M2 Sata or M2 NVMe?

[JJimmyJ]

Hello

Never looked into the world os M2, but now feel like I need some more storage, and have an M2 slot on my X470 Prime Pro motherboard.
So, googling for info has left me slightly confused!
M2 is obviously the form factor, but there are 2 'shapes'?
One is like an 'M' shape and the other looks like standard PCI shape. My understanding is the 'M' shape is SATA, and the PCI shape is NVMe, but most of the descriptions contradict this?

I'm after a 1TB M2 ssd, but really not sure on the differences
Any help please

 

[MassiveJim]

I don't know what you mean about shapes ?

M.2 is the slot type
SATA/PCI-E is the interface type

normally the SSD will be "keyed" so that it will only fit into a compatible slot, that is to say an SATA M.2 slot will not support a PCI-E SSD and vice-versa.According to the OCUK site, your board supports the following

1x M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 & SATA / 1x M.2 PCIe 3.0 x2 & SATA


so you want to order an NVME PCI-E M.2 drive
go for a Samsung 970 Evo, a WD Black or a Corsair MP510 ? (check the model on that one not 100% sure)

 

[h4rm0ny]

M.2 is the socket. You can have a regular old-fashioned shaped SSD that connects to them or Intel's Optane drives might. For example, this will connect to an M.2 socket via a cable: https://www.overclockers.co.uk/inte...e-drive-with-m.2-cable-adaptor-hd-08m-in.html

But mostly you're talking about the little stick-style drives like this: https://www.overclockers.co.uk/wd-g...-solid-state-drive-wds240g2g0b-hd-558-wd.html

You'll almost certainly want to get something like the latter because that's what the motherboard layout will be designed for with the little placement screws and maybe a heatsink. Not that you couldn't connect a different drive via a cable.

There are some variants in the socket - basically the notches in a different place. But buy any normal stick-style M.2 drive and it will fit into the M.2 socket of your motherboard. It may not fit the length, though. The M.2 name tells you the size of it with the first two digits being the width and the last two digits being the length. So for example the Western Digital M.2 2280 SSD that I linked to above will be 22mm wide and 80mm long. 80 is kind of standard - you motherboard will probably fit that length. But you can see 110mm ones that might be too big for some board layouts. Check the specs on your board and it should say what M.2 devices will fit.

You will want a PCIe-v4 drive and likely NVME ('cause it's better so long as your motherboard is compatible). I looked up the X470 Prime Pro - this one, yes?
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/asus...ocket-am4-ddr4-atx-motherboard-mb-6c0-as.html

Looking at the specs half-way down it says:
1x M.2 (M-Key, PCIe 3.0 x4 & SATA6G with max. 32 Gbit/s, horizontal, Größen 2242 to 22110)
1x M.2 (M-Key, PCIe 3.0 x2 & SATA6G with max. 20 Gbit/s, horizontal, sizes 2242 to 2280)

So you can put in an PCIe 3.0 x4 up to 110mm long and a second one up to 80mm long. You'll want to put it in the first slot above because that runs at x4 and the other only runs at x2. That's why you want an PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 drive - to get the most out of that slot. 1TB will cost you a bit even now, mind. NVMe is expensive!

Hope this helps. Samsung are currently the leaders for this sort of stuff. You could get this for example (although this one is "only" 500GB). https://www.overclockers.co.uk/sams...-3.0-x4-nvme-solid-state-drive-hd-23n-sa.html

The terms you care about in its description are these: "PCI-E 3.0 x4" and "NVME". You'd care about the 80 part of "2280" as well, but your motherboard supports up to this length in both its slots so you're fine.

 

[4K8KW10]

Samsung are currently the leaders for this sort of stuff.

We need to ask ADATA, WD, Corsair, Crucial and intel about what they think about this conclusion.

"Today we tear into the XPG SX8200 Pro, Adata’s highest-performing NVMe M.2 SSD yet. The company designed the SSD for gamers, overclockers, and video content producers, so it’s sure to impress. The drive features speeds of up to 3.5/3GB/s read/write and power efficiency that outclasses any other SSD we've tested, making the SX8200 Pro the performance leader out of the gate. The black XPG heat spreader makes it an even 'cooler' buy. Best of all, the SX8200 Pro's pricing undercuts the Samsung 970 EVO and PRO, as well as many other competitors."

