Patch lag or do I need a SSD?

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My current SSD was too small for the patch, so I uninstalled and put the game on my brand new realtively fast HD that has almost nothing on it. I have tried removing everything possible from the SSD, optimized and run cleaner, but if I have WoW there, I have only 1-2 gb space left and I feel that’s too little.

Now the loading time is driving me nuts! Portals take so long I might get DC, if I join a group I’m left far behind.

I knew it would take more time loading from a HD but the difference is huge.

How much of this is the usual patch lag? Is it all because of the HD?

Do I need to insta buy a bigger SSD to be able to enjoy the game? I have planned it, not just yet.

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It’s the slow HDD, there is no such thing as a fast one.
They are all very slow compared to even a first gen SSD.

Yes, and they are really cheap now.

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Ok, thank you Kiyuki. It sounds like my solution.

I’m thinking about this one, Kingston A2000 M.2 NVMe, the 500 GB that costs 80 euro. (remove the star)
https*://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/kingston-a2000-m2-nvme-ssd

Seems like a good SSD for the price. Feedback is appreciated. :slight_smile:

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It’s decent, but not that good value with the price you quoted.

If you have the budget I would suggest getting 1 TB SSD which are usually around 130-150 euros or so so you’d get double the space with less than double price.

Personally I am not fan of Kingston as they have had issues with reliability in some SSDs. They sometimes change used parts (usually to cheaper) while keeping same model, too.

I am personally using PNY XLR8 CS3030 1TB which is about same price here as 1 TB Kingston A2000 but is faster (not that it matters that much) and has higher write endurance, too.

Intel has budget 660p but it uses new technology so reliability is still mostly unknown, plus it is quite slow for a SSD (much faster than HDD obviously). It slows down a lot when it gets full, too. For games etc when you don’t write a lot it is good choice too if you can get it for cheap (~100-120 euros for 1 TB).

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I would recommend a Samsung SSD, you can’t go wrong with them.
My first SSD was a Samsung 530 256GB, still running strong :smiley:

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Samsung ones are good, but you are also playing lot of extra for the brand. Eg. comparable 1 TB samsung to PNY I have would have cost ~30-40 euros more for neglible performance gains.

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Im talking about reliability not speed.
Speed does not really matter for games, the difference between a sata ssd and a nvme is neglible.
Only matters for big file transfers.

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Thank you so much for the feedback. :smiley: These are good suggestions, but let me explain a bit. I have a small budget, need slowly upgrade my pc piece by piece when it’s needed. A new SSD was planned, but before that more memory going from 2x4 GB to 2x8 or even 2x16.

More storage space isn’t a priority really. Up until December I had only 400 gb HDD, when I bought a new GPU ( Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1660 6GB GAMING OC) and a 2 TB HDD that for me is absolutely huge! The current SSD is a 120 gb Kingston that I had for 5 years or maybe more.

So a 500 gb new SSD certainly feels big enough for Windows, WoW and a few other smaller programs. I agree 1 tb gives more value though.

I read about the new NVMe technology and thought it’s the way to go. Do you guys agree? (Edit: I see now Kiyuki does not)

I checked out both Samsung and PNY 500 gb NVMe, but found none cheaper than over 100 euro from sellers I trust. 80 euro alone is above budget this month, in fact its 0 euro! :frowning: Only reason I even think about it now is WoW being so annoyingly slow and I do have some money tucked away for emergency.

Would the Kingston A2000 I had in mind really be a bad alternative? Is it a brand with bad reputation in general, as Greiler hints?

The only downside in the test I linked was “unattractive” and I couldn’t care less. :smiley: Quoting from the test:

" Game Scene Loading - Final Fantasy XIV

The Final Fantasy XIV StormBlood benchmark is a free real-world game benchmark that easily and accurately compares game load times without the inaccuracy of using a stopwatch.

The Kingston A2000 delivers leading-edge game load performance. With a total load time of 18.80 seconds, Kingston’s A2000 took first place, leading even the Mushkin Pilot-E."

