M.2 SSD advice

PixelChef · 15 Nov 2017 at 18:47

Hi there,

I'm running low on space and need to upgrade my storage, I'm thinking of getting an M.2 SSD as a gaming drive, but just wanted to check before I did to make sure it will work with my setup, as I've never used an M.2 drive before!

I have a Gigabyte Z97X-UD5H-BK board, and currently have 2 SATA SSD's and 4 HDD's, so I'm using all of the SATA cable slots. The M.2 drive i'm looking at is something like the Intel 600p PCIe, will it be compatible with my board? I'm not sure if I should get an M.2 PCIe or an M.2 SATA?

According to the gigabyte website the board has one M.2 PCIe connector, but it also mentions that "The SATA3 4/5 connectors will become unavailable when an M.2 SSD is installed." Which I'm not sure about, because I don't want to not be able to use 2 of my drives. Here's the full info:

Storage Interface
Chipset:

1 x M.2 PCIe connector
(Socket 3, M key, type 2242/2260/2280 SATA & PCIe SSD support)

1 x SATA Express connector

6 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors (SATA3 0~5)
(M.2, SATA Express, and SATA3 4/5 connectors can only be used one at a time. The SATA3 4/5 connectors will become unavailable when an M.2 SSD is installed.)

Support for RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, and RAID 10

Marvell® 88SE9172 chip:

2 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors (GSATA3 6~7)

Support for RAID 0 and RAID 1

* Due to system limitation, Intel RAID and Marvell RAID can only use either one.

Also on a bit of a side note, would I be able to use the SATA Express connector for a 7th SSD/HDD? as an alternative.

Thanks in advance

Big.Wayne · 19 Nov 2017 at 12:39

No your out of luck . . . You have maxed your systems storage and if you add a single extra M.2 or SATA Express drive you will have too give up two of your existing drives. What's stopping you ditching some of the old mechanical drives? . . . four of them seems a lot?

Minstadave · 19 Nov 2017 at 12:53

Simplest way would be to use a PCIE add in card with whatever extra ports your require.

GWANGY · 20 Nov 2017 at 15:14

8 sata socketss is quite good . However it appears that as long as you move two of your hdds to the marvell sata sockets you should be good to go with your m.2.
specifically you have to move whatever is connected to sata sockets 4 and 5 to the marvell sata sockets .. they should be detailed in your motherboard manual. It also appears you can suse either sata or pcie m.2

Big.Wayne · 20 Nov 2017 at 15:39

Well spotted Gwangy, I missed that Marvell® 88SE9172 chip . . .

PixelChef · 20 Nov 2017 at 20:37

Big.Wayne said:
No your out of luck . . . You have maxed your systems storage and if you add a single extra M.2 or SATA Express drive you will have too give up two of your existing drives. What's stopping you ditching some of the old mechanical drives? . . . four of them seems a lot?

I don't want to get rid of any HDD's although I could replace one/some of them for larger ones. Basically I have a lot of games and movies / tv shows and almost all the drives are full, but I have everything backed up to one of the drives so everything is doubled. Thanks though.

Minstadave said:
Simplest way would be to use a PCIE add in card with whatever extra ports your require.

Thanks I will look into an adapter

GWANGY said:
8 sata socketss is quite good . However it appears that as long as you move two of your hdds to the marvell sata sockets you should be good to go with your m.2.
specifically you have to move whatever is connected to sata sockets 4 and 5 to the marvell sata sockets .. they should be detailed in your motherboard manual. It also appears you can suse either sata or pcie m.2

Oh, you're right, I didn't even notice it myself. I will have to have a look and see which sockets I'm using!

Super_Sweeney · 21 Nov 2017 at 07:40

Hi Guys,

Looking for Some advice. Looking at this bundle.

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/defc...00k-4.80ghz-overclocked-bundle-bu-0a8-og.html

Was thinking of getting one of these to go with...

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/sams...-3.0-x4-nvme-solid-state-drive-hd-22j-sa.html

Now my question is am I better sticking with that or getting two of the 250gb and running them in raid 0 for increased speed?

thanks

Super_Sweeney · 27 Nov 2017 at 09:54

anyone...?

Minstadave · 27 Nov 2017 at 10:32

RAID0 is a waste of time, you’ll double your risk of data loss and apart from some pretty benchmark numbers you won’t see any real world gains. Hell NVME drives in general don’t give you gains over a SATA SSD to justify almost double the price to be honest.

UberTiger · 27 Nov 2017 at 21:26

@Minstadave, I'm just looking into these M.2 drives and the jump from the average 500MB/s to 3000+MB/s seems pretty great on paper.

If loading large sound packs into memory that currently take 30-60 seconds on a 2.5" Samsung 840 SSD, would the 960 NVMe not be considerably faster?