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/adata-xpg-sx8200-pro-ssd,5955-2.html

 

[JJimmyJ]

Excellent info!
Thanks for the details, that helps a lot.
I'm not after astounding speed, just the extra storage. I could chuck a standard ssd in again, but I have the slot so figure I may as well utilise. Now I know what I'm looking for

Thanks again

 

[h4rm0ny]

We need to ask ADATA, WD, Corsair, Crucial and intel about what they think about this conclusion.

"Today we tear into the XPG SX8200 Pro, Adata’s highest-performing NVMe M.2 SSD yet. The company designed the SSD for gamers, overclockers, and video content producers, so it’s sure to impress. The drive features speeds of up to 3.5/3GB/s read/write and power efficiency that outclasses any other SSD we've tested, making the SX8200 Pro the performance leader out of the gate. The black XPG heat spreader makes it an even 'cooler' buy. Best of all, the SX8200 Pro's pricing undercuts the Samsung 970 EVO and PRO, as well as many other competitors."

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/adata-xpg-sx8200-pro-ssd,5955-2.html

Samsung are a terribly corrupt company. So if they've been knocked off the top-spot, that's great to hear.

 

[Bubo]

Is the available number of PCI3 CPU lanes still a thing as well these days, regarding whether an NVMe drive will work at its max speed or not? I am still on an ancient X99 board and a 28 lane 5820K cpu, which with my board you have to be careful you have enough spare PCI3 lanes for an NVMe to be able to operate at 4x, i.e. 4 lanes for itself out of the 28 total. As I understand it, your PCI3 lanes are used up by the GPU, and whatever is left over is available for things like nvme drives, so a SLI gpu setup would use more than a single gpu for example. And each drive would need its own 4 lanes? Do modern mobo's/cpus still have this limitation?

 

[JJimmyJ]

Ok, had a look on ocuk using the info above.
This seems to fit the bill - https://www.overclockers.co.uk/inte...id-state-drive-ssdpeknw010t8x1-hd-08v-in.html
No reviews, but it's 1tb and costs less than the samsung??? Something wrong there?

 

[Sasahara]

Ok, had a look on ocuk using the info above.
This seems to fit the bill - https://www.overclockers.co.uk/inte...id-state-drive-ssdpeknw010t8x1-hd-08v-in.html
No reviews, but it's 1tb and costs less than the samsung??? Something wrong there?

Slower and a much lower write life span. 200 TBW most other options are 400 TBW - 1700+ TBW

 

[h4rm0ny]

Is the available number of PCI3 CPU lanes still a thing as well these days, regarding whether an NVMe drive will work at its max speed or not? I am still on an ancient X99 board and a 28 lane 5820K cpu, which with my board you have to be careful you have enough spare PCI3 lanes for an NVMe to be able to operate at 4x, i.e. 4 lanes for itself out of the 28 total. As I understand it, your PCI3 lanes are used up by the GPU, and whatever is left over is available for things like nvme drives, so a SLI gpu setup would use more than a single gpu for example. And each drive would need its own 4 lanes? Do modern mobo's/cpus still have this limitation?

Yes. It's still a thing. Obviously it depends on the motherboard. I'm not confident in telling people not to bother checking just yet. The new AMD generations however usually have plenty of lanes. And PCI-Ev4 is right around the corner. I have an MSI X399 Meg Creation motherboard. It has three onboard M.2 sockets and a supplied PCI-E expander card with space for four more. It's a quite ridiculous number of PCI-E lane support and perfect for people who need a lot of fast storage. People who can't justify a threadripper build as a business expense though, you can still find yourself throttled.

I'd say you might as well buy a PCIe3v4 version anyway for future proofing but with PCIe4 imminent, we're probably going to see a jump forward. The older PCIe3 devices will still work in new boards, but we might see new PCIe4 only SSDs.

Which will be fun.

 

[Trustdesa]

I have a miniITX z370i

Got both M.2. SLOTS occupied by 1 SSD and 1 NMVE and the Graphic Card nor the SATA ports are disabled or slowed down...

Really unless one does need it for professional use / large file transfers NMVE is key else is pointless in my opinion, I did get one as my second M.2. is NVME only, yes extremely super fast however not a day to day boost like HDD to SDD.

