Go with an M.2 or 2.5 SSD?

Diablo2K

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Getting a new laptop that comes with a 1tb 5400RPM Hard Drive. From reading reviews on the laptop I am getting and similar spec'ed ones an SSD is highly recomended to help speed up the laptop. The laptop I am getting has a slot for a NVME M.2 SSD. I am wanting to spend about $120 on a 1tb SSD but I am not sure which one to get. I am leaning towards a Silicon Power M.2 drive as this will give me a total of 2tb of overall space. I only have 1tb in my desktop and have not had any problems with space. Would it be worth it to get a Smaller 512gb but faster M.2 SSD (which one?) and keeping the 5400rpm drive as backup space?
 
If it really really supports NVMe, then that's your best performance option.
 
Been doing alot of reading and thinking about this and I think I will be going with the Sabrent 512GB Rocket. At $80 it fits my budget, has good speed and life as well as a 5 year warranty. I'll be keeping the 5400rpm hard drive for back up and additional storage. I won't be doing any heavy gaming so the smaller size won't be a problem. (I wonder if the laptop I am getting will play Diablo 3? HP Pavilion - 15-cs0020ca)
Maxx and cjcox, thanks for your input. I read a review on the Sabrent Rocket Q at Reddit which helped alot on my decision.
 
It will certainly play Diablo 3. Not smoothly at the highest settings, but certainly playable on medium settings and maybe 1080P
 
Just watched Has me convinced SSD is the way to go. So an NVME M.2 for my laptop and Desktop. I'll have to get an adapter for the desktop but I think it will be worth it.
 
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Honestly, you won't really notice much difference in every day use. I have systems with both and I don't notice anything between them. It's not like the difference since between HDD and SSD, which is very noticeable. I have 6 desktops and a server + laptop. I have everything from the cheapest crappy SSD (which gets like 400MB/s) to a decent NVME that I get about 1500MB/s on. They both boot about the same speed and load apps pretty close. I would buy capacity I've speed within reason.
 
Honestly, you won't really notice much difference in every day use. I have systems with both and I don't notice anything between them. It's not like the difference since between HDD and SSD, which is very noticeable. I have 6 desktops and a server + laptop. I have everything from the cheapest crappy SSD (which gets like 400MB/s) to a decent NVME that I get about 1500MB/s on. They both boot about the same speed and load apps pretty close. I would buy capacity I've speed within reason.
So if I understand you correctly you think I should get a larger SSD over a faster SSD? In the video I linked the M.2 was only slightly faster than the 2.5" SATA SSD. In the laptop I am getting i would like to completely replace the Hard Drive to aid in battery life, but the desktop I don't need to worry about that so I can keep the Hard Drive for back up data.
 
So if I understand you correctly you think I should get a larger SSD over a faster SSD? In the video I linked the M.2 was only slightly faster than the 2.5" SATA SSD. In the laptop I am getting i would like to completely replace the Hard Drive to aid in battery life, but the desktop I don't need to worry about that so I can keep the Hard Drive for back up data.
Personally I would go for capacity and ditch the HDD if possible. As you saw, very small real world difference. I probably wouldn't get a bottom of the bin SSD for a daily driver, but I even have one of those and I can't really tell besides in bench marks. I try to do my research and find a decent controller and find a middle range brand on sale using it. Nvme are getting cheaper, sometimes you can find them pretty close in price on sale, if that happens, it may be worth a small $ increase, but I wouldn't put to much extra in for it. I did end up with 2 NVME drives in my desktops, and SATA in the rest of my machines (4 desktops, a laptop and my dual Xeon server). I'm have 1gb Ethernet, which can only do about 115MB/s max which any of the (even the one on SATA 2) SSDs can keep up with. When I eventually go up to 10gbe, I may start putting a bit more weight behind the speeds of the drives, but I doubt I'll swap existing drives, I only do large file copies once in a while.

Edit/ps:. These are my views and experience, get input from others, figure out what's important for you, do a bit of research; don't just take my word as gospel as you may have different use cases than me.
 
Personally I would go for capacity and ditch the HDD if possible. As you saw, very small real world difference. I probably wouldn't get a bottom of the bin SSD for a daily driver, but I even have one of those and I can't really tell besides in bench marks. I try to do my research and find a decent controller and find a middle range brand on sale using it. Nvme are getting cheaper, sometimes you can find them pretty close in price on sale, if that happens, it may be worth a small $ increase, but I wouldn't put to much extra in for it. I did end up with 2 NVME drives in my desktops, and SATA in the rest of my machines (4 desktops, a laptop and my dual Xeon server). I'm have 1gb Ethernet, which can only do about 115MB/s max which any of the (even the one on SATA 2) SSDs can keep up with. When I eventually go up to 10gbe, I may start putting a bit more weight behind the speeds of the drives, but I doubt I'll swap existing drives, I only do large file copies once in a while.

