Suggestions Welcome for SSDs in a Gaming/Productivity Rig

AUBRX on 21/03/2025 - 12:44

I am on the fence about whether to use a single ssd for my pc or dual ssds, and which ssds are worth the money. Have seen a lot of informed commentary on deals in the past so I am posting here for help.

A little info: I have built a gaming+productivity pc with a 7950x3d on a B650 motherboard with:

One PCIe 5.0 x4/x2 (CPU)

One PCIe 4.0 x4/x2 (CPU)

One PCIe 4.0 x4/x2 (Chipset)

And 4 sata connections.

I read a lot of differing opinions on what people use for their builds; cpu or chipset won't matter for speeds because you can't notice the difference, two ssds are better in case of failure, one large ssd is better so you don't lose a slot, partition a single large ssd to protect against failure, two is better for storage management, game load times aren't affected in most cases etcetera etcetera.

I also am not recently informed on what ssds are good for any given application ie. One with x specifications is better as a boot drive or better as storage for games, dram yes or no?

Am considering WD SN850X, Crucial P5, Kingston KC3000 or Seagate FireCuda 530R as a starting point. I can't find any legitimate websites without bias to read through for ideas to help me with decisions. They are all (quietly) sponsored, click baity garbage, low effort, or copy paste from 50 other websites.

Computing Computer Component SSD

Comments

  • pinchies on 21/03/2025 - 13:41

    Leave the Seagate FireCuda 530R … they have an unfixed firmware bug that causes the drive to slow down massively on old data, google search "read degradation Seagate FireCuda". I also have the WD SN850X, very happy with it so far.

    • AUBRX on 21/03/2025 - 14:28

      Thanks I wasn't aware of that. There's a masterlist of all hard drives I have been going through and I don't think that was in the notes.

  • AwesomeAndrew on 21/03/2025 - 15:00

    I recommend sticking to 1 SSD. Having 2 SSDs doesn't help in case of a failure, unless you put them in a RAID1 array, which stores a copy of your data on each SSD. If you're concerned about drive failures, better to just spend the money on a hard drive which you periodically back up to, or cloud storage.
    A PCIE gen 3 SSD is fine for most applications and games today. Upgrading to PCIE 4.0 typically only improves loading times by 10-20% which is insignificant.

    • Astrom on 21/03/2025 - 17:59

      I dont think the price difference really matters for pcie 3/4 now, you're right that it's not really worth upgrading a v3 to a v4 just like its not really worth upgrading from SATA-SSD to NVME for a lot of people.

      But the cost difference for new drives is marginal at best now for the two specs that its probably just smarter to get the v4 for the $5 more at the same amount of storage, with v5 being the overpriced and "not worth it" at the moment, probably until pcie6 comes around.

      • AUBRX on 22/03/2025 - 12:32

        That's what I am thinking. PCIe 4.0 isn't such a bad price point, now if we are talking about 5.0 that is still much too expensive to consider. I'd go for 4.0.

  • Hybroid on 21/03/2025 - 15:56

    SN850 is a solid flagship for PCs and PS5s. It's a safe bet. The reality is it doesn't make a real world difference between a 5,000 MBs/s or 7,000 MB/s drive. It just doesn't matter. Pick the largest size for your budget with decent warranty.

    • AUBRX on 22/03/2025 - 12:35

      I've yet to see anything bad about that drive. I will probably go with that if I can find a good deal.

  • netjock on 21/03/2025 - 16:48

    two ssds are better in case of failure

    Who told you that?

    Get a large SSD and back up to a HDD if you have important data.

    Get a single SSD fastest for price you are willing to pay and put it into the fastest slot.

  • garetz on 21/03/2025 - 20:55

    Might as well get the latest and greatest - samsung 9100 PRO NVMe

    • AUBRX on 22/03/2025 - 12:33

      Samsung are a definite N. O.
      Did you read about how they have handled all their failed drives in the past? I would not touch Samsung, and I have a 880.

      • garetz on 22/03/2025 - 13:12

        All storage manufacturers have screwed over their customers one way or another over decades.

        The majority reduce the quality of components over time so they are able to reduce prices on ssds. It doesn't mean that samsung still isn't the benchmark that all the other ssd producers strive to reach.

Login or Join to leave a comment
Login Join