SSD vs Pcie m.2

[Metapod14]

Difference between PCIe M.2 and SSD? A Samsung 850 pro is under SSD and Samsung 960 pro is under the PCIe M.2.. looking to stream and game mostly if that matters. Was just going to throw OS on it and maybe 2 or 3 of my favorite games for quick boot/load times. Any help or info is appreciated

[Orochimario]

a nvme ssd in either m.2 or pcie would probably be best

 

[Enderman]

Just now, Orochimario said:

a nvme ssd in either m.2 or pcie would probably be best

 

NVME is pretty much useless for gaming.

It is a waste of money and you get half of the capacity you could get by buying a sata SSD.

 

Unless OP is a content creator or data analyst and is actually making money from doing that all day, NVME is unnecessary.

[unknownmiscreant]

1 minute ago, Orochimario said:

a nvme ssd in either m.2 or pcie would probably be best

 

And the most expensive. For streaming and gaming there won't be much performance difference. But it will make the system snappier.

[Oshino Shinobu]

Both are SSDs. M.2 is just a form factor and PCIe is a communication bus. 850 Pro uses the SATA interface bus and (normally) the ACHI communication protocol, 960 Pro uses an M.2 connector and the NVMe communication protocol. 

 

The 960 Pro is significantly faster on paper and significantly faster in real world applications for sequential read/writes (things like copying large files or loading large files into RAM). For booting, OS use and games, it makes basically no difference. You'd actually be better off just going with an 850 EVO rather than a Pro. 

 

5 minutes ago, Orochimario said:

a nvme ssd in either m.2 or pcie would probably be best

 

It will make basically no difference compared to a regular SATA SSD. Also, M.2 is just a connector/form factor, there are SATA M.2 SSDs as well. 

[Metapod14]

So a 960 Samsung pro using PCIe M.2 is not needed I could go with just a SSD 850 Samsung pro and have little difference.

[unknownmiscreant]

1 minute ago, Metapod14 said:

So a 960 Samsung pro using PCIe M.2 is not needed I could go with just a SSD 850 Samsung pro and have little difference.

Yep.

[Oshino Shinobu]

2 minutes ago, Metapod14 said:

So a 960 Samsung pro using PCIe M.2 is not needed I could go with just a SSD 850 Samsung pro and have little difference.

For booting OS and gaming workload, yeah, it makes basically no difference. I'd actually go for an 850 EVO and save a bit of money, the Pro isn't worth it IMO. 

 

EDIT: Unless there's only a little bit of difference, then you may as well get the Pro. 

[Enderman]

1 minute ago, Metapod14 said:

So a 960 Samsung pro using PCIe M.2 is not needed I could go with just a SSD 850 Samsung pro and have little difference.

The difference will be that you can buy a much larger 850 SSD for the same amount of money, and that means you can fit more of your games on it and you will see a speed difference instead of having them on a HDD.

[Metapod14]

Thank you all so much for this, appreciated immensely!