Should I buy an M.2 or SATA SSD? (and recommendations for 250 GB SSD?)

[jmk396]

I'm looking to upgrade my OS drive SSD from 120 GB to around 250 GB and I noticed that my motherboard supports M.2 cards. (The motherboard is an ASUS Z170 Pro Gaming)

Is there a benefit to going with an M.2 drive versus SATA?

Any recommendations for a 250 GB SSD drive? (only for OS; I have a separate 1 TB SSD for gaming) Hopefully under $150?

 

[TFchris]

I'm looking to upgrade my OS drive SSD from 120 GB to around 250 GB and I noticed that my motherboard supports M.2 cards. (The motherboard is an ASUS Z170 Pro Gaming)

Is there a benefit to going with an M.2 drive versus SATA?

Any recommendations for a 250 GB SSD drive? (only for OS; I have a separate 1 TB SSD for gaming) Hopefully under $150?

I personally cannot tell any difference in speed transfer when it comes to M2 and SATA based drives for typical use.
The only benefit I can think of, is that your motherboards' M2 slot CAN allow for faster transfer speeds over SATA, but it all depends on your SSD of choice. Getting something like a Samsung 850 Pro M2 is almost no different than a SATA based SSD. You would need to purchase something like a Samsung 950 Pro to take advantage of M2 speeds, but be ready to spend a lot of money.

 

[Bawjaws]

M.2 is just the form factor - you get SATA M.2 drives and NVMe M.2 drives. An M.2 SATA SSD is going to have identical performance to a standard 2.5" SATA SSD. I have a Samsung 960 EVO M.2 SSD and it's certainly quick, but in day-to-day usage it's not massively quicker than the Samsung 850 EVO SATA SSD in the same computer.

 

[chenw]

Personally, unless your computer's space is limited by its form factor (EG it's a HTPC with ITX form factor and a small case), I'd choose SATA over M.2 SSD (especially M.2 SATA SSD).

Reason being, while it is a bigger pain to reroute the Sata data and power cables, once it's in place, it's a lot easier to change or replace a SATA drive than it is to replace a M.2 drive, depending on its location (some M.2's are either on the back of Motherboards or underneath GPUs, both PITA to get to).

Also, some motherboards take resources to run M.2's. Later chipsets have no problems with M.2, but my Z97 M.2 for example, eats two SATA ports to run at SATA port speed, which is laughably expensive in terms of mobo resources.

AFAIK Z270 mobos only take SATA slots if the M.2 SSD is SATA, NVMe will not disable anything. You'll have to double check if your M.2 conflicts with any of your existing storage.