M2 or regular 2.5 SSD to keep games on?

heartburnron · 14 Apr 2016 at 20:34

I want to add another 250GB SSD to my set up. Space is not an issue so are there any benefits in going for M2 over the 850 Samsung 2.5 SSD?

Boogieman_WD · 15 Apr 2016 at 10:13

Hi heartburnron.

Are you referring to a SATA M.2 SSD or an PCIe M.2 drive? The PCIe will be faster than an M.2 SATA drive. However I think that this would be a bit of an overkill for gaming. Having in mind the only actual noticeable part that the drive has regarding gaming (performance wise) is the shorter loading time when you start the game and all the in-game loading screens go away much faster, a regular SSD should be more than enough.

That's just my opinion. Of course you could go for the fastest option which would be a NVME PCIe drive.

edit: I don't know why I wrote about gaming. I guess for some reason I thought that this has anything to do with your choice. Basically this is still accurate performance wise. The NVMe PCIe M.2 and AHCI PCIe M.2 drives are faster than SATA M.2 drives which are practically the same as a regular SATA drive, but have a different form factor.

Hope that helps.
Boogieman_WD

heartburnron · 15 Apr 2016 at 10:50

Boogieman_WD said:
Hi heartburnron.

Are you referring to a SATA M.2 SSD or an PCIe M.2 drive? The PCIe will be faster than an M.2 SATA drive. However I think that this would be a bit of an overkill for gaming. Having in mind the only actual noticeable part that the drive has regarding gaming (performance wise) is the shorter loading time when you start the game and all the in-game loading screens go away much faster, a regular SSD should be more than enough.

That's just my opinion. Of course you could go for the fastest option which would be a NVME PCIe drive.

edit: I don't know why I wrote about gaming. I guess for some reason I thought that this has anything to do with your choice. Basically this is still accurate performance wise. The NVMe PCIe M.2 and AHCI PCIe M.2 drives are faster than SATA M.2 drives which are practically the same as a regular SATA drive, but have a different form factor.

Hope that helps.
Boogieman_WD

Thanks for replying - that's exactly want I wanted to know. You wrote about gaming as I said in the title I wanted another SSD to keep me games on! lol

Boogieman_WD · 15 Apr 2016 at 11:20

Oh, I re-read the post and didn't see anything about gaming, but forgot about the title. Seems like it's one of those days for me.

Minstadave · 15 Apr 2016 at 11:25

Personally I don't think you'll much if any difference paying the extra for a PCIE drive.

Devrij · 15 Apr 2016 at 11:46

Ah, but he could clone his OS onto the pcie drive and have games on his existing one. That would be worth doing.

heartburnron · 15 Apr 2016 at 23:37

This ended up being cheaper than the 2.5 sata 850 evo 250G :

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/sams...state-drive-mzvlv256hchp-00000-hd-221-sa.html

Not the fastest but twice the read speed of sata's...

heartburnron · 16 Apr 2016 at 12:24

Actually I'm a bit confused about where to install the M.2 PCIe - every video/picture I've seen shows the M.2 drives fitted to the mother board via the M.2 socket and using the screw - doesn't the newer PCIe drives fit directly into one the smaller PCIe's below the graphics card? If not, how does it utilise the extra speed with PCIe vs. sata?

lsg1r · 16 Apr 2016 at 16:42

Usually the m.2 pci drive has it's own little slot somewhere on the board. Assuming your motherboard is the one in your sig it's bottom right (cpu at top) just under the heatsink by the sata sockets

heartburnron · 16 Apr 2016 at 17:29

lsg1r said:
Usually the m.2 pci drive has it's own little slot somewhere on the board. Assuming your motherboard is the one in your sig it's bottom right (cpu at top) just under the heatsink by the sata sockets

Yes the motherboard is the ASUS Z170 pro gaming and I can see where the card will be installed but I thought that particular slot was for the M.2 sata drives - will I be getting the benefit of the faster PCIe by using that socket is my question. I suppose what I'm asking is do all M.2 drives be installed in the same place and the motherboard recognises it is a PCIe drive automatically or, do you have to install it into one to the PCIe express lanes to get the faster speeds?

Thanks for you help by the way.

bimbleuk · 16 Apr 2016 at 17:31

Just check if the mobo mounted socket is limited to 10 Gb/s if it is then a x4 PCIE 3.0 slot will allow the highest speed.

