Best bang m.2 NVMe

hbidad

Gawd
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May 8, 2002
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Hello all,

I recently purchased a Lenovo y730 that came with just 128gb m.2 drive and a 1tb hdd. I'm looking to upgrade the m.2 drive but I've been out of the loop on pc components for a while and not sure which one I should get? I don't do much with my laptop (youtube, net, emails and a small amount of gaming) so I do not need anything near the pro levels. I'm thinking about 512gb but realistically 256gb will probably be enough.

I glanced at Crucial's site to find they offer a P1 series 500gb for $89 but the speeds appear to be really slow at 1,900 MB/S READ, 950 MB/S WRITE

I have also been looking at the Samsung 970 evo for $130 at BestBuy but not sure if the speeds would be noticeable and worth the extra $40?

Thoughts, opinions, and/or recommendations? Should I keep looking for a better deal on a used one?
 
The Adata SX8200 is a solid choice. There are many slightly slower choices for even less cost but it is difficult to tell them all apart. Even Sabrent who I've known to make good USB adapters is now making NVME drives.
 
IMHO, as it goes for any SSD, get the cheapest, reliable one, you will barely see any difference in performance in day to day activities.
 
I'm running the m.2 WD Blacks and Samsung 970 Evos - would recommend either / both.
 
Keep in mind the Crucial P1 uses QLC. This could have some meaningful differences that are not really practically detectable given current SSD testing methodology.

A drive not yet mentioned to consider would be HP EX920 ($90 for 500gb at Newegg) or even waiting for the upcoming EX950.

With your stated workload the actual noticeable benefits of NVMe over SATA are rather small though (if at all).
 
Do you live near a Microcenter? I remember the guys here talking about the store brand from there being pretty good at a really good price. Might be worth checking out if you live near one.
 
Do you live near a Microcenter? I remember the guys here talking about the store brand from there being pretty good at a really good price. Might be worth checking out if you live near one.

I think he is talking about INLAND Professional it is half the price of a Evo but half the read/write speed and also half the IOPS too....

$80 for a 512 GB and $140 for a 1 TB...vs $135 and $260 for the Evo..
 
I would advise getting a 500+GB if you don't want to look for a new SSD in a year or so for 2 reasons.
1) extra space never hurts
2) SSD performance goes down as the drive fills up. So u start to see performance drops once u get 50% fill on cheaper drives.

I grabbed a Samsung PM981 off Ebay for around $110 which was cheaper than a Samsung EVO and offered better performance than some of the $80 ones. I expect to look for a replacement drive after 2 years.
For a different light use laptop, I jumped on an Adata off Rakuten w/the 15% off, which was the deal of the week.
 
Thank you very much everyone, I ended up ordering a HP EX920 from the egg via newegg for about $80 shipped. (500gb)
 
There is benchmarking and there is observable real world differences.

The first shows twice or even 4x as fast, the latter is nearly entirely moot.


There is a huge difference going from spinning drive to SSD. There is a exceptionally minimal human observable difference going from any modern SSD to NVME. There is probably literally no human observable difference between difference NVMEs unless you have your stop watch out and are trying to observe fractions of a second on the scale of 10 seconds.

https://www.tweaktown.com/articles/8661/best-ssd-gaming-over-120-ssds-tested/index2.html

"In each chart, we further divide products by color. The dark blue bars show NVMe SSDs while the light blue bar shows SATA SSDs. The orange bars show hard disk drives."


Here's a $55 m.2 SATA 500GB SSD highlighted compared to many other popular much more expensive NVME options
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...x-_-InternalSSDs-_-20156177-S1A1D&ignorebbr=1

The difference in a real world use case?

14.75 seconds loading time on the Crucial m.2 SATA style SSD vs. 14.46 seconds with the WD Black 4X PCI-E NVME on the same test. (The WD Black NVME is the same 500GB size, big costs over twice as much as the Cricial m.2 SATA.)

1/3 of a second on a nearly 15 second timeframe is not observable to humans absent a stop watch. Wouldn’t you rather have $75 bucks in your pocket in this type of scenario? Talk about diminishing returns!!!

Unless you are doing production database type work - no reason to sweat your NVME or even SSD purchase. Price in this realm is probably the greater criteria of selection for most sane people. Just look for decently priced deal, IMO.
 
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The Adata SX8200 is a solid choice. There are many slightly slower choices for even less cost but it is difficult to tell them all apart. Even Sabrent who I've known to make good USB adapters is now making NVME drives.

