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apropos man
Sep 5, 2016

You get a hundred and forty one thousand years and you're out in eight!
If you're using Steam primarily for holding you game files then I would absolutely just look for a reasonably priced SSD which isn't too shonky a brand.

Once you've installed a second SSD it's fairly trivial to tell Steam to move a game over to a different partition/drive. You'd have to Google for which menu it's in but it's simple and only takes the time for whatever quantity of data you're shifting over to the other drive. Something like Witcher 3, for example at 80GB will take between 5 and 10 minutes on a decent PC and off you go.

The prices are really good right now so you could get another Samsung EVO 500GB and do it that way. Another school of thought is to get a slightly "less premium" brand SSD and use that for secondary Steam library storage. That's how I have it, so my boot drive is a premium model Samsung Evo and my spare one is an old OCZ and is just used for storing games.

Even if your motherboard has the slot for an NVMe drive, it's debatable whether you'll see any real speed increases compared to a standard 2.5" SSD, so just go for another of what you've got. The Crucial MX500 is also a good alternative to the Samsung Evo if you want to save a few pennies and still get a decent drive.

EDIT: The reason I've got two different brands of SSD in mine is because:
1) When the Samsung started running out of space I had he OCZ one lying around in another PC not doing much, so it cost nothing.
2) When I go into Windows Disk Management or when I'm copying files around it's really easy to see which direction I'm copying files.

apropos man fucked around with this message at 05:48 on Jan 24, 2019

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Max Wilco
Jan 23, 2012

I'm just trying to go through life without looking stupid.

It's not working out too well...

apropos man posted:

If you're using Steam primarily for holding you game files then I would absolutely just look for a reasonably priced SSD which isn't too shonky a brand.

Once you've installed a second SSD it's fairly trivial to tell Steam to move a game over to a different partition/drive. You'd have to Google for which menu it's in but it's simple and only takes the time for whatever quantity of data you're shifting over to the other drive. Something like Witcher 3, for example at 80GB will take between 5 and 10 minutes on a decent PC and off you go.

The prices are really good right now so you could get another Samsung EVO 500GB and do it that way. Another school of thought is to get a slightly "less premium" brand SSD and use that for secondary Steam library storage. That's how I have it, so my boot drive is a premium model Samsung Evo and my spare one is an old OCZ and is just used for storing games.

Even if your motherboard has the slot for an NVMe drive, it's debatable whether you'll see any real speed increases compared to a standard 2.5" SSD, so just go for another of what you've got. The Crucial MX500 is also a good alternative to the Samsung Evo if you want to save a few pennies and still get a decent drive.

EDIT: The reason I've got two different brands of SSD in mine is because:
1) When the Samsung started running out of space I had he OCZ one lying around in another PC not doing much, so it cost nothing.
2) When I go into Windows Disk Management or when I'm copying files around it's really easy to see which direction I'm copying files.

It's a mixture of Steam, games from GOG, and other things (I lost a lot of space after setting up a modded Fallout 4 install, and just the other day I reinstalled World of Warcraft to try again, which is at least 50GB). I don't necessarily need to transfer everything over, but relocating some of the larger games would free up some space.

That CrucialMX500 seems like it would be good. I was shooting for 1TB (the 1TB Samsung one I found was like $167), so I'll think about it. Admittedly, I'm worried about the Crucial failing, but if it's just got games on it, it wouldn't be that terrible. I actually was paranoid about SSDs for a while, since I remember hearing they had a high failure rate, but maybe that's changed.

I hadn't heard of the NVMe drives before, and while those look interesting, I'm just thinking of the 2.5" ones like you said. However, I'm not the most computer hardware literate :downs:, so I didn't know if I have the connections or capacity for another SSD with the two I have already (both in terms of cable connections and/or power draw.)

apropos man
Sep 5, 2016

You get a hundred and forty one thousand years and you're out in eight!

Max Wilco posted:

It's a mixture of Steam, games from GOG, and other things (I lost a lot of space after setting up a modded Fallout 4 install, and just the other day I reinstalled World of Warcraft to try again, which is at least 50GB). I don't necessarily need to transfer everything over, but relocating some of the larger games would free up some space.

That CrucialMX500 seems like it would be good. I was shooting for 1TB (the 1TB Samsung one I found was like $167), so I'll think about it. Admittedly, I'm worried about the Crucial failing, but if it's just got games on it, it wouldn't be that terrible. I actually was paranoid about SSDs for a while, since I remember hearing they had a high failure rate, but maybe that's changed.

I hadn't heard of the NVMe drives before, and while those look interesting, I'm just thinking of the 2.5" ones like you said. However, I'm not the most computer hardware literate :downs:, so I didn't know if I have the connections or capacity for another SSD with the two I have already (both in terms of cable connections and/or power draw.)

It might be a good idea to read up a bit about RAID and backup. Not the most exciting subject for a first dive, but there's some satisfaction there once you get a RAID tank working. With an extra layer of backup for important stuff, of course. ;-)

Atomizer
Jun 24, 2007



Max Wilco posted:

Stupid question time!

