My current PC has a Ryzen 5 5600, 16GB of RAM, a GTX 1660 Super 6GB, and an MSI B550-A PRO motherboard. Marvel Rivals still feels laggy despite lowering and adjusting the in-game graphics settings, so I'm wondering which upgrade would help most. I also have a small 128GB SanDisk X400 system drive that fills up constantly. I'd like to add at least 1TB of fast internal storage for Windows and games, preferably without reinstalling everything. My other installed drives include a 2TB internal hard drive and a separate 2TB portable USB drive. What type of drive should I buy, where should I install it, and should I prioritize storage or a graphics card upgrade for better game performance?
4 Answers
Your 128GB SanDisk X400 is a 2.5-inch SATA SSD, so it’s fine for Windows but much too small for a modern game library. The simplest upgrade is adding a 1TB or 2TB SSD and installing your games on it. Your B550-A PRO supports another M.2 NVMe drive, so a PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD would be a good choice and is installed directly onto the motherboard. You shouldn’t need to reinstall Windows—just format the new drive and move or reinstall your games there.
You have two M.2 slots on the MSI B550-A PRO, so you can add an NVMe SSD without removing the current SATA drive. Look for a reasonably priced 1TB PCIe 4.0 model; you don’t need an expensive flagship drive for gaming. Use the motherboard manual to confirm the slot and check whether its heatsink needs to be removed before installation. Keep roughly 10–20% of the SSD free so it doesn’t become completely full.
For Marvel Rivals performance, storage probably isn’t the main limitation unless the game is installed on the mechanical hard drive. An SSD can improve loading and reduce some asset-streaming stutter, but it won’t add many frames per second. The GTX 1660 Super is likely the biggest gaming bottleneck, especially if you’re playing above 1080p. After storage, a graphics card upgrade would have a much larger effect on frame rate.
If the game is currently on the hard drive, moving it to the new SSD is still worth doing. Just don’t expect that alone to fix low FPS caused by the GPU.
Also check your BIOS memory settings. Your report shows the DDR4 running at about 2133 MT/s even though the Corsair kit is rated for 3600. Enabling A-XMP should raise it to the advertised profile, though 3200 or 3600 may be appropriate depending on stability. This can provide a small improvement to Ryzen performance, but it won’t replace a stronger GPU. Make sure the system is stable after changing the setting.
That helps. I was confusing an additional drive with somehow combining the free space from several different disks. I mainly want a larger separate drive for games.