I have this drive in 480GB size and will endorse it. I've been very happy with my SX8200.
 
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I used the older BPX drive and it still works fine to this day. Although, realistically, I agree with Archaea above. Significant diminishing returns. I'd probably get a 1TB SATA3 drive over a 500GB NVMe if the price was comparable.
Oh i thought you were looking for a NVME exclusively. Yeah you would probably get more storage for the $ with SATA 3 2.5" drive or m.2
 
I am kicking myself for not buying a 2TB 970 evo for $350 on amazon last night. They are back to $500 tonight.
 
I have an microcenter store brand name in one of my rigs.

It is 128gb. Has like 2300 read and 480 write. It's slow on writes but I am happy with it for the read speeds.

Also search the used market place for Samsung 960 eves. They're hella fast and can be had for cheap.

A lot of people, like me, will get a 512g and later get a 1 or 2tb and have an extra 512 with 100% life remaining on the nand. Remember the average, even power user, can barely do any real usage on these drives.

I video encode alot and my 512gb 960 pro has 100% life left and I have over 26TB of writes and use it daily for video encoding. What seems like a lot of data to me is nothing to these drives.

So get a good used on and it will perform better than a bottom bucket new one brand new
 
I'm happy with my intel 600p, it's (or atleast was at the time, it doesn't hold up so well compared to current NVMe performance \ price) a good compromise between NVMe performance and price. I'm considering picking up the 1tb 660p if they go on sale again. I had to juggle games on my 500gb last weekend to try anthem and it's a bit of a pain.
 
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Oh i thought you were looking for a NVME exclusively. Yeah you would probably get more storage for the $ with SATA 3 2.5" drive or m.2

I think he was looking for M.2 form factor. It's getting closer to the point of it being a wash between SATA3 and NVMe price wise in the M.2 form factor.
 
The 970 Evo Plus gets released on 2/10/19...I'm getting a 1tb one.
you sure? Rakuten , newegg just to name a few already selling it

not Amazon tho..which makes me wonder if some sellers sell before release or you are mixing release dates
 
I did not need to see this. Last week, I paid $320 for a 1TB Samsung 970 Pro NVMe. Already installed and running. :arghh::banghead:
The 970 Pro is in an entirely different league from the 660P. Most people don't need the write speeds and endurance of the 970 Pro, but for applications that can use it, it will beat something like a 660p by a significant margin.

I'm jealous that you only paid $320. I think mine cost something like $480 at the height of the SSD bubble. Oh well!
 
I'm not sure that most users would notice a performance difference between different class NVME drives unless they really need the extra write endurance or need extra performance for databases. The only difference I could see between my 1TB 970 EVO and the 1TB 860 EVO it replaced as a boot disk was slightly faster boot times on my desktop, which are largely useless to me since I usually just use standby mode.
 
I'm happy with my intel 600p, it's (or atleast was at the time, it doesn't hold up so well compared to current NVMe performance \ price) a good compromise between NVMe performance and price. I'm considering picking up the 1tb 660p if they go on sale again. I had to juggle games on my 500gb last weekend to try anthem and it's a bit of a pain.


Checkout the hot deals section... .they are back to $130ish on newegg
 
Bought 2tb 600p drive for $275, will be a game drive. Fast enough for me.
 
Hello all,

I recently purchased a Lenovo y730 that came with just 128gb m.2 drive and a 1tb hdd. I'm looking to upgrade the m.2 drive but I've been out of the loop on pc components for a while and not sure which one I should get? I don't do much with my laptop (youtube, net, emails and a small amount of gaming) so I do not need anything near the pro levels. I'm thinking about 512gb but realistically 256gb will probably be enough.

I glanced at Crucial's site to find they offer a P1 series 500gb for $89 but the speeds appear to be really slow at 1,900 MB/S READ, 950 MB/S WRITE

I have also been looking at the Samsung 970 evo for $130 at BestBuy but not sure if the speeds would be noticeable and worth the extra $40?

Thoughts, opinions, and/or recommendations? Should I keep looking for a better deal on a used one?


Is performance difference going to be "noticeable"?

Without benchmarking software?

NO!
 
Bought 2tb 600p drive for $275, will be a game drive. Fast enough for me.

500gb?
game drive?
I have 2x 500gb .. and almost full as steam games are HUGE!!!!
ive got a pci-e 16x nvme quad card so got room for 2 more.. hah..i just keep pointing games to different areas...
 
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