whats the point in NVME M.2 SSD's?

3t3P

3t3P

3t3P

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Been away from the hardware side for a while.

What is the point of these M.2 drives.

I get they can have greater throughput. Is that for a faster boot time?

It doesn't really seem worth it for games?

Is it for space saving?
 
Direct PCI-E connection so much faster in theory. Although in reality they're not much quicker than a SATA3 SSD's in real world use. PLus a bit of space saving.
 
I bought one, more for show. Despite it being faster than a regular SSD I don't boot any faster than my old PC. Whether that's just down to the motherboard taking longer to post I've no idea.

Apart from the fact that I wanted one and wanted to put a groovy EKWB heatsink over it then it was utterly not worth the money. I just use it for Windows and programs like Skype, Discord, Steam etc so that I can have all my games on a regular 2.5" SSD and my regular files on an old HDD.

I guess they are like physical partitions. If you're on a tight budget then don't bother
 
I'd rather have a 1TB SSD then and stop having to delete files from steam.

I've also lost faith in mechanical hardrives so seems cash better spent on a solid state only system going forward. I dont have that much data anyway. Thanks gents
 
3t3P said:
I'd rather have a 1TB SSD then and stop having to delete files from steam.

I've also lost faith in mechanical hardrives so seems cash better spent on a solid state only system going forward. I dont have that much data anyway. Thanks gents
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That's what I did with my new build. It wouldn't hurt to purchase a 120GB NVMe drive if you really want one to put Windows and programs on and keep games off it. I bought a 500GB SSD as I had another older 120GB SSD and a 1TB HDD that now is just a mass storage drive for holiday photos. Steam games on the 500GB SSD and Origin games on the 120GB SSD
 
They're also great cause they don't need two seperate thick cables from two different sources for them to work.
 
They are great.

I can complete a virus scan in 5 mins with my nvme. Same virus scan on my Samsung 850 SSD takes 1 hour.

Plus space saving and no messing with cables plus much faster for shifting 20GB files.
 
Just started using a 960 Pro M2 NVMe and it's tiny.
if building a new PC it's definatley worth filling those M2 slots up first before going to SATA SSD's.
Really, all SSD's are pretty fast. Couple of weeks ago I created a VM on a fairly new 7200RPM drive and it was so slow I initallly thought it needed more memory or CPU threads. I moved it over to an Intel 520 (pretty old SSD now) and blimey it was just so much faster. Once you get to a "fast" point, every little extra is hardly noticeable under most uses IMO. NVME, SATA3, all blindingly fast SSD's on the market.

Not used it much yet but performance wise I cannot tell the difference between a Samsung 960 M2 and an 850 Sata 3 under normal usage. I'd still buy the NMVE M2 as first choice though.
 
Space saving, doesn't require cables and although faster on paper can't say I've noticed a difference in my day to day usage.

When I bought mine it was cheaper than the same size SSD.
 
M2 feels like a bodge, didn’t they start as a laptop orientated format and then brought over to desktop because of the speed benefit once PCI-E based drives came in?

The amount of PCB space they use up severely limits the number of drives a mobo can support compared with SATA, they end up wedged between PCI-E slots and hard to get at, and their size means they run into heat issues.
 
3t3P said:
What is the point of these M.2 drives.
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3t3P said:
I get they can have greater throughput. Is that for a faster boot time?
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Although NVMe allows for much faster boots times, the main advantage as already pointed out is the direct line into the PCI-E 3.0 bus, using up to four lanes for a theoretical maximum throughput of 3.94 GB/s, the real advantage comes with the better NAND flash and controllers used on these drives allowing a huge increase in IOPS over and above the SATA interface drives.

3t3P said:
It doesn't really seem worth it for games?
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No, it's not, not while there is a large cost differential between NVMe solutions and other cheaper interfaces/busses.

3t3P said:
Is it for space saving?
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M.2 was/is used for many reasons, space saving is one of them, the fact it can be placed easily into laptop/tablet computers, or very small form factor builds with M.2 drives starting at 42mm and now going all the way to 110mm is great. A lot of people seem to think that a form factor isn't important if it doesn't benefit them personally or isn't perfect for what they do, but the use these see in commercial installations and rack based servers is causing a serious shift in what can be achieved in the same number of U's. Super high density NVMe based disk arrays are something that is becoming more and more common, and being able to use the M.2 form factor rather than a 2.5" sized drive means that you can fit many more drives in to the same system space which means lower TCO. Samsung are already trying to make M.3 a standard for higher density per slot, since they use a wider card and and therefore support a lot more NAND flash chips.

NVMe is obviously something that is a great benefit to people needing high IOPS, or very high sustained throughput, but for your average user of OCUK who plays games then it is by no means a must. Anyone who pays over the odds for one of these drives, rather than say putting more towards a better GPU is crazy, but some people will always want what is best. :)
 
I thought the speed adv was due to the use of NVME vs AHCI rather than better nand/controllers...the format itself confers no speed advantage as sata 3 m2 drives are the same speed as normal 2.5 drives. Hopefully mobos will start sprouting 4 to 6 m2 slots.
They are great tho for spacesaving, and really m2 drives should be cheaper than 2.5 s they use less materials/weigh less. Shame I cant get anything decent in the 2242/sata config ...(at a decent price)
 
GWANGY said:
I thought the speed adv was due to the use of NVME vs AHCI rather than better nand/controllers...the format itself confers no speed advantage as sata 3 m2 drives are the same speed as normal 2.5 drives. Hopefully mobos will start sprouting 4 to 6 m2 slots.
They are great tho for spacesaving, and really m2 drives should be cheaper than 2.5 s they use less materials/weigh less. Shame I cant get anything decent in the 2242/sata config ...(at a decent price)
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Sorry if I'm saying stuff you already know but figure it's worth pointing out:

m2 is a form-factor. An m2 drive can be a sata 3 drive or a pci-e drive - hence many m2 drives perform the same as sata 3 drives, because they are sata 3 drives!

You can also have pci-e drives in m2 form-factor in which case they can perform better, even if still AHCI - this is where the biggest performance changes arise.

NVME is a spec for an interface, just like AHCI and is a little faster again than AHCI even when both are on pci-e, regardless of if using m2 form factor or not.
 
Maybe a few years from now the OS is stored on the CPU itself or perhaps on the motherboard itself, mega fast. Pretty sure that could be one, rather than having to go through PCI-E bus.
 
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