Why are Nvme SSD's suddenly cheaper/ the same price as SATA? Did I miss something?

[cummerou1]

So I've been putting my new build together and I was looking at SSD's, I already have two 750GB ones, but they are not enough, and my 3TB HDD is not amazing speed wise. 

Anyway, I obviously veered towards SATA SSD's but because my new board has two m.2 slots, I figured I'd take a look just to see what the pricing was like.

Now, I know that obviously Nvme SSD's were significantly more expensive 4-5 years ago when I was building my last build (I think it was something like double the price per GB compared to SATA) because they were a new technology, few boards (compared to now) supported it, so sales were low and therefore production was low. But I looked at the pricing and I did not expect them to cost either the same (the exact same model for SATA vs Nvme for WD blue costs the same) or in some cases less (not looking at specific manufacturer SATA vs Nvme models, but cheapest Nvme vs cheapest SSD). 

 

Considering how much longer regular SSD's have been available, how many more you can actually have (most boards ship with 6 sata ports, I haven't seen any ship with less than 4), and how much smaller Nvme drives are, I figured at the very minimum they would be somewhat more expensive than regular SATA. 

I've obviously been out of the storage game for a while (4 years in tech might as well be a couple decades in other industries), but I was wondering if anyone knew why the prices have decreased to the point that both forms of storage are pretty much identical pricewise? 

[minibois]

There is more that goes into an SSD, other than it's inteface (SATA vs. NVME/PCIE).

You need to consider memory type (typically TLC or QLC) and whether or not the SSD has DRAM too.

 

For example, a QLC NVME drive will be better than a SATA TLC (with DRAM) drive at first, but once your start filling up the drive more, a QLC NVME drive will slow down, at some point being slower than said SATA drive.

[Mesecello]

the nvme ssd are now not so much new technology and the price of the cips have come down in price 

 

For your 3Tb hdd u can use an m.2 ssd as a chash for raid 1 to make it faster

[cummerou1]

1 minute ago, minibois said:

There is more that goes into an SSD, other than it's inteface (SATA vs. NVME/PCIE).

You need to consider memory type (typically TLC or QLC) and whether or not the SSD has DRAM too.

 

For example, a QLC NVME drive will be better than a SATA TLC (with DRAM) drive at first, but once your start filling up the drive more, a QLC NVME drive will slow down, at some point being slower than said SATA drive.

Ahh, fair, I thought the nature of the NVME drive (being plugged into the MOBO) would pretty much guarantee quicker speed due to the data having to travel much less speed. Interesting.

[cummerou1]

Just now, Mesecello said:

the nvme ssd are now not so much new technology and the price of the cips have come down in price 

 

For your 3Tb hdd u can use an m.2 ssd as a chash for raid 1 to make it faster

That's really cool, do you have any links for that please?

[Mesecello]

 

[cummerou1]

1 minute ago, Mesecello said:

 

Thank you, will definitely check it out!

[minibois]

6 minutes ago, cummerou1 said:

Ahh, fair, I thought the nature of the NVME drive (being plugged into the MOBO) would pretty much guarantee quicker speed due to the data having to travel much less speed. Interesting.

M.2 drives come in two varieties.

M.2 PCIE/NVME

but there is also M.2 SATA.

M.2 SATA are basically the same as 2.5" SATA drives in terms of speeds, etc. (keeping in mind individual differences like QLC, TLC, etc.).

 

An example of this would for example be Samsung's SSD lineup.

860 EVO: SATA, but comes in 2,5" and M.2, with the same speeds/durability/etc., one just plugs into your motherboard directly, while the other comes in a casing, as a 2.5" drive. 

970 EVO: NVME/PCIE in an M.2 package.

 

Both TLC.

 

Samsung also has a QLC drive, the 2.5" SATA 860 QVO. This drive will be much slower once your start to fill it up more.

 

The reason why QLC/TLC is so important is because it is about how the data is stored in SSD's.

Simply put, an SSD has NAND flash memory. This memory cells can hold voltage, from 0 to 1 volt.

The way computers work, is they work with bits. 1's and 0's. So simply put, 1 volt in a cell means 1 in binary. 0 volt = a 0. This is SLC, single layer cells.

Of course if we now introduce a couple more voltage readout points, like 0 volt, 0.33v, 0.66v and 1v, we now have 4 possible states of memory. Effectively 4x the space, in the same cell. This is MLC memory.

 

We are now at TLC and QLC. Triple and quadruple layer memory. TLC stores 8 distinct voltage values, QLC stores 16.

