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• puzzlezaddict Posts: 1,877 Member

  June 2019 edited June 2019

  NVMe drives are much more expensive than SATA SSDs because the PCIe interface can transfer data so much faster than the SATA one, and also because drives that use PCIe are so much smaller. (The 2280 form facter refers to 22mm x 80mm.) Windows will boot faster on an NVMe, but it won't make a difference to TS3. Even the newest AAA games don't load any faster on an NVMe. So if you were building from scratch and wanted a lot of storage (and had the money), I'd recommend a 256 GB boot drive for Windows and essential tasks (or 512 GB if you wanted Documents and backups on the NVMe), plus a larger SATA SSD for games and everything else.
  
  Since your 2.5" bay is already filled, I'm guessing you'd rather not replace it. Still, if you're interested, the best 2.5" drive is the Samsung 860 Evo. But it's a bit more than is necessary for "normal" use; the Samsung Qvo would be just fine. The difference between the two, other than price, is that the Evo will last through more read/write cycles. But in practical terms, this would only make a difference if you planned to download and delete a lot of data over the life of the drive, for example, if you wanted to install a couple dozen games at different times, uninstalling them when you were done to make room for new ones, then reinstalling the old ones when you wanted to play again. The same goes for movies, which are also large files, but not really for smaller collections like music and photos.
  
  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078DPCY3T/?tag=pcpapi-20
  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07L3D19MY/?tag=pcpapi-20
  
  Those are the 1 TB versions, but the product pages display all the sizes available on Amazon. As it happens, both the 1 and 2 TB Evos are quite cheap now.
  
  The best NVMe drive right now is the Samsung 970 Evo Plus, although the ADATA XPG 8200 is close behind in benchmarks; the biggest reason Samsung is still preferred is its long track record of quality. The ADATA drives are much cheaper though.
  
  https://www.newegg.com/samsung-970-evo-plus-250gb/p/N82E16820147741
  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BLNFSQN/?tag=pcpapi-20
  
  With your 2.5" bay filled, you might look into a compromise of sorts. There are SSDs that are built with the data transfer speeds of SATA drives but fit into a PCIe slot. They're a bit more expensive than traditional SATAs, but much cheaper than NVMe drives. For example:
  
  https://www.newegg.com/samsung-860-evo-series-1tb/p/N82E16820147678
  
  If you want more details, feel free to ask.

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• xiaois Posts: 141 Member

  June 2019

  @puzzlezaddict this is exactly what I needed. I was researching different SSD’s but I couldn’t decide what was best simply for putting the sims and a few adobe programs on. Thank you

  1