Confused about my NVME upgrade choices. Sabrent Rocket 4 vs Samsung 980 vs Samsung 970? Regular vs Pro? PCIe 3 vs 4?

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I have a system I built back in 2012 that I tried to push as far as I could. Being 2012 it had no M.2 ports and only two of it's SATA ports supported 6Gbps, I connected two 512GB SSDs to it in RAID0 for speed (They were only for storing my OS and games, I had backed-up RAID5 drives for anything important). Eventually, these became too small so I replaced them a few years later with two 1TB ones for a total of 2TB.

Messing with SSDs in RAID0 over the years became a pain, plus they were again almost full and so I had been planning to upgrade them to a single 4TB SSD when I could afford it.

Anyway, said system has recently died on me, so I am rebuilding it with a modern mobo/CPU and trying to re-use all the other parts I can, including the drives. I still can't afford a 4TB drive right now (especially with the other parts I had to buy recently) but the board does have multiple M.2 ports so I wanted to see if I could leverage that in a way and use NVMEs.

The board is a Gigabyte Z490 Aorus Pro AX.

The board has three M.2 ports, but only two of them work right now, both of them are PCIe 3.0. The third one will apparently be enabled, and work in PCIe 4.0 mode, in the future with a firmware update if you install an 11th gen Intel CPU in it. I do want to eventually upgrade to an 11th gen in a year or two, so I also want to keep that in consideration when buying NVMEs. I don't know if when that is enabled if any of the other M.2 ports will be upgraded to 4.0 as the motherboard manufacturer seems to make no mention of this (I'll try e-mailing them about it, apparently some of the standard PCIe slots will).

Since a good 2TB NVME would be too much for me right now, and that would be a bit of a waste as I would still need to upgrade that to a 4TB, rather than go that route I figured I would get a 1TB NVME and move my OS, Apps, pretty much everything except my games to it. Almost the entirety of the space taken up on the RAID0 was my Steam games, so a 1TB should be more than enough, and still clear up some space for me. And then I can continue to use the SSDs in RAID0 purely for game storage and nothing else until I can eventually replace that with a 4TB NVME and be done with RAID0 and standard 2.5 SATA SSDs as well. Would make backups a lot easier too since then I only need to image the 1TB SSD, anything on the games drive can just simply be re-downloaded.

And THAT is where I am a little confused on how to go about it and wanted some advice:

First of all, is there any down-side to getting a PCIe 4.0 NVME and putting it in a PCIe 3.0 M.2 port? I was planning on just going with the Samsung 970 EVO NVMEs, but then I saw a lot of talk about how these Sabrent Rocket 4 drives are comparable and/or better for the price. Those are PCIe 4.0 as well, so those would compare more to a Samsung 980 than a 970. I know they won't operate at full speed, but would there be any problems or issues if I got a 4.0 drive and put it in a 3.0 port? I figured that would make things a lot easier if I don't have to worry about both 3.0 and 4.0 drives and just write off the Samsung 970 (plus this helps me in the future in case they do upgrade the other ports in my board to 4.0 as well).

And in regards to that, would there be any benefit in using a PCIe 4.0 NVME in a PCIe 3.0 slot? Or would it be no different than just using the PCIe 3.0 version of the same drive? Again, if there are no problems, I feel it would make it a lot easier to only consider 4.0 drives in case plans have to change in the future or they upgrade my other ports to 4.0.

One thing I recall there being some debate about is if you need a heatsink for 4.0 drives Most seem to say you don't need one for 3.0 drives but do need one for 4.0. Do I need to get a heatsink for them?

And if so, are the "heatsinks" that normally come attached to the motherboards and are more meant to blend into the rest of the board for aesthetic purposes generally good enough for that task, or do I need to get something more than that? The two 3.0 ports on my board have those aesthetic-heatsinks, but the 4.0 port does not. And since the first port I want to use it right under my GPU, I can't put a large heatsink under it. (The other port would disable two of my SATA ports if I use it, which I will need until I can transition away from the 2.5 SSDs completely).

