Question Is it worth Putting an M.2 SSD drive for Win 10 operating system ?

Bsmooth

Member
Nov 6, 2008
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I'm rebuilding my system, and was wondering If there are advantages to having my Win 10 operating system on an M.2 SSD drive ? The new motherboard is a MSI MAG Z590 Gaming Plus.
I do have a 1 TB Samsung SSD drive already, but since I do a fair amount of Photography(as well as Gaming) I thought I might be advantageous to have the Operating system on the M.2 drive and my Photoshop on another SSD drive so I could do quick transfers and editing, and then I have a regular 2 TB mechanical drive I could store the images on as well as an external drive for backup.
So is this a good idea ? And what would be a good M.2 drive and size ? At least I hope I can install one of these on my motherboard ?
 

razel

Platinum Member
May 14, 2002
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Focus on NVME instead of M.2. M.2 is just the form factor/connector. SATA and NVME drives are available in M.2.

You'll also want to check which m2 ports on that board are directly connected to the CPU instead of through a intermediatary chip (traditionally called northbridge/southbridge). You'll get highest bandwidth (max MB/s) and one less chip between the CPU/NVME drive.
 
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deustroop

Golden Member
Dec 12, 2010
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There's no harm in using a new M2 NVMe (aka PCIe) drive for the OS and some improved performance can be expected. Just install it and clone the current OS drive over.

Assuming you will be buying an 11th generation intel cpu for that board, one AnandTech review of the Z590 chipset comments on the issues as follows:

"The second big difference is that the Z590 platform will enable the processor to use PCIe 4.0. Intel will include native CPU PCIe 4.0 support for the first time, 20 lanes of it, which will enable a full x16 link for add-in cards, e.g, video cards, as well as another PCIe 4.0 x4 for storage. Vendors will be able to split that x16 as required, similar to previous mainstream motherboards, into an x8/x8 or x8/x4/x4 bifurcated solution, with appropriate muxing."


So ensure that the M2 NVMe drive you acquire is PCIe 4 and that you attache it at the appropriate port, that is the "storage port" running PCIe4. Check the manual on M2 drives, that would be M2_1 .
All such drives are backwards compatible.

Samsung v4 drives are well respected .

As to size, that's up to you.
 
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Arkaign

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Oct 27, 2006
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If you need more space, definitely buy an m.2 nVME. Doesn't hurt to choose a PCIe 4.0 variant to be a little more future proof.

Expecting large, noticable differences in performance is going to be slightly disappointing however, if you are already used to a quality SATA SSD. Starting applications and especially games shows almost no difference even between SATA and PCIe 4.0 nVME drives.

Where the big difference is visible is in specific benchmarks and if you have multiple m.2 nVME drives in the same system, direct copying and writing between them is hugely faster.
 

Bsmooth

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Nov 6, 2008
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I found a couple of great drives that have great endurance, at a great price:
Corsair Force MP600 https://www.newegg.com/corsair-force-mp600-1tb/p/N82E16820236548
Silicon Power US70 https://www.newegg.com/silicon-power-1tb-us70/p/N82E16820301430
I am leaning towards the Silicon Power, except its not on My MSI Motherboards compatibility list. Weird part is the Corsair is and it has an attached heatsink, which doesn't look like it would fit in my MB.
My Z590 MAG Gaming plus has something called M.2 Shield Frozr, is this like a heatsink ?
 

PClark99

Diamond Member
Jan 12, 2000
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If you are looking at the Corsair MP600 the heat sink is removable so you can use it on any motherboard with an integral heat sink on the nvme connector.
 

Bsmooth

Member
Nov 6, 2008
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I'm trying to use the Create Media Tool from Microsoft, but I keep getting an error saying it can't do it on my machine. I tried 2 different USB drives with the same problem. Could it be because I'm using Win 7, before I do the rebuild and use Win 10 ?
 

john3850

Golden Member
Oct 19, 2002
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