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I was wondering if I would notice the difference between the nvme and sata on a daily basis for gaming web surfing & running a few vm's? The reason I ask for is I can get a regular sata m.2 for $115 or an nvme $135 which is supposed to have a fancy new Phison E12/Toshiba TLC controller. I'm not even sure what that is but its supposed to be good.
I've just gone from an 850 Evo to a 970 Evo Plus, not really any difference in day to day use, I was expecting a similar jump to going from a spinner to an SSD but despite the 970 being several times faster, its just not..
If you are running VMs then you might be hitting storage hard enough to feel a benefit from NVMe, or at least when memory starts getting tight. But even then it probably won't be huge.
I did the same. I found uncached speed was a bit better with the 970+, but if your workload was predictable the RAM cache of the 850 more than made up for it (in benchmarks it would often beat the 970+).Quote:
Originally Posted by [GSV]Trig
$20 over the life of the hardware isnt much, that alone would sway me to the nvme.
Save your money, I noticed no difference going from a Samsung Evo to an Evo 970 Nvme.Quote:
Originally Posted by rob4001
These differences will be most noticeable in sequential read write, like if you save/edit/transfer single files of 20GB each which I sometimes have. However for transfer that also depends on the speed of the media being transferred to/from.
Go with marginal cost thinking as previously said, Nvme will likely be more future proof.
I could tell the difference between an evo 860 and a Evo 970 plus or whatever it is called. But it was just a bit more quicker at booting and opening programs like SPSS and MATLAB which tend to take a while to launch
I don't think we will have something like HDD to SSD unless a new tech comes out which matches RAM speeds. Where SSD's were 10x quicker where it mattered i.e. 4k reads and writes.
About 8 years ago I use to run Windows 7 in a RAM disk and it was like going from HDD to SSD. Back then I found the RAM disk software by soft perfect to be by far the quickest in 4k tests. An nvme drive would have been good for loading that. If you have access to 64GB of RAM I highly recommend having a play to see the difference.
Optane and similar already gets us close to that, but doesn't seem to be really making waves beyond "heck that's expensive". Expensive shouldn't really be a barrier either, going from cassette tape to floppy drive on my Dragon 64 back in the day was amazing but for most users the cost was prohibitive (I was lucky, someone gave be a broken drive that I could repair). Then going from floppy to HDD was similarly expensive at first and yet we all wanted one because it meant we didn't need to change floppies all the time. Since the floppy to hdd upgrade it seems quite evolutionary just going a bit faster and a bit bigger.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kumagoro
I am happily living without Optane, I *could* live without SSD but would rather not, I couldn't go back to stuffing floppies in floppy drives. So I suspect the way that NVMe scales with upgrades to the underlying PCIe bus that they use should mean the standard will be enough for most people for a long time.
... and having said that I am tempted to go get the Dragon out of the loft and see if I can find any cassettes that work (and if I can make it talk to a modern TV through that composite TV interface). I think I have some ROM cartridge games, now that's an 80's storage tech that still makes sense!
When I have to use a computer with a HDD it doesn't feel like living nowadays. At work they buy iMacs for those that want them but they get ones with fusion drives. They are horrible for how much they cost, especially in Windows as then it can't use the ssd cache I believe.
I haven't looked optane up for ages but I believe the 4k reads and writes were only about 100 to 200 MB/s, so better than an SSD but no where near ram which is well over 1000 MB/s in a RAM disk. Are there far better optane drives now?
A quick search brings up this RAM drive example.
https://forums.tomshardware.com/thre...stion.1462708/
We had a Dragon 32 as our first computer, we had one game which came on cartridge which loaded instantly. I remember thinking for years after, why was our old computer better than much newer ones. When lockdown is finished I will have to see if it still works. Good times.
Depending on what you're doing, you may or may not perceive a difference. It's easy to show the difference in benchmarks, or with a stopwatch for some things, but perception is another matter. Storage is so often not the limiting factor nowadays.
