About to buy first SSD. A little confused about options (SATA vs M2)

[adrynalyne]

4 hours ago, farmeunit said:

Moving large files around is a minority use-case.  In "normal" use, you wouldn't see a difference or it would be negligible.  Your version of "normal" could be different but what @CougarDan said is a legitimate point.

 

If you move large files around all day, then listen to @adrynalyne.

 

Why does it have to be all day? Keep in mind you are just talking about writing. Loading large files also benefits from it. 

 

Anyone who who works with isos or videos or even audio can benefit from nvme. Considering you are on a technical forum, I seriously doubt those are minority use cases. 

[dragontology]

Ended up just going with what I think is a sure thing. The Western Digital 1TB SATA SSD. So damn excited. I got what I think is the latest public ISO of Windows 10 Home/Pro x64, and I'm gonna burn it, shut down the computer, disconnect my C drive, plug in the SSD, and install Windows fresh. I have a SATA-to-USB3 kit I can use to pull the user profiles and stuff off the C drive. Should be pretty easy.

 

M.2 is a new thing and NVMe wasn't a sure thing. So it's better to get what I know will work than risk having to RMA and be soured by the whole experience. Also, like my friend pointed out, I have a traditional hard drive now. ANY SSD is going to be an improvement. SATA or NVMe. Both will feel hugely next-gen.

 

Thanks again for the replies. I'm glad to have read all the good information.

[ThaCrip]

@ dragontology ; yes, that's the safe bet. getting a standard SATA SSD drive and pairing it with a regular hard drive for larger file storage is the safest choice and cost effective to. all of that new stuff i would hold off on for a while until it becomes more common as i don't think SATA is going away anytime soon.

[philcruicks]

You could have also got a M.2 and just sent it back if it didn't work... (even though it would be absolutely fine on your board)

 

Also lets just get terms correct here, NVMe is a separate thing from SATA and PCI-E.

The confusion comes from some things having similar same names but being different technologies.

 

SATA or M.2 are the physical connectors of the drive

SATA3(III) or PCI-E is the bus

NVMe is the equivalent of AHCI a Host Controller Interface (nothing to do with it being SATA, m.2, SATA3 or PCI-E, other than you can only get NVMe on a PCI-E bus drive)

 

AHCI was designed with HDD's in mind and so isn't great at the really fast access modern SSD's can have (but the first several generations of SSD have used AHCI as nothing else existed).

Now we have NVMe, which is specifically designed with SSD's in mind.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NVM_Express#Comparison_with_AHCI

 

In short, you board will accept and work with any combination of the above that you could by:

SATA SATA3 AHCI

M.2 SATA3 AHCI

M.2 PCI-E AHCI

M.2 PCI-E NVMe

 

More info and tests here: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7843/testing-sata-express-with-asus/4

[Mindovermaster Moderator]

1 hour ago, philcruicks said:

Also lets just get terms correct here, NVMe is a separate thing from SATA and PCI-E.

The confusion comes from some things having similar same names but being different technologies.

I thought NVMe was PCI-e.

[philcruicks]

2 hours ago, Mindovermaster said:

I thought NVMe was PCI-e.

I suspect a lot of people do, or at least get confused with the various terms.

Hopefully my post helped clear things up.

[Circaflex]

1 hour ago, philcruicks said:

I suspect a lot of people do, or at least get confused with the various terms.

Hopefully my post helped clear things up.

My understanding is that NVMe is a communications interface, like SCSI and SATA. NVMe drives though rely on the PCI-E bus which is what I think the other guy was referring to. The new U.2 connector pulls from four PCI-e lanes.

[farmeunit]

22 hours ago, adrynalyne said:

Why does it have to be all day? Keep in mind you are just talking about writing. Loading large files also benefits from it. 

 

Anyone who who works with isos or videos or even audio can benefit from nvme. Considering you are on a technical forum, I seriously doubt those are minority use cases. 

If he's asking questions about this, the OP might not be that technical.  He is coming to a technical forum to get answers because people here ARE technical.  Telling them he needs somethings that is more expensive than he will find useful isn't the best way to handle things.  Is there an advantage?  No doubt.  Is it enough to notice?  For "most" (read, people not like you), probably not.  It takes two seconds to open Chrome now and be usable,  Do I need it to be one?

[adrynalyne]

54 minutes ago, farmeunit said:

If he's asking questions about this, the OP might not be that technical.  He is coming to a technical forum to get answers because people here ARE technical.  Telling them he needs somethings that is more expensive than he will find useful isn't the best way to handle things.  Is there an advantage?  No doubt.  Is it enough to notice?  For "most" (read, people not like you), probably not.  It takes two seconds to open Chrome now and be usable,  Do I need it to be one?

