NVMe PCIe 4

[Darryl R]

Has anyone built with Intel Z590 and an NVMe 4 SSD?  On the ASUS board I like, Optane needs a PCH slot, but 2 of the 4 NVMe slots use the 11th gen CPU.  I'm planning another build and was thinking of the storage.

 

8 Best PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs - Buying Guide (2021) - ThunderboltLaptop

[kelvinwsy]

I use the Gigabyte Z590 Aorus Ultra / intel 11900k which has the M.2 1st slot directly linked to the CPU . I am about to try my Intel Optane M.2 here but I still find a LPSU powered SSD still edges out M.2 drives for SQ.

As for PCie 4 gen Looking at the WD SN 850 black 500gb for my OSdrive or for music storage

[Darryl R]

12 hours ago, kelvinwsy said:

I use the Gigabyte Z590 Aorus Ultra / intel 11900k which has the M.2 1st slot directly linked to the CPU . I am about to try my Intel Optane M.2 here but I still find a LPSU powered SSD still edges out M.2 drives for SQ.

As for PCie 4 gen Looking at the WD SN 850 black 500gb for my OSdrive or for music storage

 

Thanks for the response.  The WD seems to have good feeback from gamers, except there are the LEDs.  Unfortunately the Sabrent Rocket performance didn't seem to stand up, and there are some concerning allegations about responses from customer service on Amazon.  There is always the option of falling back to Intel 660P/670P for the time being, and still benefitting from the PCIe lanes to CPU.

[davide256]

My results are with a Z390 motherboard

For an M.2 audio OS drive, Intel 670P series does well, I'd  concur with that route. With audio speed isn't the determining factor for SQ.

Both the 670P and the FEMTO M.2 drive have allowed me to use disk caching without any SQ loss vs buffering music to RAM.

Other devices like SSD and an M.2 Samsung 970 EVO Plus didn't work out for SQ vs  inexpensive Optane M.2 memory used as a boot disk.

[davide256]

And FWIW on media storage, IMO NAS remains king for SQ and cost efficiency. I'm close to filling up a 6TB WD Red Pro drive and about to order a 10TB drive to

add on so that I don't worry about storage space for a while.

[Darryl R]

I wasn't sure what you guys meant until I found the thread:

 

NVMe SSD designed for audiophiles - Disk Storage / Music Library Storage - Audiophile Style

[AudioDoctor]

Don't forget, Samsung has released their 980 Pro PCI gen 4 NVMe drives as well.

[Darryl R]

1 hour ago, AudioDoctor said:

Don't forget, Samsung has released their 980 Pro PCI gen 4 NVMe drives as well.

 

Thanks Doc ;)

 

Those are fast, reliable drives (see my link above), but the community has pretty well panned them for adverse impact on SQ.

[Darryl R]

Does anyone have experience with an M.2 Optane boot drive on Z590?

[Darryl R]

Thanks to @mikicasellas for confirming he is using an Optane M10 64GB boot drive in M2_2 (CPU controlled) on the ROG Maximus XIII Hero.