[Hardware Unboxed] PCI-E4, PCI-E3, SATA SSD, HDD differences for loading games

[Janus67]

I thought this video was pretty interesting



I think it has been talked about quite a bit that the newer PCI-E-based SSDs don't offer much benefit outside of synthetic benchmarks in terms of games, and the video really showcased that alongside a bunch of drives of different types.

Ultimately, having a nice larger SSD (be it SATA or PCI-E) is far superior from loading from HDD, but beyond that the extra cost for a 1TB or 2TB drive may not be necessary, especially if you already have a large-ish drive.

 

[wagex]

I actually googled this same thing because i was shopping for an m.2 ssd, found the same video. I couldnt decide if i wanted to spend the extra $$ on a higher speed one, ended up getting a middle of the road one because there was almost 0 difference between even sata and nmve in most applications. i did want NVME just to have it lol.

 

[Woomack]

There are many new cheap NVMe SSD which work at ~2GB/s. Their price is about as high as SATA SSD. Enthusiasts and gamers usually skip them but their random performance (what is the most important in loading many small files) is about as high as that of the most expensive series. For example Crucial P2 or Patriot P300. Another advantage is that these SSD heat up significantly less. Count on ~50°C max during work. For sure it's a good option for SFF or laptops.