looking to get a M.2 or SSD (LOOKING FOR HELP)

[legoes31]

Hello, I have a Z170 Pro Gaming motherboard. Right now I have one SSD and one hard drive I'm looking to get more storage and I'm not sure exactly if I should get one more SSD or an M.2 

 

if I were to get an M.2 the website says for my motherboard:

1 x M.2 Socket 3, with M Key, type 2242/2260/2280/22110 storage devices support (both SATA & PCIE mode)

 

I'm not that well acquainted with M.2 and I'm not sure if it would be better to just get an SSD. Any help is greatly appreciated!

 

 

 

 

[Crunchy Dragon]

M.2 is more expensive and faster than SATA. In your case, I would recommend getting another hard drive and setting it up in RAID 1 or 0 with your second hard drive(if your board supports RAID without an add-in card).

[A Silver]

Depends what you plan on using it for and how much storage. If you want more bulk storage for documents and stuff, get another HDD. If you want to move your OS and have programs which benefit from high storage speeds, get an m.2 and if you just want to install games and other software get a SATA SSD. 

[Oshino Shinobu]

11 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

M.2 is more expensive and faster than SATA. In your case, I would recommend getting another hard drive and setting it up in RAID 1 or 0 with your second hard drive(if your board supports RAID without an add-in card).

M.2 isn't faster than SATA, it's just a connector. You can have SATA based M.2 SSDs that perform just the same as a regular 2.5" SATA SSD. NVMe is what's faster, which is a communication protocol. 

 

RAID 1 and RAID 0 have basically entirely opposite goals in terms of data security. Not sure how recommending doing one or the other would make sense. In general for consumer systems, I wouldn't recommend RAID. If considering RAID 1, using the drive for a backup instead is a better option. 

 

14 minutes ago, legoes31 said:

Hello, I have a Z170 Pro Gaming motherboard. Right now I have one SSD and one hard drive I'm looking to get more storage and I'm not sure exactly if I should get one more SSD or an M.2 

 

if I were to get an M.2 the website says for my motherboard:

1 x M.2 Socket 3, with M Key, type 2242/2260/2280/22110 storage devices support (both SATA & PCIE mode)

 

I'm not that well acquainted with M.2 and I'm not sure if it would be better to just get an SSD. Any help is greatly appreciated!

 

 

 

 

M.2 is just a connector, the actual drives can be either SATA or NVMe. M.2 drives are also SSDs BTW, it's not a matter of an SSD or an M.2 drive as both are SSDs anyway. 

 

Whether you should go for an NVMe drive really depends on what you're doing with it. For the majority of uses, NVMe SSDs aren't much faster in real world performance compared to SATA SSDs. So things like booting, OS use, loading games, loading applications and such won't really benefit from it. Where NVMe excels is sequential read/writes, so things like copying large files (bear in mind you're going to be limited by the slowest drive, so you'd need two NVMe drives to take advantage of the speed, or copying within the same drive) and loading large files into RAM for things like video editing. This makes them excellent scratch drives to work from, but for most people's everyday usage, they're pretty much the same in terms of performance as SATA SSDs. 

 

If your uses don't benefit from sequential read/write speeds, just go for a SATA SSD. You could still get an M.2 SATA SSD, they're typically not too much more than 2.5" SATA SSDs. There's not really any benefit, you just don't have to run any cables for it as it plugs right into the motherboard. 

 

EDIT: Also, if you're wanting more mass storage for things like media files and documents, you should get another HDD really as those sorts of things generally don't benefit much from faster drives. 

[legoes31]

2 minutes ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

M.2 isn't faster than SATA, it's just a connector. You can have SATA based M.2 SSDs that perform just the same as a regular 2.5" SATA SSD. NVMe is what's faster, which is a communication protocol. 

 

RAID 1 and RAID 0 have basically entirely opposite goals in terms of data security. Not sure how recommending doing one or the other would make sense. In general for consumer systems, I wouldn't recommend RAID. If considering RAID 1, using the drive for a backup instead is a better option. 

