• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

M.2 SSD speed worth it?

Comixbooks

Comixbooks

Fully [H]
Joined
Jun 7, 2008
Messages
26,240
Thinking of picking up a Skylake motherboard with M.2 how fast is it compared to a traditional SSD like a 840 Samsung.
 
I say that 99% of the time for desktop or gaming usage it is no faster than a regular SATA SSD or at least you will likely not notice the difference outside of benchmarks.
 
When I built my new machine with a Z170 motherboard, I decided to stick with the 850 Pro I already had, but if I was going to use that drive in a different machine and buy a new SSD for the new box, I would've gone with the 950 Pro over buying another 850 Pro(not that the 850 Pro isn't awesome, because it is).
 
dewbak75 said:
When I built my new machine with a Z170 motherboard, I decided to stick with the 850 Pro I already had, but if I was going to use that drive in a different machine and buy a new SSD for the new box, I would've gone with the 950 Pro over buying another 850 Pro(not that the 850 Pro isn't awesome, because it is).
Click to expand...

Yeah.. i've got a Z170 board as well, just stuck with the two SSDs I already have, didn't see the point to a m.2 drive. (that, and it's an ITX board w/ a less the full length m.2 slot)
 
It's better but i wouldn't say worth it for most people yet. More for bragging rights.
 
I got a Samsung 950 Pro after upgrading to a Z170. But then again my SSD was SATA 2 (intel 320) and only 120GB so I needed more space so I thought I might as well get the fastest. I would say that in real life I notice that my hard drive is about twice as fast, even though the transfer speeds are 10 times as fast.
 
I like M2 because of the form factor. Any additional speed is a bonus.
 
Remember M2 is a form factor like 3.5 or 2.5 drives, not a speed designation. You can have M2 SATA drives that are no faster than any other SATA drives.

What you really want to ask is if NVME is worth it over SATA..
 
Zangmonkey said:
I like M2 because of the form factor. Any additional speed is a bonus.
Click to expand...

That was another factor that made me consider it on my Z170 Sabertooth Mk 1, because the board has pretty good airflow over the m.2 slot, and it eliminates some of the cabling requirements. In the end I decided to just stick with the 840 Pro, It just wasn't worth an extra few hundred.
 
drescherjm said:
I say that 99% of the time for desktop or gaming usage it is no faster than a regular SATA SSD or at least you will likely not notice the difference outside of benchmarks.
Click to expand...
read my sig....


on topic. it depends on what you do and what you want. Do you multitask? Do you do 6 things at once that trash an SSD liek AV/AM, rip, copy, back up, and read files all at once? If so yes...this will be very helpful. If you do 1 task at a time and thats it...it may or may not depending on how demanding that said task is.

if you run malwarebytes and kaspersky at once most standard SSDs eat shit if your doing other things on top of those two programs. i can tell you i have done

malwarebytes,
kaspersky
rip 1-2 BDs
trasnfer files to another SSD
play natural selection 2 and or browse the web reading the news...AKA opening and closing 10-20 tabs
download a game at 15MBps

and had no slow downs


I have seen my 480GB Extreme Pro actually fall behind my 15MBps download speed in the install process on Steam by itself. Thats not including AV/AM scan and or all that other crap at once.

so it all depends on what you do. The 950 PRO also is completely good with being 100% full with no OP. sure it takes a performance hit but it isn't very noticable.

my 480GB Extreme Pro, which is 1 of 2 of the best SATA drives was even 20-25% OP too!!

the 950 PRO is way faster in real world usage if you actual multitask. If you don't mutitask than its not a big difference....it makes a difference but not a magical one like in my case.
 
Last edited:
I like the form factor a lot and something about the m.2 feels zippier. I have three m.2 850 EVO's. Two 250g in raid0 on a laptop where I get 1100r/1000w performance and one 500g on my new Z170 and I get 550r/520w performance. I was going to get the 950 for the Z170 but I at these speeds the 850 is fine and twice the space (vs a 256G 950) seemed like a better value to me. I also have a PNY 1TB CS1311 (for Steam and games) and it outperforms the single EVO just a bit in sequential speeds but I don't notice it unless I am benching them. The EVO's are a little better with 4k / small files - so they make a great OS disk.
 
i honestly dont feel much of a difference coming from a 840 pro but just like everyone else the form factor of the nvme drives is great
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top