Part Recommendations

[Wally_AMD]

As I mentioned in my post back in February, I'm looking to put together an AM5 build this year and want some input from the Red Team Community!

You can think of it as our community build, haha. The next piece that I'm looking into is storage... I've been looking at m.2 SSDs since I haven't used one in a build before, but if there are even better options out there - or if you have preferences - please share!

It's safe to assume the PC will be compatible with whatever recommendations you have.

[Anonymous]

I have kc3000 1tb (my first ssd). there is fury version with similar performance.

I did notice price drops for samsung and kingston models.

I know 970 evo plus and 980 pro are good too. 980 pro is better than 970 evo plus.

I know nothing about AM5 and compatibility with SSDs.

[Key-J]

I really enjoy M.2s - not just from speed and storage capacity - but honestly from a physical dimension and placement perspective.

As you might remember I had some serious issues with my SSD during my most recent build, and it all came down to where I could PHYSICALLY put the unit. Sata cables, and power cables... it all adds up.

The M.2 having a dedicated, low-profile motherboard connector is really fantastic in my opinion.

[Key-J]

Saw this, had to share for relevance and to give @Wally_AMD inspiration... 

[BigAl01]

Why mount it when you can just hang it with a twist tie?  I've never seen someone do that before!

[johnnyenglish]

I have some experience with WD, Samsung and Corsair. 

Here's my rating from best pick

Samsung 980 Pro Gen4 (needs to be firmware upgraded CRITICAL!)
Sabrent Rocket Plus Gen4 (really great for the price, has built-in heatsink)
Corsair MP600 Pro Gen4 (blazing fast but has a built-in heatsink, doesn't fit everywhere)
WD SN850 Gen4 (really fast but throttles quickly)
Samsung 980 Gen3 (needs to be firmware upgraded CRITICAL!)
Corsair Mp410 Gen3 (super fast but low reliability)
WD SN550 Gen3 (avoid, its dramless)

My daily driver is the Mp410, the other I just tested for a while, did not owned long term.
The Mp410 is really really fast but the health status drops fast when comparing to the WD nvme or the SATA SSD. 

In less than 2 years I have 94% Health left. The AMD R7 SATA SSD is still at 96% after ... IDK almost 7ish years?

The WD still at 99% and its used hard, I video edit on it.

[Anonymous]

avoid 980. better pick 970 evo plus or 980 pro.

[johnnyenglish]

Didnt found any serious issues with 980 series, as long as you update the firmware. We had some failures on Samsung, but they were generic models, specially on laptops.

The biggest offender is Sk Hynix, they die a lot. Intel nvme seem to last longer but most of them are dramless, so... Speed is not their best suit. 

[Anonymous]

I said it because 980 do not have dram and both 970 evo plus and 980 pro have dram.

980 and 970 evo plus cost same. If I remember good 970 evo plus have better performance. I did understand that ssd with dram is better but maybe there are some exceptions.

970 evo plus have 2 versions and now you will probably find only second version. New version (second version) have same controller as 980pro and have higher speed until dram is filled, after dram is filled speed of first version is higher.  I think new version of 970 evo plus is better for most users but I think temperature is higher.

some ssd models will start to manufacture with new parts and because of that performance is different from reviews on youtube. at some point because of shortage or some other reason pc monitors can come with different panels and it will no longer be same monitors from youtube review but name will be same. example is 24g2(u) version 1 have better colors, contrast, brightness but version 2 have better responsiveness. same name but different performance.

[Anonymous]

I did miss it but what was problem with samsung ssds? why firmware upgrade is critical?

[lak611]

https://www.youtubehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cU0KDQ_ePUE.com/watch?v=cU0KDQ_ePUE 

Some of the Samsung SSDs have been dying, but there is a firmware update to fix the problem. Gamers' Nexus describes it here.

[elstaci]

First place I would look at is your Motherboard's QVL List for Devices, even if it is out-dated, because it will give you a general idea which SSDs are compatible with your motherboard M.2 Slots.

