Windows on an NVME

Monkeyboysteve · 24 Aug 2019 at 21:16

Will it boot any faster?
I have an NVME m.2 drive and a sata ssd, I just have windows on the SSD at the moment and wondered if it will make any diofference moving it?

JRS · 24 Aug 2019 at 21:21

It's very much a case of diminishing returns in my experience. I have Win10 booting off a Samsung 970 Evo Plus NVME drive and it's only marginally quicker than booting from my old Samsung 840 EVO. It is noticeably quicker loading games and software from it though.

wellibob · 24 Aug 2019 at 21:23

Fresh new OS install and yes it's faster booting no questions. Wether it'll benefit you will vary. Nvme is the way forward and true benefits will be when all your storage is fast enough to go with it.

Monkeyboysteve · 24 Aug 2019 at 22:43

wellibob said:
Fresh new OS install and yes it's faster booting no questions. Wether it'll benefit you will vary. Nvme is the way forward and true benefits will be when all your storage is fast enough to go with it.

im getting there, half my storage is now nvme (2tb in total), Still got my windows boot ssd and my trusty hard drive for massive games though.

Efour · 25 Aug 2019 at 07:30

its faster for sure but does 5 seconds once a day really bother you? Thats if you even reboot and dont hibernate.
This PC has all NVMe storage but thats only cos i didnt want any cables. With 3 m2 slots on motherboards now its totally fine.

wellibob · 25 Aug 2019 at 11:24

Monkeyboysteve said:
im getting there, half my storage is now nvme (2tb in total), Still got my windows boot ssd and my trusty hard drive for massive games though.

I definitely still use large spinning rust for large games files and media storage . When large capacity ssd's are 5tb and cost about £90 I'll be all ssd/nvme.

AWPC · 26 Aug 2019 at 13:02

IME the difference between a PCI-E Gen 3 NVME m.2 & 6 year old Intel SATA 2 is almost identical same for game loading times most have no difference whatsoever.

Dave Burton · 2 Sep 2019 at 09:10

I purchased an NVME drive expecting big differences in the speeds but to be honest it's barely noticeable, if at all, as it's used mostly for gaming so it's lot of smaller, non-sequential reads and I expect that's why there's not as much benefit. It's still fast, don't get me wrong, but for the price to performance it's just not worth (to me at least) it so I'm sticking with 2.5" drives elsewhere.

Maundie · 2 Sep 2019 at 20:25

In real world time there's hardly any noticeable difference in speeds between 2.5" SSDs and NVMe drives, there is however 1 real big difference and that's the lack of cables, that for me is enough of a difference to make it worth the extra few quid.

Some people who have tighter budgets may not want to spend the extra but that's the beauty of having a choice between the 2 as what suits 1 person doesn't necessarily suit another.

Dave Burton · 2 Sep 2019 at 20:28

Maundie said:
In real world time there's hardly any noticeable difference in speeds between 2.5" SSDs and NVMe drives, there is however 1 real big difference and that's the lack of cables, that for me is enough of a difference to make it worth the extra few quid.

Some people who have tighter budgets may not want to spend the extra but that's the beauty of having a choice between the 2 as what suits 1 person doesn't necessarily suit another.

Oh, i forgot about that aspect! Yes, you're right. It frees up a small but noticable amount of cabling, leading to a tidier build and I guess slight improvement on airflow. I actually love the aesthetic of them being part of the main board, very "hi tech"

paulmapp8306 · 3 Sep 2019 at 18:19

I run a 2TB NMVe as my main drive (inc Windows, games, recording software etc). I have a 1TB SSD that is a data drive (photos, Letters/databases, Music etc) and a 4TB external Hd which is a backup.

I intend to add another NVMe (as I have 2 M.2 slots) when I have filled the first (pointless before then) as prices will have dropped and could even go PCIe4 as its an X570 Mobo. I also intend to add more Sata SSDs internally if the 1TB currently in is full (photos and music mainly, but Im only using about 200MB at present). The 4TB external is big enough to back everything up for the foreseeable future.

edscdk · 3 Sep 2019 at 18:53

I went from cheap 400/300 ssd to. 3k/2k nvme booting seemed no faster to me.. Maybe it was faster but nothing I could notice

Steveocee · 6 Sep 2019 at 11:45

Went from a Samsung Pro SSD to a Samsung NVMe and noticed no difference other than an extra 250GB capacity on the C drive.

It was went to start and is fast now.