SSD upgrade

[pee93]

Dont think you fully understood what I was asking there. What I actually meant was if I was to keep the 128GB drive as the boot drive and then add a 1TB ssd in the third bay purely for storing my games on would that make any difference to performace whilst in a game compared to if I just made the boot drive into a 1TB drive which also stored the games?

[Photoray002]

The games will load faster from the SSD storage drive than they would from any HDD.

They will not perform any differently once they are loaded, no matter if you have the boot drive the 128 GB SSD or the 1 TB SSD.

Edit to add, if the 128 GB boot drive is full or nearly full, you would see some performance issue, but only because of that.

Is that what you are asking?

[barnuk]

Without knowing exactly what the 128GB is and it's specs. it's impossible to say what advantage could be gained.  Clearing it out should help to some extent but as far as games performance it would depend on what the upgrade is.  A higher performance drive should give higher performance.....EVERYWHERE.  Anything that depends on hard drive performance would/should be affected.  Although, like I said, it all depends on what you're starting with.

[Photoray002]

The question is would the performance be affected if the game loaded from the SSD sata boot drive or the SSD sata storage drive. No you will not see any "visible" difference between those drives as I pointed out, does not matter the exact specs of the 128 GB drive. You would see a big difference between the SSD and the HDD load times and depending on the game, there could be some hit if the data didn't completely load into the RAM and still needed to be accessed.

Some people go by numbers they seen on a YouTube video and take it as gospel. Benchmarks will change for every system though.

[barnuk]

So, are you still confused, more confused or do you have a better idea of what your options are.  The papers he sent you shows the cage that hold the drives, which I still believe to be all 3.5 and from the link you left for your system I found there should be 4 sata connectors that can be seen in the lower right hand corner of the motherboard photo.  It is true that any solid state drive will be more responsive than any 3.5" with moving parts.  I would say for the best performance for your games would be to pull the 2TB out, put it in an external case and use it for backups via USB3 check the specs on the 128 and compare that to an ssd you would consider for purchase and if the specs are close, keep the 128 for system files ONLY.  If not, dump the 128 and get the best you can afford...or 2...or....3?...  Hee Hee.  The manufacturer specs, while not always accurate will give you an idea of what to expect from any upgrade but you need to find out what you have for   comparison.

[krzemien]

Here's what:

1. Open the case and check the SSD - I bet it's 2.5" SAMSUNG or whatever OEM unit placed within 3.5" cage and mounted alongside the other disk (HDD).

2. As your MoBo does not have M2 slot for NVMe expansion your choice is SATA SSD.

3. My recommendation is either 512GB or 1TB SSD that will replace the one you currently have. So go and get one.

4. There's aplenty threads here how to do the upgrade  - either by cloning the current drive (sacrificing recovery via F11 option upon boot, it won't work afterwards) or by afresh install (waste of time and possibly lot's of stuff lost in the process)

5. My recommendation is to clone the drive and keep 128GB in case you need it at later stage, for example for recovery or similar.

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Gaming-Desktops/Replacing-SAMSUNG-MZVLB512HAJQ-000H1-SSD-with-Samsung-...

(this is about NVMe upgrade but principle remains the same)

6. Your current 1TB drive you own can still be used to keep documents etc.

7. In all cases and before you start fiddling with it, make sure you have / have created recovery disks.

[pee93]

Would my pc be compatible with a pci-e ssd? I notice on the specs for my pc that there is a x4 and x16 expansion slot so if I bought a M.2 pcie nvme drive such as the samsung evo 970 that should work as it can connect to either the pci-e or M.2 connector?

Here are the specs again to save scrolling: 

https://support.hp.com/us-en/product/HP-ENVY-Phoenix-810-100-Desktop-PC-series/5399342/model/6846599...

[Photoray002 · Accepted solution]

@pee93   Look at your specs page again. The motherboard has one x16 slot that your graphics card is in and three x1 PCIe (Gen 2) slots, not x4. 

It wont exactly be ideal for NMV2 3x4 drives but would work. Your bios does support NVMe according to the bios updates, but still not a guarantee it will be bootable from the PCIe slot. It might, it might not since its an early NVMe compatible board but was not setup to work with m.2. HP's can be finicky.

Not worth it if you only use it as storage and boot times between NVMe over SATA SSD will be minimal compared to HDD, no point in spending the money. You would be just as well off to continue with your plan of a larger SATA 2.5 inch drive. Its up to you.