That future 4.0 port also is right under the CPU cooler so I worry about ambient temps of that too.

If they are needed, I would definitely need to get a heatsink for the 4.0 port since my board does not come with one, any good recommendations if they are?

As for why I want to bother with PCIe 4.0 at all for my "game" drive, and even be prioritizing that over my OS drive, well, my last pc was built in 2012 and I would still be using it now had it not died. I normally stick with a PC until it's not really reasonably upgradable anymore and annoyingly unusable for current tasks anymore (not to mention I can't afford to build a new PC often), so this PC will have to last me for a while. That means considering future upgrades. And apparently there is a new API that only works over PCIe 4.0 that significantly will increase game load speeds? (Did I understand that right?). I have no idea if this will actually take off or just be one of those techs that a handful of games implemented then dies off (like gpu-accelerated PhysX did) but since I am likely going to be stuck with this system for nearly a decade, I want to plan for future considerations like this.

And finally, this all leads me to the thing I most wanted opinions on, which one to get.

As I mentioned, Normally I like to go with Samsung (which would be the 980 EVO if I want PCIe 4.0) but I was seeing a lot of talk about the Sabrent Rocket 4 comparing to and even beating Samsung's drives. Thing is, almost everyone was talking about the more expensive Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus, even when comparing it to the Non-Pro 980 EVO that it would be more of a closer match to. So first thing I am not sure about, is if I should be considering the Rocket 4 and 980 EVO, or instead be looking at the Rocket 4 Plus and 980 EVO Pro. Apparently it's mostly the write speed that significantly benefits from the Plus/Pro models? If that is true, then should I only bother with a Plus model for the OS drive, and get the cheaper standard model someday for the game drive? It was hard to get a read on what would be the better option for performance, the Rocket 4 Plus or 980 EVO Pro. The Rocket seemed to perform better in some situations, but the Samsung in others and by a larger margin when it did. Most reviews concluded that the Rocket would be the better buy not because it's overall better, but because it's so close to a Samsung but for cheaper....... except that is not the case anymore, currently both the 1TB Rocket 4 Plus and 980 EVO Pro are the same pricepoint (seems like the Samsung drive came down in price to match) so with that I am not sure what would be the better buy anymore.

So what are people's opinions on which one of these I should go with for the OS and the eventual game drive?

IF there are no problems with using a PCIe 4.0 drive in a 3.0 port, then there are four drives I am trying to decide between:

Sabrent Rocket 4, Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus, Samsung 980 EVO. Samsung 980 EVO Plus.

I was thinking that at least the OS drive would benefit from the plus version, but I am not sure if it would matter with the game drive at all since it would be almost entirely just read operations (and apparently it's mostly write operations the Pro/Plus do better?). Which one would you recommend I use for the OS drive? And which one for the game drive? Would the Plus/Pro version benefit the OS drive over the standard version? What about the game drive?
 
I've got 2 NVMe drives in my rig: 1TB 970 Pro and 2TB 970 Evo Plus. I've been very happy with them, though the Pro filled up faster than expected with the OS and games. I'm considering the 4TB or even 8TB Sabrent to replace the Evo Plus. I was tempted to get the new 2TB 980 Pro, but didn't feel like buying a new 4.0 motherboard, too.
 
Ok, that was a bit of a read but I think I understand what your concerns are. Let me break this down as succinctly as I can.

Your two main concerns are money and storage at this point. So, what I would do, get a smallish NVME 256-500GB for your OS drive and a 2TB SATA M.2 for games/storage.

Don't worry about NVME gen4 at all. People make a big deal about the speeds but they will rarely ever see the difference unless you're moving massive files from one drive to another all the time or trying to scrub through raw video files.
 
Yes, you can put a PCIe 4.0 capable SSD into a PCIe 3.0 slot and it will work fine.

