Will an M.2 SSD affect my GPU's performance?

[Stagaz]

So, im about to build a new PC and i was thinking whether getting an M.2 SSD will affect me in a negative way.
CPU: Intel i7-7700K
Mobo: ASUS Prime Z270-A

M.2 SSD: Samsung 960 EVO NVMe M.2 500 SSD

What is the total amount of Pci-e lanes that my PC will have?
If its 16-lanes, having an M.2 SDD that takes up 4x will cause my GPU to get less than 16x? If so, will it affect my GPU's performance by alot?

I'm kinda new to this Pci-e stuff, and its kinda confusing me...

[Zando_]

It shouldn't. It will steal bandwidth from one of your SATA ports, but I doubt you have them all populated so it won't make any difference whatsoever. 

[Oshino Shinobu]

2 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

It shouldn't. It will steal bandwidth from one of your SATA ports, but I doubt you have them all populated so it won't make any difference whatsoever. 

It won't use any bandwidth from SATA. The 960 EVO uses the NVMe communication protocol over the PCIe bus. It will run off the PCIe lanes provided by the chipset, having no effect on SATA. 

[Stagaz]

5 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

It shouldn't. It will steal bandwidth from one of your SATA ports, but I doubt you have them all populated so it won't make any difference whatsoever. 

I see...
But i saw in a random forum that, if my M.2 SSD steals bandwidth from my Sata ports then im not getting any better performance than having a good old Sata SSD. Is that true?

[Stagaz]

4 minutes ago, L.Lawliet said:

Your gpu still use X16 lanes up to the cpu.

There are extra lanes provided by your chipset for m.2 SSD and whatnot.

It might disable one or two of your sata ports but it didnt affect gpu.

Extra lanes from chipset? So... whats the total amount of Pci-e lanes that i will have?

[Guest]

It shouldn't make a noticeable difference, if any. In the event that a SATA port stops working, just switch to another one, and you should have no other problems.

[Zando_]

Just now, Stagaz said:

I see...
But i saw in a random forum that, if my M.2 SSD steals bandwidth from my Sata ports then im not getting any better performance than having a good old Sata SSD. Is that true?

I think so. AFAIK, M.2 drives are just a smaller, more convenient SATA drive, though if they run off the PCIe lanes like @Oshino Shinobu said, then they should be faster. NVMe drives are faster, but only for large reads and writes. 

[Stagaz]

Just now, Zando Bob said:

I think so. AFAIK, M.2 drives are just a smaller, more convenient SATA drive, though if they run off the PCIe lanes like @Oshino Shinobu said, then they should be faster. NVMe drives are faster, but only for large reads and writes. 

So in my case... im paying the price of an NVMe M.2 SSD for the performance of an Sata SSD???

[Zando_]

Just now, Stagaz said:

So in my case... im paying the price of an NVMe M.2 SSD for the performance of an Sata SSD???

I think M.2 is a bit faster than SATA, but NVMe is really for video editors and others working with large files. So I'd still get an M.2 drive, just not an NVMe one. 

[Oshino Shinobu]

Just now, Zando Bob said:

I think so. AFAIK, M.2 drives are just a smaller, more convenient SATA drive, though if they run off the PCIe lanes like @Oshino Shinobu said, then they should be faster. NVMe drives are faster, but only for large reads and writes. 

M.2 is simply a form factor and connector. You can get both SATA and NVMe based M.2 drives. SATA M.2 drives are just SATA drives with a different form factor, they still go through the SATA controller and have the same limitations as regular 2.5" SATA drives. NVMe drives use the NVMe communication protocol, which uses the PCIe bus rather than SATA. The bandwidth provided by the PCIe bus is significantly greater than that of SATA and the communication standard allows for significantly faster maximum throughput. In real world terms, NVMe drives are good for large sequential read/writes and are about the same as SATA drives for random read/writes. So really, NVMe is good for large data transfers but doesn't really offer any benefit for booting, use as an OS drive or for gaming type workloads that are mainly random read/writes. 

 

4 minutes ago, Stagaz said:

Extra lanes from chipset? So... whats the total amount of Pci-e lanes that i will have?

The Z270 platform has a total PCIe lane budget of 30 lanes. 16 provided by the CPU, mostly set aside for high performance devices like graphics cards. The Z270 chipset should have 14 PCIe lanes, mostly used for things like M.2 NVMe drives, PCIe storage, PCIe WiFi cards and so on. 

[Oshino Shinobu]

5 minutes ago, Stagaz said:

So in my case... im paying the price of an NVMe M.2 SSD for the performance of an Sata SSD???

