Hey folks! I'm a 3D animator working with Maya, and I made a bit of a blunder two years ago by going with an HDD for my new PC. I've realized there's a massive performance difference between HDDs and SSDs, so I'm planning to upgrade. Right now, I have a 1TB Samsung SSD for Windows and apps, but all my animation files are stored on a 4TB HDD. My motherboard is the B550 Aorus Elite V2, which has two NVMe slots: an upper one and a lower one, with the upper one being the faster PCIe 4.0. I'm thinking of getting a 4TB Samsung 990 PRO SSD. A friend suggested I swap the drives, putting the new SSD in the upper slot and moving the current 1TB SSD to the lower slot. Is this a solid plan, and will my motherboard help me get the best performance from the new SSD? Thanks!
2 Answers
What model is your current SSD? Even if it's PCIe 3.0, you might not notice a huge difference unless you're doing really heavy tasks. But it's still a good idea to utilize the faster slots wisely!
The upper slot on your motherboard is PCIe 4.0, while the lower one is PCIe 3.0. So, if you're getting a PCIe 4.0 drive like the Samsung 990 PRO, you definitely want it in the upper slot. Otherwise, both SSDs would run at PCIe 3.0 speeds, which could diminish your performance gains. Great choice with the SSD!
I believe it's a Samsung SSD 980.