 

M.2 is just a connector, the actual drives can be either SATA or NVMe. M.2 drives are also SSDs BTW, it's not a matter of an SSD or an M.2 drive as both are SSDs anyway. 

 

Whether you should go for an NVMe drive really depends on what you're doing with it. For the majority of uses, NVMe SSDs aren't much faster in real world performance compared to SATA SSDs. So things like booting, OS use, loading games, loading applications and such won't really benefit from it. Where NVMe excels is sequential read/writes, so things like copying large files (bear in mind you're going to be limited by the slowest drive, so you'd need two NVMe drives to take advantage of the speed, or copying within the same drive) and loading large files into RAM for things like video editing. This makes them excellent scratch drives to work from, but for most people's everyday usage, they're pretty much the same in terms of performance as SATA SSDs. 

 

If your uses don't benefit from sequential read/write speeds, just go for a SATA SSD. You could still get an M.2 SATA SSD, they're typically not too much more than 2.5" SATA SSDs. There's not really any benefit, you just don't have to run any cables for it as it plugs right into the motherboard. 

Thank you for responding everyone! I think I'm starting to understand it a lot more which I greatly appreciate. and my plan is to either move my OS or the majority of my games onto it since the SSD that I have right now is borderline on full. wouldn't be just a better idea to get a "normal SSD" for future proofing? also what kind of SSD to you guys recommend? 

[Oshino Shinobu]

Just now, legoes31 said:

Thank you for responding everyone! I think I'm starting to understand it a lot more which I greatly appreciate. and my plan is to either move my OS or the majority of my games onto it since the SSD that I have right now is borderline on full. wouldn't be just a better idea to get a "normal SSD" for future proofing? also what kind of SSD to you guys recommend? 

If it's mostly for the OS, games and some applications, going for a regular SATA SSD makes the most sense. 

 

I would recommend the Samsung 850 EVO. It's really the best option for a balance between value, performance and quality. 

[legoes31]

1 minute ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

If it's mostly for the OS, games and some applications, going for a regular SATA SSD makes the most sense. 

 

I would recommend the Samsung 850 EVO. It's really the best option for a balance between value, performance and quality. 

 

right now I'm currently running an SSD 850 Evo 250GB actually! if I do get another one do you think you would be worthwhile doing a clean start? having the OS and some programs like Adobe on one and then games etc on the other?

[Oshino Shinobu]

Just now, legoes31 said:

right now I'm currently running an SSD 850 Evo 250GB actually! if I do get another one do you think you would be worthwhile doing a clean start? having the OS and some programs like Adobe on one and then games etc on the other?

I'd personally recommend doing a clean install, I've had issues with cloning the OS before. It gives you a chance to clear out things you don't use as well. 

 

If you get a larger drive, I'd actually recommend having the OS on the smaller drive and store games and maybe programs on the larger drive. That way if you ever need to reinstall the OS, you're not wiping out a lot of other data too. 

[xg32]

the main benefit of nvme vs sata ssd for everyday usage is mainly on opening programs (browsers mainly) and file transfers, if you are gonna get a 256gb ssd anyway, the price difference between sata and nvme is 40dollars, which i'd say get the nvme. (i actually felt the difference between the 2 drives after the upgrade). If you want a 512gb for more storage, the price difference is then about 100dollars between sata and nvme.

 

I personally use the nvme for OS + 1-2 games i'm currently playing, then 2 raided 0 ssds for other games.

[xg32]

3 minutes ago, legoes31 said:

right now I'm currently running an SSD 850 Evo 250GB actually! if I do get another one do you think you would be worthwhile doing a clean start? having the OS and some programs like Adobe on one and then games etc on the other?

if thats the case, u could get another 850 evo 250gb and raid 0 it, if it's worth the trouble to you of reinstalling the os.