QLC memory is slower, because the controller has to take more time to see "okay, how much voltage is this exactly", because if it gets it wrong, your program crashes, or your save file is corrupted. This is why TLC memory is faster.

Many QLC drives use "SLC caching", which is treating some cells as SLC memory (the 0v = 0, 1v = 1 thing from before), which is much much faster. At some point there isn't enough space on the drive to do this anymore, which is why the drive becomes slower.

 

This video will do well in explaining some concepts in SSD's:

 

If you want to read up more on these subjects, you should try to read up on cell levels (TLC, QLC, etc.), how RAM works in SSD's and maybe a bit on a what controllers in an SSD do.

If anything was unclear, please do ask.

[cummerou1]

17 minutes ago, minibois said:

M.2 drives come in two varieties.

M.2 PCIE/NVME

but there is also M.2 SATA.

M.2 SATA are basically the same as 2.5" SATA drives in terms of speeds, etc. (keeping in mind individual differences like QLC, TLC, etc.).

 

An example of this would for example be Samsung's SSD lineup.

860 EVO: SATA, but comes in 2,5" and M.2, with the same speeds/durability/etc., one just plugs into your motherboard directly, while the other comes in a casing, as a 2.5" drive. 

970 EVO: NVME/PCIE in an M.2 package.

 

Both TLC.

 

Samsung also has a QLC drive, the 2.5" SATA 860 QVO. This drive will be much slower once your start to fill it up more.

 

The reason why QLC/TLC is so important is because it is about how the data is stored in SSD's.

Simply put, an SSD has NAND flash memory. This memory cells can hold voltage, from 0 to 1 volt.

The way computers work, is they work with bits. 1's and 0's. So simply put, 1 volt in a cell means 1 in binary. 0 volt = a 0. This is SLC, single layer cells.

Of course if we now introduce a couple more voltage readout points, like 0 volt, 0.33v, 0.66v and 1v, we now have 4 possible states of memory. Effectively 4x the space, in the same cell. This is MLC memory.

 

We are now at TLC and QLC. Triple and quadruple layer memory. TLC stores 8 distinct voltage values, QLC stores 16.

QLC memory is slower, because the controller has to take more time to see "okay, how much voltage is this exactly", because if it gets it wrong, your program crashes, or your save file is corrupted. This is why TLC memory is faster.

Many QLC drives use "SLC caching", which is treating some cells as SLC memory (the 0v = 0, 1v = 1 thing from before), which is much much faster. At some point there isn't enough space on the drive to do this anymore, which is why the drive becomes slower.

 

This video will do well in explaining some concepts in SSD's:

 

If you want to read up more on these subjects, you should try to read up on cell levels (TLC, QLC, etc.), how RAM works in SSD's and maybe a bit on a what controllers in an SSD do.

If anything was unclear, please do ask.

 

 

That's super interesting, thank you, I didn't know that m.2 also had a SATA version, I thought it was NVME/PCIe exclusively.

A quick question if I may, I know there are PCIe specific SSD's, but if something is an NVME drive, does that also mean you can plug it into the PCIe as well, or is it dependant?

 

I also asked my original question because I found some 1TB NVME SSD's for 80 pounds (new), the same price as the cheapest SATA SSD I could find, but the manufacturer advertised speeds up to 3400MB/s, so obviously much quicker than SATA SSD's. Other NVME drives that are also super fast seemed to be around the 100 pounds, the same price as most 1TB SATA SSD's. Just seemed crazy to me that a newer technology, which is smaller, and much faster, and was much more expensive just 4 years ago is suddenly the same price or cheaper than SSD's. I mean, why even choose SATA at that point? Same storage amount but much slower (unless you have run out of m.2 slots and are forced to use SATA).

[minibois]

2 minutes ago, cummerou1 said:

A quick question if I may, I know there are PCIe specific SSD's, but if something is an NVME drive, does that also mean you can plug it into the PCIe as well, or is it dependant?

NVME and PCIE mean the same thing, in context of M.2 SSD's.

They aren't the same thing, but if you see "M.2 NVME" and "M.2 PCIE', they mean the same thing.

3 minutes ago, cummerou1 said:

I also asked my original question because I found some 1TB NVME SSD's for 80 pounds (new), the same price as the cheapest SATA SSD I could find, but the manufacturer advertised speeds up to 3400MB/s, so obviously much quicker than SATA SSD's. Other NVME drives that are also super fast seemed to be around the 100 pounds, the same price as most 1TB SATA SSD's. Just seemed crazy to me that a newer technology, which is smaller, and much faster, and was much more expensive just 4 years ago is suddenly the same price or cheaper than SSD's. I mean, why even choose SATA at that point? Same storage amount but much slower (unless you have run out of m.2 slots and are forced to use SATA).