I don't think it's a good value, though. I also wouldn't worry too much about the SSD to use. The minor differences in benchmark measurements don't translate well to real world use; most people don't read multi-gigabyte-sized files sequentially as part of a workflow or gameplay. Reading a 1GB file might take 2 seconds with a SATA SSD vs a half-second with a top PCIe 3.0 NVMe drive, and if you do that all the time then sure, stick to the better NVMe drives. Aside from that you'll spend more time and energy fussing over it than you'll ever get back in perceived performance.

I like the suggestion of a 500GB or so NVMe boot drive, maybe something like a Kingston A2000, and a cheap SATA 2TB SSD (either m.2 or 2.5", completely immaterial which).
 
You can look at other NVME drives as well for storage. This one at Microcenter is not unreasonably priced, and I have 2 1TB nvme from this brand in my current build. I would have gotten one of these instead of the second 1TB I have if it had been available at the time. I know it says in store only, but the second link is the same drive on Amazon for $3 more, and strangely enough says it's being sold through amazon by Microcenter, so I don't know why they just won't ship directly from their own site.

https://www.microcenter.com/product...pcie-nvme-30-x4-m2-internal-solid-state-drive
https://www.amazon.com/Inland-Plati...d=1614996915&sprefix=inland+2+,aps,165&sr=8-4
 
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Ok, that was a bit of a read but I think I understand what your concerns are. Let me break this down as succinctly as I can.

Your two main concerns are money and storage at this point. So, what I would do, get a smallish NVME 256-500GB for your OS drive and a 2TB SATA M.2 for games/storage.

Don't worry about NVME gen4 at all. People make a big deal about the speeds but they will rarely ever see the difference unless you're moving massive files from one drive to another all the time or trying to scrub through raw video files.

This is great advice. I also have a 500GB NVMe (3.0) and a 2TB SATA SSD and it's great.
 
Your two main concerns are money and storage at this point. So, what I would do, get a smallish NVME 256-500GB for your OS drive and a 2TB SATA M.2 for games/storage.

That's not really right, my main concerns are incompatibles and which drive to get for the ports I will be putting them in, and not letting the drive overheat. And about if DirectStorage will take off in the future.

Like I said, I will be buying a 1TB for now for my OS drive but keeping my games on the two RAID0 SSDs until I can afford a 4TB NVME someday. I am not going to be buying a new drive for my games just yet as even a standard 2.5 SSD would be too expensive at 4TB.

Getting a 2TB NVME now, as I mentioned, would be a waste since my current 2TB drive is nearly full. And while moving my os away from it would help, it's not going to be a huge difference.
 
...and not letting the drive overheat.

This is a really overblown issue that I think is contributed to by manufacturers marketing tacky heatsinks on their drives. You have to hammer an M.2 drive with long, sequential read/writes with zero airflow on a drive to even begin to see signs of throttling. Please, don't let this stuff worry you.
 
That's not really right, my main concerns are incompatibles and which drive to get for the ports I will be putting them in, and not letting the drive overheat. And about if DirectStorage will take off in the future.

Like I said, I will be buying a 1TB for now for my OS drive but keeping my games on the two RAID0 SSDs until I can afford a 4TB NVME someday. I am not going to be buying a new drive for my games just yet as even a standard 2.5 SSD would be too expensive at 4TB.

Getting a 2TB NVME now, as I mentioned, would be a waste since my current 2TB drive is nearly full. And while moving my os away from it would help, it's not going to be a huge difference.
You are worrying about compatibility for a feature that has merely been announced. I would not worry about it until it has been implemented. I did mention getting an M.2 SATA drive, not NVME, due to the price being lower. I did fail to see the RAID0 1TB drives, it was a wall of text. I stand by my assessment though, since money is an obstacle and space is an issue. As for the SSD cooling, the heatsinks on motherboards should be fine.

Another option would be to get a very large magnetic storage hard drive since you seem to be keeping everything you download for extended periods of time.
 
You are worrying about compatibility for a feature that has merely been announced.

