SSD upgrade time

[Scruffy90]

Time to upgrade my SSD's. Currently have a Sammy 840 pro 256gb in my desktop and an m.2 Toshiba 128gb ( already filled it up) in the laptop. Im considering a few options.

 

- Upgrade my desktop and put a higher capacity 850pro. Put my 840 pro into my laptop where the dvd drive currently resides

 

or

 

- Put a 512gb 950 pro in my laptop and figure out what to do with the second ssd

 

or

 

- throw a high capacity 850 evo where the dvd drive is

 

Thoughts on the best course of action?

[Mark77]

512gb M.2 drive?  Unless you are okay with giving up your DVD. 

[Scruffy90]

8 hours ago, Mark77 said:

512gb M.2 drive?  Unless you are okay with giving up your DVD. 

I'm ok with giving up my DVD drive. I dont think i've used a DVD drive in a good 4 or so years.

[doinurmop]

1 hour ago, Scruffy90 said:

I'm ok with giving up my DVD drive. I dont think i've used a DVD drive in a good 4 or so years.

You can always get a cheap usb one anyway

[done12many2]

15 hours ago, Scruffy90 said:

Time to upgrade my SSD's. Currently have a Sammy 840 pro 256gb in my desktop and an m.2 Toshiba 128gb ( already filled it up) in the laptop. Im considering a few options.

 

- Upgrade my desktop and put a higher capacity 850pro. Put my 840 pro into my laptop where the dvd drive currently resides

 

or

 

- Put a 512gb 950 pro in my laptop and figure out what to do with the second ssd

 

or

 

- throw a high capacity 850 evo where the dvd drive is

 

Thoughts on the best course of action?

I was just looking through the manual for your laptop and I think it's great that you have so many M.2 options.  Initially when you proposed the Samsung 950 Pro as an option for your laptop I thought you wouldn't be able to take full advantage of it's maximum sustained read/write speed due to M.2 generation limitations, but according to the manual your laptop can handle PCIe Gen 3 x2 and x4.  Very nice.

 

I am very biased towards the 512GB 950 Pro because they are unbelievably fast at sustained transfers, but the reality is that you will more than likely not use it in that capacity on your laptop unless you set up a RAID 0 with the additional slots.  It'll help your boot times a bit and load software a tad faster, but other than that, the most impressive part are those sustained transfers, which you really won't be able to take advantage of.

 

Between the three options you presented, I'd go with your first option.  Lose the optical drive and make better use of that slot.

[Scruffy90]

8 hours ago, doinurmop said:

You can always get a cheap usb one anyway

I have one already the laptop came with the drive.

 

7 hours ago, done12many2 said:

I was just looking through the manual for your laptop and I think it's great that you have so many M.2 options.  Initially when you proposed the Samsung 950 Pro as an option for your laptop I thought you wouldn't be able to take full advantage of it's maximum sustained read/write speed due to M.2 generation limitations, but according to the manual your laptop can handle PCIe Gen 3 x2 and x4.  Very nice.

 

I am very biased towards the 512GB 950 Pro because they are unbelievably fast at sustained transfers, but the reality is that you will more than likely not use it in that capacity on your laptop unless you set up a RAID 0 with the additional slots.  It'll help your boot times a bit and load software a tad faster, but other than that, the most impressive part are those sustained transfers, which you really won't be able to take advantage of.

 

Between the three options you presented, I'd go with your first option.  Lose the optical drive and make better use of that slot.

I was considering the 950 pro. Should be amazing to work with when editing on the go. If it weren't for the fact that sata ssd's are cheaper, I would've jumped the gun a long time ago.

 

My other thing is, what do I do with the spare ssd?

[Zerreth]

I got my 512GB 950 pro today to replace a RAID0 840 evo setup (3x). It's STUPID fast. I just extracted a 2GB 7zip archive in a second or so. At first I thought it was only partially extracted, but it's all there. It's crazy. I haven't installed premiere yet to test 4K video editing. If you got the money, go for it !

[done12many2]

1 minute ago, Zerreth said:

I got my 512GB 950 pro today to replace a RAID0 840 evo setup (3x). It's STUPID fast. I just extracted a 2GB 7zip archive in a second or so. It first I thought it was only partially extracted, but it's all there. It's crazy. I haven't installed premiere yet to test 4K video editing. If you got the money, go for it !

Stupid fast is very accurate! 

[Scruffy90]

The more I think about the 950 pro, the more I wished that I could put it on my desktop. To my understanding, in order to use it on my desktops mobo, id need to modify the mobo's bios to have it support NVME.

 

Sigh  . . . lol

[Zerreth]

8 minutes ago, Scruffy90 said:

The more I think about the 950 pro, the more I wished that I could put it on my desktop. To my understanding, in order to use it on my desktops mobo, id need to modify the mobo's bios to have it support NVME.

 

Sigh  . . . lol

That's what I thought too with my Maximus VI gene (Z87) never getting an update to support it.
So I went through the bios mod process and had it ready to flash. I used an Asus Hyper x4 mini kit to connect it to PCIe3, and it just showed up as a selectable boot device (windows boot manager). I didn't need to mod anything. Mind you, my system is fully UEFI, GPT & fast boot configured

[Scruffy90]

1 hour ago, Zerreth said:

That's what I thought too with my Maximus VI gene (Z87) never getting an update to support it.
So I went through the bios mod process and had it ready to flash. I used an Asus Hyper x4 mini kit to connect it to PCIe3, and it just showed up as a selective boot device (windows boot manager). I didn't need to mod anything. Mind you, my system is fully UEFI, GPT & fast boot configured

Full speeds or near full speeds?

[Zerreth]

In the PCIe x4 slot (gen 2) I was getting 1.5GB/s read and write. ( initially thought it was gen3, but it obviously wasn't going full speed, the manual confirmed it )
In the PCIe x16 slot(gen 3) it's full speed. (4x card tho)

Note that the lower IOPS on the Samsung bench is because of single threading limit, that's why the CrystalDiskmark + Calculator is there to show it's above the rated value.

[Scruffy90]

1 hour ago, Zerreth said:

In the PCIe x4 slot (gen 2) I was getting 1.5GB/s read and write. ( initially thought it was gen3, but it obviously wasn't going full speed, the manual confirmed it )
In the PCIe x16 slot(gen 3) it's full speed. (4x card tho)

Note that the lower IOPS on the Samsung bench is because of single threading limit, that's why the CrystalDiskmark + Calculator is there to show it's above the rated value.

Interesting. I dont know what the pci-e slots on my mobo are (would haive to check), but the m.2 ssd's would be inserted into the pcie slot?

[Zerreth]

1 minute ago, Scruffy90 said:

Interesting. I dont know what the pci-e slots on my mobo are (would haive to check), but the m.2 ssd's would be inserted into the pcie slot?

Yup via this: https://www.asus.com/Motherboard-Accessories/HYPER_M2_X4_MINI_CARD/
The M.2 slot on my Mobo is like Gen2 x2 or so, completely worthless (way slower than Sata3 6Gb) but it was one of the first motherboards to have an M.2 slot.

[Scruffy90]

1 hour ago, Zerreth said:

Yup via this: https://www.asus.com/Motherboard-Accessories/HYPER_M2_X4_MINI_CARD/
The M.2 slot on my Mobo is like Gen2 x2 or so, completely worthless (way slower than Sata3 6Gb) but it was one of the first motherboards to have an M.2 slot.

Thats good to know. Going to give it a shot since my mobo has an mSata slot and not a m.2 slot. Wonder if itll cause an issue. My damned Mobo manual doesnt specify if the slots are PCI-e gen 3 or 2.