Sometimes it's hard to tell if the NVMe drives I have installed are much faster than the SSDs I had before but occasionally I see something that makes me think "damn that was fast" such as decompressing some large 20GB archives in less than 10 secs.

heartburnron · 16 Apr 2016 at 20:18

bimbleuk said:
Just check if the mobo mounted socket is limited to 10 Gb/s if it is then a x4 PCIE 3.0 slot will allow the highest speed.

Sometimes it's hard to tell if the NVMe drives I have installed are much faster than the SSDs I had before but occasionally I see something that makes me think "damn that was fast" such as decompressing some large 20GB archives in less than 10 secs.

Ok thanks and can you just plug the drive into the x4 PCIe slot so that it's sticking out rather than flush with the board as per the mounted socket?

Minstadave · 16 Apr 2016 at 20:29

heartburnron said:
Ok thanks and can you just plug the drive into the x4 PCIe slot so that it's sticking out rather than flush with the board as per the mounted socket?

No.

heartburnron · 17 Apr 2016 at 13:54

Ok, so the only place it can be installed is the mounted socket and if the mobo supports it - it will give me the x4 PCIe slot speed without actually plugging it into the physical x4 PCIe slot? Is that the way it works?

Tephnos · 17 Apr 2016 at 15:09

Personally, I'd do it to get rid of those annoying SATA cables that can never be tidied away properly.

heartburnron · 17 Apr 2016 at 17:03

Tephnos said:
Personally, I'd do it to get rid of those annoying SATA cables that can never be tidied away properly.

That was my thinking too plus the 256GB M.2 Samsung was a bit cheaper than the 2.5 Evo 250GB.

bimbleuk · 17 Apr 2016 at 19:31

heartburnron said:
Ok, so the only place it can be installed is the mounted socket and if the mobo supports it - it will give me the x4 PCIe slot speed without actually plugging it into the physical x4 PCIe slot? Is that the way it works?

You'll have to check the motherboard manual to see if the onboard slot is 10Gb/s or the full 32Gb/s (= x4 PCIE 3.0).

Otherwise you would need an adapter such as the one in the link below which utilises a x4 PCIE 3.0 slot for the full 32 Gb/s speed.

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/asus-hyper-m.2-x4-pci-e-mini-adapter-card-black-pcb-hd-032-as.html

It can depends on several factors such as the number and type of PCIE slots on the mobo and what other cards you are already have plugged in the slots.

heartburnron · 17 Apr 2016 at 20:03

bimbleuk said:
You'll have to check the motherboard manual to see if the onboard slot is 10Gb/s or the full 32Gb/s (= x4 PCIE 3.0).

Otherwise you would need an adapter such as the one in the link below which utilises a x4 PCIE 3.0 slot for the full 32 Gb/s speed.

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/asus-hyper-m.2-x4-pci-e-mini-adapter-card-black-pcb-hd-032-as.html

It can depends on several factors such as the number and type of PCIE slots on the mobo and what other cards you are already have plugged in the slots.

Awesome thank you. Here is the blurb regarding storage for my mobo:

Intel® Z170 Express Chipset with RAID 0, 1, 5, 10 and Intel® Rapid Storage Technology 14 support
- 1x SATA Express port (gray, compatible with 2 x SATA 6.0 Gb/s ports)
- 1x M.2 Socket 3 with M key, type 2242/2260/2280/22110 storage devices support (both SATA & PCIE 3.0 x4 mode)*
- 4x SATA 6.0 Gb/s ports (gray)**
- Supports Intel® Smart Response Technology***
* When the M.2 Socket 3 is operating in SATA mode, SATA port 1 will be disabled.
** These SATA ports are for data hard drivers only. ATAPI devices are not supported.
*** These functions will work depending on the CPU installed.

Think this means I will be getting the full 32 GB/s using the M.2 socket?

titaniumx3 · 18 Apr 2016 at 01:42

Don't bother with the PCIe M.2 drives, not worth it at all, especially for gaming. A regular high capacity SATA SSD is more than enough for gaming.

I can't notice any difference between my Samsung 950 pro and 850 evo, other than in benchmarks and possibly loading a second or two earlier into games when playing BF4.

Also, I may be wrong here but I think these PCIE SSDs increase you boot times. I seem to have this delay when booting my PC that I just can't get rid of, no matter what settings I try.

crapler8 · 18 Apr 2016 at 10:01

well u could buy an pci sata 3 adapter if ur mobo doesnt have that