So currently I have two hard drives on my computer: the first is a Samsung SSD 850 EVO 500G, which was the one I got when it was built, which has the operating system, games, files, etc.

The second drive is WDC WD2003FZEX-00Z4S traditional hard drive with 2TB of space. This one I just use primarily for storage (old/archived files and photos, larger things like game installers and videos, etc.).

Right now, the Samsung SSD is starting to get full (mostly due to huge video game installs are), and I was thinking about getting another SSD (I saw a Samsung 1TB for relatively cheap on Amazon) to make more room for installing games separate from the SSD with operating system and my other miscellaneous files.

My questions are 1.) Would it be possible to add a third drive (and what should specs should I post to detail whether or not there's capacity for it), and 2.) If not, would I be better off just installing things to the 2TB drive.

My thinking was 'no' on the second one, since it would be more efficient to just have anything load from an SSD, but I was told that in some cases, an SSD is only utilized for getting the OS to boot and load more efficently.

The Samsung isn't a hard[-disk] drive, it's a solid-state drive. It's still probably sufficient to have games on HDDs instead of SSDs, although the latter are dropping in price ($100/TB and better) so I wouldn't fault you for getting a cheap SSD just for games. You could also keep them mostly on the HDD, but then temporarily transfer whatever you're actively playing over to the SSD to increase performance. An SSD will give you the biggest performance boost over an HDD when used to hold the OS, but SSDs are faster than HDDs overall, in terms of sequential transfers (i.e. the absolute fastest they can perform) and random transfers (which are bad on HDDs because they're physically limited in how fast they can seek back and forth, and this is what you "feel" the most when transitioning from the OS on an HDD to an SSD.)

If you do want to add a drive and are not sure if you can, tell us if this is a laptop or desktop, the model numbers you can find, etc. A laptop will have limitations of perhaps 2-4 drives of any type (m.2, mSATA, 2.5") and a desktop will have more flexibility, both in terms of ports and bays in the case.

If you have enough space between your current drives, you could get a small SSD (say, ~120 GB for $20-25,) add it to your system, and use software like PrimoCache to accelerate the HDD, which eventually gives you the benefit of SSD performance but without having to manage anything yourself.

apropos man posted:

Once you've installed a second SSD it's fairly trivial to tell Steam to move a game over to a different partition/drive. You'd have to Google for which menu it's in but it's simple and only takes the time for whatever quantity of data you're shifting over to the other drive. Something like Witcher 3, for example at 80GB will take between 5 and 10 minutes on a decent PC and off you go.

The prices are really good right now so you could get another Samsung EVO 500GB and do it that way. Another school of thought is to get a slightly "less premium" brand SSD and use that for secondary Steam library storage. That's how I have it, so my boot drive is a premium model Samsung Evo and my spare one is an old OCZ and is just used for storing games.

Even if your motherboard has the slot for an NVMe drive, it's debatable whether you'll see any real speed increases compared to a standard 2.5" SSD, so just go for another of what you've got. The Crucial MX500 is also a good alternative to the Samsung Evo if you want to save a few pennies and still get a decent drive.

EDIT: The reason I've got two different brands of SSD in mine is because:
1) When the Samsung started running out of space I had he OCZ one lying around in another PC not doing much, so it cost nothing.
2) When I go into Windows Disk Management or when I'm copying files around it's really easy to see which direction I'm copying files.

In Steam, you right-click on the game title, click "Properties" IIRC, then the Local Files tab will give you the option to transfer the files to another library (you first have to create libraries on other drives in the Steam settings.)

You certainly don't need a high-end SSD like a Samsung Evo or Crucial MX500 for Steam games, though.

Max Wilco posted:

It's a mixture of Steam, games from GOG, and other things (I lost a lot of space after setting up a modded Fallout 4 install, and just the other day I reinstalled World of Warcraft to try again, which is at least 50GB). I don't necessarily need to transfer everything over, but relocating some of the larger games would free up some space.

That CrucialMX500 seems like it would be good. I was shooting for 1TB (the 1TB Samsung one I found was like $167), so I'll think about it. Admittedly, I'm worried about the Crucial failing, but if it's just got games on it, it wouldn't be that terrible. I actually was paranoid about SSDs for a while, since I remember hearing they had a high failure rate, but maybe that's changed.

I hadn't heard of the NVMe drives before, and while those look interesting, I'm just thinking of the 2.5" ones like you said. However, I'm not the most computer hardware literate :downs:, so I didn't know if I have the connections or capacity for another SSD with the two I have already (both in terms of cable connections and/or power draw.)

I'd suggest the Adata SU650, which has been under $100 for 1 TB recently on Rakuten with their frequent discount codes. No need to worry about the reliability of that Crucial, this Adata, or really any SSD in general; they (and HDDs) can fail, but the vast majority will give you years of trouble-free use. You definitely need to backup anything important, however, and a cheap HDD will suffice for that. $20/TB is a good price, and a few months ago Amazon had 6 TB external drives for $100, which was ridiculous.