I just don't want to "lock myself out" of said feature in case it does take off by getting a drive that can't use it. Though like I also said, I am not going to be getting a 4TB drive for my games anytime soon, for now I am just getting a 1TB drive to move my os and everything except my games off to, sticking with the RAID0 SSDs until I can afford to move off of those. Before my 3770K died I wanted to replace them with a single 4TB SSD regardless, both because I needed the space, and because I am tired of the mess of dealing with SSDs in RAID0.... especially when they were also my boot drive.

As for the SSD cooling, the heatsinks on motherboards should be fine.

The other problem I mentioned in regards to that is that while the two PCIe 3.0 M.2 ports have built-in heatsinks, the 4.0 port does not.

Another option would be to get a very large magnetic storage hard drive since you seem to be keeping everything you download for extended periods of time.

I already have those in RAID5 for storage of large amounts of data where speed is not a concern over storage space.
 
Could you please list your HDDs and SSDs along with form factor in a succinct manner for me please. I don't want to read The Lord of the Rings again.

But, from what I gather, you have 2 - M.2 slots, while you say you have 3, one of them does not function until you upgrade the CPU, so you have 2. You have 2 - 1TB 2.5" SATA drives in RAID 0 that will be kept intact and you want to buy a 1TB NVME to offload the OS to. You have at least 3 HDD in RAID5 as backup (this is not a backup solution and everyone will tell you the same thing).

So, if I am at all on base with my assessment, I still stand by my initial assessment, by a small NVME gen3 for your OS drive and a large m.2 SATA drive to supplement your existing RAID0 array. Don't bother with gen4 (yet). As for cooling, I'm pretty sure that gen4 drives come with heatsinks, which is likely why there is no heatsink on that particular slot. The other slots will be just fine.

I have to say, your upgrade path is tedious to say the least. When you try to save a few dollars one place, but have to spend twice the amount in order to unlock something else later, when you could have all of it unlocked to begin with and cheaper with AMD....
 
But, from what I gather, you have 2 - M.2 slots, while you say you have 3, one of them does not function until you upgrade the CPU, so you have 2. You have 2 - 1TB 2.5" SATA drives in RAID 0 that will be kept intact and you want to buy a 1TB NVME to offload the OS to.

Correct, and again, I am planning to upgrade the CPU, I will likely do that before I get a 4TB nvme. Even if I get the second NVME first, I want to see if there will be any problems with getting a NVME planned for that port but use it in the other port until I upgrade the CPU.

You have at least 3 HDD in RAID5 as backup (this is not a backup solution and everyone will tell you the same thing).

Incorrect, I meant I backup the RAID itself, the raid is not a backup, it's just redundant mass storage.

by a small NVME gen3 for your OS drive and a large m.2 SATA drive to supplement your existing RAID0 array

I don't see any point in going m.2 sata, I might as well just get a standard single 2.5 SATA drive in that case. It would impact my available SATA ports even more if I ran the M.2 ports in SATA mode instead of PCIe mode.

Don't bother with gen4 (yet). As for cooling, I'm pretty sure that gen4 drives come with heatsinks, which is likely why there is no heatsink on that particular slot. The other slots will be just fine.

Well, I won't be getting the 4TB drive for my games soon, right now I am just going to oddload my OS to a 1TB NVMe. As I mentioned I just want to make sure I don't "lock myself out" by getting a drive that would not work with DirectStorage/PCIE4 (Does DirectStrorage require PCIE4? I heard it did, but not sure on that) for when I do. Will have to be keeping track on if DirectStorage is even going anywhere by the time I buy the 4TB.

I have to say, your upgrade path is tedious to say the least. When you try to save a few dollars one place, but have to spend twice the amount in order to unlock something else later, when you could have all of it unlocked to begin with and cheaper with AMD....

Using Intel is.... an entirely different can of worms from previously. Like I said, my previous system died or I would not even have built this one.

I would have just build a brand new AMD system with all new parts someday instead of this "Frankenstein my old parts" setup I am going with if my system had not died, I wasn't originally planning on upgrading just yet but the system failure kinda forced my hand.
 
