M.2 or SATA?

[Sokol1an]

Which is the best, M.2 Or SATA

[myselfolli]

I think what you mean is m.2 NVMe, which (in terms of speed) is far superior to SATA, but they are a lot more expencive. There are m.2 SATA SSDs as well though, which are (obviously) limited to SATA speeds.

Edited April 11, 2017 by myselfolli
Addition

[toasty6776]

Depends. There are M.2 drives that run off the older AHCI protocol and SATA interface making them just as fast as standard SATA 3 drives. If however, you opt for an NVMe drive (those are more expensive), you will see tremendous increases in read/write speeds over your average SATA SSD. That may be a tad overkill for your use case, though so watch out for price/GB. Generally, the M.2 connector is "better" because it's smaller and can, therefore, fit even in extremely small form factor builds. Furthermore, the usage of no cables whatsoever can help with cable management and therefore aesthetics.

[Sokol1an]

21 minutes ago, toasty6776 said:

Depends. There are M.2 drives that run off the older AHCI protocol and SATA interface making them just as fast as standard SATA 3 drives. If however, you opt for an NVMe drive (those are more expensive), you will see tremendous increases in read/write speeds over your average SATA SSD. That may be a tad overkill for your use case, though so watch out for price/GB. Generally, the M.2 connector is "better" because it's smaller and can, therefore, fit even in extremely small form factor builds. Furthermore, the usage of no cables whatsoever can help with cable management and therefore aesthetics.

What about intel optane?

[Sniperfox47]

Connector:

m.2 - for single board, small form factor SSDs

 

SATA(connector)/SATA Express/u.2 - for traditional 2.5"/1.5" SSDs.

 

Interface:

PCIe - for fast SSDs

 

SATA(interface) - for slow SSDs

 

Protocol:

AHCI - for SATA SSDs and older, slower, PCIe SSDs

 

NVMe - for fast/newer PCIe SSDs

 

Support:

m.2 can support AHCI over SATA(interface), AHCI over PCIe, and NVMe over PCIe

 

U.2 can support AHCI or NVMe over PCIe, but doesn't support SATA(interface)

 

SATA Express supports all three like m.2

 

And the lowly SATA Connector only supports AHCI over SATA

 

So which is better depends on what you're using them for and whether you're refering to the connector, or the interface.

 

7 minutes ago, Nitrous said:

What about intel optane?

Optane runs on NVMe over PCIe. Depending on the drive, those PCIe lanes can be exposed for the PCIe connector or the m.2 connector currently.

 

There's nothing saying it can't use SATA Express or u.2 in the future as a connector though, since both of those support everything it needs.

 

 

[Sokol1an]

2 minutes ago, Sniperfox47 said:

Connector:

m.2 - for single board, small form factor SSDs

 

SATA(connector)/SATA Express/u.2 - for traditional 2.5"/1.5" SSDs.

 

Interface:

PCIe - for fast SSDs

 

SATA(interface) - for slow SSDs

 

Protocol:

AHCI - for SATA SSDs and older, slower, PCIe SSDs

 

NVMe - for fast/newer PCIe SSDs

 

m.2 can support AHCI over SATA(interface), AHCI over PCIe, and NVMe over PCIe

 

U.2 can support AHCI or NVMe over PCIe, but doesn't support SATA(interface)

 

SATA Express supports all three like m.2

 

And the lowly SATA Connector only supports AHCI over SATA

 

So which is better depends on what you're using them for and whether you're refering to the connector, or the interface.

 

Optane runs on NVMe over PCIe. Depending on the drive, those PCIe lanes can be exposed for the PCIe connector or the m.2 connector currently.

 

There's nothing saying it can't use SATA Express or u.2 in the future as a connector though, since both of those support everything it needs.

 

 

Can you find a NVMe SSD with a price tag of $90-$120?

[Deli]

Just now, Nitrous said:

What's the cheapest NVMe ssd you can find?

