M.2 ssd benefit?

[ganon]

Does the m.2 have any benefit other than not needing cables plugged in? Got a Asus b150i pro and want an ssd for OS

Noob here

[Spreadie]

No, not really. They are faster than SATA3 SSDs but you won't notice the difference.

[ganon]

So get whichever is cheaper?

[GamerGuru7]

It really depends what you're using it for. You won't notice it all if you're gaming and for most other general use but you might notice it very very slightly in boot time and graphical design. Get whatever is cheaper. I would recommend anything from the Samsung EVO line.

[Zak33]

I've found boot times to be faster. We've got a few work PC's with them and they do boot faster :-)

[tiggerai]

I've found boot times to be faster. We've got a few work PC's with them and they do boot faster :-)

I'll always use them with VMs too - reduced boot and build times massively when we finally persuaded the finance director that it was a good idea...

[J17hnt]

Well hoping i notice a difference when i build my new pc. Going from a 120gb Samsung 840 evo on sata 2 to an 500gb m.2 970 evo.

[bawrash]

When i made new build i got the m.2 version of the same ssd i had previously and there was no performance difference. Eventually upgraded to a 970 evo and start up has only improved by a few seconds. From about 16 to 12 seconds. Biggest improvement is opening apps like steam or gta5 loading.

[wazzickle]

Physical space is a big potential benefit, fewer cables running around

[banana999]

The benefit of a m.2 Sata SSD is the lack of cables, speeds are the same.

But m.2 size NVMe drives are completely different and high end ones are about 5-6 times faster than Sata drives (m.2 or 2.5").

That said, it doesn't seem to make a huge difference for Windows or games (have a look on YouTube for some load time comparisons) but it does make a big difference if you work with large files a lot.

[Teece]

I'll always use them with VMs too - reduced boot and build times massively when we finally persuaded the finance director that it was a good idea...

I have one ordered for my new server build, looking forward to seeing if there’s any difference can a regular SSD for my VMs.