What is the specific M.2 NVME drive you're talking about? That makes it a bit easier to answer your question.

[cummerou1]

5 minutes ago, minibois said:

NVME and PCIE mean the same thing, in context of M.2 SSD's.

They aren't the same thing, but if you see "M.2 NVME" and "M.2 PCIE', they mean the same thing.

What is the specific M.2 NVME drive you're talking about? That makes it a bit easier to answer your question.

 

The specific one I found was the "Pioneer 1TB APS-SE20Q"

Advertises 3400MB/s read, and 2000MB/s write, seems crazy to me that it's over 6 times faster read and almost 4 times faster write for the same price as a SATA. But I also meant it as a general trend, when I just google "NVME SSD" they are close to the same price as the SATA SSD's

[minibois]

1 minute ago, cummerou1 said:

The specific one I found was the "Pioneer 1TB APS-SE20Q"
Advertises 3400MB/s read, and 2000MB/s write

This is a QLC SSD, which features an SLC cache (similarly to the 660p, which is what Linus' video is about. That video goes in some more detail about this).

At some point, there is not enough room on the drive to have a lot of SLC cache, which means it will have to rely on its QLC memory, which is a lot slower.

 

Compared to certain other drives, the endurance is this drive is not too high too.

Endurance with SSD's is counted in terabytes of data written to the SSD, until the cells don't work properly anymore.

This Pioneer drive on the 1TB model can have 100TB written to it.

 

This won't be an issue to everyone, but I know plenty of use cases that would not work well on this drive.

To contrast the 100TB TBW of the Pioneer drive, the SATA (M.2 & 2.5") Samsung 860 EVO has an endurance of 600TB (on its 1TB model).

While the Samsung 860 EVO may be slower than the Pioneer (when the drive is empty), the Samsung has a much higher endurance. Certain workloads like video editing (caching) can make enormous files, which the Pioneer's endurance might just not be fit for.

 

That's the thing, these speeds tests are ran in most optimal condition and only show one specific sort of metric. The speed in the best case.

The speed with an empty drive may just not be realistic and the endurance could be a lot more important.

 

Why is this specific M.2 PCIE cheaper than some SATA options?

- QLC memory, meaning lower endurance and lower speeds when filled up.

 

Why would people still buy SATA drives?

- The speed may not be the most important thing (500MB/s is still plenty fast for a lot of use-cases)

[cummerou1]

3 minutes ago, minibois said:

This is a QLC SSD, which features an SLC cache (similarly to the 660p, which is what Linus' video is about. That video goes in some more detail about this).

At some point, there is not enough room on the drive to have a lot of SLC cache, which means it will have to rely on its QLC memory, which is a lot slower.

 

Compared to certain other drives, the endurance is this drive is not too high too.

Endurance with SSD's is counted in terabytes of data written to the SSD, until the cells don't work properly anymore.

This Pioneer drive on the 1TB model can have 100TB written to it.

 

This won't be an issue to everyone, but I know plenty of use cases that would not work well on this drive.

To contrast the 100TB TBW of the Pioneer drive, the SATA (M.2 & 2.5") Samsung 860 EVO has an endurance of 600TB (on its 1TB model).

While the Samsung 860 EVO may be slower than the Pioneer (when the drive is empty), the Samsung has a much higher endurance. Certain workloads like video editing (caching) can make enormous files, which the Pioneer's endurance might just not be fit for.

 

That's the thing, these speeds tests are ran in most optimal condition and only show one specific sort of metric. The speed in the best case.

The speed with an empty drive may just not be realistic and the endurance could be a lot more important.

 

Why is this specific M.2 PCIE cheaper than some SATA options?

- QLC memory, meaning lower endurance and lower speeds when filled up.

 

Why would people still buy SATA drives?

- The speed may not be the most important thing (500MB/s is still plenty fast for a lot of use-cases)

Very interesting, thank you very much

[cummerou1]

24 minutes ago, minibois said:

This is a QLC SSD, which features an SLC cache (similarly to the 660p, which is what Linus' video is about. That video goes in some more detail about this).

At some point, there is not enough room on the drive to have a lot of SLC cache, which means it will have to rely on its QLC memory, which is a lot slower.

 

Compared to certain other drives, the endurance is this drive is not too high too.

Endurance with SSD's is counted in terabytes of data written to the SSD, until the cells don't work properly anymore.

This Pioneer drive on the 1TB model can have 100TB written to it.