 

So let me get this straight. You know the OP isn't technical because he asked a question?

Edited February 16, 2017 by adrynalyne

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

 

NVMe is the standardized name for M.2 SSDs that connect with a PCIe interface, as opposed to a SATA (AHCI) interface.  The name was finalized after the motherboard was designed, which is why the literature for it uses the older "PCIe" term. 

 

The motherboard in question is old enough that its M.2 NVMe (née PCIe) interface doesn't operate as fast as current motherboards do (10Gbps vs. ~32Gbps), however, it's still going to be fast enough that you should see a performance improvement when a M.2 NVMe SSD is installed.

 

One thing you might want to do is look into the Samsung 950 PRO series, the predecessor to the 960 PRO.  Until the 960 PRO came out, it was the fastest commercially available NVMe SSD, and if you can pick one of those up I think you'll find it performs very well in the system you are building.

 

Of course, if you do have questions about specific parts compatibility and want an authoritative answer, you can always call ASUS' technical support department, and they'll tell you exactly what does and does not work, as well as perhaps make some recommendations on parts for you.

 

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky

 

[Jason S. Global Moderator]

Thread cleaned. Let's get this thread back on what the OP had originally asked, please.

[farmeunit]

On 2/16/2017 at 4:32 PM, adrynalyne said:

 

So let me get this straight. You know the OP isn't technical because he asked a question?

Hence, "might not be".  

[dragontology]

Am I technical? What an interesting question. If my ego were wounded, I might point out the three computers I've built and their various hardware revisions, my experience with custom ROMs on Android phones, my history with Windows, DOS, Amiga, and various other computers, and who knows what all else I could pull from. But rather, I'm more curious. What's the threshold for being technical? Because while there are people who are absolutely not, like my mother for example, I think most of us are on a spectrum of being technical that covers a myriad of combinations of experience, knowledge, and instinct that paints a unique painting of, not how technical we are, but how we are technical (in which areas).

 

All that being said, I am less technical than many here, and I'm okay with it, which is why I asked here and not, say, on Reddit (though I'm sure I could have gotten good info there, as well). I figure Neowin will have a higher signal:noise ratio.

 

I only bring it up because... I think a big part of being technical is asking questions. And knowing what to ask. There's Google. There are other resources online, such as Wikipedia, WikiHow, YouTube, etc. And then there are people/forums/social media. Knowing what resources to tap is what sets some geeks apart. A lot of geeks will happily say "I don't know but I know how to find out." I knew some things, but I went to Neowin because I knew others would know more.

 

I ended up going with the WD SSD. It was very easy to install, and I bought a caddy with it. Attached it to the caddy. Turned off the computer. Pulled the hard drive out and put the caddy in its place. Same wires attached to both drives. Installed Windows 10 without a hitch. Attached old C drive to a USB/SATA converter and began copying files back. Permission settings is a PITA, but again, I don't know but I know how to find out. Found out, got it done. (Did it wrong trying to figure it out a couple times. But now it's good, now my account "owns" the old C drive, so there is nothing on it I can't touch.)

 

The good stuff. I haven't timed it yet, but my computer cold boots in about ten seconds. It's much better than it was. Fallout 4 loading screens have also benefited as well. Applications open and operate a little faster. I'm happy with the speed increases, but I'm not sure it's $265 faster. But, all in all my computer works a lot better, and that's pretty much what I was going for. I'm not trying to win any spec races, just want it to be a better machine for my wife and I.

[+Anarkii Subscriber²]

nMVE is awesome if you understand it. It does take some tinkering to get up and running with setting it up (lots of bios options you need to configure). 
By the sounds of it you made the right choice in just getting a normal SSD, maybe your next upgrade in a couple years will be the m.2 ssd
Hope your machine feels snappier now, a new install of Windows 10 should and will certainly help things along. 

[Mindovermaster Moderator]

44 minutes ago, Anarkii said:

nMVE is awesome if you understand it. It does take some tinkering to get up and running with setting it up (lots of bios options you need to configure). 
By the sounds of it you made the right choice in just getting a normal SSD, maybe your next upgrade in a couple years will be the m.2 ssd
Hope your machine feels snappier now, a new install of Windows 10 should and will certainly help things along. 

Or M.3...