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/s...me-ssd/13.html
https://techreport.com/review/33950/...-ssd-reviewed/ (scroll to boot/load times)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DKLA7w9eeA
If its for games,I only saw one situation where there was a slight difference,which was hypermodded Fallout 4 with 200+ mods and 4K textures,and that is because peak reads nearly hit 900MB/S at some points. But in gameplay it was only barely noticeable. For image editing including mass RAW conversions to jpgs(tens of gigabytes of pictures),my SATA SSD was not fully taxed let alone my NVME one.
That is the problem with NVME SSDs in general,they really only shine over SATA SSDs when it comes to sequential read/write operations,but one of the biggest improvements with SSDs,is random access. In fact I would argue,what is more useful is the size of the buffer in the SSD and how good write caching works. There are instances QLC NVME drives actually end up performing worse than decent SATA SSDs in sustained operations.
Optane was always supposed to be available in DDR4 compatible sticks that go straight into the motherboard RAM slots. Write performance sucks compared to ram, but no reason why read speeds shouldn't reach parity (or possibly exceed it, DRAM has refresh cycles and destructive reads to work around).Quote:
Originally Posted by Kumagoro
I think part of the problem with hard drives is that programmers are expecting the user to have an SSD these days, and just throw everything at storage at the same time. So rather than avoiding thrashing a HDD to optimise performance you instead maximise threads and just expect storage to keep up with reading and writing to many files or parts of a file at the same time in a way that 10 years ago would have had you labelled as an incompetent programmer. So spinning rust should be more usable than it is, but clearly the world has moved on and they are best avoided.
TBH they got me with the M.2 form factor, and once you are going that route the cost of NVMe vs SATA seems insignificant. It doesn't seem that long ago that I had a full height 5.25in HDD in my system (so the size of two DVD drives, and it was probably 20 years ago) and now I can get more storage than that in something the size of half a stick of chewing gum and no cables to go wrong or mess up airflow.Quote:
Originally Posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH
The M2 form factor is actually not that great for NVME drives due to heat,so its more likely to throttle.But not all NVME drives are made alike,so a poor QLC NVME drive is actually going to be worse in sustained transfers than a decent SATA SSD for example. The problem is people look at headline figures,when sustained performance is what you need to look at.Quote:
Originally Posted by DanceswithUnix
It doesn't help that on many motherboards, the NVMe slot is right under the graphics card, soaking up heat from it.
My mini-ITX one does that,but the other slot is under the motherboard,which means no heatsink or airflow. I don't use it as a result! :(Quote:
Originally Posted by watercooled
The drive in my system will often report temps (I think they're controller temps) of 50-60C in games and under very little load itself (e.g. even when game is stored on another drive).
The temperature of the controller doesn't really concern me given that sort of chip is usually fine to over 90 and will just throttle if needs be. I wonder about the effect on NAND though - from when I tried to look into it, I believe it actually prefers to be a bit warmer, but I'm not sure how it works with thermal cycling for instance. It's probably not a major concern but all else being the same it would be nice to have some full-speed NVMe slots a bit lower down.
Compared to being a small pcb on the end of a SATA cable trapped inside a 2.5in fake laptop hdd case so no air can get to it?Quote:
Originally Posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH
Whether SATA drives with no cache/workspace ram or QLC PCIe4 drives that fail to perform you just have to be careful what you buy meets your needs. So far I have mainly specified high IOPS drives, but have built a few PCs with cheap NVMe drives as they are likely to never see harder punishment than booting Windows and running a single application. Not long ago I would have been forced to go with small laptop spinning rust drives to keep the cost down, but there seems a decent NVMe choice these days without reverting to SATA let alone 2.5in format.
The last few builds I have done have ssd "heatsinks" on the motherboard that are more like a heat soak than a real sink, but still unless you are processing video all day it should keep those peak temperatures down. It means I don't need a SATA data cable, and the SATA PSU cable can stay in the modular cable bag.
The MSI ITX board with just an M.2 slot underneath did raise an eyebrow, but thankfully that is one of the light use machines.
