Intel 660p boot drive?

[ScandianViking]

Hi there!

So kinda a noob question I guess? I recently received a present from a close friend of mine, as it was my birthday recently. 

He heard I'm building a new system and dumped a Intel 660p 512gb on me. Now I already got a SX8200 pro 1TB for my games and I'm not sure what to use this one for? I realised I might be able to save some money if I used that as my boot drive instead of investing in a 500gb MX500.

 

However I've been looking online for advice and it seems a lot of people find this to be a bad M.2 nvme ssd? 

 

So I want to ask you guys, does anyone know how well it will work as a boot drive? I read that it gets slow if used too long. If you fill it up too much. However I'm just planning on using it for my OS (Windows 10 pro) and my browser (Firefox) I have the 1TB m.2 from Adata as mentioned before and a 2TB Samsung 860 Evo. And potentially a old 2TB 7200rpm HDD from Seagate I'll be pulling from my old system. So this will be JUST a boot drive.

 

What is your opinion? 660P 512gb or just buy a mx500 250gb or Samsung 860 Evo 250gb and use this m.2 for something else?

 

Thanks a lot in advance~

[SSOB]

Just now, ScandianViking said:

Hi there!

So kinda a noob question I guess? I recently received a present from a close friend of mine, as it was my birthday recently. 

He heard I'm building a new system and dumped a Intel 660p 512gb on me. Now I already got a SX8200 pro 1TB for my system and I'm not sure what to use this one for? I realised I might be able to save some money if I used that as my boot drive instead of investing in a 500gb MX500.

 

However I've been looking online for advice and it seems a lot of people find this to be a bad M.2 nvme ssd? 

 

So I want to ask you guys, does anyone know how well it will work as a boot drive? I read that it gets slow if used too long. If you fill it up too much. However I'm just planning on using it for my OS (Windows 10 pro) and my browser (Firefox) I have the 1TB m.2 from Adata as mentioned before and a 2TB Samsung 860 Evo. And potentially a old 2TB 7200rpm HDD from Seagate I'll be pulling from my old system. So this will be JUST a boot drive.

 

What is your opinion? 660P 512gb or just buy a mx500 250gb or Samsung 860 Evo 250gb and use this m.2 for something else?

 

Thanks a lot in advance~

If you can get a 970 evo plus, a bit more expensive but super fast

[ScandianViking]

Thing is I don't want to overspend on my boot drive. I only boot my system once per day so I'm not looking for a alternative. I got this ssd for free and want to know what people think about it. How does it fair as a boot device. Is it fast, reliable for that task or am I better of just dumping it in my laptop?

[Stahlmann]

You will not notice the difference between a generic SATA SSD and the highest-end NVME SSDs in everyday use. As long as you dont transfer huge amounts of data every day, every SSD will be fine.

[Stahlmann]

1 minute ago, ScandianViking said:

Thing is I don't want to overspend on my boot drive. I only boot my system once per day so I'm not looking for a alternative. I got this ssd for free and want to know what people think about it. How does it fair as a boot device. Is it fast, reliable for that task or am I better of just dumping it in my laptop?

This drive is perfectly fine. On the market it is one of the lowest performance NVME drives but also one of the cheapest and still performing heaps better than even the best SATA SSDs. But like i said, for your user experience it won't change much if you use a low-end or high-end NVME SSD as long as you don't transfer a lot of data.

[ScandianViking]

3 minutes ago, Stahlmann98 said:

This drive is perfectly fine. On the market it is one of the lowest performance NVME drives but also one of the cheapest and still performing heaps better than even the best SATA SSDs. But like i said, for your user experience it won't change much if you use a low-end or high-end NVME SSD as long as you don't transfer a lot of data.

So I won't see much in the way of a faster boot, which honestly I don't mind. Been using a A400 sata 3 ssd as a boot device for years. However now that he has given this drive to me, I got curious. People does seem to hate on it pretty bad. Even that it won't live very long with the write tolerance, however I don't imagine that just having a OS and browser installed on it will do much in the way of writes thanks for the advice. Think I'll just save some money on the build and use it as a boot drive

[GER_T4IGA]

22 minutes ago, SSOB said:

If you can get a 970 evo plus, a bit more expensive but super fast

Depending on where you are from Samsung is completely overpriced. In germany you pay PCIe Gen4 prices for Gen3 devices. Performance is undoubtedly top notch but the prices are outright insulting. When I can ge t a 2TB drive with average performance for an NVMe for less than a 1TB Evo I'd reather get that. I don't really understand why people still recommend them - have you not looked at price/performance in the last 3 years?

