Unless the storage drives are always at a sustained load there shouldn’t be a interconnection bandwidth issue over the PCIe 4.0 x4 that connects to the CPU.
Yeah, but now I'm looking at this more closely with AIDA64, and it seems that the network and sound controllers go through the chipset too, plus one or two of the USB controllers in use (the 3.1 main controller for most of the boards USB ports and a USB 2.0 controller used for the front panel). On top of that, AIDA64 doesn't show the SMART data from the HDDs and one SSD anymore since I installed the M2 drive (although I can still check with CrystalDiskInfo, so I don't know if it's just AIDA or something else), so it's likely that I'll end up moving it anyway, if for no other reason than lower chance of instability and less potential issues.
If your board didn't come with a m.2 heatsink you could pick up a cheap thin heatsink to install the drive on the slot by the video card. That should take care of any heat issue.
I might consider it. I'm mostly worried about the excess heat that may come out of the GPU affecting the drive, since I don't think I'll be doing any intensive writes once I'm done transferring data from the other drives to the new one, so I think it should remain a non-issue. Mostly asking just in case.
Though, looking around the local market, I find funny that a chunk of metal is almost half the price of the SSD I just bought... I don't know whether the drive was expensive or cheap lol
@windwhirl Hotter drives will run hotter (WD). Cooler drives will run cooler (SX8200). If a drive is being trashed all day long with extremely heavy writes, it'll probably run hotter. For most drives, even the most massive integrated motherboard heatsinks on the market matter less than you think they do. Maybe a few degrees at best.
In light of a drive's inherent thermal characteristics (where the temp sensor is located, whether the controller runs hot, whether the controller's physical package is flush with the NAND dies and able to make contact with a heatsink or not, etc.), a <250W GPU isn't going to affect its temperatures much as long as you have a rig that isn't burning itself up from having absolutely 0 airflow. Something like half of motherboards out there have their primary M.2 slot under the GPU.
In my particular case the intake airflow is somewhat reduced by the HDD drives and the amount of cables running through the case (3 HDDs, 2 SSDs, 1 Blu-Ray drive, so that's 6 SATA data cables and the two power cords from the PSU, which are ribbon-like) and me sucking real bad at cable management, perhaps (though I never see anyone with as many drives as I have in a standard PC case, so there is that, I guess). Now, while I was installing the M.2 drive, I rearranged things a little bit and left a drive bay of space between each HDD, so the air will still flow instead of simply crashing into a tower of drives, while also pushing the front intake fans' RPM higher (noise not a problem, due to the city being far noisier during most of the day and/or me being away at work or wearing headphones). So, I think the airflow will be fine, mostly. I'm planning to replace the GPU at some point, and I'm looking at a RTX 2060 Super at most, so GPU heat should remain about the same or go down a bit in case of upgrade.
I've not been planning on buying anything much to be honest but then my mate who's poorly put me into a train of thought, that I would be best to treat him to a AMD Ryzen 5 series setup (he'll be paying me back for it mind) but I found a Hero 8 on offer and a testing GPU for this part...
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It's been a bit of a shame ordering the two boards simply because they literally just packed them in a plastic bag and away they went... I've emailed them to say I know I'm being fussy and I understand that a few dents on the corners are the least of their worries, but if I'm buying something new, then I wish for it to be perfect when I receive it.. Both of the motherboard boxes were slightly damaged on the corners and the Wi-Fi model has some sort of marks across the front of the box and then scratches all over both of them. I know I'm a fussy &%^$"%& but there's no need to not just look after kit better and even more so, post it with some form of protection... You see the videos of couriers online and how they treat parcels, I'd rather they didn't and wish that companies would take a bit extra effort in making sure things are well protected for just in case situations....
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Well the fussy sod has had his rant, so moving on
Got some cables coming for my little HP Microserver and the big PC for fan splitters since I'm having a bit of an issue with the fans not always spinning at the same speed which is a little frustrating since they are right on the edge of being too noisy for me (a little frustrating) but the Vadar fans I'm not as impressed with as I was hoping I'd be. Bloody glad I never paid full price for them... I think I'm going to have to try some Noctua's and see how they get on.... At £25 a fan, that'll be a bit pricey if I'm going to be needing 8 just for the rads...... Ah fun times
Your rant is justified, phill. The boxes having that kind of damage shows a rather worrying lack of care when handling packages. I for one had enough seeing some guy carelessly throwing boxes around to completely avoid delivery services for the rest of my life. I don't trust them.
That aside, nice gear you got there!
so i'm thinking Ryzen 3900 (when price drops) for cpu then move to 5000 end of 2021 as to Gpu hopin to score 6800xt later this month ,fingers crossed 
cheers.
) with SX8200 Pro and SX8200.
w is it great! So much easier to set-up than the Oculus Rift, and much more comfortable to wear. And indeed the sound quality is good.
