M.2 giving me an aneurism.

[Commodore Sim]

Hiya LTT folks.

 

I'm in the reaserch phase of building a gaming PC.  My old PC is a laptop, so this is a clean slate build no legacy hardware to account for.

 

I know that having a good SSD is crucial for performance. And I know that there are generally three ways of connecting an SSD.

 

PCI, SATA, and M.2.

 

I also know that SATA is the cheapest and slowest option running at around 500 per second. And PCI blows SATA away with like 4x the speed.  But PCI is expensive.

 

I've also been told that with i5 chips there are 4 channels reserved for PCI SSD.

 

And then there is this M.2 thing.  Which when I go to look at prices on SSD are all over the place and speeds are all over the place and some say SATA M.2 and others PCI M.2.  My brain hurts.

 

Can anyone please sort me out?

[porina]

For practical purposes there are two main types of M.2 SSDs: SATA and NVMe. In short, SATA ones perform like SATA 2.5" drives. NVMe ones connect over 4 lanes of PCIe bus, and can be like the PCIe ones. If you want performance, get a good NVMe one. If you want capacity, SATA in either form factor will likely work out cheaper per capacity.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

5 minutes ago, Commodore Sim said:

Hiya LTT folks.

 

I'm in the reaserch phase of building a gaming PC.  My old PC is a laptop, so this is a clean slate build no legacy hardware to account for.

 

I know that having a good SSD is crucial for performance. And I know that there are generally three ways of connecting an SSD.

 

Actually, having some SSD is crucial for performance. A particularly fast one is just the cherry on top.

 

6 minutes ago, Commodore Sim said:

 

PCI, SATA, and M.2.

 

I also know that SATA is the cheapest and slowest option running at around 500 per second. And PCI blows SATA away with like 4x the speed.  But PCI is expensive.

 

I've also been told that with i5 chips there are 4 channels reserved for PCI SSD.

 

And then there is this M.2 thing.  Which when I go to look at prices on SSD are all over the place and speeds are all over the place and some say SATA M.2 and others PCI M.2.  My brain hurts.

 

Can anyone please sort me out?

There are really two options: SATA or PCIe. M.2 is a connector that can host drives of both types. That is, when looking at M.2 format SSDs, you have to check whether it is SATA or PCIe, and it will run at the speed of the corresponding type. Within PCIe SSDs, there are PCIe 2.0, 3.0, and in each case x2 or x4, but which one is faster is intuitive  

 

So, you can have SATA speeds with 2.5'' drives or M.2 SATA drives, or you can have some form of PCIe speed by using M.2 PCIe drives, or SSDs with PCIe connector (usually M.2 to PCIe adapters with an M.2 PCIe on them).

[Commodore Sim]

Ok so M.2 makes sense on the PCI side for connector reasons.  But aren't most motherboards equipped with like 4 SATA connectors. What purpose does a m.2 SATA connector serve?

[Guest]

M.2 for laptops is usually a pretty good idea. It's extremely fast, and they tend to be extremely small, so they fit nice in mobile situations to make room for other things. 2.5 inch drives are still relevant, but if I had to choose, I'd go with M.2. 

[Gonio]

Allowing a higher speed. But make sure that the mobo supports it including NVME. Also allthough much faster, it really depends on the drive you choose if you get good performance. Is still pretty new so the theoretical speed is not yet achieved, so check benchmarks.

 

And another thing to consider is if you run loads that can make use of that performance, otherwise you won't notice much difference in daily normal use. For most users I say no and in this case for you I also don't think so.

 

You might go with a decent sata SSD now and save you the money until they become more mainstream and cheaper. Samsung SSD's are great. 750 series is a good budget SSD with performance that slightly lags behind the 850 series. But both are good performers. No need to go for a pro, that performance is similar idea as mentioned earlier and you probably won't notice. But the long waranty is nice though, one of the main reasons why I have it.

[mariushm]

m.2 allows a SSD with a controller to connect to the system using sata or pci-e lanes.

 

The m.2 connector can be using pci-e v2.0 lanes or pci-e v3.0 lanes and also a motherboard could use only two lanes, or four lanes. Also, some SSD controllers (typically used in lower end like 128..240 GB drives) may only be able to work with 2 lanes, even if the m.2 connector has four lanes in it.  Also, some SSD controllers are only pci-e v2.0 capable, again most of these lower end controllers would be on low size SSD drives.

 

 

1x of pci-e v2.0 can support 500 MB/s.  x2 would be 1000 MB/s, x4 would be 2000 MB/s

1x of pci-e v3.0 can support 985 MB/s. x2 would be ~ 1970 MB/s , x4 would be ~ 3950 MB/s

 

SATA connectors are typically 6gbps which means maximum 600 MB/s. Third party SATA controllers like the ASMedia ones offer 2 ports and connect to the system using a x1 pci-e lane, so the two ports share a bandwidth of 500 MB/s or 1000 MB/s (if you're lucky to have it connected to pci-e v3.0)

 

[NumLock21]

SATA is just SATA

M.2 is a physical connector, it can support both SATA or NVMe. This also depends on the motherboard you buy, some will only one type, while others might support both types.

M.2 (SATA) SSD offers no performance difference over SATA SSD. They are both SATA

M.2 (NVMe) SSD will have a performance difference over SATA SSD.

M.2 (NVMe) and PCIe card (NVMe) are the exact same thing, just one drive, is plug to one of the PCIe slot and the other goes into a M.2 connector. No difference in performance here either.

Only X99 and Skylake can run NVMe drives at PCIe 3.0 x4.

[corrado33]

An SSD is not, in any way, shape, or form crucial for gaming.

 

Seriously, when will people understand that the storage device ONLY affects load times? I have DOOM running on a standard 5400 RPM HDD and my load times are on the order of seconds. And that's once every... hour? Half hour maybe? What more could you want? 

 

Oh and the post above me and SpaceGhost have the correct answers for the rest of the questions you asked. 

[Commodore Sim]

Fine I was slightly hyperbolic with my use of the word crucial.  But there are advantages, and I can afford those advantages.  I've experienced those differences too from the bad side.