[farmeunit]

16 hours ago, dragontology said:

Am I technical? What an interesting question. If my ego were wounded, I might point out the three computers I've built and their various hardware revisions, my experience with custom ROMs on Android phones, my history with Windows, DOS, Amiga, and various other computers, and who knows what all else I could pull from. But rather, I'm more curious. What's the threshold for being technical? Because while there are people who are absolutely not, like my mother for example, I think most of us are on a spectrum of being technical that covers a myriad of combinations of experience, knowledge, and instinct that paints a unique painting of, not how technical we are, but how we are technical (in which areas).

 

All that being said, I am less technical than many here, and I'm okay with it, which is why I asked here and not, say, on Reddit (though I'm sure I could have gotten good info there, as well). I figure Neowin will have a higher signal:noise ratio.

 

I only bring it up because... I think a big part of being technical is asking questions. And knowing what to ask. There's Google. There are other resources online, such as Wikipedia, WikiHow, YouTube, etc. And then there are people/forums/social media. Knowing what resources to tap is what sets some geeks apart. A lot of geeks will happily say "I don't know but I know how to find out." I knew some things, but I went to Neowin because I knew others would know more.

 

I ended up going with the WD SSD. It was very easy to install, and I bought a caddy with it. Attached it to the caddy. Turned off the computer. Pulled the hard drive out and put the caddy in its place. Same wires attached to both drives. Installed Windows 10 without a hitch. Attached old C drive to a USB/SATA converter and began copying files back. Permission settings is a PITA, but again, I don't know but I know how to find out. Found out, got it done. (Did it wrong trying to figure it out a couple times. But now it's good, now my account "owns" the old C drive, so there is nothing on it I can't touch.)

 

The good stuff. I haven't timed it yet, but my computer cold boots in about ten seconds. It's much better than it was. Fallout 4 loading screens have also benefited as well. Applications open and operate a little faster. I'm happy with the speed increases, but I'm not sure it's $265 faster. But, all in all my computer works a lot better, and that's pretty much what I was going for. I'm not trying to win any spec races, just want it to be a better machine for my wife and I.

I definitely didn't mean it in an insulting way.  I have heard about many programmers that know nothing about hardware.  So they're technical in some aspects and not others.  For example, I'm not a programmer.  I'm a "jack of all trades, master of none.)  

 

You'll enjoy it much more overall, so in time, I think you'll find it worth it.  The drive could end up last years longer than a spinning drive, also, so you might be ahead money/time/data loss.  I'm waiting on the 2TB SSDs to drop a little more for my gaming drive.  I have about 1.5TB of Steam Games and such on separate spinning drive.  I'm finding it hard to spend $500 or more on an SSD.

[xendrome]

16 hours ago, Anarkii said:

nMVE is awesome if you understand it. It does take some tinkering to get up and running with setting it up (lots of bios options you need to configure). 
 

Depends on the setup, plugged mine in and just installed Windows 10

[Mindovermaster Moderator]

22 minutes ago, xendrome said:

Depends on the setup, plugged mine in and just installed Windows 10

Depends on your board or BIOS version, too.

[dragontology]

12 hours ago, farmeunit said:

I definitely didn't mean it in an insulting way.  I have heard about many programmers that know nothing about hardware.  So they're technical in some aspects and not others.  For example, I'm not a programmer.  I'm a "jack of all trades, master of none.)  

 

You'll enjoy it much more overall, so in time, I think you'll find it worth it.  The drive could end up last years longer than a spinning drive, also, so you might be ahead money/time/data loss.  I'm waiting on the 2TB SSDs to drop a little more for my gaming drive.  I have about 1.5TB of Steam Games and such on separate spinning drive.  I'm finding it hard to spend $500 or more on an SSD.

I didn't take it as an insult, I just thought it was an amusing thing to ponder. I don't get programming either. I took an Intro to C++ class and bombed hard. I wrote web pages in EDIT.COM in DOS 5, then carried them to the computer lab to upload on GeoCities and AngelFire way back when. I used to download web pages I thought were interesting and study the HTML. I got frames, but CSS lost me and I haven't touched HTML code in years. I ran a forum a decade ago (just a little hangout for friends) and installed any mod the users asked for. They were all easy cut/copy/paste jobs. Did some cool stuff (like an arcade right in the forum, if you got high score on a game, you had its icon as a trophy on your mini profile, next to all your posts). Didn't learn a thing.

