M.2 slot worth using or just "gimmicky" on a gaming PC

Ok looking into a new build.

Everything i have is very "Year 2011" Sandy bridge p67.

Are M.2 drives worth considering for OS and a few select games?

From my basic understanding they come at conventional Sata 6g speeds and then there is some that use the pci-e lanes that go at very fast speeds R/W.

Do they impact on Say, a graphic cards performance or other devices connected to pci-e. My soundcard is also pci-e. Im looking at a 1080gtx

Im so out of the loop. Technology has stepped past me a bit i need to catch up.

This seems to be about the right price to size ratio that should exhibit some serious noticeablespead boost but not just willy waving.

Otherwise it seems like conventional sata cabled SSDs seem to be still way cheaper GB/£$

Anyone shed light on this. Is it just not worth putting money towards this and consider it elsewhere towards i5>i7 better gfx etc etc.

Its only worth it if you are going PCIe/NVMe for those super fast RW speeds.

They are faster but personally I don't notice much improvement in day to day usage compared to other SSD's I have.

Where they win for me is their size and I know it's not any good for your setup but it's great being able to connect them straight to a motherboard and reduce the PC's cable count.

It won't affect speed of other components, instead it's a couple less cables in the case and the possibility of PCI express SSD speeds if you go for something that can support them.

Thanks I'll have a look at boards that support them but won't go out of my way to get one then

I'm hoping to including a M.2 PCIe/MVMe SSD in my next build - not that I really need the speed though!

Speaking of this type of drive, I have an Asrock H170M-ITX/AC board which has a mini-PCI-E socket on it. On the Asrock website it says this can only used for the wifi/bt module or a mSATA. The website states that only the full size PCI-E slot can be used for an NVMe SSD.

What's the technical limitation for this? Is it related to the number of PCI-E lanes?

Many thanks.

M.

I went from Z68 to X99 and used an M.2 drive, along with DDR3 to DDR4 and i7 3770 to i7 5930 I have seen quite a significant overall improvement. I'm not sure how much one component will affect performance but as part of a range it has really done well.
Andi.

andicole0 said:

I went from Z68 to X99 and used an M.2 drive, along with DDR3 to DDR4 and i7 3770 to i7 5930 I have seen quite a significant overall improvement. I'm not sure how much one component will affect performance but as part of a range it has really done well.
Andi.

Click to expand...

I did pretty much exactly as you and can't say I was overwhelmed by the improvement.
That said. I RMA'd my SM951 and didn't re-install it after I got it back. I'm currently running an ordinary M2 850 evo.

The SM951 is in my NUC running OpenElec

I love my SM951 - fit's flat on my mobo, takes up no space, no cabling and it's fast!

You get 16 pci-e lanes with a skylake cpu, which you'll want for your gfx card.
Your mobo should provide another 4 pci-e lanes for running the M2.
How many other pci-e lanes are provided varies from one mobo to another depending on how many lanes they use for USB etc. (they have up to 20, 4 will be used by M2, maybe 6 for USB3) - there should be enough for your soundcard but check the mobo before you buy.

If I was buying a full new system, I'd get one.

When I went from 2500K to 6700K, I was re-using my 128GB Evo 850, from what I've read, the only place you'd notice a difference is in benchmarks.

I almost bought one, but figured the extra money was better spent on going 6700K instead of 6600K.

I think there could be some good deals on the SM951's coming up so it's worth keeping an eye on.
I doubt you'll ever be sat thinking, 'damn I wish this drive was slower'.

mrochester said:

Speaking of this type of drive, I have an Asrock H170M-ITX/AC board which has a mini-PCI-E socket on it. On the Asrock website it says this can only used for the wifi/bt module or a mSATA. The website states that only the full size PCI-E slot can be used for an NVMe SSD.

What's the technical limitation for this? Is it related to the number of PCI-E lanes?

Many thanks.

M.

Click to expand...

That's because your motherboard only has an mSATA slot and not an m.2 slot, so you'd be limited to SATA speeds and mSATA drives if you want to use that slot for an SSD which means that as the manufacturer states that to use an NVMe SSD on it you need to buy a PCIe based SSD or a PCIe adapter that has an M.2 slot and allows the use of M.s SSDs.

stuartharrison said:

I think there could be some good deals on the SM951's coming up so it's worth keeping an eye on.
I doubt you'll ever be sat thinking, 'damn I wish this drive was slower'.

Click to expand...

My question is, is the SM951 NVMe the same as the 950 Pro. The specs look identical. The difference seems to be the appearance and the price. Just looks like an OEM version.

£189 vs £260 for the 512
37p vs 51p per

£100 vs £144 for the 256
39p vs 56p per

Also, why do you have this feeling?

Yes the 951 is the same drive as the 950 pro
only diff is the 950 has a black pcb and 10 year warranty

THe 4K bit was the main difference i could find when looking.


Samsung SM951 256GB M.2 SSD - 2150MB/s Read

M.2 Interface
M.2 Form Factor
Up to 2150MB/s Read, 1200MB/s Write
4K IOPS Read: 130000
4K IOPS Write: 85000
2 Year Warranty


Samsung 950 PRO 256GB M.2 SSD - 2200MB/s Read

256GB M.2
Max Read: 2200MB/s
Max Write: 900MB/s
4K IOPS Read: 270000
4K IOPS Write: 85000
5 Year Warranty


I got the cheaper SM951 in the end and it was shocking in the MSI Z170 Mini ITX gaming motherboard (it didnt fit as it was too long at 2280), after getting it secured and setting up it just crashed all the time.

sooo, i purchased the ASRock Z170 Mini ITX AC and put the SM951 in that and all has been good, i never even reset it up, just stuck it in and let it sort itself out.

Desktop work is faster when opening picture folders but not as you would notice on general browsing and navigating.

Does perform to the stated speeds though without any tweaking.

The SM 951 is the oem version of the 950 pro
They're the same drive.
The 950 comes with a longer warranty, black pcb and presumably a box
The 951 has a green pcb and bubble wrap

I've had no trouble at all with mine (except I nearly threw it out with the packaging; they're tiny and it's in a small piece of bubble wrap)
Highly recommend one.

it seems asrock X99 motherboards have faster speed for M.2 compared to other brands.

abui1806 said:

it seems asrock X99 motherboards have faster speed for M.2 compared to other brands.

Click to expand...

They do tend to add more features than some though I remember MSi had a couple of boards with 2 x M.2 connectors PCIE 3.0 X4.

I went with the OCUK 5820K + Gigabyte mobo bundle and bought 128GB + 512GB SM951 drives mounted on Asus PCIE HBA cards. Zero SATA devices now in my system and also much less cabling as a result.

As mentioned it's hard to point to exactly what affect the SM951 drives have on the whole system as it's all pretty quick hardware installed but occasionally while decompressing large archives I see 900MB/s+ writes which means a 10GB+ files can take mere seconds to process. Much faster than my previous SATA SSD based system

Are you using the 128gb as boot and two 512gb's as storage Bimble?
Might go do similar myself.