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Discussions Rules and Guidelines
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You should review the motherboards block diagram to understand the actual electrical connectivity of the boards devices. For example; installing an M.2 drive in one of the M.2 slots may switch your GPU's PCIe lanes from x16 to x8, or might disable some portion of your SATA ports, etc.
Oledergames store on hdd, newer games m2
For now my motherboard is Asrock X870 RS Pro [non wifi version], but i am thinking about changing it as i don't like the few reviews of people facing issue with Asrock motherboards and CPU 9800X3D, i don't care about the motherboard but i care about the CPU, so i am thinking to buy another brand X870 or even B850, it was cheapest X870 i found back in Dec 2024, i didn't know that Asrock mobos could have issues with 9800X3D.
I don't mind using SATAIII SSD, i can buy 2TB or even 4TB of that instead of NVMe SSD, but the speed will be only up to 560 somehow, i was thinking about having one drive at least for storage and not playing, so i use larger drive only to store games, while main drive to play games, i will transfer the games if i need space on the main drive, i just don't like the idea buying 4TB, people now saying that games nowadays are about 100-300GB size, i will not choose all games at those sizes and i am not interested, only few but not all, so if they are about 150GB average then if i only choose 5 games it means i still won't reach 1TB, but it is better to have enough free space too, so 2TB is maximum if i have to, but not 4TB or more, it is only for gaming, i have another computers for other things.
If you do decided to change the board feel free to post back here with which boards you are looking at and there are several people on these discussions that can double check that it'll work for what you are wanting to do.
Asrock X870 RS Pro Manual[download.asrock.com]
Page 11 is the block diagram
M.2_1 is the slot above the top PCIe x16 slot that is PCIe Gen5 x4 coming from the CPU
M.2_2 is the slot on the bottom toward the rear IO (left side of the board) which is PCIe Gen4 x4 that is shared with the PCIe_2 slot (PCIe_2 is an x16 slot that is electrically only wired for x4). If you install an M.2 device in M.2_2 then the PCIe_2 slot is disabled.
M.2_3 is the slot on the bottom toward the front (right side of the board) which is PCIe Gen3 x4.
So if you don't ever intend to install anything in the lower PCIe slot then you can use that M.2_2 slot and it'd be fine. If you intend to install something like a sound card, ect. in that PCIe slot then you wouldn't want to use that M.2_2 slot because it would disable the PCIe_2 slot.
The speed being limited on a SATAIII SSD is because it is SATAIII. The SATAIII bus is 6Gb/s which would equate to a theoretical maximum of 750MB/s if there was no overhead. In reality though it's not just the data going over that connection and there is overhead for the disk IO commands, etc. which eats into that theoretical maximum. The SATA protocol isn't terrible efficient for SSDs either as it was designed around how mechanical disks work and SATA itself is a 20+ year old protocol. NVMe was built specifically as a storage communication protocol for how flash storage works and it talks directly over PCIe. So in comparison, One (x1) lane of PCie Gen5 has a theoretical maximum of 4GB/s (which is 32Gb/s), so slot/SSD that is x4 has a theoretical maximum of 16GB/s (or 128Gb/s). The interface and bus speed for them is largely not the bottleneck any more and rather the SSD NAND controller is usually the limiting factor for NVMe SSDs.
Also, Most games are not 100GB - 300GB in size; however, a lot of new "AAA" games are 100GB+ and can be that large. So that notion really depends on the types of games you are interested in. Also, you aren't going to see a massive difference for games performance wise on a PCIe Gen5 SSD; other than with games that are write heavy (very few games are like this) or new games that are leveraging DirectStorage.
Looking at your current game library, most of the games are older games and aren't going to take up a lot of storage space. I'd suggest just getting a 1TB Gen4 or Gen5 NVMe SSD for your primary disk for the OS and then just plan on adding another cheaper NVMe SSD later if/when you need the additional storage. If you really want one right away, then you can get a decent 2TB Gen3 and some Gen4 SSDs for around the $100 - $130 price point.
