MAG B560 Tomahawk paired with Crucial T700 Gen5 NVMe M.2 SSD
MAG B560 Tomahawk paired with Crucial T700 Gen5 NVMe M.2 SSD
I’m using a B560 Tomahawk motherboard with an i9 11900k and a Corsair Force MP600 M.2 SSD. I’m looking to switch to a faster SSD for smoother performance in Escape from Tarkov, but I’m having trouble finding the right options. Can I install a Gen 5 SSD on my current setup?
You can still use it, though it won't perform well at the highest settings. Expect lower performance compared to Gen 3 or Gen 4 configurations in games. Some systems might struggle with compatibility, and this board doesn't include all the features of the 11th generation. Edit: It includes a lightning slot, which is the top M.2 port marked with the LIGHTNING cover—this is your Gen 4 speed slot.
Can you? Yes. Will you get any performance uplift? No. Aside from Gen 5 SSDs being well into the territory of diminishing returns for gaming systems, our motherboard's top M.2 slot top out at Gen 4, so the T700 would be limited to the same ~7GB/s that drives like the SN850X and 980 Pro are limited to for an order of magnitude more money. Then there is the diminishing returns talk, where I wouldn't really expect all that much difference between a SATA drive and your current SSD, let alone your current SSD and a top of the line Gen 5 drive. If you want an upgrade, put that money towards a faster CPU/Motherboard/RAM combo instead, not a fancy new SSD.
A fresh CPU would certainly become the limiting factor here. We don’t have your GPU details, but the 11900K is clearly showing signs of aging. For comparison, the 13600K delivers about 20% better single-core performance and 30% faster multi-core results, with nearly double the number of cores (8 versus 14).