 

Anyway... one other question. Sort of a side thing. I have a 128GB USB 3.0 flash drive. It's pretty fast. It's this little guy here. (Amazon link, no referral) Is that an SSD, at least in theory? I mean, it is a drive, and it is solid state. I see briefly skimming the Amazon page, that its read/write speed is around 130MB/s, which is like a quarter of what the SSD I bought can do. So, I know it's not a real SSD, I know it's not SATA (it's USB) and it sure isn't NVMe. So... what's stopping companies like Samsung, Sandisk, et al., from putting SSDs in USB flash drives. Seems like the prices are roughly the same. Well, I see some 120GB SSDs for around $50, and then there's this SanDisk external 120GB SSD for $80 (Amazon link; again, no referral).

[Michael Scrip]

Sorry to threadjack...

 

I have a similar ASUS motherboard... though it's a Z97 board instead of H97... and I have a similar question about its M.2 slot.

 

Nowhere in the manual does it use the term "MVNe"

 

The manual uses these terms when discussing the M.2 slot:

 

Socket 3

M-Key

2260/2280

 

I know the last one is the length of the drive.  But I'm confused about everything else when looking for M.2 drives on Newegg or Amazon.

 

Can anyone tell me which specific brand/model M.2 drives will work with my motherboard?

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

 

Your motherboard manual's printing likely predates the use of the term NVMe, instead it probably says "PCIe" or something like that when describing it.

 

An M-keyed M.2 socket supports both SATA (up to 6Gbps) and NVMe (up to PCIe×4, about 32Gbps), however, the chipset may limit it to about 8Gbps, which really doesn't make much difference as current drives top out at around 3Gbps.  And, of course, all of those are theoretical speeds, so real-world perfomance may be less. 

 

As to specific brands and models, Intel, MyDigitalSSD, Plextor and Samsung are among the many manufacturers which offer M.2 NVMe SSDs.  Any one from them should work, just like you could hook up any SATA HDD to a SATA port on the motherboard.  If you're looking for specific recommendations, though, it is probably best to check with ASUS tech support.

 

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky

 

 

17 minutes ago, Michael Scrip said:

Sorry to threadjack...

 

I have a similar ASUS motherboard... though it's a Z97 board instead of H97... and I have a similar question about its M.2 slot.

 

Nowhere in the manual does it use the term "NVMe"

 

The manual uses these terms when discussing the M.2 slot:

 

Socket 3

M-Key

2260/2280

 

I know the last one is the length of the drive.  But I'm confused about everything else when looking for M.2 drives on Newegg or Amazon.

 

Can anyone tell me which specific brand/model M.2 drives will work with my motherboard?

 

[philcruicks]

2 hours ago, dragontology said:

IAnyway... one other question. Sort of a side thing. I have a 128GB USB 3.0 flash drive. It's pretty fast. It's this little guy here. (Amazon link, no referral) Is that an SSD, at least in theory? I mean, it is a drive, and it is solid state. I see briefly skimming the Amazon page, that its read/write speed is around 130MB/s, which is like a quarter of what the SSD I bought can do. So, I know it's not a real SSD, I know it's not SATA (it's USB) and it sure isn't NVMe. So... what's stopping companies like Samsung, Sandisk, et al., from putting SSDs in USB flash drives. Seems like the prices are roughly the same. Well, I see some 120GB SSDs for around $50, and then there's this SanDisk external 120GB SSD for $80 (Amazon link; again, no referral).

Again this comes back to terminology.

Yes the memory chips in the USB drive are Solid State, thus you could call it an SSD.

Traditional something actually called an SSD is a primary storage device designed to replace a HDD, so 2.5" and M.2 would class in my books as SSD's.

 

A USB drive is generally not used as a primary boot drive, and is more designed for being mobile and transferring data between computers.

 

The speed difference is down to the Bus.

So USB is Universal Serial Bus which is generally slower than SATA or PCI-E

Though of course it depends on the versions, USB3.0 is much faster than older SATA 1 or 2, but a bit slower than SATA 3 and much slower than PCI-E.

 

Also I would suspect the technology inside a USB drive is not as good, so slower chips etc... due to their intended purposes and relative costs. 128GB SSD ~£50 is much more than a 128GB USB ~£20

[Tidosho]

On 14/02/2017 at 2:21 PM, CougarDan said:

Another thing to keep in mind is that typically when you connect an M.2 drive it will disable 2 of the onboard SATA ports, so your 1 drive now requires 2 spots.  Not an issue for most people, but I myself have 6 drives in my main machine.

Isn't that what happens with the SATA Express ports, not M2? I'm sure my Z170 board's manual said it like that.

[patseguin Global Moderator]

I just disagree on a couple posts regarding size. I used to use 256GB SSD's and they just weren't enough. I like to keep only essential stuff on SSD but also stuff I use a lot. Prices have come down and I think a 512GB Samsung 850 Evo is best value right now.