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Upgrade and installation questions, primarily PCI or M.2 SSD question

M

maniacalpha1-1

Diamond Member
My 7970 burned out and died recently and for now I pulled a 560 ti out of retirement. I'll hang on til the R9 300s shake up the market, but when I do that, I'm also going to bump my RAM up to 16GB and get a new SSD (I'm still using a couple of vertex 4 128 GBs, and while they work fine, I need more space).

On the ram, my Hyper 212 EVO is blocking one of the slots, preventing me from adding 2 more 4 GB sticks. Will I be tempting fate if I crimped it to gain a couple of mm clearance?

On the SSD, I am considering getting an M.2 or PCI version (because why not), but 3 questions:

1. I have an SLI board. Will running either an M.2 or PCI SSD take away bandwidth from anything, GPU? Motherboard is Gigabyte GA-Z97X-SLI.

2. I won't be installing windows on this, it will just be for games. Will it be the same mapping method as with adding a SATA drive? Any chance BIOS update would be required?

3. To be absolutely 100% sure that I know what I'm doing/buying, this is one of the SSDs I'm looking at:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820104544

If I get the M.2 version, it will go in first yellow circle, but if I get the version with PCI adapter (which is the one in the link), it goes in the third yellow circle (the second PCI-E 3.0 X16), right? I'm not that knowledgeable with all aspects of computer hardware, I just happen to have built 4-5 computers and, through asking questions, always manage to plug the parts into the right places. As I've never installed any PCI things except GPUs, I need to do this illustration to be 100% certain.



LAhkDhr.jpg
 
maniacalpha1-1 said:
If I get the M.2 version, it will go in first yellow circle, but if I get the version with PCI adapter (which is the one in the link), it goes in the third yellow circle (the second PCI-E 3.0 X16), right? I'm not that knowledgeable with all aspects of computer hardware, I just happen to have built 4-5 computers and, through asking questions, always manage to plug the parts into the right places. As I've never installed any PCI things except GPUs, I need to do this illustration to be 100% certain.
Click to expand...

For maximum performance you do not want to use the onboard M.2 slot, since its limited to PCIe 2.0 x2. The SSD you're looking at is a PCIe 2.0 x4 design, so it'll only have half the potential bandwidth in that slot. You can use the secondary PCIe slot for a x4 drive with an adaptor. Like the one included.

If you use the secondary PCIe x16 slot, bandwidth for the primary PCIe x16 will be halved (x8). This has little to no effect on GPU performance however. The difference in performance between a PCIe 3.0 x16 and x8 is only 1-2%.

I don't know much about the Kingston HyperX predator. Since you're using a Z97 board, it should have boot support for a Samsung XP941/SM951, which will perform better for a very small premium. If there is any. The alternative is currently the Intel SSD 750, but its only available in 400GB capacity, but comes on its own expansion board, so no need for an adaptor. Has full power-loss protection too.
 
maniacalpha1-1 said:
On the ram, my Hyper 212 EVO is blocking one of the slots, preventing me from adding 2 more 4 GB sticks. Will I be tempting fate if I crimped it to gain a couple of mm clearance?
Click to expand...

The best way to modify the HSF would be to use some tin snips to remove the offending portion of the heat sink. Bending the fins will also work, but that obstructs airflow and reduces performance more than removing a small amount of surface area.

maniacalpha1-1 said:
2. I won't be installing windows on this, it will just be for games. Will it be the same mapping method as with adding a SATA drive? Any chance BIOS update would be required?
Click to expand...

You might need a BIOS update to boot from it, but you won't need to make any changes to use it as a storage drive.

However, I would really caution against buying a PCIe SSD just to store games. Game load times do benefit from SSDs, but a normal SATA SSD provides sufficient I/O performance to shift the bottleneck away from the storage system.

You'd be paying about 2.5 times more per gigabyte for the privilege of PCIe storage, but you will not get 2.5 times the benefit. For this purpose, I highly recommend sticking with a SATA SSD like the Crucial BX100 250GB for $95. If you wanted to spend more, then I would look at an increased capacity drive like the Samsung 850 EVO 500GB for $200.
 
mfenn said:
The best way to modify the HSF would be to use some tin snips to remove the offending portion of the heat sink. Bending the fins will also work, but that obstructs airflow and reduces performance more than removing a small amount of surface area.



You might need a BIOS update to boot from it, but you won't need to make any changes to use it as a storage drive.

