I'm pretty overwhelmed with the amount of choice for a boot drive interfaces & formats.
I'm looking to build a skylake system probably with the asus z170-A.
I know that Logan seems to like the corsair neutron XTs, but seems to be m.2 , u.2, with some sort of nvme controller are the new hot ish...
Any clarification on best choice for $300-$500 budget would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers.
m.2 uses the PCI bus, so it's faster than sata, or can be at least, and nvme is in the 750 series from intel right? I think that's just for super high speed data transfers.
Also if you're just gaming, usually better to just go for haswell and use the extra cash for your GPU.
Sorta... Some early M.2 drives used Sata.
NVME is the replacement for AHCI. And from my rudimentary knowledge provides far less overhead when requesting a read or write, which are performed a lot faster on flash than on mechanical hard drives.
Sata III speed is a limiting factor for ssd with good controller and quality nand (read/write and iops ,latency).Nvme is solution for that , if u need it you won`t mind the price, editing few videos at the same time , caching , using it and moving stuff around through 10g network etc ( my case, I own p3600, p3700 and 750 chosen by nand endurance to fit their purpose in different pcs .) And nvm is hot hehe, you need to cool them more than regular ssds :D Making it bootable is a different matter, easiest way is to choose a system with native nvme drivers like win 8.1. If you dont need that speed nor doing a "show off" build ,the best option would be to get the largest capacity ssd with mlc nand and reliable controller (that doesnt choke when handling Incompressible Data), which should last years and has some extra space for frequently used programs and games (or leave some space as drives slow down as they get full).Or get two separate ssd one for OS and second for other stuff.Also worth to mention that larger capacity sata3 ssds get slightly better performance. M.2 is a space saving form , it might offer speed boost depending on interface but also might need some extra cooling, if it gets hot when busy ,to avoid throttling and spreading heat to other components. Again for OS and/or few games and programms sata III 6gb/s ssd should be fine.Just avoid cheap kingston v300 ssds and samsung 840 evos and" TLC buffered with SLC" drives as their performance is not consistent.
Alright make sense, basically nVME and m.2 drives are overkill for OS and Apps, mainly for video and high amounts of data transfer. Is there any SATA SSD people recommend?
Samsung evo 850 PRO? Corsair Neutron XT?
People tend to get the cheapest thing that does its job properly.Its difficult for me to recommend Samsung drives as I have two 840s. Samsung 850 evo seems to be popular , for a casual use it should be fine, people havent reported firmware issues yet .850 pro is good for more intensive work,it has more endurance and longer warranty and higher price.Also worth to mention they are making 2 tb versions now if you are after fast storage.I havent used Corsair ssds so cant advice on that. If its not urgent, wait for some promotions like Black Friday deals etc .Same goes for a new system, I would wait till first 1 or 2 bios and driver updates come out when users report some hardware issues with new platforms , Also more nvme drives will show up so the prices might come down to a reasonable level.
The best bang for the buck boot drive right now is the Samsung SM951 [128/256/512] AHCI M.2 which can perform @ up to 2150 MBps which is 4 times faster than standard SSD's. This drive isn't NVMe so it costs less but performs nearly as well. The only down side is that you may need a PCI card if you're motherboard doesn't natively support a M.2 slot.
Full sheet here
Whatever is cheap, mushkin chronos has worked fine from my experience.
my samsung 840 250gb pro
the ssd magitian software is saying the smart data says ive got 11 TB or writes on the drive, and its still chugging along just fine, above 520MB/s on sequential s all the way
ive got rapid mode enabled so if i were to screenshot the test id need to reboot,
but i think ive got an old shot somewhere
& the older shot
nice ssd, but they heat up quickly past 100 C, I have xp941 512 gb and it got burning hot and second thing is the m.2 slots are usually placed in areas difficult areas to cool like under the gpu, back side of motherboard or its impossible to glue radiators on ssd as you could void warranty. Pcie adaptor seems good idea ( i always run out of pcie slots so I do not use them) .Also with that budget you could get yourself Intel s3500 with power loss protection.Or save money and get extra storage later when you find better deals.Or invest extra money elsewhere.