2.5" SSDs will all be SATA, which is fine for most uses. m.2 is those little gum-stick-sized SSDs, that can be SATA or NVMe, the latter basically being a PCIe connection. You don't need NVMe for most purposes, so I wouldn't pay a premium for one over an SATA SSD, but if the price was right and your system supported it I wouldn't avoid an NVMe drive.

You won't have to worry about power supply for SSDs (they use a few watts at best) but as above, you need to determine available ports and physical slots/bays.

apropos man posted:

It might be a good idea to read up a bit about RAID and backup. Not the most exciting subject for a first dive, but there's some satisfaction there once you get a RAID tank working. With an extra layer of backup for important stuff, of course. ;-)

RAID is not backup. You need to understand this and you sure as hell need to make sure not to mislead someone who is clearly less familiar with the topic. You can use, say, RAID1 or RAID5 to provide a little extra reliability and ease of restoration, but it's not something I'd recommend to someone in Max's position nor is it something he should worry about before he has a traditional backup system in place.

alex314
Nov 22, 2007

Moving game directory in GOG is even simplier: move directory, tell GOG Galaxy to scan the drive. Steam should work the same, but I've got a game or two where Steam ended up redownloading the whole game.

Potato Salad
Oct 23, 2014

nobody cares


redeyes posted:

Come on now, have you actually had that experience or are you spergin away. It's $38 bux for 240GB right now man.

Windows Update has to set aside an additional 7GB due to the prevalence of full drives in the home-use sector.

You may not personally encounter any particular issue, but you aren't a standard home user. Modern controllers need free space to work with. Advances in materials science do not wholly account for the leaps in NAND endurance made this past decade. Leave the overprovision in there*

*Advice® always offered as a default for a home user Goon. Advice® may not be for advanced users. Advice® may be overridden by someone, like you, who personally knows what they're doing

Potato Salad fucked around with this message at 13:32 on Jan 24, 2019

oohhboy
Jun 8, 2013

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
I can’t believe people today are still recommending putting anything other than mass media on an HDD like games are some sort of application exception.

DrDork
Dec 29, 2003
commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

oohhboy posted:

I can’t believe people today are still recommending putting anything other than mass media on an HDD like games are some sort of application exception.

In many cases they are, though? While there are certainly exceptions, and games which do benefit heavily from SSDs, in many cases you're only getting a bit faster initial boot times, and then no real benefit, because the games were written with a PS4/XBox in mind, and thus are structured around the assumption that they need to pre-fetch and cache heavily to deal with the lovely laptop HDDs in those systems.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I bought a 1TB SSD explicitly so I could sit all my games and everything else other than movies on it and reap whatever benefits--minimal as they may be at times--I could from it, but if it's a question of "I only have a 250GB drive, what do I jettison first?" the answer is Media > Games > everything else.

Lambert
Apr 15, 2018

by Fluffdaddy
Fallen Rib

DrDork posted:

In many cases they are, though? While there are certainly exceptions, and games which do benefit heavily from SSDs, in many cases you're only getting a bit faster initial boot times, and then no real benefit, because the games were written with a PS4/XBox in mind, and thus are structured around the assumption that they need to pre-fetch and cache heavily to deal with the lovely laptop HDDs in those systems.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I bought a 1TB SSD explicitly so I could sit all my games and everything else other than movies on it and reap whatever benefits--minimal as they may be at times--I could from it, but if it's a question of "I only have a 250GB drive, what do I jettison first?" the answer is Media > Games > everything else.

You're getting way faster load times with SSDs, the difference is very significant (with Battlefield V, you're looking at multiple minutes of loading with an HDD). Even on PS4/Xbonx (have an internal Crucial MX500 in mine), the difference is pretty noticeable, although way less pronounced than on PC.

SSDs are pretty cheap these days.

DrDork
Dec 29, 2003
commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness
Yeah, PC-centric games like BFV are certainly gonna benefit, but many others are firmly designed for consoles, and aren't going to be such a night or day difference. SSDs are cheap, but if you can't/don't want to buy a newer or bigger one, after media, many games are the next step in the "this doesn't really benefit from sitting on the SSD" list.

This isn't me saying "lol never put games on a SSD." This is simply a triage strategy when you run out of space.

Rexxed
May 1, 2010

Dis is amazing!
I gotta try dis!

DrDork posted:

This isn't me saying "lol never put games on a SSD." This is simply a triage strategy when you run out of space.

Thank goodness that will never happen again with these prices.

oohhboy
Jun 8, 2013

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
It should be SSD: Put programs here. You keep insisting games are somehow special, they are programs like everything else.

Consoles suck at loading because the CPU is choking hence the variation from meh to ok where in PC it's almost always WOW. There isn't a PC/console centric thing, both can use the same loading strategies and more than likely do outside of playing a game straight off an optical disk.

incoherent
Apr 24, 2004

01010100011010000111001
00110100101101100011011
000110010101110010

Potato Salad posted:

Windows Update has to set aside an additional 7GB due to the prevalence of full drives in the home-use sector.

