M.2 SSD for OS instead of SSD

[Dubesta11]

I was wondering how much faster it would be to get an M.2 and use that as my windows install drive instead of my SSDs. And would it be possible to add this M.2 to this motherboard and still be able to connect 3 hard drives?

[Mello]

Yes that mb has a M.2 slot.

yes it would be much faster than the normal SSD.

and you can still use the other 3 hard drives.

[Clanscorpia]

You wouldnt notice much of a difference. m.2's are a waste of money unless you are constantly transferring massive files

 

[Dubesta11]

5 minutes ago, Clanscorpia said:

You wouldn't notice much of a difference. m.2's are a waste of money unless you are constantly transferring massive files

 

 

Fair enough. I was just wondering if windows would boot/load even faster.

[Clanscorpia]

Just now, Dubesta11 said:

 

Fair enough. I was just wondering if windows would boot/load even faster.

MAybe like half a second? Its not noticable like HDD vs SSD

[Morgan MLGman]

29 minutes ago, Mello said:

Yes that mb has a M.2 slot.

yes it would be much faster than the normal SSD.

and you can still use the other 3 hard drives.

 

27 minutes ago, Clanscorpia said:

You wouldnt notice much of a difference. m.2's are a waste of money unless you are constantly transferring massive files

 

Wrong. You're both wrong. M.2 is just a form-factor. You can have an exactly the same 2,5" SSD in the M.2 version with exactly same write/read speeds etc. Those M.2 drives that use PCI-E x2/x4 bandwidth for their data transfer are the fast and expensive ones. However there's many M.2 SSDs that use the SATA III interface and bandwidth and cost pretty much the same, I own one. It's the M.2 version of the ADATA SP550 240GB, I chose it over a regular 2,5" drive cause I had a free M.2 slot anyway and there's only one 2,5" drive slot left in my case after I installed my Samsung 850 EVO SSD in the other slot.

 

EDIT: as for OP, boot times seem unaffected from your SSD speed. A shitty Kingston V300 boots the system in about the same time as a fast 850 EVO drive despite being significantly slower.

[Oberon.Smite]

40 minutes ago, Clanscorpia said:

MAybe like half a second? Its not noticable like HDD vs SSD

So is it not worth it to get the new 960 M.2 drives? 250GB for 130 M.2 isn't that bad IMO but I'll go for one of those SK Hynix ones if it dosen't really make a difference.

[Clanscorpia]

6 hours ago, Oberon.Smite said:

So is it not worth it to get the new 960 M.2 drives? 250GB for 130 M.2 isn't that bad IMO but I'll go for one of those SK Hynix ones if it dosen't really make a difference.

No its not at all.

 

7 hours ago, Morgan MLGman said:

 

Wrong. You're both wrong. M.2 is just a form-factor. You can have an exactly the same 2,5" SSD in the M.2 version with exactly same write/read speeds etc. Those M.2 drives that use PCI-E x2/x4 bandwidth for their data transfer are the fast and expensive ones. However there's many M.2 SSDs that use the SATA III interface and bandwidth and cost pretty much the same, I own one. It's the M.2 version of the ADATA SP550 240GB, I chose it over a regular 2,5" drive cause I had a free M.2 slot anyway and there's only one 2,5" drive slot left in my case after I installed my Samsung 850 EVO SSD in the other slot.

 

EDIT: as for OP, boot times seem unaffected from your SSD speed. A shitty Kingston V300 boots the system in about the same time as a fast 850 EVO drive despite being significantly slower.

True sorry forgot about that, I just assumed the OP was talking about drives like the 950 Pro

[Dubesta11]

13 hours ago, Clanscorpia said:

You wouldn't notice much of a difference. m.2's are a waste of money unless you are constantly transferring massive files

 

 

Fair enough. I was just wondering if windows would boot/load even faster. 

 

5 hours ago, Clanscorpia said:

No its not at all.

 

True sorry forgot about that, I just assumed the OP was talking about drives like the 950 Pro

 

I linked the drive I was referencing. 

[Captain_WD]

20 hours ago, Dubesta11 said:

~snip~

Hi

 

Generally M.2 is simply a form factor such as the regular 2.5". What matters is which bus it uses to communicate with the motherboard. 

The SSD that you have chosen can work with both the SATA and the PCIe bus and use either the AHCI or the NVMe protocols.

The motherboard seem to support PCIe-based M.2 drives s oyou should be fine. I would check if the NVMe function for those SSDs works well on this particular motherboard and if a BIOS/UEFI update is needed. 

 

It would really depend on what you do on your system. You may see a significant improvement on some storage-demanding applications while witnessing no improvement at all over a regular SATA SSD in other types of usage.

 

Let me know if you need more info

 

Captain_WD.

[Dubesta11]

4 hours ago, Captain_WD said:

Hi

 

Generally M.2 is simply a form factor such as the regular 2.5". What matters is which bus it uses to communicate with the motherboard. 

The SSD that you have chosen can work with both the SATA and the PCIe bus and use either the AHCI or the NVMe protocols.

The motherboard seem to support PCIe-based M.2 drives s oyou should be fine. I would check if the NVMe function for those SSDs works well on this particular motherboard and if a BIOS/UEFI update is needed. 

 

It would really depend on what you do on your system. You may see a significant improvement on some storage-demanding applications while witnessing no improvement at all over a regular SATA SSD in other types of usage.

 

Let me know if you need more info

 

Captain_WD.

Doesn't WD now have M.2 SSDs? How do those compare to regular 2.5mm SSDs in terms of speed?

[Captain_WD]

17 hours ago, Dubesta11 said:

~snip~

As I pointed out in my previous post, M.2 is simply a form factor, meaning just the size of the drive. 

WD Blue SSD and WD Green SSD both have M.2 versions and they have the exact same performance as the 2.5" versions. 

If you take a M.2 SATA SSD and the same model but in 2.5" SATA format you will have the exact same performance with only the physical size of the SSD being different. 

You can check out the spec sheets of both WD Blue SSD and WD Green SSD and see that there are no differences between the M.2 and the 2.5" versions. 

 

You will see a performance difference if a M.2 uses the PCIe bus instead of the SATA bus, which not all M.2 do so that's one thing to look out for. Also, your motherboard's M.2 slot needs to support M.2 PCIe connection (either over AHCI or NVMe) otherwise the M.2 SSD will again work through the SATA bus and will work as a regular 2.5" SSD.

 

Captain_WD.