[Oshino Shinobu]

1 minute ago, xg32 said:

if thats the case, u could get another 850 evo 250gb and raid 0 it, if it's worth the trouble to you of reinstalling the os.

Really wouldn't recommend that. Especially not for an OS drive. Performance increase is similar to NVMe is terms of use cases, but the performance jump isn't as good and it more than doubles the chances of data loss. If going for sequential read/write performance, NVMe would be a better choice than RAID 0. 

 

 

[xg32]

Just now, Oshino Shinobu said:

Really wouldn't recommend that. Especially not for an OS drive. Performance increase is similar to NVMe is terms of use cases, but the performance jump isn't as good and it more than doubles the chances of data loss. If going for sequential read/write performance, NVMe would be a better choice than RAID 0. 

 

 

i've been using raid 0 on ssds for 6 years, also on multiple builds, it depends if he wants everything on the same array or not, but just presenting it as an option. For the same amount of money, or ~40dollars difference, i'd go with the nvme too.

[Oshino Shinobu]

Just now, xg32 said:

i've been using raid 0 on ssds for 6 years, also on multiple builds, it depends if he wants everything on the same array or not, but just presenting it as an option. For the same amount of money, or ~40dollars difference, i'd go with the nvme too.

Doesn't mean it doesn't drastically increase chances of data loss. I have a friend who had two SSDs in RAID 0 for the OS drive. One day goes to boot and finds that the array was corrupted so lost all of the data, even with both drives being fine, with the array corrupted, all data is still lost. I personally used to run two drives in RAID 0, but one of them died, which would have resulted in a basically full 4TB array being lost. Luckily I had moved all of the data to a new NAS recently, so I got lucky. 

 

RAID 0 does have its uses, for things like scratch drives where no data is permanently stored, but for everything else, it's a terrible idea IMO. 

 

If it's for the same money, absolutely go for NVMe, there's no reason not to. But if the use case doesn't take advantage of NVMe (basically most people's use case), I don't think it's worth the price premium because you're paying more for no extra performance for what you use it for. Quite a lot of the time $40 can be the difference between moving up to a bigger capacity, which is more important than speed you're not going to use IMO. 

 

NVMe drives make fantastic scratch drives, but right now I can't see them being useful for much more. I assume they'll end up becoming the standard as data requirements increase though.

[legoes31]

3 minutes ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

Really wouldn't recommend that. Especially not for an OS drive. Performance increase is similar to NVMe is terms of use cases, but the performance jump isn't as good and it more than doubles the chances of data loss. If going for sequential read/write performance, NVMe would be a better choice than RAID 0. 

 

 

1

as I said before I even knew when it comes to this stuff so I'll be a little nervous doing RAID 0. 

9 minutes ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

Really wouldn't recommend that. Especially not for an OS drive. Performance increase is similar to NVMe is terms of use cases, but the performance jump isn't as good and it more than doubles the chances of data loss. If going for sequential read/write performance, NVMe would be a better choice than RAID 0. 

 

 

since RAID isn't really an option for me/too nervous to try it. should I really go for an NVMe or should I just stick with the SSD EVO?

[Oshino Shinobu]

Just now, legoes31 said:

as I said before I even knew when it comes to this stuff so I'll be a little nervous doing RAID 0. 

since RAID isn't really an option for me/too nervous to try it. should I really go for an NVMe or should I just stick with the SSD EVO?

Look at the price difference between them and what capacity you can get for the price of the NVMe drive. If it's like $15, you may as well go for an NVMe drive. If it's a difference between a 500GB NVMe drive or a 750GB SATA drive though, I would take the 750GB drive as it sounds like most of your usage is going to be random read/writes, which doesn't really benefit from NVMe (it's faster on paper, but in terms of real world performance, it makes no significant difference). If you do some video editing or something similar (basically, production type applications) then NVMe will provide a benefit as files stored on it will be faster to import and work from. 