[ScornfulWizard]

In famous words: "Go crazy, go stupid" (and RAID-0 that b*tch, of course 😂)

 

[Axxemann]

I saw that the other day on UFD Tech... if I had the money... DOWANTDOWANTDOWANT!!!!!!!!!!

[Vynski]

Looked into these and actually couldn't find a price unless you want to request a quote.  Close examination of their structure and what they consist of you better have deep, deep pockets.

[otacon]

Asus sells a PCIE 3 and 4 one. Unfortunately the speeds you get out of a RAID 0 setup aren't a lot greater than if you were just running one extremely quick drive for most tasks. Obviousl

[Axxemann]

I'm LOVING my KC3000 M.2. I partitioned it to hold my OS and most of my games. I have some Samsung and Kingston SATA SSDs for additional games and short-term ready access storage. My SATA HDDs are all Seagate Barracudas ranging from 1 to 4 TB in size. Those get used for deep storage/media. I've run WD HDDs before with good success, with the last one crapping out after about 10 years or so. One of my 1TB 'Cudas is pushing 12.

[cpurpe91]

I have the NP600 Pro NH by Corsair and its pretty great when it comes to gaming and load times.

[Vynski]

I'm sure you will be using GEN 5 everything.  So I'm behind the game in that sense.

Anyway here are the results of the 2 GEN 4 drives I have 

Sabrent Rocket 4 PlusXPG GAMIX S70

The Sabrent is running on a Ryzen 9 3900X / MSI MEG X570 ACE

The XPG is running on a Ryzen 5 5600 / MSI MPG X570 Gamming Plus

For what ist's worth.

[petosiris]

---

@Wally_AMD wrote:

It's safe to assume the PC will be compatible with whatever recommendations you have.

---

Hi Wally,

I'd recommend looking at not just R/W speed but also TeraBytes Written (TBW).  TeamGroup is the king regarding TBW, with Seagate second but faster.  It depends on what you are using the SSD for.  If it's a system disk with Windows, games, and everything, then I'd maybe go for TeamGroup because there'll be lots of writing to disk.  If you use the SSD for games only, I'd go for a Seagate since read speed matters more there.  Seagate is probably the best compromise overall, where you get both speed and good TBW.

I'd also look at the Samsung Pro series, because they're MLC drives and potentially also more durable.

It's also important to choose a SSD with plenty of available space.  Not only because disks in general, and especially SSDs, don't like cramped space to work with, SSDs also have better durability and TBW when larger.

My recommendations (all are M.2 SSDs with PCIe gen. 4):

Seagate Firecuda 530
TeamGroup T-Force Cardea C440
Samsung 990 Pro  (make sure you use the latest Firmware!) 

[mengelag]

personally i've had great luck with the Crucial P5 M.2 2280's

 

[TR2]

I have used Sabrent, WD, Crucial, T Group and others. I like the Sabrent for speed and  the WD blue or black for reliability. I would also like to add I use mechanical drives (Seagate) for data storage because bang for buck you get more capacity and drives have gotten pretty reliable. They all have MTF(mean time to failure)  rates but I have been pretty lucky. If I was a gamer I would use 2 m.2 ssds one for my OS ( as least 1 TB) and then a bigger and also the faster drive to hold games. Newer ATX boards have a least a gen 2 to t  m.2  and a gen 4 or 5 m.2. I use the mechanical drive to offload storage so the OS runs fast and smooth. I have a 500 gb Samsung 980 and have not used over 20 % of the capacity.

[BigAl01]

I think it comes down to the PCIe rating and how much you want to spend.  I've found just a few PCIe 5.0 M.2 drives are out now and they are not cheap.  There are lots of PCIe 4.0 M.2 drives however and they are now lower in price.  I just ordered two of the 2-TB WD_Black SN850X drives (one for system, one for data on a new build) and they were $140 each on Newegg.  

[ajlueke]

Several of the X670E boards come with 4X NVMe slots where all slots support PCIe 4.0 4x or better.  So with 8TB NVMe drives you could potentially move a media sever setup to a smaller form factor and eliminate 3.5" drives.