[GER_T4IGA]

19 minutes ago, Stahlmann98 said:

This drive is perfectly fine. On the market it is one of the lowest performance NVME drives but also one of the cheapest and still performing heaps better than even the best SATA SSDs. But like i said, for your user experience it won't change much if you use a low-end or high-end NVME SSD as long as you don't transfer a lot of data.

Although I agree with everyhting you said, I'd still not use it as my boot drive if I have faster stuff at hand. Most programs you end up installing will go on it and some do actually benefit from a faster drive.

[ScandianViking]

Just now, GER_T4IGA said:

Although I agree with everyhting you said, I'd still not use it as my boot drive if I have faster stuff at hand. Most programs you end up installing will go on it and some do actually benefit from a faster drive.

True, however my other m.2 I'd rather spend on my game library than on my OS. My thing is either I buy a new MX500 250gb (fair priced here in Taiwan) or I use this. If not I'll most likely use it for my OBS, some games and maybe programs like CCleaner. however I fear that might be a lot of writing which will in turn make it last a shorter time.

[Stahlmann]

16 minutes ago, ScandianViking said:

So I won't see much in the way of a faster boot, which honestly I don't mind. Been using a A400 sata 3 ssd as a boot device for years. However now that he has given this drive to me, I got curious. People does seem to hate on it pretty bad. Even that it won't live very long with the write tolerance, however I don't imagine that just having a OS and browser installed on it will do much in the way of writes thanks for the advice. Think I'll just save some money on the build and use it as a boot drive

If you're only using it for that, it will last longer than you will probably need it. The 1TB model actually has a rated edurance of 200TBW.

[Stahlmann]

3 minutes ago, GER_T4IGA said:

Although I agree with everyhting you said, I'd still not use it as my boot drive if I have faster stuff at hand. Most programs you end up installing will go on it and some do actually benefit from a faster drive.

I agree most people -myself included- would probably grab at least a TLC drive for a few $ more. But if it's at a good price or for free i see no problem with the 660p.

[ScandianViking]

2 minutes ago, Stahlmann98 said:

I agree most people -myself included- would probably grab at least a TLC drive for a few $ more. But if it's at a good price or for free i see no problem with the 660p.

Yeah in my case atleast it's free.

I would have gone with a 860 Evo as it is plenty snappy for my needs. However I'm kinda at the "why spend money when I have this" debate with myself

[Stahlmann]

2 minutes ago, ScandianViking said:

Yeah in my case atleast it's free.

I would have gone with a 860 Evo as it is plenty snappy for my needs. However I'm kinda at the "why spend money when I have this" debate with myself

I don't have a single NVME drive in my own system as i bought all my SSDs before NVME really was a consumer thing. Until now i never felt like i needed the faster transfer speeds. 90% of the time i use my pc for gaming with big open-world games and the loading times are already so quick that i don't care if i wait 5 seconds with a SATA SSD or 4 seconds with NVME. And when i move big games with 100+ GB i don't mind waiting 30 seconds more. Just keep in mind: 4 times higher read/write speed doesn't translate to 4 times better performance in most uses.

[ScandianViking]

5 minutes ago, Stahlmann98 said:

I don't have a single NVME drive in my own system as i bought all my SSDs before NVME really was a consumer thing. Until now i never felt like i needed the faster transfer speeds. 90% of the time i use my pc for gaming with big open-world games and the loading times are already so quick that i don't care if i wait 5 seconds with a SATA SSD or 4 seconds with NVME. And when i move big games with 100+ GB i don't mind waiting 30 seconds more. Just keep in mind: 4 times higher read/write speed doesn't translate to 4 times better performance in most uses.

Yeah im aware.

My 1TB SX8200 pro is bought to limit cables and because I got a killer deal on it.

Besides that I've been a lover of the MX500 SSD's and used them In all builds I've done for friends. It's only now that I've been given the 660p that I'm looking at it thinking if it's worth using my 2nd m.2 slot for a boot device, use it for my OBS for my stream and maybe a program or two. Or plug it in my laptop  

Prior to getting it I was going to buy either a MX500 or 860 Evo. Both being Sata 3 none m.2.

 

I'm just here to see what people think, as I've never used a m.2 as a boot drive, since (just like you said) it has never been a option or a need really.