SSD vs M.2

[audi321]

Hi IT experts. I see there is 2 types of SSD one that plugs into a normal sata port on the motherboard and one which plugs into a different port on the motherboard and looks a bit like a stick of RAM.

Are there any benefits over either of these? The latter doesn’t need any separate sata power and they all seem a similar price (per tb).

[dudleybloke]

Speed, m.2 are a lot faster.

[TGCOTF-dewey]

Nvme drives are faster.

[captain_cynic]

dudleybloke said:

Speed, m.2 are a lot faster.

This. M.2 are significantly faster.

SATA are generally cheaper but the gap is narrowing.

[Trustmeimadoctor]

so 2.5" sata ssd big, slow (for ssd's) and cheap

then you have m.2 ssd's
that can be both sata and NVME

sata m.2 drive id avoid restricted sizes compared to 2.5" versions

then m.2 nvme these rae the fast and more expensive ones BUT they come in different version pcie gen 3, 4 and 5 the higher the gen the fater they are but your motherboard my not support gen 4 or 5 but will still work with them just much slower comparatively


but if your coming from a mechanical hdd they are all much faster just look for one that has a dram cache

and also check that your m.2 slot is actually capable of running a nvme ssd and is keyed correctly as some m.2's are only for running wifi adapters etc

https://www.atpinc.com/blog/what-is-m.2-M-B-BM-key...

[e-honda]

m2 is actually just the socket type, some drives are not nvme at all, but some boards will have a socket that will work with multiple types.
There is whole big mess of compatible drives with certain notches to avoid incompatible drivers, but they don't guarantee you've got the right drive type,
NVMe can be anywhere from a few times faster to thousands of times faster depending on the workload and the pcie version.

[audi321]

I got one of these in the end and I guess I got lucky as it fitted the motherboard perfectly and runs amazingly fast!

https://amzn.eu/d/bDxNNej

Thanks again guys.

[.:ian:.]

Nvme drives are just astoundingly fast. I installed win10 on an older pc with an old sata spinning hdd, it's basically unusable, how did we use to cope

[Shiv_P]

M.2 drives are not inherently faster than SATA SSDs. NVME M.2 drives are. It's just a different drive type. PCI-E SSDs are even even faster!

[Griffith4ever]

I've got 2x SSD on SATA and 2 x NVME on m..2.

Win boots on nvme.
Games are spread across SATA and M2 and I can't tell the difference.

They are both plenty fast :-)

[audi321]

So what exactly did I buy above?

NVME
M.2
PCI express

It mentions all 3 lol

[Trustmeimadoctor]

You bought an nvme drive

[audi321]

Cheers. For £34 it seems unbelievably cheap!

[Trustmeimadoctor]

It's small and slow and a non standard manufacturer
But it's very fast compared to a mechanical disk and honestly is fast enough for most people

[TGCOTF-dewey]

Rather than start a new topic, are there any MBs out yet that will directly accept a gen 5 nvme drive on the MB slots?

My gaming rig will only accept them via the pcie slot and included adapter. Thing is, this is a pointless approach as most modern gpus cover the second slot with their fan shroud.

My son is getting a gaming rig in March for his birthday, and I'd like to future proof as much as possible.

It'll likely be a 7800x3d cpu as these seem to be the best bang for your buck currently.

[mikef]

TGCOTF-dewey said:

are there any MBs out yet that will directly accept a gen 5 nvme drive on the MB slots?

Asus ROG Strix Z690-E Gaming looks like it does. I'd be interested to see what the NVMe5 temperatures are like - I have the PCIe4 version and the SSD cards run really hot

[TGCOTF-dewey]

mikef said:

Asus ROG Strix Z690-E Gaming looks like it does. I'd be interested to see what the NVMe5 temperatures are like - I have the PCIe4 version and the SSD cards run really hot

Thanks. I've got a 990pro and wd850x - both heatsink models - in my PC but temps are OK. The case does have extra fans though so shifts a lot of air.

I picked a cheap 990pro a while back as memory prices are predicted to skyrocket this year so this will be his game storage disk. It was more an eye on future proofing. From what I've read, gen5s don't offer much benefit in games yet anyway.

[mikef]

Yeah, WD SN850 here without heatsink, as the heatsink won't fit under my RTX3090 card. Speed consistently well over 7GB/s (serial read) and temperature 20 ℃ above ambient with the built-in SSD fan, which runs at 3400 RPM. Like you, I rely on case ventilation - Define 7 case with seven Be Quiet! case fans (and considering replacing the blu-ray drive by another fan, as I never use that)