External TB3 NVME vs 2.5" SATA III SSD

[Zeddeck]

So I picked up a Lenovo Y740 15" last month and have been pretty happy with its performance. The half-Tb NVME it shipped with is pretty snappy, but I need more space. Unfortunately the board only has one M.2 slot, so I'd need to get a SATA 3 drive to keep it all internal.

 

Now, I started thinking about external drives, because most of my ports would easily support the 6gb/s that SATA III drives usually run at. Then I realized: I have a thunderbolt 3 port. That supports up to 40gb/s, which could easily support an NVME drive. Turns out that yes, you can get external m.2 enclosures that support TB3, though they don't come cheap. But, it would allow me to have additional NVME storage which is far faster than any 2.5" sad I could get for the internal bay.

 

Long story short, I'm considering getting a TB3 M.2 enclosure instead of a more conventional SSD. Would it even work as a long-term solution, and will I get full NVME performance, or is it a monumental waste of money for a marginal and slightly unstable speed boost?

 

Or am I just dumb for even considering this?

[Enderman]

What do you even need NVME for?

[TheSLSAMG]

For the extra cost, I don't think an NVMe drive would be worthwhile in this scenario. If all you need is reasonably quick storage expansion for stuff like games, photos and other files (as opposed to needing the space for something more intensive like processing a lot of high definition raw video files), getting a SATA SSD and putting it in the free internal slot is the smartest solution. You can pick up decent 1TB SSDs for $90-$110.

[Zeddeck]

7 minutes ago, Enderman said:

What do you even need NVME for?

Less of a need and more of an idea I wanted to bounce off some people with more building and technical experience.

Planning for what might become viable as Moore's law applies itself and SSDs become less and less relevant.

In general, I'm considering stuff that could help future-proof my setup.

[Enderman]

53 minutes ago, Zeddeck said:

Less of a need and more of an idea I wanted to bounce off some people with more building and technical experience.

Planning for what might become viable as Moore's law applies itself and SSDs become less and less relevant.

In general, I'm considering stuff that could help future-proof my setup.

Unless you do some soft of data analysis programming or a lot of video editing, buying NVME will make 0 difference to you.

Boot time, program launching, gaming, none of that is any faster with NVME.