NVMe Worth it?

Hardware HDD's & SSD's
#1

I told a buddy at work I'd build him a nice PC for his kid to game on using some spare parts of mine (surprise Christmas present for his kid), a 120GB Corsair Force LX SSD I was planning on getting rid of anyways, and some purchased components totaling around $650...

Kid's build part list:
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/gxhvXL (it was around $75 cheaper at time of purchase... pretty basic build but I snuck in the i5 and a 390... and $650 was the budget... he'll certainly be the only 16-year-old on the block with a water-cooled i5 and an R9 390.... and his dad already sternly told him no @ the computer just to troll him :P)

So here's my current build:
http://pcpartpicker.com/user/DrunkenPanda/saved/dx6BD3

Was looking at larger OS SSDs...maybe Intel 750 series 400GB?
(http://www.neweggbusiness.com/product/product.aspx?item=9b-20-167-359&tpk=9b-20-167-359)

Is NVMe worth it? Or just buckle into not cloning my drive, wiping my gaming SSD, and using my media HDD for all that stuff? OR should I look at M.2? I can't justify buying another 2.5" SSD really... I mean I guess I could but the 1/2TB Samsung is plenty, most likely....

OR

Buy a new 850w+ PSU and get a used 780 classy for SLI? it's about the same cost :P

#2

ive been wondering too/
m.2 can hit like 2500MB/s
sata tops off at 550MB/s
but does it make a difference in loading the os and then games?

#3

An SATA SSD is plenty fast. I'd go with the latter route and get a larger PSU plus a second 780. That would kick ass...

#4

No.
For your average computer user, even a power user, SATA SSDs are plenty. There will be almost no perceptible difference. It is likely you wouldn't even be able to tell the difference between an SSD on SATA II at 3Gb/sec and SATA III 6Gb/sec

#5

There is definitely a difference between SATA II and SATA III, at least in my experience. All computers I've tried using SATA II with SSDs in them(SATA III SSDs) are slower in day to day usage. Boot time, program startup time, etc.

#6

Still a billion times faster than a HDD though.

More my point was just SATA III is plenty.

#7

hell man, i can tell the difference between my samsung 840 pro and my intel 520
both are sata 3
then again im special

i was gunna post a photo of a helmet but then i realized that might be offensive to some people
also i couldnt find a proper photo..

#8

NVME will be worth it in a year when the price is closer to AHCI

#9

My desktop environment is a VM. There are 5 other VMs running off of the same disk. I think it feels snappier overall on a NVMe Intel 750 compared to the 730. Could just be a placebo effect.

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#10

I'm installing two M.2 SM951 drives today. Partly due to my current SSD RAID 0 being a couple of years old with thousand of hours and terabytes of writes on record. Also because I'm upgrading with a CPU + mobo bundle so I can remove all SATA cables for a cleaner look. As for M.2 AHCI vs NVMe prices some NVMe drives are cheaper but yeah obviously there are cheaper SATA drives for similar capacity.

I'm only expecting a few gains maybe in game level loading and certainly transfering files between the M.2 devices. Otherwise it was just a good time to switch for me.

I'm actually expecting to upgrade again in the next year or so assuming the Intel 3D Xpoint storage tech comes to the consumer market.

#11

place a fan blowing on top of them
FYI

#12

That's a good tip that I was aware of. I'll will see what temps they reach in the case as there's a fan above them but I have those small stick on heat sinks in reserve as well.

#13

I'd say unless u have 200-400 dollars to burn sure go right away. But yea I think the recent drop in SSD prices, they are just trying to get rid of their inventory for the next big thing in SSD. Sure M.2 is fast but wait til consumer grade ramdisk SSD, imagine it going 50GB/s in a few years using that quad channel bandwidth on x99/x79 motherboards, they are just waiting for this tech to be *paid for.

#14

I ask myself that question often. Then i start looking at the failure rates of m.2 and nvme and think it is too early. They need to improve the reliability.

#15

I think it might just have to do with the insane temps they're running at, 7 watts on such a small place without a heatsink is begging for trouble.

115c is unacceptable for a modern microprocessor die.

1 Like
#16

If you want an NVMe drive, get a Samsung 950 pro. They have faster reads and writes and are cheaper. Plus they are m.2.

1 Like
#17

Maybe the on chip sensors are not reporting the controller temp but this is what I get when running CrystalDiskMark on one of my SM951 drives. No heat sink just a large case fan wafting air over the motherboard area.

I can try a heat gun later to see if there are any hot spots and maybe it just needs more time to warm up.

#18

I am in love with my 950 Pro m.2

This test was done on the actual drive in my system its my boot drive. Windows feels like it dosen't even load I see the bios screen, then it asks for my password.

950 pro.jpg847x1129 183 KB

#19

I am looking for stability and longevity of RAID0 on 2 Samsung 950 Pro NVMe 512 sticks. I see lots of videos on building this RAID on my MB, AsRock Extreme 7+ but it's so new that I don't read about RAID failures or other ugly results. In his review Wendell seems to imply that your asking for trouble with his body language. I plan on backing up to a SSD or spinner but don't want to constantly have to rebuild my system. My gut tells me to load the OS and applications on one of the M.2 sticks and use the other for files. My question takes the OP's one step further, Is it worth it to go RAID0 with 2 of these beasts? I'm not a gamer but work with large raster grids doing mathematical analysis.

#20

NVMe is only worth it if you are doing tasks that can take advantage of that massive read write. I'd rather save more money to get a cheaper and more capacity SSD like the Mushkin Reactor or put in a more powerful graphics card.