That and even microsoft ship their own surface hardware with 128gb SSDs (or, ugh, 64GB eMMC).

Mr.Radar
Nov 5, 2005

You guys aren't going to believe this, but that guy is our games teacher.

incoherent posted:

That and even microsoft ship their own surface hardware with 128gb SSDs (or, ugh, 64GB eMMC).

You can still buy no-name x86 Windows tablets with 2 GB RAM and 32 GB eMMC storage. Like this one which is $180 for some reason even though the next model up with double the RAM and storage is only $20 more.

K8.0
Feb 26, 2004

Her Majesty's 56th Regiment of Foot

redeyes posted:

Come on now, have you actually had that experience or are you spergin away. It's $38 bux for 240GB right now man.

People absolutely will do the dumbest poo poo possible no matter what you do to try and prevent it.

DrDork
Dec 29, 2003
commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

oohhboy posted:

It should be SSD: Put programs here. You keep insisting games are somehow special, they are programs like everything else.

Consoles suck at loading because the CPU is choking hence the variation from meh to ok where in PC it's almost always WOW. There isn't a PC/console centric thing, both can use the same loading strategies and more than likely do outside of playing a game straight off an optical disk.

There's a pretty substantial difference in how much a SSD helps depending on whether your workload is "open a bunch of small, difficult to predict files" or "open a highly predictable stream of largely continuous data." Which is, you know, why stuffing media on HDDs is fine: it's super easy to predict what it'll need next.

I don't know what your argument here is, man: some games simply don't benefit much other than initial load times. For instance, unless you're struggle-bussing around with 4GB RAM, Civ VI starts a lot faster, but after that, drives are pretty much irrelevant because it no longer needs to load much in any sort of rapid fashion, so even a HDD is sufficient to provide any needed assets in time. Other games, like BF V or basically any MMO, have substantial framerate impacts or "pop-in" issues when running off a slow HDD that would be massively improved by a SSD. It's not a universal thing; if you've got the space for it you should absolutely put games on a SSD, but if you're out of space, there are titles that won't suffer much from being elsewhere. :shrug:

Console CPUs aren't great, no, but they're also not the choke point: that would be the internal SATA 2 interface :negative:

Lambert
Apr 15, 2018

by Fluffdaddy
Fallen Rib

DrDork posted:

basically any MMO

I remember switching to an SSD back in 2010 (a Corsair Force 120 - real piece of poo poo, had three of those die on me!). I was a World of Warcraft player back then - after login in a crowded area like the capital city of Orgrimmar, all the items people wore, pets running around etc. would slowly stream in with an HDD. After switching to my SSD, everything was visible pretty much immediately.

teagone
Jun 10, 2003

That was pretty intense, huh?

I got a 500GB Crucial MX500 for ~$30 shipped using the AMEX $30 off $60 promo on Amazon. Needed to add a new SATA cable to bring the total over $60, but pretty great deal. I can finally upgrade the 250GB SSD in my gaming PC and not be starved for storage lol.

BIG HEADLINE
Jun 13, 2006

"Stand back, Ottawan ruffian, or face my lumens!"
Oh, and before anyone asks "wait, what $30 AMEX promo": https://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=17020113011

Atomizer
Jun 24, 2007



:siren:
With regards to the following discussion, let me repeat that I recommend caching software, specifically PrimoCache, to noticeably boost performance of HDDs as long as you can spare a single SSD (and/or system RAM.) You get the capacity and cost-efficiency of an HDD and the performance of an SSD (after caching is performed) without any micro-management, and that software in particular gives you lots of flexibility in terms of cache arrangement and type.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

DrDork posted:

I mean, don't get me wrong, I bought a 1TB SSD explicitly so I could sit all my games and everything else other than movies on it and reap whatever benefits--minimal as they may be at times--I could from it, but if it's a question of "I only have a 250GB drive, what do I jettison first?" the answer is Media > Games > everything else.

This is the main point: if SS storage and/or money weren't an issue, we'd be using SSDs for all active applications (and HDDs for archival/backups/long-term storage.)

Lambert posted:

You're getting way faster load times with SSDs, the difference is very significant (with Battlefield V, you're looking at multiple minutes of loading with an HDD). Even on PS4/Xbonx (have an internal Crucial MX500 in mine), the difference is pretty noticeable, although way less pronounced than on PC.

SSDs are pretty cheap these days.

But Battlefield 5 is an exception, and multiple-minute load times are pretty excessive, to the point where it sounds like some optimization is in order. I mean if we're talking about a 2-minute load from a slow HDD at 100 MB/s, that's how many gigabytes to load a single level?!? :psyduck: Is the game really loading 12+ GB into RAM?! If we're talking about having to read a ton of small files, on the other hand, then that's potentially a game that would benefit from being on an SSD, but again, optimization is possible....

oohhboy posted:

It should be SSD: Put programs here. You keep insisting games are somehow special, they are programs like everything else.