Steam makes it really easy now to move games between Steam libraries on different disks. So doing some tiered storage like that is really easy now. If you're finding that you are adding a lot more to you games library you could also easily add a high capacity 3.5" SATA HDD for bulk storage and then just move the games you are actively playing to your SSDs. This is what I do as my game library is pretty large and I have the majority of it on 20TB HDDs and only move the games I'm regularly playing onto my SSDs while I'm playing them. For now, however, if I were in your shoes I'd just get a decent 1TB NVMe SSD as your primary and hold off on buying more storage until you actually need it.
Humor me. Why shouldn't it be your fastest drive?
I can understand why it doesn't have to be the fastest drive. Pretty much any half decent SSD SATA or NVMe is good enough. My work PC used a SATA SSD for years and my gaming PC is all NVMe drives, and experience-wise there was very little difference. It's fine for the OS to be on a modest SSD. But I'm not sure why using the fastest drive is a problem. I mean I'm sure it's not, but I'd like to hear the rational for what seems like an overstated claim.
Sounds to use 1TB for OS because i already have, then i buy 2TB, but now i am worried again because of people talking about the motherboard extra slots, about sharing with GPU, so does that mean i only need to use one slot that is not connected to the GPU while for other drives i use SATAIII instead?
Thank you very very much for this clear post to answer me with explanation.
For my Steam library, i still love old games and i am trying to finish most of them as i stopped, but once i am ready with my gaming build i will add some newer games, i have some in my mind such as latest DOOM and Monsters Hunter and such, mostly i like FPS rather than AAA games, but i don't close the door for something i might be interested in, also i wait for prices offers, so having old games won't delete the idea me adding some newest, also i bought few or at least 1 game out of Steam, but i think i won't run after so big files games anyway, if so only 1 or 2, not 10-20.
I won't add any devices in the lower PCIe, i only worry about GPU lanes, in all cases the first slot is definitely for OS and i already bought Gen 5 so it is not about games only but the whole system in general, i might do transfer big files and downloads and such, in all cases i was happy to afford that Gen 5 SSD without any problem so i just use it, not a big deal over Gen 4 anyway, but for the second and third slots yes i will use Gen 4 or even Gen 3 as it is extra drives, i can use one for games while the other let's say for extra storage or backups, good you answered me about it.
About motherboard, well, i still didn't decide, some told me to keep the one i have and just update the BIOS [and updating all motherboards BIOS anyway], or if i am so paranoid and worried then i cn think about something from the other 3 known names: Asus, Gigabyte and MSI, i am more leaning towards Gigabyte and MSI because Asus is slightly more expensive, what do you think, i prefer to go with X870, then B850, i try not go with older AM5 models such as B650 or X670, for just $100-150 less it is not a big deal for me really, my motherboard isn't bad and i still can keep it and use it with another CPU and gave it to my daughter while i buy a better motherboard less issues stories to pair with 9800X3D, mostly Gigabyte Aorus is the one most recommended, i have to tell you that my build is all white, so i must buy white board which is also limited options.
I like your idea about only start with 1 drive for now, in all cases i can buy second drive as Samsung 2TB so i don't worry for like 1-2 years, then later i can see if i grew up in games or still with fewer games then i don't need to upgrade or replace, only add, i bought two 1TB Samsung 9100 so one is for gaming build and the other is for productivity build, both will be as main OS and some extra programs needed, but both definitely will have extra drives for storage, as for gaming i will try to stay below 2TB, i can't promise i will stay below 1TB, but definitely i won't install so many to go over 2TB any time soon.
It is for files transferring mostly, and i don't mind, i mean if i don't use the fastest drive or slot for OS then i should use it for what?
The funny thing is if you have Gen 8 slot and you just ignore it and only use another slot with Gen 6 or Gen 7, so why you stay away from the fastest slot then and what you will use it or say you keep it for, i also wait for an answer or reason, price wasn't a big issue for me for 1TB Gen 5, i bought two [for two different builds].
Joining them all as a logical volume might be worthwhile, though the extra heat dissipation would be annoying, and I don't know how well M.2 storage controllers handle raids and logical volumes.