M.2, U.2, and More

[nicklmg]

Buy M.2 SSDs on Amazon: http://geni.us/Vxdx

 

M.2? AHCI? PCIe? With the knowledge in this video, you should be able to comfortably pimp out your storage setup to the next big thing.

 

 

[idmb]

Actually really liked this, sure it could be on techquickie but it's definitely a "tech tip" and it's done by Linus so oh well! 

 

[ephz]

Hey Linus, I run a Samsung 950 Pro with an pcie adapter on a msi z87 motherboard with a 4770k, of course the chipset doesnt support NVME, but I am able to boot from it!

Samsung has implemented some sort of a bootloader into their 950/960 pro SSDs (as far as I understand...), it doesn´t boot via UEFI, but if you switch the bios to legacy, I can boot from it without problems! And after installing the Samsung NVME driver in Windows 10, I seem to have the full performance!

So that is a way of enjoying an M2 SSD on an "older" chipset.

[xnamkcor]

Don't mind me. I'm just here waiting for someone to make a DDR4-based hardware storage device.

[potoooooooo]

You should have pointed out the difference between PCIE and SATA m.2 SSDs. That's a pretty important detail to miss. PCIE SSDs can still be AHCI, and will work in any slot an NVME SSD would work in...

[Blitzbrieg Dimarectic]

Wow! You guys sure did get the Corsair MP500 way before I could get mine. I posted an amiture topic about the launch a few days ago. I'm actually happy to see you guys have shown yours. This Monday I should get mine unless the weather decides to push it back a couple days.

[gnaby2]

If I have a Z97 U3 Plus motherboard from MSI, what kind of m.2 drives can I plug in? also, can I use it as a boot drive ??? please help =)

[gnaby2]

8 hours ago, xnamkcor said:

Don't mind me. I'm just here waiting for someone to make a DDR4-based hardware storage device.

that's on the way btw because they are starting to have non-volatile memory (one that stays there even when powered off) but 128 Gb would cost around $250

[iPolymer]

2 hours ago, gnaby2 said:

If I have a Z97 U3 Plus motherboard from MSI, what kind of m.2 drives can I plug in? also, can I use it as a boot drive ??? please help =)

I have a Z97 Gigabyte motherboard and I have the same 850 EVO shown in the video, but I do get problems with windows 10 on it.  

[gnaby2]

8 hours ago, xnamkcor said:

Don't mind me. I'm just here waiting for someone to make a DDR4-based hardware storage device.

that's on the way btw because they are starting to have non-volatile memory (one that stays there even when powered off) but 128 Gb would cost around $250

[gnaby2]

2 hours ago, gnaby2 said:

If I have a Z97 U3 Plus motherboard from MSI, what kind of m.2 drives can I plug in? also, can I use it as a boot drive ??? please help =)

@Slick @LinusTech

[xnamkcor]

17 minutes ago, gnaby2 said:

that's on the way btw because they are starting to have non-volatile memory (one that stays there even when powered off) but 128 Gb would cost around $250

Does that price include the RAM? If so, that's a better price than the RAM itself. currently 4GB of DDR4 costs about 25 USD.

 

Also, I'm thinking more along the lines of a 16 or 32x PCI-e 3.x or 4.x board that has RAM slots and a backup battery. If non-volatile RAM is gonna be a thing, I imagine it's use case and demand will be small and the product will be expensive.

 

PS: Don't confuse the M in NVM with RAM. Random IOPS and raw speed are much higher on RAM, while NVM can be used to describe any storage that isn't volatile.

[Exprima]

So I have a question. If my mobo already has an M.2 slot can I still opt to use a PCIe x4 M.2 adapter like the Angelbird Wings instead for aesthetic reasons?

[gnaby2]

5 minutes ago, Exprima said:

So I have a question. If my mobo already has an M.2 slot can I still opt to use a PCIe x4 M.2 adapter like the Angelbird Wings instead for aesthetic reasons?

Yes but money that is all

[Exprima]

2 minutes ago, gnaby2 said:

Yes but money that is all

Well ofc this is assuming that I don't care about the money part, I just want my rig to look that much crisper lol

[gnaby2]

2 minutes ago, Exprima said:

Well ofc this is assuming that I don't care about the money part, I just want my rig to look that much crisper lol

honestly for simplicity i'd just use your mobo normaly

[drja45]

Commenting on this video I must say that it left me somewhat confused. I feel that a use of feature charts and the addition of conclusions (i.e......in summary if you have............then choose this or............) I am also concerned that the recent videos as a whole are becoming so dense with info as to be hard for less experienced people to follow. I know I might be in the minority here but I normally read printed documents when I want to really immerse myself in a subject. Thanks for listening.  