The M2 drive on the top mounted slot already runs a bit warm,and that is with a heatsink and good airflow,so the slot underneath has neither,so probably is not ideal longterm.Quote:
Originally Posted by watercooled
The SATA and NVME drives which are not M2 tend to show less throttling,as most M2 PCBs are dual sided,ie,there is NAND underneath which gets no direct cooling,and you can make a SATA enclosure out of metal so it acts as a heatsink. You can see that with thermal pads in the 2.5" SSDs.Quote:
Originally Posted by DanceswithUnix
I have three SSDs in my system - one which is SATA and holds Windows,and the other two are M2 SSDs just for games at the moment. One is NVME and one is SATA in a aluminium enclosure. Both the SATA M2 and NVME M2 drives run hotter at idle,and the NVME drive has constant airflow over it,and the other two are on the behind of the case. The Windows drive is constantly in use. TPU for example has a useful data point in the Crucial MX500:
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/c...2-1-tb/15.html
They test both SATA versions,ie,2.5" and M2,and the M2 throttled more,but the SATA drives do run cooler.
The heatsinks on top of the M2 drives lack sufficient mass also. My main system is mini-ITX,and I had to spend £150 just to get a motherboard which had one slot on the top.
Also regarding the QLC drives,they can be as slow as HDDs in certain cases - its why I will get TLC drives as there is no price advantage currently.
Yet their tests showed the M.2 drive to be slightly faster due to its newer firmware, not slower because it over heated and hit a performance wall. They actually said:Quote:
Originally Posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH
which ties in with my expectations. I hit my storage pretty hard in my everyday work, and I don't get anywhere close to that.Quote:
You'd have to write around 45 GB without pause for the drive to get sufficiently warm
I have to wonder if your NVMe drive is warm, is the motherboard heating the drive or the drive heating the motherboard?
Quote:
Originally Posted by DanceswithUnix
The 2.5" version runs cooler. I actually easily do bigger writes than 45GB.Quote:
While the MX500 M.2 comes with a thin metal heatspreader, it is no replacement for a real heatsink. The drive will thermal-throttle to around 300 MB/s when pummeled by non-stop writes for over 90 seconds. Before you panic: this is a rare scenario. You'd have to write around 45 GB without pause for the drive to get sufficiently warm—something that rarely happens. Still, if you often send such large bursts, then the SATA version might be a better choice because it can dissipate heat more efficiently due to its larger form factor. Reads are not affected by this and will always run at maximum speed.
The fact is if you look at the M2 drives,there are a few problems. Just looking at the PCBs can tell you that. The NAND chips and everything else is all much closer together,and if there is a double sided PCB,the NAND chips on the bottom have no access to a heatsink in an M2 drive. These are the ones which start to overheat,in low airflow conditions, not the top mounted ones I suspect. In the 2.5" drives the PCB is physically more spaced out.
Also I have two SATA SSDs. One is a full sized 2.5" drive,and the other is an M2 in a 2.5" aluminium adaptor case. Both are in the drive compartment which is behind the motherboard. Both have the same amount of cooling air which is zero. The M2 in the adaptor runs consistently hotter,even when idle and not being accessed - the other drive is the Windows drive so is being constantly accessed,so its not idle.
The other M2 drive I have is an NVME drive,which is on the top of the motherboard,with a heatsink. In the mini-ITX case,I have a single 120MM and a single 140MM blow air over the graphics card and motherboard. However,I am using a mini-ITX system,so thermally it is more confined,and it amplifies any differences in the SSDs even more.
The M2 form factor is nice and compact,but its not ideal for thermals. Just like my mini-ITX motherboard is nice and compact,but a full sized B450 motherboard is probably going to have cooler running VRMs as you can have bigger heatsinks,etc. There is no free lunch when you shrink something down,which is at least my experience of ditching full sized builds for 15 years.
It gets even worse with M2 drives,when it comes to some of the faster NVME drives,especially the PCI-E 4.0 ones,you really need to have some proper cooling over them.
These chips are not only very close together vertically but are tied with copper which is an awesome thermal conductor specially through the power planes of the PCB. So throttle one, throttle all.Quote:
Originally Posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH
But if you look inside a modern 1TB SSD:
https://images.tweaktown.com/content...eview_full.png
it is still a tiny PCB with components both sides. I haven't heard of thermal pads being used to transfer heat to the shell, and many drives have a plastic top shell. They just don't do enough to get hot. The two small screws holding the PCB in place must be doing enough heat transfer!
