Is it worth to buy an NVMe?

[Moglakos]

I'm thinking to upgrade my HDD with an NVMe SSD and I found searching on google that NVMe SSDs thermal throttles. So, my question is, does this thermal throttle affect the performance of the NVMe? If yes, how much? Will a heatsink (like the one linked) will help with this issue?

[Stardar1]

3 minutes ago, Moglakos said:

I'm thinking to upgrade my HDD with an NVMe SSD and I found searching on google that NVMe SSDs thermal throttles. So, my question is, does this thermal throttle affect the performance of the NVMe? If yes, how much? Will a heatsink (like the one linked) will help with this issue?

You mean an M.2 SSD?

Also what heatsink linked?

[pwn_intended]

They can thermal throttle if your airflow is really bad and you're hammering it with lots of read/writes. From what I have heard, they get really really hot but still manage decent speeds.

While according to raw numbers, NVME is a lot faster than SATA, in practise, the computer will feel a bit snappier (if you put your OS on the NVME drive) but it wont be as huge a change as going from an HDD to an SSD.

Now as to whether it is worth it, if you have a few extra banjamins burning a hole in your pocket, go for it, but depending on the rest of your system, that money could be better spent on a new GPU or whatever else you may need.

[pwn_intended]

2 minutes ago, Stardar1 said:

You mean an M.2 SSD?

Also what heatsink linked?

M.2 doesn't necessarily mean NVME, iirc, M.2 drives can be wired for SATA OR NVME. So OP chose his words properly.

[Stardar1]

Just now, pwn_intended said:

M.2 doesn't necessarily mean NVME, iirc, M.2 drives can be wired for SATA OR NVME. So OP chose his words properly.

Yeah, I misread. But can't 2.5" drives also be NVMe?

[Mira Yurizaki]

I've had an NVMe drive for about a year now and I can tell you that it's not worth it. The OS doesn't really feel snappier or load any faster. Now you can say "but you have your NVMe drive behind the motherboard so it's getting hot all the time", which no, it floats around 45C and it only has a throttling problem if I'm hammering it. Plus I've seen it hit gigabytes per second if I'm doing an intra-drive transfer so I'm not strapped on performance. This is also consistent when I tried experimenting with a RAM Disk a few years ago: games and programs saw no real appreciation in loading. If a RAM Disk, which is orders of magnitude faster than NVMe, cannot give appreciable results, neither will an NVMe SSD.

 

Get a SATA SSD. You'll get more room for the programs and stuff you want. The leap from an HDD to a SATA SSD is amazing. The leap from a SATA SSD to an NVMe SSD is meh.

[pwn_intended]

Just now, Stardar1 said:

Yeah, I misread. But can't 2.5" drives also be NVMe?

Well, sorta. AFAIK, intel is the only one who made them in that form factor, and they use a special connector that I forget what its called, and not really offered on a lot of mobos. I don't even think they advertise these anymore, they were more of a "stepping stone" tech while mobo manufacturers started including M.2 NVMe support natively.

[Stardar1]

Just now, pwn_intended said:

Well, sorta. AFAIK, intel is the only one who made them in that form factor, and they use a special connector that I forget what its called, and not really offered on a lot of mobos. I don't even think they advertise these anymore, they were more of a "stepping stone" tech while mobo manufacturers started including M.2 NVMe support natively.

Am I correct in thinking that M.2 NVMe is the M key while SATA M.2 is the B+M key? (otherwise known as PCIe M.2 ans SATA M.2)?

[pwn_intended]

Just now, Stardar1 said:

Am I correct in thinking that M.2 NVMe is the M key while SATA M.2 is the B+M key? (otherwise known as PCIe M.2 ans SATA M.2)?

Ha, now you're getting a bit to specific for me without resorting to "The Google" so I will retire. I do not know the specific key-ing of the M.2 slot but yes, they can be wired for either SATA, PCIe or BOTH.

[Moglakos]

9 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

I've had an NVMe drive for about a year now and I can tell you that it's not worth it. The OS doesn't really feel snappier or load any faster. Now you can say "but you have your NVMe drive behind the motherboard so it's getting hot all the time", which no, it floats around 45C and it only has a throttling problem if I'm hammering it. Plus I've seen it hit gigabytes per second if I'm doing an intra-drive transfer so I'm not strapped on performance. This is also consistent when I tried experimenting with a RAM Disk a few years ago: games and programs saw no real appreciation in loading.

 

Get a SATA SSD. You'll get more room for the programs and stuff you want. The leap from an HDD to a SATA SSD is amazing. The leap from a SATA SSD to an NVMe SSD is meh.

 

12 minutes ago, pwn_intended said:

They can thermal throttle if your airflow is really bad and you're hammering it with lots of read/writes. From what I have heard, they get really really hot but still manage decent speeds.

While according to raw numbers, NVME is a lot faster than SATA, in practise, the computer will feel a bit snappier (if you put your OS on the NVME drive) but it wont be as huge a change as going from an HDD to an SSD.

Now as to whether it is worth it, if you have a few extra banjamins burning a hole in your pocket, go for it, but depending on the rest of your system, that money could be better spent on a new GPU or whatever else you may need.

Thanks a lot for your replies.

@M.Yurizaki I was also going to put it on an Asus Z170I Gaming Pro which has it's M.2 slot on the back of the mobo and the case will be the Enthoo Evolv ITX. So you gave me a good presentation of what I was looking for. I used to have an SSD but it died and I went back to HDD, now I manage to collect some money and I was looking to go back to that good feel that an SSD has, but since NVMe is "affordable" I was wondering if it would have that much of a difference.

@pwn_intended I'm pretty good with my "old" MSI R9 270 it does it's job well so far, so i'm not looking to upgrade that yet and the rest of my PC is pretty beast (6600K/16GB Ram @2666MHz/EVGA 750G2)

[Mira Yurizaki]

23 minutes ago, pwn_intended said:

Well, sorta. AFAIK, intel is the only one who made them in that form factor, and they use a special connector that I forget what its called, and not really offered on a lot of mobos. I don't even think they advertise these anymore, they were more of a "stepping stone" tech while mobo manufacturers started including M.2 NVMe support natively.

The U.2 connector. It's basically the same thing as M.2.

 

They should really use it more often though. Not that I don't mind M.2's formfactor but for a desktop in my mind, it doesn't make a lot of sense. At least there's M.2 to U.2 converters.

[Captain_WD]

20 hours ago, Moglakos said:

~snip~

Hi there

 

This video should be able to explain in detail the difference between NVMe and AHCI based SSDs

 

M.2 is simply a form factor meaning the size of the drive. 

M.2 drives can use the SATA bus as well as the PCIe bus.

PCIe M.2 SSDs can either be NVMe or AHCI with performance differences between the two. 

 

If you don't necessarily need the additional speed you could reallocate the extra funds for higher capacity or another upgrade to your system. 

 

Let me know if you have any questions! 

 

Captain_WD.