[johnnyenglish]

I did a video about the board picking thing, beware that not every X670E (put some E after, it makes difference) has support for 4x M.2 at 5.0 or sometimes at 4.0, that is reserved for the more expensive ones, to put things in perspective, the Strix B650E will outmatch a X670E Prime PRO in the NVME.

I wouldn't also do a 4x NVMe as well, maybe a 2x4tb NVME at 4.0

I believe you can use 4 lanes on the first M.2 slot plus 4 lanes in the last M.2 slot that is fed from the chipset. Not sure, I would have to look at the board user's manual.
Using the ones that are fed by the CPU it will split 4 lanes into 2 plus 2.
Or... Sacrifice GPU to get extra lanes.

Or... (this one is better) get a Threadripper with 128 PCI lanes 😁 
 

PCI lanes short explanation here:

[ajlueke]

On several X670 boards, you can indeed run four NVME drives at PCI 4.0 4x speeds.  In the case of the MSI X670E Pro Carbon WIFI,  of the 28 PCIe lanes supported by the CPU, 16 are reserved for a graphics card (or two, with each utilizing 8 lanes), and 4 are designated for an M.2 drive ( or 2 each if both slots are populated). Another 4 lanes are used to connect to the chipset. The remaining 4 lanes have been used to power various things like USB ports etc.  So in this case, both CPU powered NVMe points will run at PCIe 4.0 4x speed if they are both populated with a PCIe 5.0 device (PCIe 5.0 2x = PCIe 4.0 4x bandwidth).

The X670 boards feature two Promontory 21 chips on the chipset.  Linked together over 4x PCIe 4.0 lanes.  That adds 12 additional PCIe lanes. MSI chose to use 8 of those 12 to power two additional NVMe ports at PCIe 4.0 4x.  One of those is shared with the third PCIe slot on the motherboard, meaning if anything is plugged into that the fourth M.2 slot will be disabled. Of course different boards will distribute those lanes differently.

The main difference between the X650 and X670 chipsets is that the former features a single Promontory 21 chip, while the latter features two.  So X670 has additional PCIe 4.0 lanes from the chipset which the board maker can apply to more SATA ports, additional USB, a second network adapter etc.  

[johnnyenglish]

I know, that is why I did the post. Not every X670E can do 4 nvme at 4.0

How the pci lanes are distributed will depend a lot, same for slot population.

My point is, we should not do a general assumption that every X chipset board is superior to a B chipset. 

Also note that the some of the pictures I posted above is an example only, as I made that video for earlier Ryzens, the table does not have yet pci 5.0

However, with 4 nvme it will still split lanes on every board. 16 gpu + 4 nvme + 4 nvme + 4 chipset 

[johnnyenglish]

ADDEDDUM:

I was writing on a phone, now with a laptop its easier.

The way chipsets are connected is indeed interesting but you won't decide how and when to use the lanes, that is like I said above, up to the board vendor.

EG: Quantity of SATA ports; Quantity of USB Ports and Generation or if they will be used at all.

Board vendors may also make available more M.2 Slots, SATA and a never ending USB ports but as soon as those lanes get assigned, some slots, SATA or USB Ports may get disabled in the process.

EG: Some Intel boards that do support both generations would disable a M.2 slot depending on the CPU installed or if you populate the Chipset fed M.2 some SATA won't work as well. Again, this dependes a lot on the board.

How are they connected?

CPU will deliver 24 and the last 4 Gen5 goes to Chipset.

Then the first of the pair delivers 8 usable Gen 4 lanes that can be assigned to M.2 slots but... most of the time, they only use 4, as seen in my other post. The daisy chained "chipset" won't connect to the CPU, only to the first chipset, so you guess it, these will definitely go for supporting USB ports and such with lower bandwidth, like USB 3.2 at 5 ot 10gbps.

Conclusion, the chipset will be fed by ONLY 4 Gen 5.0 lanes, they will have to share roughly 16GB/s across multiple devices and it even includes onboard WiFi6E or my Ryujin Watercooler conneted to an internal USB Header.