So it's a sandwitch-style case and frankly, my build is only missing this component and I still can't make up my mind.
Most ITX motherboards feature two M.2 slots and in case of a B550 board, the frontal slot is 4.0 while we have 3.0 at the back. Latter can supposedly be harder to cool as there's no heatsink, although 4.0 drives usually get hotter under load. With this in mind - along with their difference in read speed, which is better suitable to function as the boot drive? I figured since the price for having one M.2 SSD of 1TB to hold everything costs as much as buying two piece of the same kind with 500GB each, I might as well actually use two drives instead of one. Might even go for a 250GB for the boot drive so I'll come out even cheaper.
I'm a total noob in this area, don't have any experience with M.2 drives and I'm not sure if a boot drive is constantly reading data from the OS or just boots upon system start and then idles. Without any proper knowledge to back up my guess, what I have in mind is using a 250GB 3.0 at the back for boot drive and get my games to load from the 4.0 slot with the motherboard heatsink on. Hope that won't heat up that area too much. Btw, my mobo of choice is an Asus b550-i, so no fan or heatpipe in the M.2 area.
Alternatively (especially if having two M.2 is too toasty for this case) I can just use one of the M.2 slots for the boot drive and put the games on a SATA SSD mounted on the front of the case. Which one you recommend, which setup you're using? Thanks in advance!
Most ITX motherboards feature two M.2 slots and in case of a B550 board, the frontal slot is 4.0 while we have 3.0 at the back. Latter can supposedly be harder to cool as there's no heatsink, although 4.0 drives usually get hotter under load. With this in mind - along with their difference in read speed, which is better suitable to function as the boot drive? I figured since the price for having one M.2 SSD of 1TB to hold everything costs as much as buying two piece of the same kind with 500GB each, I might as well actually use two drives instead of one. Might even go for a 250GB for the boot drive so I'll come out even cheaper.
I'm a total noob in this area, don't have any experience with M.2 drives and I'm not sure if a boot drive is constantly reading data from the OS or just boots upon system start and then idles. Without any proper knowledge to back up my guess, what I have in mind is using a 250GB 3.0 at the back for boot drive and get my games to load from the 4.0 slot with the motherboard heatsink on. Hope that won't heat up that area too much. Btw, my mobo of choice is an Asus b550-i, so no fan or heatpipe in the M.2 area.
Alternatively (especially if having two M.2 is too toasty for this case) I can just use one of the M.2 slots for the boot drive and put the games on a SATA SSD mounted on the front of the case. Which one you recommend, which setup you're using? Thanks in advance!
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