I'm running out of SSD space for games so I'm looking at getting an M2 ssd. My motherboard only supports PCIe Gen2 x2 or SATA, so I know I'm not going to get the full potential of an NVME Gen3 ssd. I'm looking for a 500GB drive, is it worth spending a bit more and getting something like a Samsung 970 Evo Polaris or as I've only got gen2 x2 should I just get the cheapest like a Crucial P1, or go even cheaper and get a WD Blue or MX500 and just run at SATA3? Other option is to get a PCI-Ex4 card, slot it into one of my x16 slots and get a 970 Evo and run at full speed? Probably work out at about £50 more expensive, which would be very close to the price of a 1TB M2.
As it's only for games, get a larger SATA drive. There's no benefit to a faster drive for games. I've seen my 860 EVO top at 400 ish MB/s when loading BFV and that's the highest I ever see it go. It usually loads maps at around 220 to 250 MBps at best.
Just get the M.2 MX500... or save yourself a tenner, live with the cables, and get the 2.5" model IMO the BX500 isn't enough of a saving to recommend it and the 860, P1, and 970 offer very little for the extra outlay for the reasons TMDD states above.
I'd grab a 1TB drive minimum, honestly... I thought 1TB would be enough and I am already at <300GB free space. It dwindles extremely fast with games today. BF1 is 80GB, for example.
I am looking at 1TB drives now, . Most stuff goes on my 3TB rust spinner with some current games going onto either my 256GB 830 or a 240GB Kingston, just downloaded Forza Motorsport 7 and it's 97GB,
At 1TB the 2.5" MX 500 is probably still your best bet... if it absolutely must be M.2 I might be tempted to pay the extra £25 for the Crucial P1 over the MX 500, though that's probably vanity over sanity.
Yeah, I got a 1TB EVO 850 for my Steam/games drive, and I half-filled it immediately. I was toying with the idea of a 2TB SSD but my gaming habit has slowed considerably of late, so I'll be fine for a while yet. Just to back up what Brendan said - I tried out a partition on my 970 EVO NVMe drive as a Steam drive and it didn't make an ounce of a difference to loading times when compared to the EVO 850 SATA.
To third the point: I have games installed on a 500GB 960 EVO and a 500GB 850 EVO and there is zero difference in loading times between them.
I have the M2 slot sitting there empty on my mobo and adding another drive is harder to do neatly what with all the cables. Reckon I'm still going to go with the MX500, that P1 is a little more than I ideally want to spend, as I've got to upgrade my CPU at some point soon too. Thanks for all the info/help.
i found myself in the same situation and i decided to wait, i've read an article somewhere that flash prices could drop down over 50% in 2019, whether that turns out to be true or not remains to be seen. i got burned once few years back after buying a 128GB and 512GB crucial SSD's for somewhere around £300-400 and 6 months later they literally halved in price ! around two years ago i found a deal on a 960GB sandisk ssd for around £130, and sadly prices haven't changed much since then, here's hoping things will change ! i want 2TB for games just so i won't have to uninstall games, lol.
SSD pricing is decent ATM, plenty of choice ATM although crucial / Samsung are my personal choice. Whilst we're expecting SSD prices to fall even further we don't know how long that'll take. It's not like a graphics card release when we roughly know benchmarks and pricing alongside a rough release date.
Like I said, everything is bound to fall eventually. It could fall towards the end of 2019 or never happen at all, because it is pure speculation, and nothing more.