However, I would really caution against buying a PCIe SSD just to store games. Game load times do benefit from SSDs, but a normal SATA SSD provides sufficient I/O performance to shift the bottleneck away from the storage system.

You'd be paying about 2.5 times more per gigabyte for the privilege of PCIe storage, but you will not get 2.5 times the benefit. For this purpose, I highly recommend sticking with a SATA SSD like the Crucial BX100 250GB for $95. If you wanted to spend more, then I would look at an increased capacity drive like the Samsung 850 EVO 500GB for $200.
Click to expand...

I might try the snips, as the below linked RAM is 1866 CL8 and 1.5v; it's just that I have to use 4 sticks as I can't find a 2X8 kit. Oops, guess I forgot to ask if I should look at 1.65v RAM as that opens options up, if I can.
 
mfenn said:
However, I would really caution against buying a PCIe SSD just to store games. Game load times do benefit from SSDs, but a normal SATA SSD provides sufficient I/O performance to shift the bottleneck away from the storage system.

You'd be paying about 2.5 times more per gigabyte for the privilege of PCIe storage, but you will not get 2.5 times the benefit. For this purpose, I highly recommend sticking with a SATA SSD like the Crucial BX100 250GB for $95. If you wanted to spend more, then I would look at an increased capacity drive like the Samsung 850 EVO 500GB for $200.
Click to expand...

Seconded. Unless you're running some serious server-type workloads, you'll see no gain (aside from the placebo) from getting a PCIe SSD. Get a large capacity SATA SSD, and then put aside the price difference and use it to buy a PCIe SSD in a few years (when they're probably 1/4 the price of today) if you still feel like you need it.
 
On the RAM, I was hoping to get a kit that's better speed/CL than what I have. If nothing else, I will get this one that's 1866 CL9 2 X 8 GB (I have 1600 CL9 now):

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DVISMCG...TF8&colid=39JK49DQLD1PC&coliid=I2E8M8WI4KCBN0

Now...on the SSD, right now I have 1 HDD, 2 128GB SSDs and 1 60GB SSD, and they occupy all the drive slots my case has. There is one place on top of the HDD bay that might allow me to affix an SSD but I do not believe it's intended for that, so, part of the reason I'm looking at M.2 is so that I don't have to worry about that, or remove any SSDs (even taking out the 60 GB one makes this change that much more inefficient).

I found these Crucial MX200 M.2s that are only $20 or so more expensive than BX100 SATA IIIs:

Single sided:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148956

Double sided:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148953

My only concern with those, is that two reviewers at Newegg on the 500GB single side version cited it getting very hot. The 250 GB version should be enough for my needs; can I assume that this one will run cooler? Is the double sided 250GB or single sided 250GB the better one for heat?
 
maniacalpha1-1 said:
On the RAM, I was hoping to get a kit that's better speed/CL than what I have. If nothing else, I will get this one that's 1866 CL9 2 X 8 GB (I have 1600 CL9 now):

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DVISMCG...TF8&colid=39JK49DQLD1PC&coliid=I2E8M8WI4KCBN0
Click to expand...

The difference between DDR3 1600 and DDR3 1866 when running a discrete GPU is miniscule. It's your money, so if you want to go for "bigger numbers", then that's your prerogative, but the actual performance impact isn't there.

maniacalpha1-1 said:
Now...on the SSD, right now I have 1 HDD, 2 128GB SSDs and 1 60GB SSD, and they occupy all the drive slots my case has. There is one place on top of the HDD bay that might allow me to affix an SSD but I do not believe it's intended for that, so, part of the reason I'm looking at M.2 is so that I don't have to worry about that, or remove any SSDs (even taking out the 60 GB one makes this change that much more inefficient).

I found these Crucial MX200 M.2s that are only $20 or so more expensive than BX100 SATA IIIs:

Single sided:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148956

Double sided:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148953

My only concern with those, is that two reviewers at Newegg on the 500GB single side version cited it getting very hot. The 250 GB version should be enough for my needs; can I assume that this one will run cooler? Is the double sided 250GB or single sided 250GB the better one for heat?
Click to expand...

Your 60 GB SSD is likely the slowest SSD you have, and just adds complexity to your setup. I'm not sure if the value it adds is worth keeping it in the system. If you want to spend a little more on M.2

As for heat, that's primarily dictated by the controller and NAND configuration. The double-sided one will run slightly hotter, only because the components on the underside are not as exposed to airflow. You have room for the 2280 (single sided), so you would be fine to go with that.
 
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