My current system uses an ASUS TUF B450-PLUS Gaming motherboard and a 240GB Kingston A1000 M.2 SSD. Loading games and other software feels extremely slow, including large games like Baldur's Gate 3 and even League of Legends. I'm considering replacing the drive and would like recommendations for a faster, suitably sized SSD. Should I choose a larger NVMe drive, and is there anything else I should check first?
2 Answers
Your motherboard supports a faster PCIe 3.0 NVMe drive, so a 1TB or 2TB model would be a sensible upgrade. Drives such as the WD Blue SN570, Samsung 970 EVO Plus, or Crucial P3 Plus should work, although the PCIe 4.0 models will run at PCIe 3.0 speeds on this board. Try to keep roughly 15–20% of the drive free, since a nearly full SSD can slow down significantly.
Before replacing it, check how full the Kingston drive is and confirm that it is running in the expected NVMe mode. Also check its health and temperatures with a drive-monitoring tool. If the SSD is nearly full, unhealthy, or the system is low on RAM and constantly using the page file, those issues can contribute to slow loading. A new 1TB NVMe SSD is still a good upgrade, but make sure the operating system and games are installed on it rather than on a slower hard drive.
The slow loading affects both games and general use, so checking the drive’s health and remaining capacity first makes sense instead of assuming the SSD itself is the only problem.
Got it—so moving to at least a 1TB SSD and leaving some free space should help a lot.