Minstadave · 28 Nov 2017 at 00:09

UberTiger said:
@Minstadave, I'm just looking into these M.2 drives and the jump from the average 500MB/s to 3000+MB/s seems pretty great on paper.

If loading large sound packs into memory that currently take 30-60 seconds on a 2.5" Samsung 840 SSD, would the 960 NVMe not be considerably faster?

How large are the sound packs? Because unless they're several gigabytes it's probably not the read speed of the drive thats limiting you. A standard SSD will have a sustained read near 500MBs, so if these files take 30-60 seconds to load they'd have to be massive for it to be the drives read speed that is limiting you.

Super_Sweeney · 1 Dec 2017 at 07:12

thanks for the adivce guys Might just stick with a single 1tb one for the moment. Though i will say i did notice personally an increase in boot speed with the NVME when i changed to this but not sure if you would notice it in raid other than pretty numbers as mentioned. Also personal find it helps with cable management ect when building a new system.

What raid would you recommend. Raid 1? Raid 3?

UberTiger · 1 Dec 2017 at 08:44

Minstadave said:
How large are the sound packs? Because unless they're several gigabytes it's probably not the read speed of the drive thats limiting you. A standard SSD will have a sustained read near 500MBs, so if these files take 30-60 seconds to load they'd have to be massive for it to be the drives read speed that is limiting you.

They are several GB. The entire pack is 40Gb, but obviously not all instruments are loaded per track.

Watching task manager, the disk is getting maxed out at 100% and it looks to load about 4GB of data into the RAM as it’s loading.

Super_Sweeney · 3 Dec 2017 at 10:54

UberTiger said:
They are several GB. The entire pack is 40Gb, but obviously not all instruments are loaded per track.

Watching task manager, the disk is getting maxed out at 100% and it looks to load about 4GB of data into the RAM as it’s loading.

wow thats pretty interesting, had always heard of SSD being a bottleneck but never actually seen it thats pretty insane. Would be curious to hear if the NVME would solve this, my assumption like you would be yes.

UberTiger · 3 Dec 2017 at 14:34

I just finished setting up a new build from some good quality older parts for my friend with a normal Samsung 2.5" SSD, will see how he gets on with it for a few days and then offer to upgrade to to NVME and see what he says. Not sure he'll bite at a roughly £350 upgrade, especially as the new SSD will already probably feel a lot faster than his old HDD, but personally I think it would be worth trying.

If he tells me to pull the trigger I'll time the loading of a few big scores on each drive as a comparison.

Minstadave · 3 Dec 2017 at 14:37

I just swapped an 840 Pro to a 960 Evo and there’s not a jot of difference for my usage (Gaming and Lightroom).

I’d be gutted if I upgraded for the speed benefits but fortunately I needed a bigger boot drive and I got the 960 Evo for a decent price.

Super_Sweeney · 4 Dec 2017 at 12:10

Minstadave said:
I just swapped an 840 Pro to a 960 Evo and there’s not a jot of difference for my usage (Gaming and Lightroom).

I’d be gutted if I upgraded for the speed benefits but fortunately I needed a bigger boot drive and I got the 960 Evo for a decent price.

that is interesting. Did you notice anything at all? I am have to ordered a bran new build and for the 960 PRO nvme. My old setup was a laptop running dual NVME in rai 0 but the read write speads were no where close so not expecting to see much a difference in load times compared to it either

Minstadave · 4 Dec 2017 at 12:29

Super_Sweeney said:
that is interesting. Did you notice anything at all? I am have to ordered a bran new build and for the 960 PRO nvme. My old setup was a laptop running dual NVME in rai 0 but the read write speads were no where close so not expecting to see much a difference in load times compared to it either

Maybe a slightly quicker boot time but in day to day use I’d not be able to tell the difference.

Super_Sweeney · 4 Dec 2017 at 13:05

Minstadave said:
Maybe a slightly quicker boot time but in day to day use I’d not be able to tell the difference.

ok cool thanks for the update really appreciate it

Vince · 7 Dec 2017 at 17:24

Minstadave said:
Maybe a slightly quicker boot time but in day to day use I’d not be able to tell the difference.

Not sure I agree with this. I recently swapped a nvme out of my laptop to set up a threadripper build and set the laptop up on a sata ssd. It feels slower across the board even simple tasks like opening Windows explorer. The difference was enough that I ordered another m.2 and it's back to its old zippy self, the drive I put in was a 240 m500. Perhaps my use case is not your norm but I'll often have Photoshop, sql management studio, visual studio and other dev apps open.

With my use case the difference between sata and nvme is like night and day it felt like just a fraction slower in everything I was doing which got tiring pretty quickly, I was running the Nvme in it for a year and after only about 4 weeks of the sata I decided I needed the nvme back.