Using Intel is.... an entirely different can of worms from previously. Like I said, my previous system died or I would not even have built this one.

I would have just build a brand new AMD system with all new parts someday instead of this "Frankenstein my old parts" setup I am going with if my system had not died, I wasn't originally planning on upgrading just yet but the system failure kinda forced my hand.
What chip are you running in the Z490?

You could have gone last gen, 3000 series Ryzen and had PCIE gen4 out of the box. for likely cheaper (I haven't priced Intel in a few years) and migrated all of your storage over. Not to mention, now you have this offering to upgrade to:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/16535/intel-core-i7-11700k-review-blasting-off-with-rocket-lake
 
What chip are you running in the Z490?

Right now a 10700K

You could have gone last gen, 3000 series Ryzen and had PCIE gen4 out of the box. for likely cheaper

Actually, part of the reason I got this 10700K was because at the time, I was able to get it cheaper than a 3700x, and the equivalent motherboard at the time was a few bucks cheaper.

But also because I wanted to have Intel RAID support for those SSDs. Recently I got new advice to try to use the Linux application dmraid first to try that, but before I was told to attempt to use an Intel motherboard of the same or newer chipset to try to recover that raid. I have backups, but I would like to get the latest version of my data if I can. The RAID5 isn't an issue as that runs off it's own card.

If I didn't need to bother with re-using that RAID0 and was just building a new system outright today and wasn't tighter on budget than usual, I would have gone with a 5000 series AMD , likely either a 5600x or 5800x (AMD is REALLY dragging out that 5700X release...), and just used all new parts rather than re-using anything.

Oh, also I forgot to mention in my last reply, most of the PCIe4 NVMEs I saw apparently don't actually come with a heatsink.
 
Right now a 10700K



Actually, part of the reason I got this 10700K was because at the time, I was able to get it cheaper than a 3700x, and the equivalent motherboard at the time was a few bucks cheaper.

But also because I wanted to have Intel RAID support for those SSDs. Recently I got new advice to try to use the Linux application dmraid first to try that, but before I was told to attempt to use an Intel motherboard of the same or newer chipset to try to recover that raid. I have backups, but I would like to get the latest version of my data if I can. The RAID5 isn't an issue as that runs off it's own card.

If I didn't need to bother with re-using that RAID0 and was just building a new system outright today and wasn't tighter on budget than usual, I would have gone with a 5000 series AMD , likely either a 5600x or 5800x (AMD is REALLY dragging out that 5700X release...), and just used all new parts rather than re-using anything.

Oh, also I forgot to mention in my last reply, most of the PCIe4 NVMEs I saw apparently don't actually come with a heatsink.

Ya, it's just an unfortunate situation I guess, it happens. I still say buy a small gen3 NVME and transfer the OS and apps. They are pretty cheap in small capacities. It accomplishes several things, it keeps you in the game while allowing gen4 SSDs come down in price and gaining more insight into directstorage. I mean, I haven't read up on directstorage, I've only heard some rumors, so there's no way to know whether or not it will ever be enabled on your board.

As for the gen4 drive without a heatsink, if the manufacturer doesn't recommend a heatsink I would assume it's not necessary, but you could always buy a heatsink for it regardless.
 
Ok, that was a bit of a read but I think I understand what your concerns are. Let me break this down as succinctly as I can.

Your two main concerns are money and storage at this point. So, what I would do, get a smallish NVME 256-500GB for your OS drive and a 2TB SATA M.2 for games/storage.

Don't worry about NVME gen4 at all. People make a big deal about the speeds but they will rarely ever see the difference unless you're moving massive files from one drive to another all the time or trying to scrub through raw video files.

Unless he upgrades to Rocket Lake, he won't be doing PCIe 4.0 at all. A decent PCIe 3.0 NVMe drive is fine for the OS, and potentially everything else too. Assuming he can find something for a good price. Nothing wrong with SATA based SSD's for data though.

