Do I need screws for my SSD?

[Theminecraftaddict555]

So i bought an ssd to add some additional, cheap, and fast storage to my system. I've realized that I don't have any HDD/SSD screws available (not sure if it came with any PC components I bought) when it arrived & was wondering if I need to them at all considering that it contains no moving parts. If important, I have the S340 computer case, which thumbscrews are used to secure the SSD cage/drive bay itself. Also, I heard that you can have it sit anywhere in your computer without screws and it will still be fine as long as its not dangling, is that also true?

 

SSD: https://pcpartpicker.com/product/VqgzK8/crucial-bx500-120gb-25-solid-state-drive-ct120bx500ssd1

 

OPTIONAL QUESTION:

-Does the SSD's 500 mbps read & write speed make a huge difference compared to my HDD's speed (being 100-150 mbps)

 

 

[Derrk]

just slap some double-sided tape on it. screws are cheap, but you don't need screws

[sky_shark_101]

1 minute ago, Theminecraftaddict555 said:

So i bought an ssd to add some additional, cheap, and fast storage to my system. I've realized that I don't have any HDD/SSD screws available (not sure if it came with any PC components I bought) when it arrived & was wondering if I need to them at all considering that it contains no moving parts. If important, I have the S340 computer case, which thumbscrews are used to secure the SSD cage/drive bay itself. Also, I heard that you can have it sit anywhere in your computer without screws and it will still be fine as long as its not dangling, is that also true?

 

SSD: https://pcpartpicker.com/product/VqgzK8/crucial-bx500-120gb-25-solid-state-drive-ct120bx500ssd1

 

OPTIONAL QUESTION:

-Does the SSD's 500 mbps read & write speed make a huge difference compared to my HDD's speed (being 100-150 mbps)

 

 

You are correct in the assumption regarding no moving parts. Although I would emphasise a word of caution about putting strain on the connecting cables. If you look at a lot of mod builds quite often they are stuck somewhere with double sided tape. It would be a good idea to immobilise it somehow as you don't want components freely moving around the case as they could hit something else.

[Video Beagle]

If you'd like to vaccum my carpet, I'm sure you'll find 4 or 400 drive screws lying around

[Theminecraftaddict555]

21 minutes ago, Derrk said:

just slap some double-sided tape on it. screws are cheap, but you don't need screws

 

20 minutes ago, sky_shark_101 said:

You are correct in the assumption regarding no moving parts. Although I would emphasise a word of caution about putting strain on the connecting cables. If you look at a lot of mod builds quite often they are stuck somewhere with double sided tape. It would be a good idea to immobilise it somehow as you don't want components freely moving around the case as they could hit something else.

After looking around, I found 2 groupings of black screws belonging to my s340 case. They were the M3 * 5 flat screws & 6-32 flat screws. I think the numbers mean amount of flat screws or the the specific measurements of the flat screws. 

[Theminecraftaddict555]

53 minutes ago, starcoaster said:

you don't need screws for an SSD, but drives dangling loose isn't good

 

also, the 500MB/s sequential read speed compared to the 150MB/s sequential read speed from the hard drive won't make a big difference to windows, it's the random read/write performance that's going to make the biggest difference.

For the bx500 SSD and my HDD (WD caviar blue), I wasn't able to find the random read/write speeds 

 

edit: for my HDD, it was 59 mbps for read speed and 53 mbps for write according to here: https://www.storagereview.com/western_digital_caviar_blue_1tb_review_wd10ealx assuming that I read the data correctly 

[Theminecraftaddict555]

25 minutes ago, starcoaster said:

use crystaldiskmark and check it for yourself - don't believe marketing wank

someone else's results of the benchmark on the bx500: 

 

 

Mine: assuming I did it correctly lul

[dgsddfgdfhgs]

3 minutes ago, Theminecraftaddict555 said:

Mine: assuming I did it correctly lul

First the disc is almost full! its expected to run much slower than rated speed.

its supposed to run full speed at sata III 6Gb/s , check if mobo supports it.

 

usually psu cables are hard enough to hold this light weight ssd in any place , + tape / blue tacks if you want

[Theminecraftaddict555]

2 minutes ago, dgsddfgdfhgs said:

First the disc is almost full! its expected to run much slower than rated speed.

its supposed to run full speed at sata III 6Gb/s , check if mobo supports it.

 

usually psu cables are hard enough to hold this light weight ssd in any place , + tape / blue tacks if you want

My motherboard should support it by default considering that it only has sata 3 6gb/s ports 

[Theminecraftaddict555]

4 minutes ago, starcoaster said:

you said your disk was a 120gb ssd, that's a 1tb drive and by the looks of those performance numbers it's a hard drive

No I said my current one is a 1tb HDD and my ssd has yet to be installed into my system. Sorry for the confusion

[Theminecraftaddict555]

So I found that my SSD requires M3 screws which I have, so that problem is solved

 

12 hours ago, starcoaster said:

you said your disk was a 120gb ssd, that's a 1tb drive and by the looks of those performance numbers it's a hard drive

Just installed my ssd right now, here is the performance of it 

 

[Mr.Humble]

Faced with the same issue a few years back, i just tucked it into a safe position in the case where it wouldnt obstruct anything else

[Kedohawyr]

In answer to your original question about speed the correct answer is indeed that random performance (which is mainly affected by seek time) matters much more to Windows, your applications and your games then the sequential performance. In your benchmarks the 4k values (specifically the lower queue depth ones, 4KiB Q1T1) tend to provide the most insight into this performance characteristic.

 

As you can see mechanical harddrives almost never reach 1MB/s in that metric while your SSD is passing 43MB/s. This is why SSDs feel so obviously faster, it's not the 4X improvement in sequential speeds, it's the over 40X improvement in random performance. This is also why NVMe's don't feel very different from SATA SSDs unless you run very specific IO bound workloads. A high end NVMe will only run about 65MB/s in that test, not even double the performance of a SATA (so HDD to SATA SSD you feel a 40X improvement while SATA SSD to NVMe SSD only gets you about 0.5X improvement)

[eyeangle]

I have heaps of them- just PM me your snail mail address and I'll post you 4 for free. This size will fit any 2.5" SSD, but I also have the #6-32 UNC screws for 3.5" HDDs if you need those too.