Help identifying parts

F

Forester1

Well-known member
Greetings. I have been reading and watching stuff about SSDs both here and other places online, and looking at sale prices, but I am wondering if my system has the chutzpah to run an SSD. I have an Alienware Aurora R7 with an i7-8700CPU @ 3.2GHz. It has an Intel Optane+ 1.8TBHDD, and the storage controllers are an Intel(R) Chipset SATA/PCIe RST Premium Controller and a Microsoft Storage Spaces Controller. Under System Devices I see Intel(R) PCI Express Root Ports #2,3,4, & 9. Also Intel(R) PCIe Controller (x16) and (x8). I also see PCI Express Root Complex.

I don't see any details on any of this stuff that tells me if any of this can run an SSD. Does anyone have any insights, or where I might look to get more details on what I have? Maybe the driver levels or something? Thanks for any advice!
 
Anything can run an SSD, the worse case is external SSD connected with USB 3. The Optane suggests it has an m.2 slot for an SSD and may already have one. The Intel Optane is interesting, if the card is on the machine leave it strictly alone, it caches hard drives including SSDs. They are expensive but cheaper than real memory.

In theory the R7 has one M2 slot that can accept a 2 gig NMVE card but it can also be used for the Intel Optane card. See crucial.com and drop in your computer.

The other thing you can do is drop in a card to an empty PCIe slot that accepts NMVE m.2 cards. These typically support 4 gig cards so need a specific slot and bandwidth.. Dell sell one that accepts four NMVE cards for their servers. Other brands are cheaper.

SSDs have a limited life so it makes sense to buy larger ones so the wear evens out better. Crucial are fine but but a SAMSUNG 990 PRO SSD 4TB PCIe Gen4 NVMe M.2 would be the way to go for best performance.

Cheerio John
 
Thanks John. I have used Crucial in the past to check for memory, so I will try it to see what it says about this. I suppose if I installed a faster SSD than it supports it would just run slower? I would hate to spend the money that way though if I could get a cheaper SSD at a matched speed.
 
The big advantage of SSD in avoiding the head seeks on a conventional drive. You won't see any major gain in FPS. The big problem is getting stuff into memory and then into the CPU. Memory is nano seconds disk speed is milliseconds or 10,000 times slower. Intel Octane is all about shoveling in stuff faster, mainly used on servers. The other thing to look at is adding memory, Win 11 will cache your drives in memory when it can.

Putting an NMVE drive on the PCIe slot gives it a bout the fastest interface you can, certainly a lot faster than USM 3 and lots of people are happy with SSD on USB 3 when running trainz. What it will do is load stuff faster.

Cheerio John
 
If it helps I run a generic PCIe adapter with a 512 gig NMVE card, samsung 960 pro. That comes up at 693 MB/sec, a 2 T nmve from Crucial comes in at 855 MB/sec and a traditional hard drive comes in at 43 MB/sec using winsat disk -ran -write -drive C at the cmd prompt. This is on a Dell 5820 server. They take anything for a video card.

The $20 adapter has moved from one machine to another as I moved for win 10 to win 11.

Cheerio John
 
I’m running a small(ish) SSD for the Windows OS - this has given my pc about 10 seconds from switching on to login page - a major change. There’s also another running TS 2022, this reduces the loading time for the scenery. If you can run one just one ssd, use it for the OS. It makes a major difference.
 
Thanks guys. Well, I have been trying to run Crucial's scanner and it doesn't seem to work for some reason. I let it sit and run for over an hour and nothing came up. I restarted it using "Run as Administrator" and after half an hour, nothing. It sits with a web page that just says, "While we're finding compatible upgrades for your computer..." and flashes an ad "Did you know? Crucial DRAM and SSDs are compatible with over 175,000 computers." Now I feel special... :unsure:

EDIT: Crashing with Event ID 1000, Exception code 0xc0000409. So now I really feel special....
 
Last edited:
Forester1 said:
Thanks guys. Well, I have been trying to run Crucial's scanner and it doesn't seem to work for some reason. I let it sit and run for over an hour and nothing came up. I restarted it using "Run as Administrator" and after half an hour, nothing. It sits with a web page that just says, "While we're finding compatible upgrades for your computer..." and flashes an ad "Did you know? Crucial DRAM and SSDs are compatible with over 175,000 computers." Now I feel special... :unsure:

EDIT: Crashing with Event ID 1000, Exception code 0xc0000409. So now I really feel special....
Click to expand...
Feed in the make and model number and it works fine. If you decide to replace the boot drive then the disk drive makers give you free software to clone a disk but you'll need something like a ugreen external nvme enclosure to plug it in as USB 3. Pick them up on amazon. I think you only have one m.2 slot for drives and that is almost certainly in use as boot drive.

Cheerio John
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

R
New PC build for Trainz Etc. FINALLY finished
Replies
4
Views
521
ricomon35
R
A
Looking for advice to rebuild my PC.
2
Replies
20
Views
1K
johnwhelan
J
S
How important is the monitor?
Replies
7
Views
913
JCitron
J
D
New PC - i7 + 4070 laptop
Replies
5
Views
1K
JCitron
J
B
SSD Compared to "Main" SSD?
Replies
10
Views
2K
ColPrice2002
C
Back
Top