Oh, also I forgot to mention in my last reply, most of the PCIe4 NVMEs I saw apparently don't actually come with a heatsink.
You don't generally need them. Also, many motherboard M.2 slot covers act as heat sinks.
 
Unless he upgrades to Rocket Lake, he won't be doing PCIe 4.0 at all. A decent PCIe 3.0 NVMe drive is fine for the OS, and potentially everything else too. Assuming he can find something for a good price. Nothing wrong with SATA based SSD's for data though.
Like I said, I do want to upgrade to an 11th gen CPU in a year or two, mostly for PCIe 4.

You don't generally need them. Also, many motherboard M.2 slot covers act as heat sinks.
The gen 4 M.2 port on my board does not have any, only the gen 3 ports do.
 
Most gen 4 NVME drives come with their own heatsinks, which are gonna be more than adequate for the temps they need to be.
The heatsinks that your motherboard came with are also, likely, perfectly adequate.

My 4.0 drive is the hottest drive in my system out of my 4 NVME drives, but its not by enough of a margin for me to be worried about any of my drives.

A good high speed PCI-E 3.0 drive is also gonna be perfectly adequate.
A good high speed PCI-E 4.0 drive is gonna be more than adequate, but potentially future proof, at considerable extra cost that likely isn't worth it right now, considering that PCIE-4 drives are gonna get cheaper in the future. Hopefully at larger sizes.
 
I don't see any point in going m.2 sata, I might as well just get a standard single 2.5 SATA drive in that case. It would impact my available SATA ports even more if I ran the M.2 ports in SATA mode instead of PCIe mode.

You are absolutely right about this, and I'd advise you to never listen to any recommendation involving a SATA-mode m.2 drive. Those exist purely for compatibility for older systems, and should never be taken into consideration in a modern system, because the price difference between them and an NVMe drive is miniscule. Giving up ~6x the speed to save ~$20 is asinine, unless you were truly scraping by and trying stretch every dollar you could to make a build happen.

As for your other concern about running a 4.0 drive in your 3.0 slots, just remember that it's PCI-e, which means backwards compatibility is a basic feature. Surely you aren't also going to worry about running a 4.0 GPU in your 3.0 slots right? (e.g. any RTX 3xxx series, any RX 5xxx series and up).
 
You are absolutely right about this, and I'd advise you to never listen to any recommendation involving a SATA-mode m.2 drive. Those exist purely for compatibility for older systems, and should never be taken into consideration in a modern system, because the price difference between them and an NVMe drive is miniscule. Giving up ~6x the speed to save ~$20 is asinine, unless you were truly scraping by and trying stretch every dollar you could to make a build happen

I recommended the M.2 SATA due to its low cost to user experience ratio. The person is very much on a budget and they're loading games for the most part. While I agree about the compatibility/flexibility of an M.2 SATA, I believe you're incorrect with your assessment including price. If the prices were in line with what you're suggesting I might lean in the same direction, but NVME drive are typically twice the cost in larger capacities for an extremely low margin of performance over SATA for loading games. As I previously mention, there are only a handful of situation in which the speed of an NVME will be 'user noticeable' over SATA.

There are enough benchmarks to prove my 'user experience' claim. Here is one:



View attachment 336195

View attachment 336196
 
So if I understand right to swap out a pcie 4.0 ssd you need to remove cpu cooler?

In terms of options.

For starters if you have decided 970 evo plus is in your budget then you may as well get the 970 pro, the 980 qlc drive pushed up price of evo plus to the point its a bad buy vs the 970 pro.

In practice I cannot tell the difference in my PC between a SATA MX500 and a m.2 970 EVO other then the fact the former is far cheaper per gig, and much easier to access, so based on that you not going to notice the difference between a slow m.2 and a fast m.2, however we do have the upcoming directio API which may make m.2 relevant.
 
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Get a PCIE-3.0 Sabrent Rocket 2TB and keep your current Sata SSDs as well.
This will be plenty fast, SATA drives arent much slower than decent NVME drives with normal use.
Its silly to spend money on a 4TB drive for no benefit.

