Help choosing 3rd gen SSD for PCI-E 2.0 x4

[Heart_Of_Adel]

Hi guys. I have MSI H97 Gaming 3 motherboard and I'd love to add an NVMe SSD to my PCI-E 2.0 x4 slot. I don't really want an overkill model because i like to feel that a component is at its full performance so I'm limited to 1700 mb/s r/w speeds. I'm trying to find decent models at that speed without QLC and with some DRAM to have consistent performance for DirectStorage and overall. Your help would be very appreciated.
And if there are no SSDs at that speed together with TLC and DRAM, is QLC + DRAM or TLC + no DRAM more reliable?

 

[Abula]

Most consumer NVMEs, even PCIe 4.0, can peak to numbers that you might see as waste because of your limitation but the reality is that most of them barely can sustain 1000 mb/s, so if you have well above that, so i would buy whatever your budget allows, probably not PCIe 4.0 because we already have PCIe 5.0 making a entering soon, but a good PCIe 3.0 NVME to me its a good investment.

I like a lot SK hynix Gold P31, which is not a top end performance drive, but a a very efficient and good performance overall drive. There are others to consider, i have read good things about the new intel 670p, which is a QLC but seems to perform very close to TLC drives. Another drive that has been well regarded due to its performance is Samsung 970 Evo Plus, that recently has gone in sale.