The 960 EVO is an NVMe drive. You'd be paying for NVMe performance. Whether you actually benefit from NVMe really depends on your use case. If you're not making frequent large data transfers, you're not going to get much from NVMe. For things like booting, OS use and gaming, NVMe performs the same as SATA. 

[Oshino Shinobu]

2 minutes ago, L.Lawliet said:

Its 24 according to this article.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Z270-H270-Q270-Q250-B250---What-is-the-Difference-876/

Yep, my bad on that one, article I looked at said 14, but Intel says 24 too:

 

https://ark.intel.com/products/98089/Intel-Z270-Chipset

[Stagaz]

Just now, Oshino Shinobu said:

Yep, my bad on that one, article I looked at said 14, but Intel says 24 too:

 

https://ark.intel.com/products/98089/Intel-Z270-Chipset

so whats my total pcie lanes? 16 (from CPU) + ??? (from chipset) = ?

[Blebekblebek]

just 16

[Stagaz]

5 minutes ago, L.Lawliet said:

Its 24 according to this article.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Z270-H270-Q270-Q250-B250---What-is-the-Difference-876/

so whats my total pcie lanes? 16 (from CPU) + ??? (from chipset) = ?
is it 16+24=40? or 24 total?

[Oshino Shinobu]

5 minutes ago, Stagaz said:

so whats my total pcie lanes? 16 (from CPU) + ??? (from chipset) = ?

16 from the CPU that are set aside for graphics and 24 from the chipset. I believe the chipset's PCIe lanes will be used up somewhat by any high bandwidth devices like Thunderbolt and USB 3.1 Gen2 controllers. It's unlikely you'll actually have 24 PCIe lanes available to use, but you should have enough to the point where it would be difficult to fully saturate all of the lanes without a bunch of PCIe expansion cards. 

 

EDIT: The M.2 drive will use 4 lanes from the chipset, having no impact on the graphics card whatsoever. 

[Shog]

Thank goodness Oshino and Lawliet are here to stop me from going on a rant. What they said is true and good advice. 

Always check the speed of your product on userbenchmarks or just looking it up before you buy it (some m.2 form factor products are actually just really slow). That being said the m.2 form factor provides a much faster speed. (The forum post you briefly mentioned is full of shit and exacerbating a singular situation with limited knowledge of how basic computer functions work. I believe they were talking about total bus bandwidth we're talking about now which is obviously the same regardless of what you connect to the motherboard.)

Get an m.2, buy a nice fast one, it'll have no impact on your gpu and you'll see a nice improvement in storage read and writes. 

[Stagaz]

2 minutes ago, Shog said:

Thank goodness Oshino and Lawliet are here to stop me from going on a rant. What they said is true and good advice. 

Always check the speed of your product on userbenchmarks or just looking it up before you buy it (some m.2 form factor products are actually just really slow). That being said the m.2 form factor provides a much faster speed. (The forum post you briefly mentioned is full of shit and exacerbating a singular situation with limited knowledge of how basic computer functions work. I believe they were talking about total bus bandwidth we're talking about now which is obviously the same regardless of what you connect to the motherboard.)

Get an m.2, buy a nice fast one, it'll have no impact on your gpu and you'll see a nice improvement in storage read and writes. 

Samsung 960 EVO M.2 500GB any good?

[knightslugger]

13 minutes ago, Stagaz said:

Samsung 960 EVO M.2 500GB any good?

It's great, but to echo what has been said earlier, you may not see any increase of performance between a SATA SSD (m.2 NGFF) and a NVMe SSD (m.2 NGFF). Power users who have applications that benefit from low que depth, or use cases where high throughput is needed (such as frequent massive video file transfers between machines on an ultrafast network) would see the benefits immediately whereas the casual user who just loads their steam library on it wont notice any difference between a SATA or NVMe SSD.

 

if you fall into the latter scenario, either buy a SATA M.2 NGFF drive with twice the capacity of an NVMe M.2 NGFF drive, or save 1/2 and buy a SATA M.2 NGFF drive of comparable capacity.

[Stagaz]

4 minutes ago, knightslugger said:

It's great, but to echo what has been said earlier, you may not see any increase of performance between a SATA SSD (m.2 NGFF) and a NVMe SSD (m.2 NGFF). Power users who have applications that benefit from low que depth, or use cases where high throughput is needed (such as frequent massive video file transfers between machines on an ultrafast network) would see the benefits immediately whereas the casual user who just loads their steam library on it wont notice any difference between a SATA or NVMe SSD.

 

if you fall into the latter scenario, either buy a SATA M.2 NGFF drive with twice the capacity of an NVMe M.2 NGFF drive, or save 1/2 and buy a SATA M.2 NGFF drive of comparable capacity.

thanks for the advise

[Stagaz]

Thanks to everyone. I really appreciate all the help.