harddrive type and install OS question

English Hardware
#1

Re: Machine #1

Thinking about expanding for more space on this pc.
Currently have 1 nvme - 256 gb for OS [Tumbleweed]
4 sata III drives for storage [1 - 1TB, 1 - 500GB, 2 - 320GB]

I have 2 slots on motherboard for nvme.m2, so one empty, which is the one I will purchase.
The current nvme.m2 is WD Black SN750 250GB NVMe Gen3 PCIe, M.2 2280, 3D NAND - WDS250G3X0C.
I am wondering if I should stick with nvme Gen 3 or move up to Gen 4.
Does anyone have experience/knowledge of problems that might occur for this combination?

If it would be a working situation, would I use the Gen 3 or the Gen 4 for the OS?

Thanks

#2

I don’t see any support for 4.0 on https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards-Components/Motherboards/PRIME/PRIME-Z390-A/techspec/. I think a 500 series chipset motherboard and Rocket Lake CPU are required for 4.0 support. I have a Socket 1200 Asus B560M-A with Rocket Lake but 3.0 NVME. My Asus doesn’t support 4.0 if a Comet Lake CPU is used.

#3

Thank you @mrmazda.

As usual, delving into these things always seem to raise more questions.
After checking your link, I went to Asus tech help and found that although the gen 4 NVMe can be installed on my m/board, the speeds it can develop will not be used.
It will only work as well as a gen 3 NVMe on my m/board, but if I [as usual] upgrade in a year or 2, it would be better to get the gen 4.

Apparently, there is a card adapter [Hyper M.2 X16 series card] that can be purchased so that the NVMe can be put on this card and plugged into the PCIe slots of this m/board.[up to 4 on an adapter card.]
This m/board supports this, but I wonder would there be any speed degradation if NVMe is installed on PCIe rather than M2?

So now this begs the question: should I switch to all NVMe [4] or just install the new NVMe in the M2 slot and continue to use the new NVMe and other Sata drives for storage.
Of course, the latter would be the least expensive way to go.

#4

I have an Asus TUF Gaming X570-Plus motherboard, which has Gen 4 ports, with a Corsair Force MP600 1TB NVME Gen 4 drive. I can’t compare it to a Gen 3 drive, but compared to a SATA SSD it doesn’t appear to be any faster for general purpose use.

Gen 5 devices are supposed to start showing up this year.

I wouldn’t bother switching to Gen 4 now unless the price is right.

#5

You may show what you have:

[FONT=monospace]**erlangen:~ #** inxi -zMD 
**Machine:   Type:** Desktop **Mobo:** ASRock **model:** Z170 Pro4S **serial:** <filter> **UEFI:** American Megatrends **v:** P7.50 **date:** 01/23/2018 
**Drives:    Local Storage:****total:** 7.28 TiB **used:** 1.7 TiB (23.3%) 
           **ID-1:** /dev/nvme0n1 **vendor:** Samsung **model:** SSD 970 EVO Plus 2TB **size:** 1.82 TiB 
           **ID-2:** /dev/sda **vendor:** Crucial **model:** CT2000BX500SSD1 **size:** 1.82 TiB 
           **ID-3:** /dev/sdb **vendor:** Western Digital **model:** WD40EZRX-22SPEB0 **size:** 3.64 TiB 
**erlangen:~ #**[/FONT]
#6

You can set in BIOS any PCIe version for slots and SSD: gen1 - gen4.
To use gen4 PCIe you need CPU that supports it.

#7

Buy new drive with new system. Some Gen4 drives are slower than some Gen3 ones.

#8

My cpu does support it: AMD Ryzen 7 3800X 8-Core Processor

My answer remains the same: for general purpose use there is no human detectable difference.