Help Picking Motherboard and x2 SSD

Jay_Kay

I like strategy games, but specifically games like the Total War series and the Mount & Blade series. I also like games like that will usually have alot of assets in the world: Sims3, Dwarf Fortress, etc. I should be able to stay in the 28~33FPS range, for Total War: Warhammer 3 (and beyond), for the next 2~3 years on Ultra Settings (non-4/8k gaming) after looking at a few benchmarks for the current and latest games. Regardless, that's the point of this budget build and I think I've made something that should preform well for the next 6+ years.

Now here is my issue, I'm not sure if I've picked the right motherboard, specifically, will I be able to connect my Optics/Disk Drive along with my 2 SSDs (I don't know if I have enough ports)?

Next, what's the difference between (2.5") SSDs & M.2/NVMe SSDs? I'm assuming 2.5" just means it's physical size and M.2 is the connection type/port. So what's the difference between a "regular" SSD and an MVNe SSD?

Can I set up Raid 0 between (x2) M.2 / NVMe SSDs?

Can I set up Raid 0 between a singe 2.5" SSD and a singe M.2 / NVMe SSD?

Jay_Kay

I should have also added: what total number of graphics cards can this board hold and what total number of 2.5SSDs and M2/NVMeSSDs can it hold?

magarity

That motherboard does not support Intel CPUs.

The old 2.5" SSD top out at 550MB/s while the M.2, depending on PCIe 4 or 3 can do something like 7500 MB/s or 3500 MB/s (I forget the exact numbers).

That's an extremely cheap and low total power supply; consider a 650W at least and modular.

Yingdong

Most of modern mid tier motherboards supports Nvidia SLI and AMD Crossfire, which means it can support up to two Graphics card, one runs at PCIE x 16 and the other runs at PCIE x 8. But your gpus also need to support it.

PowerSpec_MikeW

@Jay_Kay

https://www.microcenter.com/product/642649/msi-z690-a-pro-ddr4-intel-lga-1700-atx-motherboard

$220 with 6 SATA ports and 4 M.2's. Means you could do four NVME drives instead of the SATA, you've still got 6 SATA ports open if you're adding additional drives. The QLC drives are fine for data storage, but I'd spend a little more on a TLC drive for my boot drive.

With the video cards, if you're referring SLI/NVLink. SLI is gone. NVLink doesn't have any motherboard requirements. The issue you're going to have here is with available PCIe lanes. Top slot is PCIe 5.0 x16. Second slot is PCIe 3.0 x4, and the third slot is PCIe 3.0 x1. If you're using the GPU in a task as a hardware accelerator where the bandwidth isn't an issue, having a second GPU in E3/E4 is fine. You wouldn't want to use a card for gaming in those slots, it would suffer a serious performance hit.

Jay_Kay

@TSMikeW
Is PCIe only used for video/graphics cards? I thought some SSDs used it to.

I've made modifications to my original design, but I'll likely pick another motherboard if it is indeed the case that I'm mistaken about which ports my SSDs use.

Jay_Kay

magarity

Why would you get two 1660Ti graphics cards? If you think that will make the video better or faster in some way, you are mistaken. No one does multiple graphics cards for games any more. The second card would sit in your case and do nothing. Get a 30x0 series and it will last a long time. Something like this will cost a lot less than two 1660 but run circles around it: ASUS NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 ROG Strix V2 Overclocked Triple-Fan 12GB GDDR6 PCIe 4.0 Graphics Card - Micro Center

Do you realize you've picked out 128GB of memory? If you are worried about never running out, it is better to just get 2 modules now and the rest later when (if) you need it. I have 64GB and people seem to think I'm out of control. Doing database simulations on 14 VMs I can use almost 50GB but I have yet to break 50.

Yes, that motherboard has places to put both m.2 drives. They attach directly to it. The DVD drive will have a cable that goes from it to the motherboard and there are 4 places on the motherboard to plug it in.

The Intel stock cooler comes with thermal paste, there is no need to buy a tube of the stuff. On a similar note, are you sure you need an internal DVD? They are rarely used anymore so an external that you can put in a drawer is probably better. Then you can get a fine case. Notice that's just about the only model that has a 5.25 bay.

Jay_Kay

@magarity I had similar people make the exact same comments irl. I dropped the who Raid0 plan and just upped the graphics which benchmarks me at 60+ FPS. I saw evidence that the Ti cards spiked significantly during TW:WH3, I though a second card might fix that but It might make it worse.

Although I'm building this thing to handle some of the games I play, it's going to be next to my TV and act as my general multi media player (DVDs, BluRay, Streaming). So I plan on keeping the drive.

In regards to the RAM, ya, I'm just trying to maximize. But I've cut down on the RAM also.

Currently I'm not sure if a cheaper Power Supply exists, I had a hard time find the right pins that would both supply my Mother Board and the Graphics Card.

magarity

Now you've changed to a case that doesn't have a place to put a DVD drive inside.

Are you planning to have all this delivered or do you live near a MicroCenter and were going to pick it up? I really think you need to show up with a preliminary list and discuss with someone in the BYOPC department to nail down the final details.

See the "share' next to 'unnamed list' on the upper right side? If you paste that link it's a lot easier bc then anyone reading it can hit the links and see the details of parts you pick out. otherwise to see details of any part you picked i have to remember the name and search it myself in another window.

PowerSpec_MikeW

@Jay_Kay

NVME operates on the PCIe BUS. NVME SSD's are PCIe as opposed to SATA. Looks like you picked a good drive as the boot drive. You're going with a single higher end GPU. For the fans, I'd buy the Arctic Cooling P14's over those Kingwin fans for $1 extra.

You could save yourself a lot of money by sticking to DDR4. You can get DDR4 3600 C18 or 3200 C16 for half the price now. Compare that to DDR5 4800 CL40, you're giving up a lot of latency for the additional frequency. There's a performance benefit for applications requiring high throughput, but DDR5 is still very early. No doubt it's the future, but as with any new technology it does take time to mature. We're going to see the same thing we've seen with DDR2, 3 and 4. Technology matures over time both in performance and in pricing as DDR4 gives way to DDR5.