a sustained load, the longest you're seeing constant disk activity for is the duration of a loading screen, maybe 20 or 30 seconds.

Likewise while SSD can wear out due to writes (form factor is irrelevant), it does take an awful lot of data written and for most home and power user use the drive will die of other reasons first.  Gaming in particular is mostly reading data rather than writing it, so I doubt you'd even come close to that point in a decade of use.

techquest

No what I'm referring to is that I have some M.2 drives and they are generating shedloads of heat, which is dissipated to the heatsink that is extremely hot, burn hot, after minutes of use. They are all Samsung's top range of drives. So in a small form case like @sleepyone is going to use, then I'm suggesting you'd better be sure your cooling/airflow is at its best.

EndlessWaves

Do you have a source for that? Tom's hardware found the 970 Evo consumed 3.9W average while copying data, peaking at 6.9W:
500GB Performance Results - Samsung 970 EVO Plus SSD Review: More Layers Brings More Performance
Those are tiny amounts of heat compared to other components, and the revised Plus version is even lower. It's similar to a 2.5" SSD, and less than a 3.5" hard drive.

The node 804 is a large 41L case with 10 120mm/140mm fan mounts - it comes with three fitted as standard.

techquest

As I said my own drives and real experience. As for the case what I'm saying is it's best to be sure than to find a heat source has shortened the life span of a product inside your case.

Delvey

I doubt you would notice the difference between an SSD and M2 in real world terms
As others have mentioned, M2 can get hot (probably due to the close proximity to the GPU, Mobo, CPU etc).

techquest

Also have 2 M.2's  in external drive caddies and you can just about handle them after a short period of use due to the heat generated, though in it's caddy the heat has nowhere to go but the surrounding case. Compared to a 2.5" SSD in a caddy then that runs cool.

Sloppy Bob

You could save a bit of cash going for a B450 or X470 Mini-ITX board, however, if this is your first dip into Ryzen that will create problems for you as the BIOS needs flashed on them and you need a CPU to do it for most boards.