Let's talk M.2

[eldergeek]

What do you think guys? Worth the investment? I've been looking at getting one to compliment my Asus Maximus VII Ranger, but remain overall unsure what kind of performance I'll see with it.

[Suffokation]

M.2's perform exactly like regular SSD's.

Get them when they are on sale and are cheaper than SSD's.

[Captain_WD]

What do you think guys? Worth the investment? I've been looking at getting one to compliment my Asus Maximus VII Ranger, but remain overall unsure what kind of performance I'll see with it.

 

Hey eldergeek,

 

M.2 should work just as any other SSD on a SATA port. As the guys pointed out, if you need a faster and better speed, you should either take a look into PCIe SSDs or RAID options that provide speed boost. 

M.2 is useful as it is designed for providing high-performance storage in thin,power-constrained devices. It saves energy and space, but other than that, it works pretty much like any regular SSD.

 

Captain_WD.

[eldergeek]

 

Hey eldergeek,

 

M.2 should work just as any other SSD on a SATA port. As the guys pointed out, if you need a faster and better speed, you should either take a look into PCIe SSDs or RAID options that provide speed boost. 

M.2 is useful as it is designed for providing high-performance storage in thin,power-constrained devices. It saves energy and space, but other than that, it works pretty much like any regular SSD.

 

Captain_WD.

 

 

I saw a video a while ago of a guy installing Windows 8.1 to an M.2 card in about 4 minutes, and thought "oh my effing god, I need that in my life" which was actually the impetus to upgrade to Z97. It's odd, because now I'm here, I'm looking at my pc and asking what else can be changed - I have no interest in silly little windows on cases, and always see the point of increasing storage in my daily driver for a multitude of reasons.

[xeromynd]

Well it depends, m.2 over SATA and PCIe are two different things, the latter being much faster.

[Captain_WD]

I saw a video a while ago of a guy installing Windows 8.1 to an M.2 card in about 4 minutes, and thought "oh my effing god, I need that in my life" which was actually the impetus to upgrade to Z97. It's odd, because now I'm here, I'm looking at my pc and asking what else can be changed - I have no interest in silly little windows on cases, and always see the point of increasing storage in my daily driver for a multitude of reasons.

 

As the guys pointed out, unless it is a PCIe M.2 or PCIe SSD, you shouldn't see any improvement over a regular SSD (hovering around 450MB/s-550MB/s). Some SSD manufacturers have software that enables the RAM to cache the SSD and thus reach tremendous speed results in the benchmarks and boot your system even faster, but the difference in real life is not that shocking. 

 

Captain_WD.