Choosing Storage Drives

M.2 NVME SSDs

M.2 NVME SSDs represent the latest and greatest in solid state storage. Unlike traditional SATA SSDs and HDDs, which are bottlenecked by rather slow SATA connections, NVMe SSDs communicate with your systems motherboard through high-speed PCI-Express lanes, same as your graphics card. Think of a traditional SATA HDD or SSD as traffic headed down a two-lane highway, and an NVMe SSD as that same traffic on a twelve-lane highway, allowing for significantly faster throughput and data flow.

The result of using NVMe SSDs can be felt everywhere, from boot up times, game loading, file browsing, and even downloading and rendering. Whenever and wherever data needs to be read or written, an NVMe SSD will get it done faster.

SATA SSDs

SSDs, or 2.5” SATA SSDs to be specific, make for a tried and true, speedy storage solution. Customers should consider traditional SSDs if their builds M.2 NVMe SSD slots are limited or already populated, or if a significant amount of storage is needed, as these drive types tend to support higher capacities. The technology inside these drives is essentially the same as an M.2 NVMe SSD, but it’s the connection type that differs, with SSDs using SATA cables and M.2 NVMe SSDs using the much faster PCI-Express interface.

HDDs

Despite their slower read/write speeds, hard disk drives still serve a purpose. Customers seeking high-capacity storage solutions, or supplementary storage for less frequently accessed data, such as back-ups, archiving, media libraries, scratch disk designation, etc., may find value in a traditional hard disk drive.

HDD’s offer the lowest cost per gigabyte and are available in capacities up to 20TB!

Feeling ready to make the jump into a new build? Head over to our custom configurators to spec out your new system here. If you'd rather leave the research and customization to the experts, take a look at our Ready to Game systems here.

Too many options? Still have questions? Give us a call at 908-620-9050 or reach out via email to Sales@MAINGEAR.com. Our entire staff is made up of gamers and creators alike, and we’re happy to lend a hand with configuring your new PC, however you plan to use it most!