Is it worth getting PCIe4 drive for B550 Motherboard?

[Tutan]

For a B550 mobo,is it worth paying extra for a PCIe4 drive vs a fast PCIe3 drive,or will be B550 somehow bottle neck the PCIe4 drive?
I've heard people mentioning X570 is the way to go for PCIe4 due to bandwith etc,just wanted to know if what I lose with a B550 if I go PCIe4?

 

[Radox-0]

For a B550 mobo,is it worth paying extra for a PCIe4 drive vs a fast PCIe3 drive,or will be B550 somehow bottle neck the PCIe4 drive?
I've heard people mentioning X570 is the way to go for PCIe4 due to bandwith etc,just wanted to know if what I lose with a B550 if I go PCIe4?

Normally B550 boards will have one M.2 slot which is PCIe 4. The current Ryzen CPUs have 4 x Gen 4.0 lanes on the CPU itself dedicated to storage. The remaining drives on B550 boards will get there lanes from the chipset which will be PCIe Gen 3.0 whereas with x570, the chipset has Gen 4.0 lanes.

So there will be no difference in terms of performance on the primary drive between a Gen 4.0 drive on B550 or X570, both communicate direct with the CPU.

Of course if you get more then 1 Gen 4.0 drive then B550 will be a boundary on the additional drives.

 

[alec]

B550 is fully capable of PCIe 4.0 on the M2 slot that is connected to CPU. No difference to X570 there.
The second (and third if present) slot will be limited to PCIe 3.0

Difficult to see a difference between a fast Pci3 and a fast Pcie4 drive.
And consequently a difference between Pcie4 drive running in 4.0 or 3.0 mode.

So don't worry.

 

[Tutan]

B550 is fully capable of PCIe 4.0 on the M2 slot that is connected to CPU. No difference to X570 there.
The second (and third if present) slot will be limited to PCIe 3.0

Difficult to see a difference between a fast Pci3 and a fast Pcie4 drive.
And consequently a difference between Pcie4 drive running in 4.0 or 3.0 mode.

So don't worry.

The PCIe 4 drive speed is read 4,950MB/s write 4,250MB/s
The PCIe 3 one is read 3500 write 3000MB/s
both cost the same,difference being the PCIe 3 comes with 5 years warranty, whereas the PCIe 4 drive is factory refurbished (but will look brand new with sealed packaging) and only 1 year warranty.

my system will be Ryzen 5 3600 (or successor 4000 series),B550,RTX 3080

 

[Buffalo2102]

The speed difference looks significant when written down like that but you won't notice it in reality. Also, there are widespread complaints of the early PCIe 4 drives slowing down dramatically once they are partially full so I would be careful if you decide to buy one. I know that this is something that happens with a lot of SSDs, depending on design but I'm talking about write speeds dropping by 80% when the drive is only 30% full. In that case you would be better off with a more mature PCIe 3 drive.

 

[clv101]

If you are only connecting one M.2 drive to B550 board, and it's PCIe3.0, does it make any difference at all which slot to use? I'm planning to build a B550 system with a fast 3.0 drive, but planning to add a 4.0 drive in the future.

Planning to use the 3.0 slot, leaving the 4.0 slot available for later.

 

[Buffalo2102]

No, it doesn't matter which one you use.

 

[clv101]

No, it doesn't matter which one you use.

Thanks.

 

[orbitalwalsh]

Flagship master and Taichi can run 3 m.2, and the master at all 4.0 but splits GPU to 8x which is currently fine .

4.0 will be worth it when Nvidia and MS get their rapid IO tech up to combat Sonys PS5 .
Plus then we'll have full speed 4.0 NVMe ! Also guessing RX cards will feature this IO tech via their own design or using MS .

Cheap at 4.0 is can see is Aorus 1TB at £160.. ouch

Would interesting to see if b550 master gets CPU hotter when using triple 4.0 m.2s. as everyone has mentioned X570 does two via Chipset and that needs a fan on it (when running raid )!

Waiting for them to review again when RTX IO is working or MS gets their first .