I have a Gigabyte B650M D3HP motherboard with a 500GB PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSD in M.2 slot 1, and Windows is installed on that drive. I'm considering buying a 1TB Lexar NM790 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD and putting it in slot 1, while moving the older PCIe 3.0 drive to slot 2. Making the new SSD the boot drive would likely mean either a clean Windows installation or cloning my current drive and expanding the partition afterward. My PC is mainly used for AAA and smaller games, web browsing, and lightweight background applications. I don't do video editing, large file transfers, or other storage-heavy work. Would moving Windows to the faster SSD provide a noticeable real-world benefit, or would it make more sense to leave Windows on the PCIe 3.0 drive and use the NM790 for games?
4 Answers
For this kind of use, the difference would be very small. Windows and typical programs rarely take advantage of the extra sequential speed, so boot times and everyday responsiveness should be nearly identical. The faster drive may help somewhat with large file transfers and game installations, but loading games usually won’t improve dramatically.
I’d leave the existing Windows installation alone and use the NM790 for games and other files. It will still perform well in slot 2, assuming that slot supports the appropriate PCIe generation. Reinstalling everything just to move the boot drive is probably not worth the effort for your workload.
Moving Windows to the PCIe 4.0 drive would be technically faster, but the improvement would mostly show up in benchmarks or occasional heavy transfers. You might measure a slightly shorter boot time, but it would likely be difficult to notice during normal browsing, gaming, and routine desktop use.
If you want the new SSD to become the main drive, you don’t necessarily need a clean install. You can clone the current 500GB drive to the 1TB SSD with a disk-cloning tool, boot from the new drive, and then extend the partition to use the remaining capacity. A clean installation is tidier, but it won’t create a major performance improvement by itself.
That makes sense. I was mainly concerned that putting the faster SSD in slot 2 would somehow waste its performance, but it sounds like the larger capacity and using it for games matter more than making it the boot drive.