Building my flightsim ; this will be first time PC build .
Any particular considerations for M.2 SSD ?
System is exclusively for MSFS 2020 , and maybe , X-Plane .
MB is AMD B550 .
512 or 1T GB , Gen3 or 4 ?
WD or Samsung ? or Other ?
It doesn’t really matter for gaming at the moment. Might make a big difference in the future when GPUs can talk to PCIe SSDs directly, but that’s 1-2 years away in practice.
The loading time tends to differ less than 1 second between a SATA SSD and the best NVMe M.2 SSDs.
The Kingston A2000 is a nice budget option. Samsung 980 EVO/PRO is a good performance option, but for gaming specifically it’s currently a waste of money.
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Remember that M.2 is just a specification for internally mounted computer expansion cards and associated connectors. You can have M.2 that uses SATA or PCIE. The PCIE cards will be faster than SATA. In the real world, you will likely see very little difference in M.2 stick or a 2.5" SSD.
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I would each sim onto 1 ssd. Over time you’ll eventually add a ton of addons. I run fs2020 on a dedicated 1tb m.2 and it runs beautiful in vr
I love my Samsung 970 Evo Plus… fast as a son of a gun.
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I used MSFS as an excuse to build a new machine in anticipation of the release, and decided to use two Samsung 970 1TB PCIe m.2 drives in a RAID0 configuration. My storage throughput is ridiculously fast. I’m not worried about running in a RAID0, since everything is cloud based now anyway. If there were a failure, I’m only out a couple hours of download time to get back up and running. It would take me just as long to restore from a bare metal backup.
I have ran MSFS on a HDD, SSD and an M2 now, noticed very little difference in performance and even loading times between the 3 so I wouldn’t worry too much about the spec. I would just get the highest capacity you can budget for as it’s only going to get bigger in size.
I decided to to for:
OS drive - 500gb Samsung 970 Evo Plus
FS2020 drive - 1TB Sabrent Q
I decided to prioritise a balance of storage space and dedicated drive for FS2020
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I read that for our purposes , no perceptible performance difference between , Samsung 970 EVO , WD Blue SN550 , or Kingston A2000 .
Amazon Best Sellers in Internal Solid State Drives
#3 Samsung 970 EVO 1T $140
#17 WD Blue SN550 1T $110
#197 Kingston 1TB A2000 $120
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As others have said as long as it’s an SSD it shouldn’t make much difference.
For me it’s 2 minutes from double-clicking on FS until it gets to the main screen. WD Blue SN550 1TB.
I have a PCI Gen 4 M2 from western digital.. there is only one ;-).
My loading times are ~ 12 secons of a fresh new world, it’s definetly worse like having 3090 which I have as well.
Only the best is enough for me for this great sim.. 
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Hold up…are you saying that you can load from the desktop to the world screen in approximately 12 seconds?
If so, I would love to see a video of that and also the model number of that drive you use.
1tb m.2, 2 minutes desktop to play
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No, I am just saying that there is a difference between Gen 3 & 4.
My load up with Western Digital Gen 4 1TB SSD: 1:49 seconds to main menĂĽ
Doesn’t make a dif. for gaming according to this video .
Which brings up the question , Is MSFS software a game or should it be benchmarked otherwise ?
Yea but the Cold to Desktop is worth the price of admission alone!
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… is that all Gen 4 is doing for you at the moment ?
How about loading the sim ?
My new build moved me from an SSD install to PCI-E4 M2 drives for OS and games. Notice a big difference on flight load times.
1sT M.2 drive >>> 500GB Samsung 970 Evo Plus
-------- win10 = 100GB ---------- = C:\ drive
-------- FS2020 = remaining ---- = D:\ drive
2nd M.2 drive >>> 1TB Intel 665p
_____ All other programs ------- = F:, G:, H:\
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