I don’t really understand how important the test results are, but at the last page with Conclusion is a lot of praise:

"the A2000 ranked as the fastest SSD in the group when loading Final Fantasy’s game scenes, making it a great value for gamers. …

During our tests, the A2000’s temperatures were well-managed. Even when running multiple 50-100GB transfers simultaneously, temps stayed below 60C with little airflow in our 25C environment.

Kingston’s A2000 is a well-rounded NVMe SSD overall. Whether you are a business class user, prosumer, or just someone looking to outfit their new build with some speedy storage, the A2000 is a great choice. With competitive pricing, high endurance and five-year warranty to match, the drive ranks among the top value picks."

So please, give me more feedback and help me decide. :slight_smile:

Edit: The rest of my stuff I got a couple of years ago is:
AMD Ryzen 5 1400 3.2 GHz 10MB
Corsair 8GB (2x4GB) DDR4 2400Mhz CL16 Vengeance
MSI B350M GAMING PRO that has only 2 slots for memory

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Kingston A2000 is not a bad SSD (in fact there really aren’t outright bad ones if you stick to the larger brands and avoid some LED monsters). It is just my personal preference to avoid Kingston due their past behaviour and problems, especially if there are alternatives.

So yes, given the availability and price A2000 is a good drive and if it’s cheapest for you then go for it.

If you want do more price shopping then Amazon-de might be worth checking out as they have free shipping to most European countries for larger orders (over 39euros) and also have English translations. They have had recently some problems with site saying items sold by Amazon do not ship to some specific countries even though they ship just fine and you can order them. Avoid third party sellers though as they usually charge more for shipping etc.

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Does your mainboard support nvme?
And like i said, you won’t see any benefit for WoW with a faster nvme, but you will pay more for it.

That’s a really slow setup for WoW i have to say.
Except the SSD you should not invest any more money into it.
Save the money for a new mobo/cpu/ram :smiley:

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Thank you for the feedback. I’ll see what I can find to read about poor quality of Kingston. Since my current SSD is a Kingston working properly for many years now it was natural to look for another one, but one swallow doesn’t make a summer. I think I’ll stick to the trusted shops in my own country.

Yes, Kiyuki, the motherboard supports NVMe. When it comes to the CPU ultra settings and 60 fps when not in raid is fine for a casual player like me. I had no performance issues before the SSD got full, unless in raids when I set it lower or if i have too much running in the background. More RAM is planned.

From what I’ve read and been told WoW is GPU dependent and the CPU isn’t as important so I upgraded in December to a GeForce GTX 1660 6GB GAMING OC. When I feel the need, I can upgrade the CPU+MB later. Isn’t that so? Was I stupid?

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Dalaran in Legion was quite an SSD upselling technique. In short yet, load times with SSDs will be much lower. And it doesn’t really have to be NVMe if you are on a budget.

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Prices betweeen 2.5" drives, M.2 SATA an M.2 NVMe are pretty small least here (~60 euros for cheapest 480 GB 2.5" drives vs 70-75 for cheapest M.2 SATA or NVMe).

The motherboard OP has can use newer CPUs so eg. used 2600X or such might be option. Seems like it supports the newest Ryzens so that might be option too. Requires BIOS update of course and I don’t know if the motherboard has any issues with them but in theory they should work.

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Aside of the SSD/HHD, there has been severe lag. Loading screens getting stuck, world servers down, quest mobs disappearing, attack delay, client/pc crashes etc etc.

So I would not put all the blame on the HHD.

Needless to say if you are used to a SSD you will prob be annoyed with the downgrade either way. But just wanted to let you know :slight_smile:

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I haven’t had loading times like this since playing on a potatoe in TBC! :wink: Not just loading screens. In this patch there really are a lot of them! But the bags, maps, everything takes what feels like ages… Not more crashes than normal on patch though and no disappearing mobs thank God.