Consoles suck at loading because the CPU is choking hence the variation from meh to ok where in PC it's almost always WOW. There isn't a PC/console centric thing, both can use the same loading strategies and more than likely do outside of playing a game straight off an optical disk.

You're right, but games also consist of a ton of media: audio files, video, textures. That's the kind of poo poo you'd have on an HDD, and certainly don't need to be on an SSD. The fact that certain games can't manage their resources efficiently is their fault.

DrDork posted:

Console CPUs aren't great, no, but they're also not the choke point: that would be the internal SATA 2 interface :negative:

Wait, is this actually a thing?!? Is that why the PS4, for example, doesn't show a huge benefit from upgrading the internal drive to an SSD?

teagone posted:

I got a 500GB Crucial MX500 for ~$30 shipped using the AMEX $30 off $60 promo on Amazon. Needed to add a new SATA cable to bring the total over $60, but pretty great deal. I can finally upgrade the 250GB SSD in my gaming PC and not be starved for storage lol.

A 500 GB SSD for $50 or less is a good deal, although the MX500 is frankly too good to be relegated to game duty; it's a top-tier SATA SSD, OS-quality good. But I don't currently see a cheaper SSD at that capacity, so.... :)

GRINDCORE MEGGIDO
Feb 28, 1985


Keeping games that benefit from ssds on a spinny drive to punish them for being inefficient.

oohhboy
Jun 8, 2013

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
Sata 2 with an ssd is still theoretically 50% faster than an hdd @ 100 MB/s seek time ignored. Consoles come with 5200rpm drives which opens things up even more. It’s the poo poo tier cpu.

Farmer Crack-Ass
Jan 2, 2001

this is me posting irl

Atomizer posted:

But Battlefield 5 is an exception, and multiple-minute load times are pretty excessive, to the point where it sounds like some optimization is in order. I mean if we're talking about a 2-minute load from a slow HDD at 100 MB/s, that's how many gigabytes to load a single level?!? :psyduck: Is the game really loading 12+ GB into RAM?! If we're talking about having to read a ton of small files, on the other hand, then that's potentially a game that would benefit from being on an SSD, but again, optimization is possible....


Huge lols if you think big game publishers are going to spend time optimizing for HDD read performance when they're so lazy they sometimes won't even bother compressing audio any more.

Atomizer
Jun 24, 2007



GRINDCORE MEGGIDO posted:

Keeping games that benefit from ssds on a spinny drive to punish them for being inefficient.

No, the point was, SS storage isn't quite cheap enough to just throw everything on it, at least not for every user, so HDDs are still in the picture. Ideally, though, I'm all for SSDs for active use, HDDs for backup.

oohhboy posted:

Sata 2 with an ssd is still theoretically 50% faster than an hdd @ 100 MB/s seek time ignored. Consoles come with 5200rpm drives which opens things up even more. It’s the poo poo tier cpu.

Oh I agree, I was just unaware that some(?) current consoles were limited to SATA 2. Presumably the latest PS4 Pro, XboneX use SATA3?

And I'd definitely rather have an SSD over an HDD even on SATA2, it's just even more of a bottleneck (to sequentials at least) than SATA3. If anything, it puts the choice of a SSD upgrade into perspective; might as well put a cheap DRAMless drive in there rather than a nice Evo or MX500, for example, if your PS4 is going to be choking it over SATA2.

Farmer Crack-rear end posted:

Huge lols if you think big game publishers are going to spend time optimizing for HDD read performance when they're so lazy they sometimes won't even bother compressing audio any more.

What they should do is different from what I think they'll do....

Lambert
Apr 15, 2018

by Fluffdaddy
Fallen Rib

Atomizer posted:

Oh I agree, I was just unaware that some(?) current consoles were limited to SATA 2. Presumably the latest PS4 Pro, XboneX use SATA3?

And I'd definitely rather have an SSD over an HDD even on SATA2, it's just even more of a bottleneck (to sequentials at least) than SATA3. If anything, it puts the choice of a SSD upgrade into perspective; might as well put a cheap DRAMless drive in there rather than a nice Evo or MX500, for example, if your PS4 is going to be choking it over SATA2.

Both PS4 Pro and Xbonx are still limited to SATA2. There were some rumors of SATA3 support for Xbonx before launch, but those were false.

With the Xbonx, there's an additional huge benefit to switching the internal to an SSD: The OS chugs severely running from the original HDD. Much smoother since putting the MX500 in there. The PS4 Pro OS is faster as well, but never stuttered as much when running from HDD.

Max Wilco
Jan 23, 2012

I'm just trying to go through life without looking stupid.

It's not working out too well...
So what specs would I need to post to determine whether or not I can add another SSD? Can I just post the motherboard I use (ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. Z97-A-USB31), or will I need to physically open up the computer and check to see if there are additional connections for it?

Lambert
Apr 15, 2018

by Fluffdaddy
Fallen Rib

Max Wilco posted:

So what specs would I need to post to determine whether or not I can add another SSD? Can I just post the motherboard I use (ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. Z97-A-USB31), or will I need to physically open up the computer and check to see if there are additional connections for it?

That board has four SATA connectors as well as one M.2 NVMe connector, so you're good for a total of four SATA drives and one NVMe drive (M-Key, 2260 and 2280).

Note that you need to change a UEFI setting to make the M.2 slot work at full speed: You need to set "PCI Express Slot and M.2 Bandwidth" to "M.2 Mode". This will disable the topmost PCI-E-Slot (the one above the graphics card slot you're probably not using anyways).

Lambert fucked around with this message at 04:10 on Jan 25, 2019

teagone
Jun 10, 2003

That was pretty intense, huh?

Atomizer posted:

A 500 GB SSD for $50 or less is a good deal, although the MX500 is frankly too good to be relegated to game duty; it's a top-tier SATA SSD, OS-quality good. But I don't currently see a cheaper SSD at that capacity, so.... :)

Oh, it'll be the OS drive. Gonna clone the 250 drive onto it. But now I can finally have all the games I currently play installed on an SSD and not on the 1TB WD Blue I use for the games that are huge (30GB+).

Max Wilco
Jan 23, 2012

I'm just trying to go through life without looking stupid.

It's not working out too well...

Lambert posted:

That board has four SATA connectors as well as one M.2 NVMe connector, so you're good for a total of four SATA drives and one NVMe drive (M-Key, 2260 and 2280).

Note that you need to change a UEFI setting to make the M.2 slot work at full speed: You need to set "PCI Express Slot and M.2 Bandwidth" to "M.2 Mode". This will disable the topmost PCI-E-Slot (the one above the graphics card slot you're probably not using anyways).

Just for clarification, SATA connectors would work with SSD drives? (I ask because the regular HDD is listed as a SATA drive)

If so, hooray! :toot: That means I have two free connectors (meaning, if I were really insane, I could install two SDDs and potentially have 2TBs of storage), and according to the Speccy info on the motherboard, PCI-E slots 0, 2,3,4, and 5 are listed as 'Available'. (slots 1 and 6 are in use). I don't know how to change the PCI Express settings in Windows 7 though (assuming my version Win7 is/isn't already set up for it.)

Do I need to do anything specific with physically installing it? The case I have is the Cooler Master HAF 912, and I can't remember how I installed the Western Digital drive, but I don't know if I need to buy a rack or something to mount it on (I don't know if it loads into the same space as regular hard drive.)

isndl
May 2, 2012
I WON A CONTEST IN TG AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS CUSTOM TITLE

Max Wilco posted:

Just for clarification, SATA connectors would work with SSD drives? (I ask because the regular HDD is listed as a SATA drive)

If so, hooray! :toot: That means I have two free connectors (meaning, if I were really insane, I could install two SDDs and potentially have 2TBs of storage), and according to the Speccy info on the motherboard, PCI-E slots 0, 2,3,4, and 5 are listed as 'Available'. (slots 1 and 6 are in use). I don't know how to change the PCI Express settings in Windows 7 though (assuming my version Win7 is/isn't already set up for it.)

Do I need to do anything specific with physically installing it? The case I have is the Cooler Master HAF 912, and I can't remember how I installed the Western Digital drive, but I don't know if I need to buy a rack or something to mount it on (I don't know if it loads into the same space as regular hard drive.)

You can get SSDs that are functionally identical to HDDs for the purposes of installation (2.5" form factor, SATA connectors). You don't need to worry about changing the PCIe settings for SATA drives. Screw placement should be standard but if for some reason your drive cage can't secure it you can let it sit wherever you can stuff it, SSDs don't suffer from vibrations.

If you purchase a M.2 NVMe SSD for the M.2 slot then you may want to adjust the PCIe settings but you might not even notice a difference for most use cases. You'd have to make the changes in the BIOS, not in Windows.

Max Wilco
Jan 23, 2012

I'm just trying to go through life without looking stupid.

It's not working out too well...

isndl posted:

You can get SSDs that are functionally identical to HDDs for the purposes of installation (2.5" form factor, SATA connectors). You don't need to worry about changing the PCIe settings for SATA drives. Screw placement should be standard but if for some reason your drive cage can't secure it you can let it sit wherever you can stuff it, SSDs don't suffer from vibrations.

If you purchase a M.2 NVMe SSD for the M.2 slot then you may want to adjust the PCIe settings but you might not even notice a difference for most use cases. You'd have to make the changes in the BIOS, not in Windows.

I was planning on doing either the Samsung SSD or the Crucial that AproposMan recommended to me earlier, (though it doesn't sound like it comes with screws or anything to mount it in with). I just have to decide which one to get, and what storage size (thinking maybe the Crucial 1TB, as there's a one-star review for the Samsung one, saying there a problem with the July 2018 releases).

The NVMe sticks seem neat, but the price doesn't seem worth it right now (at least in the 1TB range).

