M.2 SSD's

Are these a meme currently? My new Ryzen build has an M.2 slot right below where I plug in my graphics card.

I need another SSD so I figured I'd buy one. But after doing some research, it would appear that there are some concerning temperature issues with ones that do not have heat sinks attached. For example the Samsung Evo 960 M.2 gets to 70c+ from what I've seen, maybe even higher.

Then you have the ones that do have a heatsink, which don't perform as well as the Samsung Evo 960, and additionally may not even fit under your graphics card if that's where your slot is.

Also, does anyone know if the built in M.2 slot on your motherboard always supports the 4x advertised speed for NVME? Or are they just Sata III speeds?

Does anyone own one of these M.2 drives?

Maybe

Well M.2 might be a meme for now.

i went from an m.2 nvme to a 850pro sata6 ssd. and desu the i cannot tell the difference in day to day usage except for a few things.

the sata6 loads windows10 a bit faster, the nvme ofc had higher sequential write/read.

but how often do you need to copy large files to the same disk.

if its m.2 x4 or ULTRA then its the good connector. but some mobos have normal m.2 which is x2. 10GBPS. Ultra is 20or something

They take up less space is why I use them.

...

not worth it imo

I have this exact drive, it never gets hot, only gets hot when you do like stress testing on it. Even with the little airflow in my case, temps are fine.

Performance compared to regular SSDs?
No noticeable improvement.

the difference between m.2 and sata3 SSD is marginal in normal workloads.

your cpu and ram is still bottlenecking the rest when loading a game for example

it does make a feelable difference when transfering files from m.2 to m.2 and using winzip and certain game titles like battlefield 1

Screenshotted the wrong drive...

As you can see temps on the 960 are similar to the 850, you don't need to worry about temps in buying this drive.

Its predecessor had temp issues, the 950Pro.

>does anyone know if the built in M.2 slot on your motherboard always supports the 4x advertised speed for NVME?

IIRC my mobo has both a 4X and a 2X M.2 slot.

>Or are they just Sata III speeds?

No.

The M.2 connector can handle both PCIe and SATA, and will automatically pick one of them depending on the card you use.

If you use a PCIe M.2 SSD it will be some PCIe speed.
If you use a SATA M.2 SSD it will be some SATA speed.

Check the specifications of your motherboard.

Also be aware that it could eat up some PCIe lanes from your graphics cards if it's hooked up to the same PCIe controller.

A total meme for desktops.

Sweet thanks, maybe I'll get this one then if the temps aren't that bad.

Did you try testing it under load?

I just looked it up on my mobo. It would appear it says M.2 (Key M) with PCI-E 4x for Ryzen processors, PCI-E 2x for Athlon, and Sata III 6.0Gb/s compatibility. Thanks for the info.

Not always. I no longer have free drive bays and already have 2 SSDs just dangling and a clusterfuck of cables to feed all the drives. I would love to use M.2 but my Z77X board does not have one.

it's only worth it if you need space (out of place to put drives/too many drives, mini-itx build etc). otherwise, just not worth it

SATA M.2 drives are usually about the same price or cheaper than 2.5" drives.

I own the exact drive that's in your pic. It's fast but if you only want gaymen and boot speeds just get yourself a normal cheap sata ssd.

yes

I've owned one before it was a meme. They're great.

They are good for scratch drives, IE video editing & rendering, but standard SSDs are still better for boot drives

a friend of mine owns the exact drive in question. It works fine for him, just have a decent airflow in your case and you should be fine. The speed is top notch. Go for it.

Hope it's not a meme. I have an itx with no airflow on the back of the board.

mine is fine but i really don't need it. Fun to shit on your friends that don't have one tho, that's really what is best in life.

in practice the difference between one and a sata ssd is negligible. i bought one and returned it for a sata ssd with more memory

It frees up a lot of space in your case and lets you use the SATA slot for something else. Plus it's cool.

I'll be getting one for my Ryzen build so I can finally ditch SATA cables. It'll make my build so much cleaner.

small stuff

I want to make a pc that will probably have -20 C ambient temps in a air tight insulated box will these be fine?

M.2 is just mini PCIe. It's the physical protocal. What you need is thre logical protocal NVMe on top of that, which far exceeds the speeds of SATA with AHCI. Basiaclly, we are back at using parallel data transfer, because flash memory has gotten really fucking fast over the past years.

not only that but less cables, gives it a much cleaner look inside, when i built my pc with an nvme i felt like it looked like it was missing something

Overheating is almost certain.

nvme boot drive = comfy

I havr this drive as well. It's 5-6x faster than a SATA SSD. I can easily tell the difference even in just normal desktop usage, but then again I have the needed CPU power as well.

For what purpose would you chill everything besides the CPU/GPU to -20C?
No idea if it will be fine as I don't know anyone that chills their SSD. It's possible that you can run into cold bug issues. Unless the manufacturer states that the SSD's operating temperatures include -20C, you might run into problems.

I've got a z97 board and the m.2 slot is under the board and it's limited to pcie 2. I'll just get a pcie/m.2 adapter and get pcie 3x4 hopefully and maybe point a fan at it.