Which M.2 Should I Go For?

[jiyeon]

Hi, so recently I've been wanting to get a new storage device because my 250GB Samsung 850 Evo is starting to show its price.

 

I'm after the following:

• M.2 form factor
• Preferably NVME just for the sake of speed
• 500GB+ capacity
• Under £100

 

I've found a few options but I'm on the fence about which one to go for. I've heard NVMEs for the most part perform the same, and I'm keen on the Crucial P1 so far.

 

Which NVME would you go for? If not, which SATA M.2?

 

I would be buying from Amazon UK so prices are from there.

[TheSLSAMG]

I bought a P1 last week and I had some issues, but I believe that the issues are down to my system and aren't representative of the drive (especially since I tried a replacement drive which had the same issues.) Essentially, my system would hard lock under storage intensive tasks (such as playing Forza Horizon 4, an open world racing game).

 

Outside of that issue, the drive performed great and I do not believe that it's an issue with the drive itself. So with that, I would recommend it. Then again, the P1 and the 970 EVO are in different leagues, and if you can afford it, it's the better choice.

[Yellow_]

Do you need NVMe though?

[Eastman51]

The 970 EVO, imo, is the best of the bunch. I have multiple Samsung SSDs (960 EVO, 860 EVO, 970 EVO) and have seen quite good results with all of them. However, the Western Digital Blue 2.5" SATA does have higher writes than the 860 EVO. 

 

If you want an awesome value though, Western Digital Blue SSDs (M.2 and 2.5", both SATA) are only $135 USD for 1TB. I got the WD 2.5" 1TB and its been great for my HTPC

[tarfeef101]

4 minutes ago, Yellow_ said:

Do you need NVMe though?

This. The vast majority of people don't, and you could have more storage if you went SATA. My rig(s) are all many thousand dollar watercooled systems with i7s/R7s and high-end GPUs. but they all use SATA. I'm not doing file benchmarks all day, editing raw 4K footage, or anything like that, so I simply don't need NVMe. What exactly are you doing with the drive?

[Eastman51]

4 minutes ago, Yellow_ said:

Do you need NVMe though?

That's a good question. I haven't seen any faster game load times (or Windows boot times) with NVMe vs SATA. In a way, having an NVMe SSD makes you expect too much of it and can leave you disappointed with how similarly they perform to SATA in everyday use.

 

Now if you do large file transfers all the time (video editing for example, and you need a high speed scratch disk), then NVMe is far superior to SATA.

[Eastman51]

2 minutes ago, tarfeef101 said:

This. The vast majority of people don't, and you could have more storage if you went SATA. 

Exactly. For (roughly) the cost of a 500GB 970 EVO you could get a 1TB WD Blue.

[jiyeon]

30 minutes ago, Yellow_ said:

Do you need NVMe though?

No, I don't. It's just that at 500GB storage capacity, the prices for NVME and SATA M.2 drives are too similar.

22 minutes ago, Eastman51 said:

Exactly. For (roughly) the cost of a 500GB 970 EVO you could get a 1TB WD Blue.

I don't need a 1TB drive, but that is a good perspective on prices there, personally I think the 970 EVO is a little overpriced anyway.

[Eastman51]

1 minute ago, essy said:

No, I don't. It's just that at 500GB storage capacity, the prices for NVME and SATA M.2 drives are too similar.

I don't need a 1TB drive, but that is a good perspective on prices there, personally I think the 970 EVO is a little overpriced anyway.

At that point, get a 500GB WD Blue SSD, they are quite cheap. If you don't need NVMe, don't bother paying a premium for something you have no use for.

 

A 500GB M.2 WD Blue is $60 USD on Amazon while a Crucial P1 500GB is $90 USD on Amazon. Pricing also carries over to Newegg

[Pyramiden]

I got the Corsair MP510. It is as fast as the 970, while being cheaper and offering better livespan.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Corsair-CSSD-F480GBMP510-Force-MP510-Solid/dp/B07HR83J4S/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1550002873&sr=8-2&keywords=mp510

[jiyeon]

8 minutes ago, Pyramiden said:

I got the Corsair MP510. It is as fast as the 970, while being cheaper and offering better livespan.

480GB is such an odd number, as picky as I am, I'd rather get 500GB.