Only issue I have about letting the drive sit wherever, as opposed to mounting it, is while it doesn't vibrate, I worry about it getting knocked around if I have to take the computer out to dust or move it. Apart from buying screws, I don't know how else you'd get to stay put.

oohhboy
Jun 8, 2013

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Farmer Crack-rear end posted:

Huge lols if you think big game publishers are going to spend time optimizing for HDD read performance when they're so lazy they sometimes won't even bother compressing audio any more.

TITAN FALL!!! I couldn't stop laughing. Quantum Break also had absurd file sizes because of the ridiculous videos 4K sizes with no options for smaller and half rear end space management for the data. Streaming the videos is a mess too as you needed a really decent connection as again no choice. Aside from laziness part of it might be because they are reliant on the built in decoder. Pirates do a really good job compressing movies with minimal loss in detail with H.265 which the consoles might not be able to do.

Load times are important unless you like making coffee with every load screen. I play insurgency Sandstorm which is first come first served. I am almost always first loading in seconds so I can pick any class I want. Until other people eventually catch up with SSD as the default, it's a nice perk. Even then having a nicer SSD will put you ahead. Games also need data right the gently caress now instead of a couple seconds later so the data isn't just 'Media' like movies or you family album.

If you are buying more RAM to cache unless you are short of RAM you might as well use that extra money to buy a bigger SSD. It's a bit like buying Optane for HDD. Plus Windows does it's own caching(ymmv) so you would need to have a specific programs in mind to use a third party utility. MacOS uses all your spare RAM as cache.

My suggestion is unless you have an urgent need for an SSD, wait a little, save a little bit more money. By the time you buy prices will have fallen again and the same/marginally more money will get you double the space and maybe push you into the next tier of the product line.

Max Wilco posted:

Only issue I have about letting the drive sit wherever, as opposed to mounting it, is while it doesn't vibrate, I worry about it getting knocked around if I have to take the computer out to dust or move it. Apart from buying screws, I don't know how else you'd get to stay put.

Recent cases should have 2.5 spaces and you can buy conversion frames for 3.5 slots. Putting them where ever is also fine. Blue tack or double sided tape.

Potato Salad
Oct 23, 2014

nobody cares


Leave 'em dangling from the wires. Nude. Like a man.

Klyith
Aug 3, 2007

GBS Pledge Week

Lambert posted:

With the Xbonx, there's an additional huge benefit to switching the internal to an SSD: The OS chugs severely running from the original HDD. Much smoother since putting the MX500 in there. The PS4 Pro OS is faster as well, but never stuttered as much when running from HDD.

IIRC games and particularly consoles were one of the bast use cases for those hybrid SSHDs that seagate makes, because even the small amount of flash they have is good enough for the predictable caching needs of a game or console os.

I say were because the 500gb MX500 is now cheaper than a 500gb SSHD. That's, uh, pretty loving wild.


oohhboy posted:

Putting them where ever is also fine. Blue tack or double sided tape.
I highly recommend adhesive velcro, it's secure enough for a case that might be moved around. but still easy to pull the drive out again.

blue tack sounds terrible cause that stuff can get funky at high temperature and exude some type of oily liquid.

Max Wilco
Jan 23, 2012

I'm just trying to go through life without looking stupid.

It's not working out too well...

Klyith posted:

IIRC games and particularly consoles were one of the bast use cases for those hybrid SSHDs that seagate makes, because even the small amount of flash they have is good enough for the predictable caching needs of a game or console os.

I say were because the 500gb MX500 is now cheaper than a 500gb SSHD. That's, uh, pretty loving wild.

I highly recommend adhesive velcro, it's secure enough for a case that might be moved around. but still easy to pull the drive out again.

blue tack sounds terrible cause that stuff can get funky at high temperature and exude some type of oily liquid.
Adhesive velcro sounds good. I was a little worried about how poster tack would work, and I figured it would make some kind of mess.

Additionally, I thought to look for Western Digital brand drives, and the one I found seems to priced around the same as the Crucial ones, and have pretty good reviews (I've found that WD brand stuff tends to be pretty good)

Max Wilco fucked around with this message at 14:48 on Jan 25, 2019

oohhboy
Jun 8, 2013

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Klyith posted:

I highly recommend adhesive velcro, it's secure enough for a case that might be moved around. but still easy to pull the drive out again.

blue tack sounds terrible cause that stuff can get funky at high temperature and exude some type of oily liquid.

Great suggestion. Blutack on second thoughts is a pretty bad idea, good catch.

Klyith
Aug 3, 2007

GBS Pledge Week

Max Wilco posted:

Additionally, I thought to look for Western Digital brand drives, and [url="https://www.amazon.com/Blue-NAND-1TB-SSD-WDS100T2B0A/dp/B073SBQMCX/ref=cm_wl_huc_item"]the one I found seems to priced around the same as the Crucial ones[/u], and have pretty good reviews (I've found that WD brand stuff tends to be pretty good)

That drive, the MX500, and an 860 Evo are all effectively identical from a desktop-user performance perspective.

