
IPS vs VA for Strategy and Sim Games in SA
IPS vs VA for strategy and sim games should be judged by fit, not a single winner. Compare compatibility, latency, capacity, upgrade path, cost planning, and South African setup needs.
Read moreBest Gen 5 NVMe SSD for Sandton-based remote should be shortlisted around the job it must do. South African buyers should compare capacity, speed, thermals, and motherboard support, warranty path, and upgrade room before treating any pick as best.
Gen 5 NVMe SSDs offer sequential reads of 10,000–14,000 MB/s, roughly double the speed of Gen 4 drives, but for most remote-work and gaming workloads the practical difference is small. The Samsung 990 Pro (Gen 4) at around R1,400 for 1 TB is the better value for Sandton remote workers; Gen 5 drives like the Crucial T705 1 TB (~R2,200) only justify the premium for workloads that transfer very large files repeatedly, such as video production or large database backups.
For office tasks — emails, browser tabs, Teams/Zoom, Office — Gen 4 and Gen 5 SSDs feel identical. Both load Windows in under 15 seconds and open large Excel files in under 2 seconds. The sequential speed advantage of Gen 5 only shows in benchmarks and sustained large-file transfers (copying 50+ GB files).
For gaming, game load times differ by 1–3 seconds between Gen 4 and Gen 5 — immeasurable in practice. The real bottleneck in modern gaming is GPU performance and VRAM, not SSD speed.
Gen 5 drives generate more heat than Gen 4: the Crucial T705 reaches 70°C under sustained load. Sandton professionals using slim or compact cases should verify their motherboard includes M.2 heatsinks, as Gen 5 requires active cooling to avoid throttling.
For most remote-work use cases, no — Gen 4 drives like the Samsung 990 Pro at ~R1,400 deliver virtually identical day-to-day performance. Gen 5 is worth the premium only for video editors, data engineers, or professionals who routinely transfer 50+ GB files.
Evetech stocks drives in the Gen 4 and Gen 5 categories. The Crucial T705 and Seagate FireCuda 540 are two Gen 5 options available at around R2,000–R2,500 for 1 TB. Confirm compatibility with your motherboard's M.2 slot generation before purchasing.
No — gaming performance is GPU-bound, not storage-bound, above Gen 4 speeds. Installing games on a Gen 5 versus Gen 4 drive saves at most 2–3 seconds per load screen. Save the price difference for a GPU upgrade or more RAM.
a Gen 5 NVMe drive, check that your motherboard has a PCIe 5.0 M.2 slot — Gen 5 drives run at Gen 4 speeds on a PCIe 4.0 slot, completely eliminating the speed advantage you're paying for.