Advice Wanted On Primary & Secondary Drives

Cadder · 27 Nov 2020 at 11:46

Hello all,

I am taking a break from looking for GPUs that don't exist and turning my attention to storage drives. Hopefully there's a deal to be had over the weekend.

I want two drives - one as the boot drive and install drive for my CAD programs. The second can be for storage, CAD files and games like Factorio (maybe even Transport Tycoon & Theme Hospital).

I am pretty certain I'm happy with 500GB for the primary drive and 1TB for secondary. I have a home server and a decent limit on my cloud server.

Originally I was going to go all-out on Samsung 970 EVO drives but now I'm being sensible and trying to find reliably, fast drives for reasonable prices. Can anyone recommend cost-effective SSDs please?

Also, my PC is based on an MSI X570 Tomahawk WiFi, seated in a Fractal Meshify C. Any recommendations on whether I have two M.2 drives or one and a SATA? I'm a right storage noob.

Grimley · 27 Nov 2020 at 14:22

How are these? M.2 drives save on cables in your case so job done.

My basket at Overclockers UK:

1 x WD Blue SN550 1TB NVME M.2 2280 PCIe Gen3 Solid State Drive (WDS100T2B0C)= £85.99
1 x WD Blue SN550 500GB NVME M.2 2280 PCIe Gen3 Solid State Drive (WDS500G2B0C)= £49.99

Total: £144.68 (includes shipping: £8.70)

Cadder · 30 Nov 2020 at 22:23

Thanks for that Grimley I appreciate it. I've been monitoring possible deals and noticed the WD Black 1TB for just over £100.

With the X570 Tomahawk, do I need the heatsink versions of the SSDs?

Cadder · 3 Dec 2020 at 14:47

So, after some research I have pretty much decided (although I am happy for someone with SSD wisdom to advise otherwise) on these:

Primary/Boot Drive: Corsair MP600 500GB (PCIe 4.0)
Secondary/Storage Drive: PNY CS2130 1TB (PCIe 3.0)

Hopefully the heat spreader on the MP600 won't be an issue as it looks pretty big. It's my first build so if that was a silly comment, my apologies.