 

This won't be an issue to everyone, but I know plenty of use cases that would not work well on this drive.

To contrast the 100TB TBW of the Pioneer drive, the SATA (M.2 & 2.5") Samsung 860 EVO has an endurance of 600TB (on its 1TB model).

While the Samsung 860 EVO may be slower than the Pioneer (when the drive is empty), the Samsung has a much higher endurance. Certain workloads like video editing (caching) can make enormous files, which the Pioneer's endurance might just not be fit for.

 

That's the thing, these speeds tests are ran in most optimal condition and only show one specific sort of metric. The speed in the best case.

The speed with an empty drive may just not be realistic and the endurance could be a lot more important.

 

Why is this specific M.2 PCIE cheaper than some SATA options?

- QLC memory, meaning lower endurance and lower speeds when filled up.

 

Why would people still buy SATA drives?

- The speed may not be the most important thing (500MB/s is still plenty fast for a lot of use-cases)

 

I tried googling around but couldn't really find what I was looking for, in the video with Linus performance dropped heavily when it reached the 50% mark, but from what I understood that was due to all the cache getting full. I know regular TLC SSD's usually suffer performance wise when you fill them up above 80%, but I was wondering if I wanted an SSD to store games on, how much I could reasonably fill it up and keep it at at least SATA SSD speeds.

[minibois]

21 minutes ago, cummerou1 said:

I tried googling around but couldn't really find what I was looking for, in the video with Linus performance dropped heavily when it reached the 50% mark, but from what I understood that was due to all the cache getting full. Would the vastly decreased performance still be the case for a QLC drive if it was filled up above 50% over time? I know regular TLC SSD's usually suffer performance wise when you fill them up above 80%, but I was wondering if I wanted an SSD to store games on, how much I could reasonably fill it up and keep it at at least SATA SSD speeds.

It's not nescecarily the case that the cache is "full", it's more that there is not enough space to be able to have any cache at all.

 

The SSD is QLC. It can save 16 independent voltage levels per cell. It just chooses to one use 2 independent voltage levels (SLC) on some of its cells, that is its cache.

Once you start filling up the drive, you encroach on the cells that are used for only two levels, meaning the SSD has to say "alright, there is no room for this very fast SLC memory, time to use all my cells as QLC".

 

That is what this chart refers to:

Once you use more than 75% of the drive, the amount of cells leftover to use as SLC cache is much lower, to a point where the drive has to rely on its cells as QLC, which is a lot slower.

 

This chart above is only accurate for the Intel 660p. The Pioneer drive does something similar, but I can't be sure how much GB of cache there will be, depending on the free space.

 

How much SLC cache you need, depends a lot on what your store on it.

For example, Word documents are so small, they will still fit in 12GB of SLC cache (the lowest amount of available cache as seen in the chart for the 660p), but something like a video can definitely exceed that 12GB.

[p51mustang23]

2.5" SATA drives arent actually bigger than m.2.  If you take the shell off a 2.5" drive, it's basically the same memory modules.  It's mostly empty space on the inside.

The m.2's just have better controllers, caches, sometimes newer memory types.  

[cummerou1]

2 minutes ago, p51mustang23 said:

2.5" SATA drives arent actually bigger than m.2.  If you take the shell off a 2.5" drive, it's basically the same memory modules.  It's mostly empty space on the inside.

The m.2's just have better controllers, caches, sometimes newer memory types.  

Oh really? Learn something new every day

[cummerou1]

26 minutes ago, minibois said:

It's not nescecarily the case that the cache is "full", it's more that there is not enough space to be able to have any cache at all.

 

The SSD is QLC. It can save 16 independent voltage levels per cell. It just chooses to one use 2 independent voltage levels (SLC) on some of its cells, that is its cache.

Once you start filling up the drive, you encroach on the cells that are used for only two levels, meaning the SSD has to say "alright, there is no room for this very fast SLC memory, time to use all my cells as QLC".

 

That is what this chart refers to:

Once you use more than 75% of the drive, the amount of cells leftover to use as SLC cache is much lower, to a point where the drive has to rely on its cells as QLC, which is a lot slower.

 

This chart above is only accurate for the Intel 660p. The Pioneer drive does something similar, but I can't be sure how much GB of cache there will be, depending on the free space.

 

How much SLC cache you need, depends a lot on what your store on it.

For example, Word documents are so small, they will still fit in 12GB of SLC cache (the lowest amount of available cache as seen in the chart for the 660p), but something like a video can definitely exceed that 12GB.

