So I have a chance to buy a 512gb NVMe m.2 drive, I already have 2x 512gb sata SSDs, and I was wondering if their will be any worth while improvment with NVMe
Depending entirely on what you do...
I am basic user, gamer and amateur content creator.
I have 64GB Sata ssd... I don't feel slowed down.
If you are a power user and do stuff, that really need the speed, then it may be worth it. For standard every day use, gaming, even content creation (not every type, but many types) you will not feel the difference at all...
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I agree with psycho_666. There are only extreme cases in which you might really need and see a difference using an NVME drive. I can't think of any case at the moment. Maybe editing 8K high bitrate footage might need a drive that's that fast, but even for that scenario is overkill since Red camera use SSDs that are just as fast as SATA ones so. Transfering a lot (and I mean a shit ton) of small files over and over again might need a drive with such high IOPS. Other than that it's just, in my opinion, overkill because more is better. That's it. Not hating on anyone using NVME drives, I love you all.
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depends on your needs but most importantly, on your patience
Having used both a SATA M.2 drive and a PCI NVME drive, I can definitely say that the NVME drives are fast as hell. The OS boots and is ready within only 1-2 seconds. That being said, they are definitely not worth the price unless you do heavy file transfers like 4k video editing. They're certainly a luxury over SATA, not a necessity.
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I have no experience myself but with weird pricing here the difference between a intel 540 m.2 and 600p is nothing so of course I'm going 600p. But I'm building new system not looking to upgrade.
Depends.
I'm having a blast with my SM961 512gb, then again I only had a 120gig + 2tb HDD in my system before.
I have actually done a lot of testing with M.2 versus SSD's in several different set up's. I have 2 - Samsung 950 pro's M.2s, I use one for Windows 10 operating system, and the second for a recording / scratch disk for adobe. I also have Linux running on 3 240gb Adata SSD's in a raid 0 setup.
I first compared windows 10 running on a single M.2 versus 1 adata 240 ssd. During this test, I was checking for boot time, read time, right time, time to copy a 25 page paper (since I figured that would be about normal for most home use file copy work). I copied a Mp4 file of one single 1080 movie. I copied a mp4 with two full length movies at 1080 resolution. I copied a 16gb mp3 music file (considering that would be on average what everyone used). I also played Overwatch and Doom off of both drives.
I found that load times between the two drives were not noticeably different. On all of the files, (and i copied them independently) there was no noticeable difference between coping from the ssd to the M.2 or from the M.2 to the ssd.
I did the same test between M.2 and 2 ssd's in raid 0 and also tested between 1 - M.2 and 3 SSD's in raid 0 and noticed no difference in boot times on Windows. Linux did boot faster on the 2 and 3 ssd's in raid 0. The files tranfered fast from the M.2 to the 2 ssd raid set up than they did from the 2 ssd raid to the M.2.
I did not notice a difference between a 2 ssd raid setup and 3 ssd raid setup on either linux or windows.
Window boot time did not change regardless of what setup I was running. It booted at almost the same time for both ssd raid setups and the M.2 setup. Unless windows decided to do it things and update the system at random times.
I have, because I do have 2 M.2s on the motherboard, I did run both of them the M.2's in a raid setup and that makes a huge difference. M.2 in raid 0 beat the ssd's in all test including: boot times, file read and write times.
Conclusion, I can not justify the price for a M.2 for the average person that does average home use work with their computer. Even for someone, like myself that does a lot or research and writing on my system, and a lot of video editing with the same system, I can not justify the price. I have better results with ssds in a raid setup. Of course I keep full backs of my system on a Nas, and I have multiple back up of all of my research, because I do have everything setup in a raid system.
My reasoning for saying a M.2 is not worth the price is - the average file size transfer that the average person does, reading and writing from their ssd are not big enough to fully saturate the sata cables in their machine, especially if you use ssd's in a raid setup. Now if you are doing big and I mean really big file transfers with files larger than the 6gb that sata will transfer then I can see using M.2's but and keep this in mind, you will only see a difference in reading and writing to the M.2. If you are doing file transfers from a ssd to a M.2 or vice versa, then you are going to be limited by the sata transfer rate once you reach that 6gb limit.
Now, as far as playing games. I was really really disappointed in load times. I did notice a difference between the ssd setup and M.2 setup while playing the same game. However, this test was done after I had done all of my other testing and I will say that I was pretty pissed off from not seeing any difference between my raid setup and the M.2, so I might have been trying to tell myself that the M.2 was making a difference in the game.
If I were to do everything over again, I would not worry about using the M.2 unless I were planning on using it just for large file transfers or large file saves. I would save my money and buy 2 or 3 240 or 256gb ssd's and run them in a raid system. You will get a lager storage space, and the raid system will run just as fast or faster for average daily use.
My system that I test all of this on is
x99 Taichi
2 - samsung 950 pros 256gb for windows
6850k 6 core @ 4.3ghz
64gb @ 2800 ram
Gtx 1080
3 - Adata 240gb SSD's in raid 0
So the system has the power to fully use the M.2's.
So let me know what you end up doing and if you test your system out against some ssds and let me know what you end up with.
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I was offered one at 30% off regular price, and thought if their was a benifit I would go for it.
but from what you described my 2x 512gb SSDs are fine for now.
thanks!
If it's cheap maybe
if you have to ask you probably don't need over a GB per second on your data transfers
ask yourself... do you really need it or want it? is it a good investment? you already have SSD's why do you need a m.2? i have 3 laying around. if you are storing that many files sure but do you need that information all the time
I was partially thinking of putting this in my laptop but realized I don't use more than 150gb of space on it so meh
M.2 drives can be worth it for things like video production or something else that needs insane bandwidth (maybe caching once you run out of ram or something similar?) however the difference in loading games or booting up is negligible. If you wish to attain a NVMe drive for gaming purposes I suggest you don't bother.
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yea... i have a 500gb Samsung and use about 25% of that. but i have a pc with games and etc. however i use ultra books now and need have it. but were are two different people with different needs. if you have a ultra book that only takes pcie ssd then fuck yea, if not just use a 2,5 ssd its cheaper.
The PCIe M.2 can be used for scrubbing through 4K video in Adobe Premier or KDEnLive, Boot times were going to be phenominal on Linux because of how systemd handles the boot scripts asynchronously. Games are shotty after the SATA bandwidth anyway. If you are doing file compression and the sort, why not !