Edit/ps:. These are my views and experience, get input from others, figure out what's important for you, do a bit of research; don't just take my word as gospel as you may have different use cases than me.
I been doing alot of research on them, both here, youtube, and other reviews. One reason I chose the Sabrent Rocket (TLC) over the Rocket Q (QLC) was the lifespan of the Rocket was alot longer then that of the Rocket Q it's only about $15 more for the Rocket over the Rocket Q. The extra speed is just a bonus and I am sure I probably wont notice any differance in speed between the 2. As far as size goes I have a 1tb drive in my desktop and I only use about a 1/3rd of it at any time. I am not a big gamer anymore and don't have alot of games installed so I don't use much space. I am sure 512gb will be more than enough in my laptop as I will have even less games on it. Probably just Diablo 3 and a few smaller games like World of Goo.
 
if you have a m.2 NVME slot i would use it as opens up for you to use the sata for a spinner or another ssd, but overall you probery won't notice it (unless you had a NVME ssd before that is, as it's nice when installing games at 1.2-2GB/s, but opening games your CPU limited even if you had a SATA SSD) if the NVME SSD i bought for my system was not the same price of a SATA SSD at the time when i bought it i would of got a SATA ssd

but if price is a problem there is really nothing wrong with a Dram based SSDs (don't buy Dram-Less SSDs or QLC SSDs unless you don't mind that they are not meant for very large writes but are fine for reads noramly)

problem with QLC SSDs when you burn up the SLC cache they drop to sub 80MB/s not very ideal, but some QLC SSDs come with quite a large amount of SLC cache but do note more full the dive smaller the SLC cache gets, but do remember it takes about 10 minutes or longer for the SSD to empty the SLC cache into QLC
 
It will certainly play Diablo 3. Not smoothly at the highest settings, but certainly playable on medium settings and maybe 1080P
Well I got the laptop yesterday. Installed all updates and Diablo 3. I am getting about 15fps at 1080p with everything on low or off.
 
Well I got the laptop yesterday. Installed all updates and Diablo 3. I am getting about 15fps at 1080p with everything on low or off.

I don't think that's the SSDs fault though. 720p might get you closer to playable, but there's only so much you can do with some IGPs.

I have a laptop with a M.2 and 2.5" slots. I have a 970 Evo with Windows in the M.2 and an old Crucial 2.5" SSD in that bay for Manjaro.
 
Well I got the laptop yesterday. Installed all updates and Diablo 3. I am getting about 15fps at 1080p with everything on low or off.
if you thought a ssd was going to get you more fps ,no

ssd affects load times and overall fast and consistent system response time

what's the laptop make model and installed cpu and gpu in that laptop
 
if you thought a ssd was going to get you more fps ,no

ssd affects load times and overall fast and consistent system response time

what's the laptop make model and installed cpu and gpu in that laptop
No I didn't think a SSD would effect gaming performance. I did update Drivers using SDIO and got a good bit of improvement. (About 10 to 15fps improvement)

HP Pavilion - 15-cs0020ca
Intel® Core™ i5-8250U
Intel® UHD Graphics 620

I didn't have expectations of being able to game on this laptop. It does need an SSD in a bad way, takes forever to boot up and opening programs is slow. I knew this before I bought this laptop.
 
No I didn't think a SSD would effect gaming performance. I did update Drivers using SDIO and got a good bit of improvement. (About 10 to 15fps improvement)

HP Pavilion - 15-cs0020ca
Intel® Core™ i5-8250U
Intel® UHD Graphics 620

I didn't have expectations of being able to game on this laptop. It does need an SSD in a bad way, takes forever to boot up and opening programs is slow. I knew this before I bought this laptop.
without a real gpu like nvidia ,intel igpu are garbage, a amd R5 ryzen based laptop may have been better
 
without a real gpu like nvidia ,intel igpu are garbage, a amd R5 ryzen based laptop may have been better
Without going into details I didn't have a lot to chose from. I got to do the best I can with what I have.
 
I just watched a LTT on this that made me chuckle. They found that SSDs are pretty close to equal when doing regular daily tasks even gaming. Idk I have a few SSDs but I’ve never done any side by side testing. Also keep in mind you can buy m.2 sata drives and skip over NVME. MIGHT save you some money I haven’t really seen much difference in price for sata 2.5”, m.2 sata, and NVME for budget solutions with on sale exceptions. For instance I got an ADATA 8100 1tb m.2 NVMe for $89 over Black Friday, and a 1tb ADATA 8200 for $109 cyber Monday finally now when I’m looking for storage again now prices are like $30 or more higher so I want with a few 2.5” hynix 1tb g31s for $85 each. Now that sales are over all of them are pretty well over $100. I would look out for sales and just get what you can that fits and meets your capacity because prices seem kinda volatile this year and rising for SSDs in general
 
I just watched a LTT on this that made me chuckle. They found that SSDs are pretty close to equal when doing regular daily tasks even gaming. Idk I have a few SSDs but I’ve never done any side by side testing. Also keep in mind you can buy m.2 sata drives and skip over NVME. MIGHT save you some money I haven’t really seen much difference in price for sata 2.5”, m.2 sata, and NVME for budget solutions with on sale exceptions. For instance I got an ADATA 8100 1tb m.2 NVMe for $89 over Black Friday, and a 1tb ADATA 8200 for $109 cyber Monday finally now when I’m looking for storage again now prices are like $30 or more higher so I want with a few 2.5” hynix 1tb g31s for $85 each. Now that sales are over all of them are pretty well over $100. I would look out for sales and just get what you can that fits and meets your capacity because prices seem kinda volatile this year and rising for SSDs in general
I still haven't bought anything. I have been looking at the WD Blue SN550. It's probably the cheapest ($99) 1tb drive I can find and it's TLC and not QLC. From the reviews I have seen it's a pretty good drive. It's only $15 more then the Sabrient Rocket 512gb. However Amazon is currently out of stock on them but I am hoping they will have them back in stock next week.

Edit: I am buying the WD Blue SN550 or the Mushkin Pilot 500gb. I have decided 500gb is more then enough for my laptop and it fits easily into my budget. Now for my Desktop, I have a M.2 slot on my motherboard but it's not NVMe and when I asked a while back was told it was not worth using basicly. So for a SSD do I just go with a 2.5 SATA drive or do I buy an adapter and use an NVMe Drive? I have a free PCIe x8/16 slot. I will definatly need a 1tb drive for the desktop.
 
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