 

[hyperseven]

We need to ask ADATA, WD, Corsair, Crucial and intel about what they think about this conclusion.

"Today we tear into the XPG SX8200 Pro, Adata’s highest-performing NVMe M.2 SSD yet. The company designed the SSD for gamers, overclockers, and video content producers, so it’s sure to impress. The drive features speeds of up to 3.5/3GB/s read/write and power efficiency that outclasses any other SSD we've tested, making the SX8200 Pro the performance leader out of the gate. The black XPG heat spreader makes it an even 'cooler' buy. Best of all, the SX8200 Pro's pricing undercuts the Samsung 970 EVO and PRO, as well as many other competitors."

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/adata-xpg-sx8200-pro-ssd,5955-2.html

Can you not find a better source than Tom's who lost all credibility after the Nvidia debacle. Wonder how much ADATA paid them for that, surprised they didn't use their 'just buy it' tag line

 

[4K8KW10]

"Power Consumption

We use the Quarch HD Programmable Power Module to gain a deeper understanding of power characteristics. Idle power consumption is a very important aspect to consider, especially if you're looking for a new drive for your laptop. Some SSDs can consume watts of power at idle while better-suited ones sip just milliwatts. Average workload power consumption and max consumption are two other aspects of power consumption, but performance-per-watt is more important. A drive might consume more power during any given workload, but accomplishing a task faster allows the drive to drop into an idle state faster, which ultimately saves power.

Just as the previous SM2262 featured very low idle power consumption, so does the SM2262EN. The SX8200 Pro sipped just 10mW with ASPM disabled and just over half a watt with the feature disabled.

We recorded maximum power consumption of just 4.05W and an average of just 1.93W during our 50GB file folder transfer. This is even less than the Crucial MX500 and Intel 660P, which are two of the most efficient SSDs on the market. Combined with the 366MB/s average throughput during the transfer test, the SX8200 Pro features class-leading efficiency with an average of 189MB/s per watt. That’s almost 50 percent better than any other SSD in the comparison pool!"

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/adata-xpg-sx8200-pro-ssd,5955-2.html

 

[hyperseven]

"Power Consumption

We use the Quarch HD Programmable Power Module to gain a deeper understanding of power characteristics. Idle power consumption is a very important aspect to consider, especially if you're looking for a new drive for your laptop. Some SSDs can consume watts of power at idle while better-suited ones sip just milliwatts. Average workload power consumption and max consumption are two other aspects of power consumption, but performance-per-watt is more important. A drive might consume more power during any given workload, but accomplishing a task faster allows the drive to drop into an idle state faster, which ultimately saves power.

Just as the previous SM2262 featured very low idle power consumption, so does the SM2262EN. The SX8200 Pro sipped just 10mW with ASPM disabled and just over half a watt with the feature disabled.

We recorded maximum power consumption of just 4.05W and an average of just 1.93W during our 50GB file folder transfer. This is even less than the Crucial MX500 and Intel 660P, which are two of the most efficient SSDs on the market. Combined with the 366MB/s average throughput during the transfer test, the SX8200 Pro features class-leading efficiency with an average of 189MB/s per watt. That’s almost 50 percent better than any other SSD in the comparison pool!"

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/adata-xpg-sx8200-pro-ssd,5955-2.html

Any other sources to corroberate Tom's dubious 'review'and associated data?

 

[4K8KW10]

Any other sources to corroberate Tom's dubious 'review'and associated data?

"The SX8200 Pro is by far the best performing drive in its price range. Samsung’s 970 EVO matches if for relatively small amounts of data, but slows down more quickly on long writes."
https://www.pcworld.com/article/3323075/adata-xpg-sx8200-pro-nvme-ssd-review.html

Can you not find a better source than Tom's who lost all credibility after the Nvidia debacle. Wonder how much ADATA paid them for that, surprised they didn't use their 'just buy it' tag line

You have it:

"Fast, cheap and durable, the Adata XPG SX8200 Pro is our new favourite NVMe SSD, and the first one you should consider when building a PC or upgrading a laptop."
https://www.expertreviews.co.uk/ssds/1408958/adata-xpg-sx8200-pro-review