[Zodiark1593]

Leave it to Intel to decide that it would leave out the H97 chipset of the NVME party. 

[kwarkon]

Hi, you actually mistaken m.2 PCIe AHCI with m.2 SATA drives. And this is a HUGE mistake that will cause more confusion. 

The whole difference is best shown on a diagram on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.2#/media/File:SATA_Express_interface.svg

 

The red on the left is true for SATA cable, mSATA and m.2 SATA. The yellow is true for anything that uses PCIe lines including m.2 PCIe AHCI SSD's (that do not work on sata)  

If we consider only sotrage than m.2 port can have it's data lines configured to PCIe, SATA or  GPIO ( auto detect between those two).

 

This is especially important as some laptops have their m.2 ports set only to SATA so neither pcie AHCI SSD nor NVME SSD will work. 

Also m.2 to PCIe adapters will have only PCIe lines so only m.2 PCIe AHCI and NVME drives will work.  There are adapter that have secondary m.2 slot only for m.2 SATA SSD but you will notice that it will also include male sata cable that you have first to connect to normal sata port on the board  

 

m.2 SATA is naturally limited by SATA III speeds  - theoretical 0.75GB/s

m.2 PCIE is limited by PCIe lines, with x4 Gen3.0 PCIe lines up to theoretical 3.938 GB/s

 

[DnFx91]

On 1/22/2017 at 8:40 PM, xnamkcor said:

Don't mind me. I'm just here waiting for someone to make a DDR4-based hardware storage device.

Don't put that there, that's where your RAM goes

 

DIMM to M.2 adapters are a thing now i believe...........

[xnamkcor]

44 minutes ago, kwarkon said:

Hi, you actually mistaken m.2 PCIe AHCI with m.2 SATA drives. And this is a HUGE mistake that will cause more confusion. 

The whole difference is best shown on a diagram on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.2#/media/File:SATA_Express_interface.svg

 

The red on the left is true for SATA cable, mSATA and m.2 SATA. The yellow is true for anything that uses PCIe lines including m.2 PCIe AHCI SSD's (that do not work on sata)  

If we consider only sotrage than m.2 port can have it's data lines configured to PCIe, SATA or  GPIO ( auto detect between those two).

 

This is especially important as some laptops have their m.2 ports set only to SATA so neither pcie AHCI SSD nor NVME SSD will work. 

Also m.2 to PCIe adapters will have only PCIe lines so only m.2 PCIe AHCI and NVME drives will work.  There are adapter that have secondary m.2 slot only for m.2 SATA SSD but you will notice that it will also include male sata cable that you have first to connect to normal sata port on the board  

 

m.2 SATA is naturally limited by SATA III speeds  - theoretical 0.75GB/s

m.2 PCIE is limited by PCIe lines, with x4 Gen3.0 PCIe lines up to theoretical 3.938 GB/s

 

What are the performance differences between AHCI SATA and AHCI PCI-e?

[kwarkon]

3 hours ago, xnamkcor said:

What are the performance differences between AHCI SATA and AHCI PCI-e?

Not sure if there are any limits of data throughput for AHCI. 

As I wrote before for SATA by it self is limited to 6Gb/s = 0.75GB/s so SATA will not run any faster than this.

Getting rid of SATA lifts this restriction. 

 

But lets compare specs best Samsung SATA SSD 850 PRO to Samsung PCIe SSD with AHCI controller SM951

 

	PCIe	SATA
	SM951 512GB	850 PRO 512GB
Max Sequential Read	Up to 2150 MBps	Up to 550 MBps
Max Sequential Write	Up to 1550 MBps	Up to 520 MBps
4KB Random Read	Up to 300,000 IOPS	Up to 100,000 IOPS
4KB Random Write	Up to 100,000 IOPS	Up to 90,000 IOPS

 

There are not many m.2 PCIe SSD with AHCI controller as it was replaced very early with NVME controllers. AHCI has higher latency because it was designed for slow HDD's. NVME was made with fast SSD in mind.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7843/testing-sata-express-with-asus/4 

[JoostinOnline]

Getting an NVMe drive is a waste of money for almost everyone.  They generally don't read small files any faster than a SATA drive.

[SOCOM_HERO]

I'm actually more confused after watching this.

[xnamkcor]

36 minutes ago, SOCOM_HERO said:

I'm actually more confused after watching this.

The alternative is being more confident in what you know, but being wrong.