That's quite impressive. My usage sees a flat out copy of probably about 5GB at the start which stresses storage, and probably quite a few GB of writes after that but spread out over a minute so they don't really count. Most users don't see my level of usage, let alone yours.Quote:
Originally Posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH
Interesting that they think reads don't generate heat. I'm sure they don't on 2.5in SATA drives, but some of the heat on NVMe is going to be from the PCIe lanes clocking so high and the processing trying to keep up with requests coming in so fast.
Yet if you looked at the M2 and SATA PCBs,the M2 has less space between the chips. The plastic shelled models are usually the budget range ones,many now which are lower performance drives with no DRAM - the 860 EVO you linked to has a full metal body. One of the more recent SSDs I dissembled was a Sandisk 480GB which had failed,and it had thermal pads on the PCB. Most will have at least a thermal pad for the controller.Quote:
Originally Posted by DanceswithUnix
I have bought 8(or was it 10,I lost count) SSDs in the last 18 months or so for myself and others- all the SATA 2.5" ones run cooler than the M2 ones,as I have literally bought in two instances,the same model,but one in M2 SATA and the other in 2.5" SATA dependent on the system. I also use mini-ITX systems too,which are more thermally constrained.
If you look at what TPU said their M2 version throttled. They compared the two models a few months apart. But there is also another thing here. Some of the 2.5" versions actually have more NAND chips for the same capacity from what I have read,probably because of the M2 form factor they are forced to use higher capacity NAND modules.
I have the M2 MX500 myself - the heatsink is just a tiny little thing,and my NVME SSD has the same kind of heatsink.It runs worse than the flat slab of metal heatsink which came with the motherboard. Despite this the 2.5" SATA drive running Windows is idling at a lower temperature,and the MX500 in an aluminium enclosure still idle's higher.
Its even been stated in some recent reviews the M2 form factor is not ideal for PCI-E 4.0 SSDs,as its too bunched together.
Anyway I am getting a bit bored about SSDs now,probably talking more about them now than using them! :P
If I am batch processing images from RAWs from one SSD to another,and moving data between drives 45GB isn't as much as you think,and my new mirrorless camera does 4K footage,so might start playing around with that. I also tend to manage my game installs on and off. For instance my install folder for Fallout 4 itself varied between 100GB~140GB,plus mod install folders are nearly at 100GB(Vortex).Because of that I keep a mirrored copy of some games,which is frequently updated as its a PITA to redo it all if there is a problem. I tend to mod more than one game - its why I am upto 1.5TB of SSD storage for games and image stuff,and and a few applications,plus 500GB for the OS.Quote:
Originally Posted by DanceswithUnix
Another day, another SSD that needs to be purchased...Quote:
Originally Posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH
Was reading a review, and thought of this thread. from: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/w...e-sn500/7.html
https://tpucdn.com/review/western-di...rmal-write.jpg
Not a stellar performing drive, but without active cooling under constant writes it never drops to the performance level of a SATA drive. Amazon have it for £1.73 more than the MX500 SATA.
(with a fan turned on the write performance looks just the same wibbly wobbly running out of SLC cache profile, just at a lower temperature).
Similar experience. HDD -> SSD was amazing. traditional SSD -> m.2 was "meh, well - it's smaller", and m.2 to NVME was not noticeable in normal usage. Only thing better is copying large files or large amount of files since time is better if you are transferring GBs - however, you are only as fast as your slowest link, so NVME to anything not-NVME... loses that advantage.Quote:
Originally Posted by [GSV]Trig
'Traditional' SSD to (presumably SATA) m.2 is just a different form factor, so it's expected that you would see no difference in performance.
M.2 is a form factor that can work in two electrical modes and the slots/drives are keyed differently depending on which standard(s) they can operate in. The two modes are SATA and PCIe. In SATA mode it's no different to plugging the drive into a standard SATA port, and in PCIe mode it's no different to plugging into a physical PCIe slot. You can even get passive adapters to convert between the different physical connectors. NVMe is a protocol that operates on top of PCIe.
I went from a SATA SSD to a 970 Evo Plus recently and tbh I haven't really noticed much difference in everyday tasks. Nothing like going from HDD to SSD. Moving large files around is much faster though.