I feel my acute fix is either a cheap second hand SSD like my current but bigger, or “eating porridge next month” and buy a NVMe, be sure it will last a while. I think I’ll go for the second option.

Thank you Grelier for checking my MB, I’m glad it’s not that bad. :smiley: I want a new CPU ofcourse, but I feel bigger RAM is priority, after the SSD? Am I right?

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More RAM only makes sense if you actually need it.
If the RAM is not used, it’s literally doing nothing for you.

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As the undead mage below said, it really depends on how you use current ram. Do you have lots of programs running on background when gaming etc.

For example WoW usually takes about 3-4 GB of RAM so that leaves the other 4 GB for Windows, other software and disk cache which is not that much nowadays.

You can use Task manager to get basic overview of memory use. Remember that even “free” memory is not wasted as it is automatically used by Windows for disk cache. Eg. I am currently using only about 9 GB of RAM with Firefox, couple small programs and WoW running but Windows is using 20 GB for disk cache.

Memory is fairly cheap currently and for entirely new computer for gaming I would recommend 16 GB at the minimum. For you, I’d say it really depends on use. Try to monitor Task Manager while you have your usual background stuff running and when you start game and see if memory gets used 100% or only 75% or so. If memory use is over 80% or so I would suggest buying more RAM.

You might get used RAM and CPU fairly cheaply, too, so checking eg. local online forums for PC enthusiasts or other market places might be worth it.

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That is not slow setup for WoW at all, especially if CPU is overclocked. On top of it, that motherboard supports zen2, so 3600 would be cheapest meaningful upgrade even if the only game played is WoW.

RAM is really cheap atm (price is expected to start rising in Q2) so getting 16gb kits at decent speeds/timings would not be bad investment.

Quite the opposite. If you do not suffer from not having sliders at 10, multisampling/200% res scale, reflections at ultra and AO at med+, even entry level GPUs (nvidia 1050/amd 560) are more then enough while retaining almost indistinguishable picture quality.

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It does not matter, the first gen Ryzen still have very low IPC, which combined with very slow DDR4 RAM (2400) will cost you even more FPS in WoW.

Ryzen and CPU-limited games profit alot from faster RAM.
Let me give you an example from first hand experience:
I recently upgraded from a 3570K (which already had better singlethreading than the Ryzen 5 1400) to a Ryzen 3900x.
That alone increased my FPS by almost double.

My new RAM is 3600Mhz CL15.
Without the XMP profile loaded in the UEFI it runs at default 2133Mhz.

So i compared the FPS in WoW with 2133 and 3600.
The difference was almost 30 FPS! Imagine that…alone from the RAM.

So, yes i would say that setup is slow if my 7 year old I5 is faster in WoW.
But hey… at least not as bad as the FX CPUs right? :wink:

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Thank you all for the feedback and specially Greiler’s practical advise. Now I know what to do and marked the thread with “solution”. I’m already pretty sure the RAM is strained because I do run a lot in the background. It’s not an acute need though so I can buy something proper. Or even, if i’m lucky, find some enthusiast thinking 16MB isn’t enough and sell cheap.

I have a few last questions:

Is there any point running WoW at higher fps than 60, when that is the refresh rate of my screen?

I’m getting a second screen (old one for free) How much will that strain the system?

When it comes to CPU vs GPU, I had a GTX 660 when I bought the Ryzen+MB+RAM. A guy has helped me overclock. I couldn’t run ultra settings, about 7, but it was still a better pc than ever before. In December I bought a GTX 1660 6GB GAMING OC along with the new HDD and the difference is huge! I can run ultra settings with almost no lag, except in raids and I’m cool with that. The game is beautiful, like I’ve never seen it before. (Edit: that was before the SSD got full) Maybe it was overdoing it and a Nvidia 1050/amd 560 as Zverkan said would have been just as good?

A lot of the discussion is above my head but I try to read and learn. New Ryzen that I can fit in the MB is very interesting as future upgrade. :slight_smile: