NVMe upgrade

mtnorris

mtnorris

mtnorris

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20 Jul 2010
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216
So with black friday being here and my urge to spend some questionably earned monies I am looking at upgrading my main storage drive from a vertex 3 240gb. I've seen some reviews etc of NVMe and ACHI storage drives but frankly I have no idea about the technical side of things...

Got an i7 4770k in a Z87 board (gigabyte g1.sniper) which does not have an M.2 socket.

So what are the options and which drives are showing the best performance? Budget isnt a big problem but I wouldn't want to go above £150.
 
Don't want to go over 150? Your not going NVME Then pal! And stability of NVME on platforms prior to x99 is questionable at best!

When I got my NVME drive it was the smallest available and cost around £450 Just to give you a budget idea! Unless things have drastically changed

Is there a reason you want the upgrade? And is there anywhere else you could spend the money for better gains ie gpu
 
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https://www.overclockers.co.uk/pc-components/storage/ssd-solid-state

So many NVMe M.2 drives under £150 dude, its only a 256gb I would want too, nothing huge. I assume you either assume i'd be going for an intel or a huge drive by your shock on the budget! I guess you bought a little too soon :D

cpu/mobo/ram/psu/case/perifs are all more than good enough for my needs or not worth an upgrade at current and the gpu (7950oc) is still pretty close to the current gen performance so will wait for another big step forward on that. (I mostly play csgo, some fallout etc but 90% csgo, 300fps stable is ideal). The only other thing I would think of is a new keyboard, but never used a mechanical so need to test one out for sound levels and comfort!

Your info about stability is interesting, I know very little on this and is what I was looking for help with. I know my board supports ACHI (says gigabyte!) but I don't know if that will mean I can plug and play without touching the bios etc. Then for NVMe I have no idea, googleing it doesnt seem to help sadly.
 
From my brief researching into the subject, it would appear that gigabyte aren't planning on releasing a bios to support NVMe for z87 boards, so there seems to be little point in buying the hardware until I upgrade my motherboard :mad:
 
mtnorris said:
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/pc-components/storage/ssd-solid-state

So many NVMe M.2 drives under £150 dude, its only a 256gb I would want too, nothing huge. I assume you either assume i'd be going for an intel or a huge drive by your shock on the budget! I guess you bought a little too soon :D

cpu/mobo/ram/psu/case/perifs are all more than good enough for my needs or not worth an upgrade at current and the gpu (7950oc) is still pretty close to the current gen performance so will wait for another big step forward on that. (I mostly play csgo, some fallout etc but 90% csgo, 300fps stable is ideal). The only other thing I would think of is a new keyboard, but never used a mechanical so need to test one out for sound levels and comfort!

Your info about stability is interesting, I know very little on this and is what I was looking for help with. I know my board supports ACHI (says gigabyte!) but I don't know if that will mean I can plug and play without touching the bios etc. Then for NVMe I have no idea, googleing it doesnt seem to help sadly.
Click to expand...

The vast majority of the M2 drives on this site are still SATA 6Gb which is no different from a normal SSD.

The only drives that make sure of the interface properly that I can see is the Samsung SM951 and the 950 Pro.
 
There are two NVMe SSDs under £150 on OCUK right now that I can find, both OEM and in M2 form factor so you'd need an adaptor (though you'd still be within budget):
256GB SM951
128GB SM951

The rest of the SM951's are more, the 950 Pro's are more, the Intel 750's (the only ones you wouldn't need an adaptor for) are way more, nothing else available yet I'm afraid.

Having said that - I'd not touch NVMe with an older board personally. Small gains over AHCI with a bunch of added risk.
 
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