Help me make sense of this storage device

[Radium_Angel]

https://flash.newegg.com/Product/9SIAF3G6JC1140

 

The price looks pretty good, but the mixing of m.2, SATA, SSD, and whatnot has me confused. If I understand this correctly, this doesn't go through the nVME controller interface, but rather SATA (even though it's m.2) which means the raw performance of nVME isn't present...?

 

 

[WereCatf]

4 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

The price looks pretty good, but the mixing of m.2, SATA, SSD, and whatnot has me confused. If I understand this correctly, this doesn't go through the nVME controller interface, but rather SATA (even though it's m.2) which means the raw performance of nVME isn't present...?

As I have had to explain about a billion times already here on the forums to other people, M.2 is just the physical form-factor and the connector; M.2 has nothing to do with speed. SSDs can be either NVME or SATA, but they can still use the M.2 form-factor, so no, the SSD in your link won't have the performance of an NVME-drive and will be limited to the about 500MB/s speed of SATA.

[Peskanova]

I think m.2 is the conector and nvme is a standard , that m.2 is not nvme.

[Radium_Angel]

2 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

As I have had to explain about a billion times already here on the forums to other people, M.2 is just the physical form-factor and the connector; M.2 has nothing to do with speed. SSDs can be either NVME or SATA, but they can still use the M.2 form-factor, so no, the SSD in your link won't have the performance of an NVME-drive and will be limited to the about 500MB/s speed of SATA.

Thank you. Every time I try to research this, I end up getting confused because the terms are tossed around casually, and interchangeably, and probably wrong in the process, hence the confusion. 

[WereCatf]

Just now, Radium_Angel said:

Thank you. Every time I try to research this, I end up getting confused because the terms are tossed around casually, and interchangeably, and probably wrong in the process, hence the confusion. 

It's the same thing with USB-C; people always get confused about that and think USB-C means 10Gbps speeds, but it's just the connector and doesn't specify anything else. This is to say, no worries, I'll just keep on explaining it to people when needed

[NineEyeRon]

In the end it doesn’t matter all tht much for most.

 

Connecting via M.2 is handy when you run out of SATA ports, esp for ITX boards.

 

I would always fill the M.2 first with something and flex on the SATA ports as time goes by. 

 

I have an NVME M.2 SSD and I have not noticed any real world gains vs SATA SSD for boot, there are some edge case gains but not enough to justify the price.

 

I pretty much just bought it to see the fast speeds on benchmarks, if there are any benefits they are not ones that are big enough to make me notice.

[KarathKasun]

M.2 can be SATA or PCIe.  The slot its installed into has to support SATA (not all M.2 slots support both), and transfer speeds will be at SATA rates.

 

M.2 PCIe has 8x the transfer rate, but normal usage will not reveal a huge difference.

[Radium_Angel]

2 minutes ago, NineEyeRon said:

for boot

Agreed, I already have an SSD for my boot drive, and I am plenty chuffed with it, I was just noticing how prices for solid state drives are seemingly in a free-fall, while memory is still sky high (although coming down)

I was considering adding something like what I had posted to a few of my systems for program speed improvements.

[NineEyeRon]

1 minute ago, Radium_Angel said:

 

I was considering adding something like what I had posted to a few of my systems for program speed improvements.

The edge case for me was file loading into editing programs and some programs that load a lot of extras once initiated.

 

I use mine for boot drive and I move things I am editing onto it, go make a cuppa, come back and edit quick and easy. I then move back in the background to my storage drive and back up to NAS. 

 

I wouldn’t say it saves time but it just stops waiting when I don’t want waiting and I bulk all the waiting into one big block where I can do something else.

 

I also have some big open world games with lots of mods and extras on there but I have not noticed a benefit so will move them off if I need the space back.