Dont change your CPU to get PCIE-4.0, only do it if any extra CPU performance will benefit you.
Otherwise its another way to waste money.
 
If you had a PCIe 4.0 capable CPU, you would get PCIe 4.0 x4 on the top m.2 slot and the 1st graphics slot would be PCIe 4.0 x16. After that, there are no more CPU lanes available. The rest of the board, including the 2 existing m.2 slots from the chipset will still be PCIe 3.0 x4.
 
I recommended the M.2 SATA due to its low cost to user experience ratio...I believe you're incorrect with your assessment including price. If the prices were in line with what you're suggesting I might lean in the same direction, but NVME drive are typically twice the cost in larger capacities
snIfKTe.png


Yeah, I'm not really seeing it. 16% higher cost for way more than 16% performance increase seems like a no-brainer. Given that most people probably have more SATA ports than PCIe connectivity, it seems like terrible advice to tell someone to waste one of their m.2 slots on a SATA device, because they could've just gotten a 2.5" drive instead, and left the m.2 slot open for future high-speed expansion.
 
View attachment 336320


Yeah, I'm not really seeing it. 16% higher cost for way more than 16% performance increase seems like a no-brainer. Given that most people probably have more SATA ports than PCIe connectivity, it seems like terrible advice to tell someone to waste one of their m.2 slots on a SATA device, because they could've just gotten a 2.5" drive instead, and left the m.2 slot open for future high-speed expansion.
Exactly, they can put the SATA M.2 in an enclosure and use it that way as well. Not to mention that what you've listed for the NVME is QLC so, if they are getting the speeds that they demand from an NVME interface then it's only until they fill the cache and it's down to speeds around SATA3. Not to mention reduced write endurance. But, you do you.

An amendment. This would be a better comparison drive, a little slower overall, but TLC, it's on sale too. That's the great thing about technology these days, it's ever changing. I hadn't seen this drive until today and I'd say it's a pretty good deal.

1615070452915.png
 
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Yeah, I'm not really seeing it. 16% higher cost for way more than 16% performance increase seems like a no-brainer. Given that most people probably have more SATA ports than PCIe connectivity, it seems like terrible advice to tell someone to waste one of their m.2 slots on a SATA device, because they could've just gotten a 2.5" drive instead, and left the m.2 slot open for future high-speed expansion.

Exactly how I feel, why would anyone go with a M.2 SATA drive when any modern desktop motherboard is likely to have multiple SATA ports? That's just a total waste of a M.2 port. Either get a M.2 NVME or a 2.5 SATA, don't bother with M.2 SATA.
 
An amendment. This would be a better comparison drive, a little slower overall, but TLC, it's on sale too. That's the great thing about technology these days, it's ever changing. I hadn't seen this drive until today and I'd say it's a pretty good deal.
Glad you saved me the trouble of linking the exact drive I was about to post. I previously sorted by lowest price first and didn't bother looking down further, but now at least you've seen for yourself. There is no reason whatsoever for anyone buying an m.2 drive for a modern system to buy SATA, as I said in my first post. Those drives have their place in older machines that either have low PCIe allocation (e.g. z97 boards usually only had x2 for the m.2 slots) or no NVMe support, and that's the only place they belong.
 
Glad you saved me the trouble of linking the exact drive I was about to post. I previously sorted by lowest price first and didn't bother looking down further, but now at least you've seen for yourself. There is no reason whatsoever for anyone buying an m.2 drive for a modern system to buy SATA, as I said in my first post. Those drives have their place in older machines that either have low PCIe allocation (e.g. z97 boards usually only had x2 for the m.2 slots) or no NVMe support, and that's the only place they belong.
Well, I still disagree. I stand by the flexibility and cost effectiveness of an M.2 SATA drive. Real world usage you won't see any difference, especially when loading games. I have an M.2 SATA in a cradle and I don't need to worry about what I can put it in, it will work on any system I have or want to migrate it to, old or new.
 
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