NVMe M.2 or SATA SSD for Gaming

[grumpyherbie]

I am in a dilemma like some of the people coming here to figure out what type of drive to use for gaming. I don't have a ton of games on my current drive (WD Blue 1TB), but the few I have exceed 20gb (GTA V, SWB, BF1, Witcher 3). I have done a lot of research into the NVMe M.2 and SATA SSD stuff (Including the video Linus JUST released today 1/22/17), but for the life of me can not decide on what to get. I have a budget of about $500 to spend on a new drive as mine is making a lot of strange noises. I really just need to get the best performance, storage size and life expectancy out of it for my money. This is mainly going to be used for all my storage needs except being used for a boot drive as I have a tiny 128GB SSD for that.

 

I looked into maybe getting a SATA SSD because they are pretty low cost for the amount of storage they offer and performance. Then I said maybe get an m.2 drive for the higher performance, and somewhat low cost of storage options. I then read somewhere I will never really notice that type of performance in real world applications.

 

Some of the M.2 drives I looked at was the Intel 600p 1TB, Samsung 960 EVO 1TB, Samsung 960 PRO 512GB, and the soon to be released WD Black PCIe SSD 512GB. The only SATA option I looked at was the Samsung 950 EVO 1TB, as it had good reviews and performance. I need this drive for gaming and general storage. So the drive needs to be 1tb at most for "future proofing". So what do you guys use and recommend I look into more? I want to go the m.2 route more but I am willing to try a SATA drive if it is going to save me some of my money.

 

Performance, Reliability, and Longevity are what I need.

[hconverse02]

http://pcpartpicker.com/product/RKhj4D/crucial-mx300-11tb-m2-2280-solid-state-drive-ct1050mx300ssd4 same price as its ssd counterpart, but faster cause its m.2

[iamabad]

As long as the motherboard supports NVMe you should pick up an NVMe M.2 Drive. They are extremely fast compared to hard drives and faster than normal Sata SSD's

[hconverse02]

If you saw linus's "secret box" video, intel released new m.2s and they are crazy fast so if you are looking for raw performance and instant game boot times, get a $600 1 tb m.2

[nikhilxp64]

I've been researching storage recently for an upcoming build. I would think that an NVMe drive either in an m.2 or PCIe x4 slot would be the fastest and easiest route to take.

 

The Intel 600p doesn't hold up to the Samsung 600 series if I read this right: http://www.anandtech.com/show/10850/the-intel-ssd-600p-512gb-review.

 

Between the Samsung 960 Pro and 960 EVO, the few comments I did chance upon suggest that the Pro has a slight edge over the EVO in terms of performance but the EVO is priced better. The loss in performance is probably not noticeable for a general prosumer, but might make a difference in very specific applications. There's also the warranty difference of 5 years for the PRO over the 3 years for the EVO. Bringing that up since you mentioned longevity.

 

For me I don't think I could justify the price difference for a gaming drive.

 

Here's the comparison:

http://pcpartpicker.com/products/compare/4cyxFT,C3mxFT/

 

Would like to hear what other folks here think, to help me decide what I am putting into my upcoming build as well.

[Stoagmeyer]

2 hours ago, grumpyherbie said:

I am in a dilemma like some of the people coming here to figure out what type of drive to use for gaming. I don't have a ton of games on my current drive (WD Blue 1TB), but the few I have exceed 20gb (GTA V, SWB, BF1, Witcher 3). I have done a lot of research into the NVMe M.2 and SATA SSD stuff (Including the video Linus JUST released today 1/22/17), but for the life of me can not decide on what to get. I have a budget of about $500 to spend on a new drive as mine is making a lot of strange noises. I really just need to get the best performance, storage size and life expectancy out of it for my money. This is mainly going to be used for all my storage needs except being used for a boot drive as I have a tiny 128GB SSD for that.

 

I looked into maybe getting a SATA SSD because they are pretty low cost for the amount of storage they offer and performance. Then I said maybe get an m.2 drive for the higher performance, and somewhat low cost of storage options. I then read somewhere I will never really notice that type of performance in real world applications.

 

Some of the M.2 drives I looked at was the Intel 600p 1TB, Samsung 960 EVO 1TB, Samsung 960 PRO 512GB, and the soon to be released WD Black PCIe SSD 512GB. The only SATA option I looked at was the Samsung 950 EVO 1TB, as it had good reviews and performance. I need this drive for gaming and general storage. So the drive needs to be 1tb at most for "future proofing". So what do you guys use and recommend I look into more? I want to go the m.2 route more but I am willing to try a SATA drive if it is going to save me some of my money.

 

Performance, Reliability, and Longevity are what I need.

One thing to think about is M.2 is not just M.2... M.2 is a form factor so with that said there is 2 popular flavors, Nvme(super fast utilizes pcie 3.0 x4 pci lanes dirrectly to ur chipset when used in a m.2 slot) and the second being a M.2 SATAIII which isnt much different then the normal SSD, The speed boost over a typical ssd comes when you use a m.2 that is using nvme. A standard SSD using  a SATAIII connection from the drive to the controller. And M.2 using SATAIII such as the crucial m.2 someone sent earler isnt much of a speed increse from a standard SDD connected with a SATAIII cable. In short read up or watch some videos on M.2 Nvme and M.2 SATAIII. I'm not the best of explainers but I can tell you Nvme is what you want also might want to look in to slc mlc tlc (single, muliti ,triple level cell). Lastly if you plan to boot to a m.2 check if your mother board supports it, also check to see if you mother board supports nvme m.2 and SATAIII m.2 

 

Ive just recently like 2 months ago started to learn about all this, and yes it was a learning curve. There are a lot of factors in nowadays with this M.2, if you dont have a slot on ur motherboard you can buy an adaptor for it to go in to a pcie slot also. but again check to see if ur mother board supports everything before buying. 

 

TLDR: Check support and M.2 is a form of SSD that can be SATAIII(6GB/s) and Nvme(32BG/s theoretically)  (don't quote me on the Nvme speed cant remember max bandwidth, also i thing the samsung pro 950 is the fastest so check benches on that)

[Stoagmeyer]

My benches on the 600p, not trying to link my issue but these are benches ive done on the 600p 

 

Here

[vrod]

At this time I would only consider an M.2 drive if it was a boot drive. For gsming drive it makes no sense at all. Even for the disk-heaviest games you might see a second less loading time... i haven't even heard of a game that pulls more than 100-110MB/s. M.2 would be absolute overkill. If you can find a bigger SATA SSD for the same or less I would recommend that. And eventually use deduplication to save space.