Intel 600P

[Sokol1an]

1 minute ago, Deli said:

Intel 600P

Okay thanks

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, Nitrous said:

Can you find a NVMe SSD with a price tag of $90-$120?

do you really need nvme though

[Sokol1an]

Just now, deXxterlab97 said:

do you really need nvme though

Yes i do :3

[Sniperfox47]

Yeah the 600p is currently the cheapest, but moving forward a lot of drives will likely default to it since the controllers are expected to be cheaper than SATA controllers shortly.

[Mira Yurizaki]

2 minutes ago, Nitrous said:

Yes i do :3

What do you do that requires up to ~2000 MB/s bandwidth? Curious.

[Sokol1an]

1 minute ago, M.Yurizaki said:

What do you do that requires up to ~2000 MB/s bandwidth? Curious.

4K PO- no. Actually for steam games and things that i want to boot up fast.

[Mira Yurizaki]

1 minute ago, Nitrous said:

4K PO- no. Actually for steam games and things that i want to boot up fast.

NVMe doesn't really improve performance of those. You shave off about 1-2 seconds at best, but usually less than a second on average. And response times doesn't seem to be better either.

[Sniperfox47]

2 minutes ago, Nitrous said:

4K PO- no. Actually for steam games and things that i want to boot up fast.

You likely won't even notice the difference that NVMe provides.

 

Unless you're getting really high end drives and using them for things that actually take advantage of that speed, the difference between a high end SATA 6 drive and a PCIe drive are hard to notice, much less the difference between an AHCI PCIe drive and an NVMe PCIe drive

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, Nitrous said:

4K PO- no. Actually for steam games and things that i want to boot up fast.

Watch this

 

[Mira Yurizaki]

Another thing I want to mention is if you don't reboot your machine often, all of your daily drivers are just going to live in RAM anyway. Windows keeps data of programs in RAM, even when closed. It just marks that data as "can be evicted from RAM if needed." What this means is the next time you launch the program, it'll launch almost immediately because Windows just flips the data back to "in-use".

[Princess Luna]

nvme shouldn't be bought for gaming... get a larger sata 3 for better cost to performance.

[Sniperfox47]

8 minutes ago, Princess Cadence said:

nvme shouldn't be bought for gaming... get a larger sata 3 for better cost to performance.

The only exception of this is getting a budget NVMe SSD like the 600p as a caching drive for a traditional Hard Drive with Intel SRT on Windows or bcache/bcachefs on linux.

 

The lower latency of NVMe helps it perform better as a cache. Same principle as why Optane makes such a better cache than current SSDs.

[Sokol1an]

53 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Another thing I want to mention is if you don't reboot your machine often, all of your daily drivers are just going to live in RAM anyway. Windows keeps data of programs in RAM, even when closed. It just marks that data as "can be evicted from RAM if needed." What this means is the next time you launch the program, it'll launch almost immediately because Windows just flips the data back to "in-use".

But what if i use corsair dominator platinum DRAM? Its volatile.

[Mira Yurizaki]

14 minutes ago, Nitrous said:

But what if i use corsair dominator platinum DRAM? Its volatile.

The first sentence I said in that post is the answer you seek.

 

Anyway, an NVMe drive for loading programs doesn't offer any compelling benefits over SATA.

[Sokol1an]

2 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

The first sentence I said in that post is the answer you seek.

 

Anyway, an NVMe drive for loading programs doesn't offer any compelling benefits over SATA.

So just regular trash SATA then?

[Mira Yurizaki]

3 minutes ago, Nitrous said:

So just regular trash SATA then?

That's my recommendation. If you really want an NVMe drive, then by all means, buy one.

[Sokol1an]

Just now, M.Yurizaki said:

That's my recommendation. If you really want an NVMe drive, then by all means, buy one.

Okay.

[PrimeSonic]

Do you want to burn money away? Go ahead and spend the extra on an NVMe SSD. They aren't cheap and have the worst $/GB you could get.

 

Now, if you don't care about burning away money, want that extra epeen, or really don't want to add extra cables to your build, by all means, go ahead.

 

But just don't expect any tangible/noticeable benefits over a regular SATA SSD for day-to-day uses.

 

I say this as someone with two M.2 NMVe SSDs in his rig who doesn't actually need them.