WD bought Sandisk, so they use in-house flash, and sandisk drives also have a good history. So if you like the WD brand that's a fine decision.

priznat
Jul 7, 2009

Let's get drunk and kiss each other all night.
I try to never use tape or anything that can dry out, nylon zip ties of all shape and sizes and in chains for mechanical fastening with easy snippability are always good.

I dunno if command strips dry out, I would try them out for something light. Like a 2.5" SATA SSD!

2.5" NVMe SSDs are usually a lot beefier and wouldn't do that.

Rexxed
May 1, 2010

Dis is amazing!
I gotta try dis!

I use these scotch removable mounting squares. Two is plenty for a SSD and you can peel them back off:
https://smile.amazon.com/Scotch-Mounting-Squares-2-inch-64-Squares/dp/B077R42N64/

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Atomizer
Jun 24, 2007



Lambert posted:

Both PS4 Pro and Xbonx are still limited to SATA2. There were some rumors of SATA3 support for Xbonx before launch, but those were false.

With the Xbonx, there's an additional huge benefit to switching the internal to an SSD: The OS chugs severely running from the original HDD. Much smoother since putting the MX500 in there. The PS4 Pro OS is faster as well, but never stuttered as much when running from HDD.

:psyduck: What could possibly be the reason that they still have SATA2 controllers in the latest revisions of the current consoles?!? It's not even like that's a piece of hardware that the software would need to directly interface with and they couldn't change it due to compatibility! :psyboom:

Anyways, I've been a PC gamer for ~25 years and haven't really owned or played consoles very much, but my bro has a PS4 that I started to dick around with because there are some exclusives. I haven't been put off by the latency within the OS at all (he's got the stock HDD) and the load times (both from that HDD and an old external WD Green 2 TB I added for more game storage) were bearable on the games I tried. (I've been dicking around with Remote Play on the Vita, and trying to move games around to make space due to that limited stock HDD, in addition to waiting forever for the games to update, so I haven't actually had that much time to play.)

That being said, I haven't used an Xbone (or a 360 for that matter) but I absolutely believe that that OS is less optimized than Sony's. (I guess this goes back to what I was saying earlier about how it's certainly possible for video game developers to optimize their software if they're sufficiently motivated and/or competent.

oohhboy posted:

Load times are important unless you like making coffee with every load screen. I play insurgency Sandstorm which is first come first served. I am almost always first loading in seconds so I can pick any class I want. Until other people eventually catch up with SSD as the default, it's a nice perk. Even then having a nicer SSD will put you ahead. Games also need data right the gently caress now instead of a couple seconds later so the data isn't just 'Media' like movies or you family album.

If you are buying more RAM to cache unless you are short of RAM you might as well use that extra money to buy a bigger SSD. It's a bit like buying Optane for HDD. Plus Windows does it's own caching(ymmv) so you would need to have a specific programs in mind to use a third party utility. MacOS uses all your spare RAM as cache.

I agree with the load times, but some games aren't an issue. I play World of Tanks and have had it on an SSD for years because of how terrible it is at streaming resources (or loading them ahead of time.) Other games are fine on an HDD. I should point out that my games are on a 6 TB drive which has about 5 TB occupied, so even at a good price of $100/TB that's way too much to spend for SSDs unnecessarily. That's all I was getting at; there certainly is content that belongs on an SSD.

I also already did mention a 3rd-party caching utility, read the previous post.

Klyith posted:

IIRC games and particularly consoles were one of the bast use cases for those hybrid SSHDs that seagate makes, because even the small amount of flash they have is good enough for the predictable caching needs of a game or console os.

I say were because the 500gb MX500 is now cheaper than a 500gb SSHD. That's, uh, pretty loving wild.

HDDs of course have a minimum cost of materials, so there's a floor that they can't go beneath to be profitable. Assuming that FireCuda line is basically just variable numbers of platters in the same housing to get 500 GB to 2 TB capacities, that's why HDDs are generally cheapest (i.e. ~$20/TB for 3.5") in mid-capacities, like >2 to around 8 TB. I'd definitely go with a 500 GB SSD over an HDD given the choice in a 2.5" application, because that's cheap for an SSD and not very capacious for an HDD, which is basically one of the two reasons you'd still be using an HDD (cost and capacity.)

Also, those FireCudas we're talking about are SMR drives - which is totally fine for modern HDD applications, but that runs counter to them being performance-oriented drives. The SS cache should boost a HDD, but in effect, according to some of the reviews I read, the cache is basically negating the performance penalty of SMR. All that in mind, I still think there's nothing wrong with SMR for basic bulk storage duties, because it allows for higher read speeds due to greater platter densities, but write performance can suffer in the worst-case scenarios (i.e., transferring data larger than the caches can accommodate, or trying to rearrange data in a nearly-full drive.) The worst thing is that Seagate advertises those drives for OS use, stating that the SS cache can identify system files and cache them for better performance; SMR is NOT a good idea for that scenario. Nevertheless, they're still probably the most ideal HDD for console upgrades.

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