[legoes31]

1 minute ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

Look at the price difference between them and what capacity you can get for the price of the NVMe drive. If it's like $15, you may as well go for an NVMe drive. If it's a difference between a 500GB NVMe drive or a 750GB SATA drive though, I would take the 750GB drive as it sounds like most of your usage is going to be random read/writes, which doesn't really benefit from NVMe (it's faster on paper, but in terms of real world performance, it makes no significant difference). If you do some video editing or something similar (basically, production type applications) then NVMe will provide a benefit as files stored on it will be faster to import and work from. 

I do run the Adobe programs like Photoshop and Premiere Pro decently often. that's one of the main reasons I need more storage. The temporary files fills up my drive really fast. so I'm basically hearing is I should probably just go for an SSD 850 EVO unless there is an NVMe for the same storage capacity with a close price? what type of NVMe would you recommend?

(it would have to be M.2 Socket 3, with M Key) that's the type of thing that it is.

[Oshino Shinobu]

2 minutes ago, legoes31 said:

I do run the Adobe programs like Photoshop and Premiere Pro decently often. that's one of the main reasons I need more storage. The temporary files fills up my drive really fast. so I'm basically hearing is I should probably just go for an SSD 850 EVO unless there is an NVMe for the same storage capacity with a close price? what type of NVMe would you recommend?

(it would have to be M.2 Socket 3, with M Key) that's the type of thing that it is.

If you're using Premiere Pro, NVMe will provide a benefit when it comes to importing an working on files. Same with Photoshop, but to a lesser extent. 

 

Considering that, NVMe does make sense for your use case. Basically everything to do with Premiere Pro and Photoshop (particularly the files you're working on) should be ont he NVMe drive and it should be faster. 

 

Samsung 960 EVO would be my recommendation. It's in a similar position to the 850 EVO in terms of the balance between performance and price. It's a shame the PCB is green though, while the 960 Pro is nice and black. Another to consider is the Intel Pro 6000p

[legoes31]

10 minutes ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

If you're using Premiere Pro, NVMe will provide a benefit when it comes to importing an working on files. Same with Photoshop, but to a lesser extent. 

 

Considering that, NVMe does make sense for your use case. Basically everything to do with Premiere Pro and Photoshop (particularly the files you're working on) should be ont he NVMe drive and it should be faster. 

 

Samsung 960 EVO would be my recommendation. It's in a similar position to the 850 EVO in terms of the balance between performance and price. It's a shame the PCB is green though, while the 960 Pro is nice and black. Another to consider is the Intel Pro 6000p

the Samsung 960 EVO (https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-960-EVO-Internal-MZ-V6E500BW/dp/B01LYFKX41?th=1)

and Samsung 850 EVO (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OBRE5UE/ref=twister_B00PRDMHLU?_encoding=UTF8&th=1)

seems like you get twice as much memory if you got the SSD for around the same price.would a little extra speed be better or a little extra storage? I'm really kind of just torn right now

[Oshino Shinobu]

26 minutes ago, legoes31 said:

the Samsung 960 EVO (https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-960-EVO-Internal-MZ-V6E500BW/dp/B01LYFKX41?th=1)

and Samsung 850 EVO (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OBRE5UE/ref=twister_B00PRDMHLU?_encoding=UTF8&th=1)

seems like you get twice as much memory if you got the SSD for around the same price.would a little extra speed be better or a little extra storage? I'm really kind of just torn right now

Yeah, looks like the difference in price right now is pretty high. I'd personally go with a larger SSD. If you're not in a hurry, you could wait for the January sales to see how the prices are, though you also run the risk of things being out of stock if you don't get there quick enough. 

[legoes31]

24 minutes ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

Yeah, looks like the difference in price right now is pretty high. I'd personally go with a larger SSD. If you're not in a hurry, you could wait for the January sales to see how the prices are, though you also run the risk of things being out of stock if you don't get there quick enough. 

Okay, I seriously appreciate all your help! thank you so much