The number of PCIe lanes available to motherboards and processors continues to grow. If RAM is the main bottleneck of any PC, the second is undoubtedly storage, no matter how fast we are. And it is that without a doubt correctly place our SSD It’s essential to take advantage of all available bandwidth and reduce latency, but where is better to install it in a base plate?
We’re deep in the switch to PCIe 5.0 and it will bring us heart attack speeds, but it won’t do us any good if our PC’s configuration for the SSD isn’t correct. This is something that many know, but others don’t, and due to the increasing use of SSDs, it’s clear that connecting multiple SSDs has become routine and therefore they need to be conveniently configured.
So installing an SSD on a motherboard is not so simple?
Well yes and no at the same time. We emphasize the fact that we are talking about M.2 NVMe SSD or even SATA if it is worth it, but not SATA SSD to use. The problem here is logically the slot where they are drilled.
The SATA port doesn’t distinguish priority beyond boot or system boot, but M.2 is different, since the PCIe lanes are tied together and given the greater number of these, the deviation can interfere either with the performance of it, or with good latency, which is almost more detrimental than even losing half the throughput along the way.
The problem is precisely that the latency and therefore the SSD must be installed in the M.2 that produces the least PC access time, and therefore there are a series of keys that we must take into account.
Each model is a world, as well as each manufacturer
You should have your PC’s motherboard manual handy. Because? Because each plate and each model is a world, and each manufacturer has different configurations that you need to know exclusively. The theory in this case tells us that the best M.2 to install an NVMe or SATA SSD is the one that is physically closest to the CPU, but it turns out that for some time this has not always been true.
Therefore, the only option we need to be 100% sure that the correct M.2 is the one we select is the motherboard manual and its SSD configuration. We will see if it shares any lines, if these lines go to the processor or the chipset and if installing more than one SSD is counterproductive for performance.
Even if it is possible to make a RAID 0 or 10 with two or more SSDs, depending on the cards. This way we can be sure that the configuration will be the best, the latency will be at a minimum and the performance will be optimal. If you’re wondering what the priorities are because for some reason the manual doesn’t say so or you’re not clear about it, the M.2s that have priority are the ones that are connected to processor and they do not share any lines with a bus, port, or component.
