Single fast m.2 vs 2 SATA III SSD in RAID 0?

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I am building a new desktop for the first time in several years. I am looking at some options for a drive for OS and programs. I have an ASUS Z97i-plus mini itx mainboard which has an m.2 10gb/s port.



My question is this...from a performance and usability standpoint am I better with a single Samsung SM951 m.2 or 2 drives like the Samsung EVO 850 SATA III in Raid 0 configuration?



Pricing wise the two options are roughly equivalent right now.
 
problem with raid 0 if using IRST will be the CPU usage so you will be fighting for CPU time under heavy loads but that might not be a concern for you.

also whats the performance between the two drives? the 850s might offer better single thread 4k but i am not sure. It all depends on scaling and difference in performance. Also i am not sure why everyone likes the evo drives here. They are not that great personally especially in terms of endurance.

Also you have higher rate of failure but not a big deal to be honest.

Cost? and Size? You decide on that. Thats where RAID 0 might be nice
 
Realistically you won't see a difference unless you are using programs that either constantly swap data or require large data loads.

I recommend getting a single large SSD or if money is of no concern large m.2.
 
I'm curious how you find the pricing equivalent because from what I see, 850 Pro SSDs can be had for about $0.50/GB, 850 EVO for $0.35/GB and the SM951 is about $1/GB
 
RAID 0 has very limited benefits for SSDs. It only makes sense if you require more than 1TB in a single volume, or if you are one of the very few consumers who absolutely must double your sequential read and writes.
 
EnderW said:
I'm curious how you find the pricing equivalent because from what I see, 850 Pro SSDs can be had for about $0.50/GB, 850 EVO for $0.35/GB and the SM951 is about $1/GB
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you could get the Sandisk extreme pro for 45 cents a gig or sometimes less on sale. The better performance and reliability well makes up for the mere 10 cents a gig
 
I ran two 840 Evo's in RAID 0 for three months and I swear I couldn't tell the difference between a single drive or two in RAID 0. At 500MB+ a sec, disk IO is NOT an issue, CPU is. Unless you are running several dozen VMs, or a very very high IO database, I just don't see a use case where a single user running ANYTHING needs that much performance.

Of course, there is always the "Just because I can do it" crowd, but personally spend your money elsewhere. More CPU cores, i7 over an i5, a better GPU, better case, literally anything.
 
Philmatic said:
I ran two 840 Evo's in RAID 0 for three months and I swear I couldn't tell the difference between a single drive or two in RAID 0. At 500MB+ a sec, disk IO is NOT an issue, CPU is. Unless you are running several dozen VMs, or a very very high IO database, I just don't see a use case where a single user running ANYTHING needs that much performance.

Of course, there is always the "Just because I can do it" crowd, but personally spend your money elsewhere. More CPU cores, i7 over an i5, a better GPU, better case, literally anything.
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This.

RAID 0 just doubles your trouble, too - in case of drive failure (it's now 2x more likely).

I'm looking to get a fast M.2 SSD but right now, even the SM951 has its issues (4k performance issues reported, no warranty if you buy from NewEgg, etc.) - so sticking with the 850 Pro setup that I have.

I will tell you this - with the ASUS G751 gaming laptop that I had - it had an XP941 in it and that sucker screamed. Insane boot times. It led me to see the light. Hence my search for an M.2.

On the SATA side, I've moved from Samsung 830s to 850 Pros and you can't tell the difference in normal scenarios.
 
IIRC raid 0 doesn't instantly double chances of failure. There is some sort of formula but i dont recall it being that large.
 
I am very curious no one propose you the intel NVME 750series pcie
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I would highly recommend against that for a desktop ssd seeing the few real world benchmarks that were released.

I mean look at this:
time-boot-bare.gif


Despite besting most of its competition with ease in our other tests, the 750 Series is by far the slowest to boot the system. It lags more than 10 seconds behind most of the competition in both tests, and it loses even more ground to the M.2 leaders.

We used a slightly different motherboard revision with the NVMe SSDs, but that didn't slow the P3700 by the same margin, so it doesn't explain the 750 Series' sluggishness.
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I got that pic from here:
http://techreport.com/review/28050/intel-750-series-solid-state-drive-reviewed/5


Edit2: Although this is in conflict with the following review:

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...ews/69131-intel-ssd-750-series-review-13.html

boot.jpg
 
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SomeGuy133 said:
are boot times event relevant for a desktop? especially if its on 24/7?
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It's like one of the only things a faster SSD illustrates (under normal usage) - so I think that's the only reason why it's "relevant".

Boot times with my prior XP941 M.2 were light years faster than my current Samsung 850 256GB, for example. But all other "general" use cases make them seem about the same to me.
 
SomeGuy133 said:
are boot times event relevant for a desktop? especially if its on 24/7?
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My point looking at that and several of the other real world benchmarks from the techreport link that showed the 750 slower than even an Intel X25-M 160GB G2 in real world applications is inexcusable considering its hefty price. Although I did look again and found more favorable benchmarks at the other site.
 
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That board's M.2 slot is only 2.0 x2 so a SM951 or even the XP941 would be waste because it's capped to ~800MB/s. So not that much faster than Sata 3.0.
 
sk3tch said:
I'm looking to get a fast M.2 SSD but right now, even the SM951 has its issues (4k performance issues reported, no warranty if you buy from NewEgg, etc.) - so sticking with the 850 Pro setup that I have.
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Could you please elaborate on the 4k issues reported? A quick web search returns one person that has shotgunned a post about High-QD4k slowness across many forums.

