What is the fastest NVMe SSD for Intel 13th Gen builds?

Question

Im finally putting together my dream build with an i9-13900K and a Z790 Aorus Master board and I'm honestly stuck on the storage part. I'm doing a lot of 4K video work for my side gig and want the absolute lowest load times for my games too. I saw the Samsung 990 Pro is like the gold standard for Gen 4 but then I keep seeing the Crucial T700 Gen 5 drive hitting crazy speeds like 12,000MB/s.

But here is where I'm getting confused. I read on some reddit thread that if I use a Gen 5 NVMe on my board it might cut my GPU lanes down to x8 instead of x16 because of how Intel handles the lanes on 13th gen. That sounds like a bad trade off for my RTX 4090? Or maybe the difference isnt even noticeable for what I do? My budget is roughly $250-300 for a 2TB drive and I'm trying to pick everything up at the Microcenter near me this Friday. I want the fastest thing possible without gimping the rest of my system.

Is it better to just stick with the fastest Gen 4 drive like the 990 Pro or is there a way to actually use a Gen 5 drive at full speed on this platform without issues?

OverdraftOverlord · Accepted Answer

Yeah that lane splitting thing is a total headache. I ran into this exact issue when I built my workstation last year. If you put a Gen 5 drive in that top slot, your 4090 drops to x8 lanes. While the 4090 is a beast, I still wouldnt want to gimp it for a gain in drive speed that you mostly only see in benchmarks. In my experience editing high bitrate 4K, random read/write speeds matter way more than peak sequential stuff. The Western Digital WD_BLACK SN850X 2TB NVMe SSD has been my go-to for a while because its fast and reliable for long sessions. Another one to check at Microcenter is the Solidigm P44 Pro 2TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe. It's basically a rebranded Hynix P41 and it's super snappy for OS and games. Stick with high-end Gen 4 for now tho... your GPU will thank you.

OpalOmen · Answer

Select the Samsung 990 Pro 2TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe. It is an amazing, reliable option that keeps your GPU lanes safe! I love the stability!

KiwiKestrel · Answer

Building on that earlier suggestion, check out the Crucial T500 2TB PCIe Gen4 NVMe!Blazing fast for video!Zero lane headaches... Seriously such a fantastic, reliable beast for this build!