Okay, that makes sense, I understand regular file transfer is very linear (2GB of music and 2GB of photos are transferred at the same speed). I use my machine exclusively for videogames, so I would be putting the AAA RPG games and such which benefit from SSD speed for faster loading times on the NVME. 

 

Where my confusion sets in is that from what I can understand, playing a videogame works a lot differently than a regular file transfer, since when it's loading an area, it's loading a bunch of different files from a bunch of different folders, while leaving many untouched. More of grabbing a bit here and there instead of all of it. 

 

So I was wondering if you'd be able to tell me when I would be likely (approximately) to see an actual significant hit to loading performance for a game? 

[p51mustang23]

1 minute ago, cummerou1 said:

Oh really? Learn something new every day

Yep.  

Although in theory, you could still make a higher capacity SATA ssd by just jamming it full of tons of memory modules on one PCB.   

[cummerou1]

2 minutes ago, p51mustang23 said:

Yep.  

Although in theory, you could still make a higher capacity SATA ssd by just jamming it full of tons of memory modules on one PCB.   

16TB SSD here we come! Lol

[p51mustang23]

29 minutes ago, minibois said:

It's not nescecarily the case that the cache is "full", it's more that there is not enough space to be able to have any cache at all.

 

The SSD is QLC. It can save 16 independent voltage levels per cell. It just chooses to one use 2 independent voltage levels (SLC) on some of its cells, that is its cache.

Once you start filling up the drive, you encroach on the cells that are used for only two levels, meaning the SSD has to say "alright, there is no room for this very fast SLC memory, time to use all my cells as QLC".

 

That is what this chart refers to:

Once you use more than 75% of the drive, the amount of cells leftover to use as SLC cache is much lower, to a point where the drive has to rely on its cells as QLC, which is a lot slower.

 

This chart above is only accurate for the Intel 660p. The Pioneer drive does something similar, but I can't be sure how much GB of cache there will be, depending on the free space.

 

How much SLC cache you need, depends a lot on what your store on it.

For example, Word documents are so small, they will still fit in 12GB of SLC cache (the lowest amount of available cache as seen in the chart for the 660p), but something like a video can definitely exceed that 12GB.

That's absolutely fascinating when you put it so clearly.  Thanks!

[p51mustang23]

1 minute ago, cummerou1 said:

16TB SSD here we come! Lol

I think they exist

I think 100tb models exist, although the pricing is nonsensical compared to just putting smaller drives in a RAID. 

[cummerou1]

Just now, p51mustang23 said:

I think they exist

I think 100tb models exist, although the pricing is nonsensical compared to just putting smaller drives in a RAID. 

Jesus, yeah, makes sense though, developing a design and the super low production volumes they're gonna have means that they kinda have to be much more expensive per GB to recoup costs. 

 

Not like they're gonna sell a million of them

[minibois]

35 minutes ago, cummerou1 said:

Where my confusion sets in is that from what I can understand, playing a videogame works a lot differently than a regular file transfer, since when it's loading an area, it's loading a bunch of different files from a bunch of different folders, while leaving many untouched. More of grabbing a bit here and there instead of all of it. 

 

So I was wondering if you'd be able to tell me when I would be likely (approximately) to see an actual significant hit to loading performance for a game? 

In many games you won't see much of a difference between a good SATA and a good M.2 PCIE drive:

So I'd say as long as you're sort of below 75% usage on a QLC drive, you'd be okay.

But of course I can't speak for the future, where new tech might be able to better use fast drives.

33 minutes ago, p51mustang23 said:

That's absolutely fascinating when you put it so clearly.  Thanks!

Thanks for the kind words!

SSD tech is so complicated, especially with all the new stuff coming out all the time and with the different use cases everyone has.

[p51mustang23]

1 minute ago, minibois said:

In many games you won't see much of a difference between a good SATA and a good M.2 PCIE drive:

So I'd say as long as you're sort of below 75% usage on a QLC drive, you'd be okay.

But of course I can't speak for the future, where new tech might be able to better use fast drives.

Thanks for the kind words!

SSD tech is so complicated, especially with all the new stuff coming out all the time and with the different use cases everyone has.

I'd agree.  The data is out there, and switching from SATA to NVMe might lower your load screens on games from 12.5 seconds to 11.2 seconds, at BEST.  But Hard disks have a 30 second load for the same thing.

Some people have pointed out that the new consoles FINALLY have SSD's instead of HDD's, and that could mean developers start taking advantage of the tech and making use of it.  But if they do, it will still be a couple years as the new console gen settles in, and it's hard to believe SATA drives will just turn into useless clunkers in 2 years.