I'm trying to figure out what is the recommended option. So for those why doesn't know about my setup, I have a Windows PC and a Hackintosh. Currently both of these systems do not have an SSD in it and I am trying to make arrangements so that at least one system has an SSD for a start.
So it goes down like this, should I just grab the Intel 750 1.2TB PCIe SSD for my Windows PC only, or give both systems a breathe of fire and grab 2x Samsung 850 Pro 1TB or 2x Crucial MX200 1TB SATA SSDs? The reason I included the Crucial one in the options was due to its value. My budget for this doesn't really matter in this assumption but at least I would want something that'll solve the current poor state of my drives setup.
Well, what do you do on your Hackintosh that would require an SSD? If you do a lot of gaming and data transfer and production on your Windows, I'd definitely recommend the PCIe SSD over an 850 for each.
Sometimes I would use it for doing some multimedia editing, running VMs and using Xcode. For the frequent uses, I do tend to transfer sometimes large files around and doing all the web browsing on this machine. Most of the time my Hackintosh would run into page swapping due to the huge amount of use on RAM. With that said, RAM usage is the biggest problem on that machine. Don't see any gaming on there even though it is spec'd for that at least.
But for the most part of the editing, I do those on my Windows/Gaming PC, in tandem with those activities I do on my Hackintosh.
Well, you'd certainly see an improvement in both systems with an SSD. To be honest, the PCIe SSD is overkill for almost everything. I think, (from what I understand you use your PCs for) you would see a benefit well worth it providing the Hackintosh with an SSD as well as the Windows machine. I recommend you get an 850 for each. It may not be as fast as the PCIe SSD (which we both know), but it's definitely a hell of a lot faster than a HDD, likely providing a boost to both machines.
Yeah. To summarise up, my Windows PC mostly deals with resource intensive applications, while my Hackintosh; let's say it takes some share of that workload.
Hmm, a couple of those 540s would be pretty solid... Paying the extra $200-ish for the 850s doesn't seem very logical as the specs are almost identical. What are you leaning towards? (then again the Crucial has similar performance, but I personally trust the build quality of Intel's SSDs over Crucial's)
Yeah, it does. The 540 seems to be the mid-range option here. If price really isn't a worry, I'd just go for the 850s, but even with the high IOPS count, it won't be that much of a difference in practice as it is on paper.
If you are using swap a lot get something with a high tbw rating. Ssds warranty is often ''years or Terabytes of writes'' , TLC ssds have lower tbw so if anything happens and you reached that rating you could be out of warranty. How it aplies to real life scenario? I dont know , I didnt have to return any of the ssds I own yet. Also 1 tb of fast storage is a lot. I use a lot of different ssds,some were bought for testing but always Im trying to get a proper one for the job. And only 1 of them is 1tb, which was the worst purchase I ever made (840 evo) for steam library but later one it turned out it wasnt the best idea to store a lot of data on them for a longer periods of time lol. Few intel nvme pcie cards, (one 750 for tests, few p3600s and p3700s) , for freenas ''caching'' and vm monster pc . They have not only great speed but very low latency and great endurance rating. Also my lan is 10 Gibabit which helps a bit to justify using them. Nvme ssd shines if you can make it busy enough and that can be difficult to do by a single user. Sounds like both of your pcs would benefit from having ssd or more ram. If possible mlc drives with high tbw ratings if you do a lot of writes. (ram/slc cache tricks do miracles with benchmarks on tlc drives,but under constant use tends to run out ).
I'm not much into using SLC SSDs as I don't move large files across drives frequently. Plus they are more expensive than MLC/TLC ones and are more of towards server applications.
Also, I have read somewhere that someone said in order to fully use the NVMe feature you need an X99/Z170 motherboard. Looked up on this on Wikipedia and saw nothing to support that statement.
You wont get slc drive.The price gap is huge plus industry is moving from slc,more about it later.Well you need motherboard that works with nvme. 750 works with some older motherboards but is not guaranteed o work, I use it with x79 motherboard but its labeled as unknown pata drive.But a lot of pre x99 motherboards dont recognise it.Also if its going to be your os ssd make sure your os supports .Win 8 has the drivers so you can install it on nvme ssd .Even enterprise is moving from slc ,emlc replacing it.Mlc is being new slc. And most of ssd manufacturers is raplacing their mainstream mlc products with tlc. Its the last momement you can still get mlc ssd for a normal price.
I would do the SSD in each system. Unless you have a very specific workload a PCIE ssd is not going to give you the performance increase (over a standard SSD) to justify the cost, whereas 2 SSDs will be much cheaper and offer a significant performance increase on both systems.
@Destroyed007 i have a 500GB one of these and I'm very happy with it al also have 3 other crucial ones and they are doing very well. i sold my 120Gb to a friend it had be use as a temp download drive for torrents and seen a few TB of writes They are effectively micron drives and you can use the micron software to manage them
if you can get the 540 at that price go for it of the crucial.
Alright, I'm starting to lean towards getting 2x Crucial MX200 1TB for both of my systems, but I'm still unsure whether to go for them or get an 850 Pro 1TB and a RAM upgrade for my Hackintosh.