- Joined
- May 23, 2017
- Messages
- 233
- Motherboard
- Asus ProArt Z690-Creator WiFi
- CPU
- i7-13700K
- Graphics
- RX 6900 XT
- Mac
@flatlander48,Pastrychef:
I trust all is good with you and Happy Thanksgiving!
I’m hoping to make the jump from Catalina to Big Sur in a month or 2, but first I plan to address some memory and storages issues. My system is running well, but I am continually bumping up against my constraints of 32Gb internal memory and a 256Gb M.2Q SSD. And yes, I have trimmed and pared down as much as I could!
I’ve purchased 2 more of the same OLOy memory cards that are currently running in the system.
For storage I’m planning a Samsung 1Tb NVMe M.2P SSD. I have 2 installation options:
The reasoning is that I’m not sure how much I will need to disconnect/remove and reinstall in order to mount the card directly into the M.2P slot. Or, since the empty PCIe x4 slot is the last one, it may just be easier to slip the expansion card in there. Not sure about performance advantages/disadvantages as I haven’t been able to make a clear comparison. What are your thoughts?
- Install the card directly into the M.2P slot
- Mount the card on a M.2 SSD to PCIe expansion card and install in my empty PCIe3 x 4 slot.
When everything is installed, I still want to boot off of the 256Gb M.2Q card. The system folders and files would still reside there, but everything else would be moved to the 1Tb M.2P card. Is this a reasonable approach?
After all this is running satisfactorily, I’ll begin the search for a good Radeon graphics card, and replace my current NVIDIA card, so that I can move beyond Big Sur. That’s the plan. Now all I have to do is implement it!
Thanks for your help!
I can contribute that you probably should stay away from a Samsung m.2 as you will likely experience TRIM issues once you go up to Catalina. The WD SN drives are widely regarded as a good option.
As far as M.2 slot vs PCIe; I’d bet there wouldn’t be a tremendous performance difference either way — unless the card happens to live in a slot that utilizes CPU lanes instead of chipset. Not sure how possible that even is with this board. In any event, my preference is to always save your slots for something else down the road. In my case, there aren’t enough as it is, and especially if you end up getting a GPU that eats up more than two slots (like 6800, 6900). They’re HUGE.