I have tested my SM951 on four different motherboards, 3-X99 (I even borrowed Nathan's test system from Legit Reviews) and 1-Z97. With the Intel driver installed it performed the same on three of them. Can you guess which three? The Z97 board performed the same, save for High-QD4k performance which was significantly lower. I have noticed that CPU usage spikes to 100% at the start of this particular test on a 4790k. I am still poking at it trying to determine what is going on, but I do not believe it is anything to do with the SM951 and has more to do with the platform.

Aibohphobia said:
That board's M.2 slot is only 2.0 x2 so a SM951 or even the XP941 would be waste because it's capped to ~800MB/s. So not that much faster than Sata 3.0.
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^This. I would not pair an SM951 with that motherboard. You would be much better off with an M.2 850 Evo or a 2.5" SSD.
 
sk3tch said:
It's like one of the only things a faster SSD illustrates (under normal usage) - so I think that's the only reason why it's "relevant".

Boot times with my prior XP941 M.2 were light years faster than my current Samsung 850 256GB, for example. But all other "general" use cases make them seem about the same to me.
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lol. applicant load times are what you should be concerned with not boot times on a desktop. Thats where the time saving exists
 
drescherjm said:
My point looking at that and several of the other real world benchmarks from the techreport link that showed the 750 slower than even an Intel X25-M 160GB G2 in real world applications is inexcusable considering its hefty price. Although I did look again and found more favorable benchmarks at the other site.
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That's believed to be on Windows 8.1 as their NVMe driver isn't very well done.
 
SomeGuy133 said:
lol. applicant load times are what you should be concerned with not boot times on a desktop. Thats where the time saving exists
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The Samsung 840 Pro loads Photoshop in under 3 seconds. Are you saying that there is significant improvement to be done here?
 
evilsofa said:
The Samsung 840 Pro loads Photoshop in under 3 seconds. Are you saying that there is significant improvement to be done here?
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depends your work load and how you view load times. If i open Chrone, opera, photshop, explorer, outlook, and a multitude of other windows 500 plus times a day. That cna add up to be a lot more productivity. If i save 500 seconds in a day thats a lot of time over a period of length and i am sure i open a window more than 500 times a day.
 
evilsofa said:
The Samsung 840 Pro loads Photoshop in under 3 seconds. Are you saying that there is significant improvement to be done here?
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Haha I know what you are saying but the advantages are loading that super-high res photo on higher end SSDs.

Application loading was hardly ever an issue.
 
SomeGuy133 said:
depends your work load and how you view load times. If i open Chrone, opera, photshop, explorer, outlook, and a multitude of other windows 500 plus times a day. That cna add up to be a lot more productivity. If i save 500 seconds in a day thats a lot of time over a period of length and i am sure i open a window more than 500 times a day.
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Internet windows open significantly faster than Photoshop. You're talking about half a second rather than 3 seconds for the whole program. Tabs, you're talking about milliseconds. You will be limited by how fast you can input information into the computer, not how fast it can process it.

Also, who does work straight through their work day and not waste a single minute, much less a second? People take breaks, talk to coworkers, etc. Trying to use that as a rationalization to get a faster SSD over a slower one is just pure BS. If you want a faster one, just admit you want a faster one.

Now, if your workload takes minutes to load, that's a different story. Fractional second differences? Don't bother.
 
Trimlock said:
Haha I know what you are saying but the advantages are loading that super-high res photo on higher end SSDs.

Application loading was hardly ever an issue.
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my work flow is more of rapid switching so windows not loading fast and programs not instant opening is very annoying. Its not just time but patience. This is more I/Os than sequential so I will bend over backwards for a fast drive that can get those things to near 0. Again also for sanity Also for images I just load that into RAM. I load like everything into RAM when I do photoshop. I load photoshop/bridge and all the files i am working with into RAM. I too loathe the time it takes for a photo to load in the process of skimming images in bridge. I also have it set to load 4k images in bridge for my 4k IPS screen. The issue with that isn't the drive but the CPU can't handle 4k images in bridge. Bridge just eats the dirt when you change default preview res to 4k.

having a 4k screen truly does help with telling if an image is slightly blurry or not in preview. I can reject all bad images in a heart beat with the 4k image preview without ever opening PS.

But sorry i am off topic.
 
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Tsumi said:
Internet windows open significantly faster than Photoshop. You're talking about half a second rather than 3 seconds for the whole program. Tabs, you're talking about milliseconds. You will be limited by how fast you can input information into the computer, not how fast it can process it.

Also, who does work straight through their work day and not waste a single minute, much less a second? People take breaks, talk to coworkers, etc. Trying to use that as a rationalization to get a faster SSD over a slower one is just pure BS. If you want a faster one, just admit you want a faster one.

Now, if your workload takes minutes to load, that's a different story. Fractional second differences? Don't bother.
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read these.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_effects_of_Internet_use
http://thetrendythings.com/read/13997

different type of work flow but the concept still holds true.
 
Aibohphobia said:
That board's M.2 slot is only 2.0 x2 so a SM951 or even the XP941 would be waste because it's capped to ~800MB/s. So not that much faster than Sata 3.0.
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I just stumbled across this limitation, which seems to blunt the edge of the drive somewhat.

The PCIe drives are enticing but I am presented with a limitation in that my board has ust a single PCI express slot, which will house a GTX 970.


Thanks for all of the replies on this thread!
 
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