SSD M.2 vs RAM

Darkiller · December 29, 2016

My question is that could you acutally use a newer SSD that you put in the M.2 slot as RAM, instead of actually real RAM sticks?

So, i just build my first computer (yey) and i got the SSD 960 EVO 500GB from Samsung. The read speed is 3,200 MB/s and write speed is 1,900 MB/s.

The thing that has got my thinking about this is the Pagefile size you can set it windows, and im not sure if i understand this to 100% so correct me if im wrong, but what it does is store info that would been stored on your RAM on your hard drive/SSD instead. Applications that isnt used atm can be moved to the hard drive and if your RAM would get full it can start to use space on the hard drive instead of having the application just crash.

I seen lots of older disscusions where they say that storing that info on the hard drive will slow things down a lot, even if you have a SSD with 500 MB/s read and write speeds. But i wounder, how fast would your SSD have to be to now slow it down a lot. I know that RAM is much faster then a SSD (seen peopel saying diffrent things about RAM speed, but been around 10,000 - 30 000 MB/s) but then i find this video from Linus where he states that the RAM speed is so fast so most programs cant use that amount of read and write speeds anyways

So then, how much read and write speed can i program actaully use? And if you could get your hands on a SSD with a speed higer then programs can use, would it do so you dont notice any speed diffrince

when the RAM is full and its starting to store info on your SSD? And would this make it possibel to stop using RAM sticks and just use your SSD as it instead?

Maybe its som complicated programing stuff that i dont understand that makes this complitly impossibel, or maybe just something basic that stops this, but i couldnt stop thinking about this and maybe one of you next level data teqnion could tell me why this is a stupid idea and complitley impossibel and kill my dreams of not using any RAM sticks at all

knightslugger · December 29, 2016

NVMe speeds are about what DDR was long ago. still nowhere near the speeds of today's RAM.

and no you need RAM to POST the computer, and the PCIe bus that M.2 connectors use is wired through the DMI, whereas RAM is wired directly to the processor.