Help With Hardware Choices

[Erik005]

I would get this one.

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/VrH48d/samsung-internal-hard-drive-mzn5e500bw

[FMod]

Beg or borrow to add a Samsung SM951 and thank us later imo. They're made with both AHCI and NVMe controllers, the latter is a bit faster but both devices are amazingly quick, cold start to Win 7 64-bit desktop in under nine seconds etc.

No real point paying for faster-than-average SSD for a desktop PC. In a laptop, cutting the startup time from 10 seconds to 8 can make some difference, in a desktop you'll never notice. ASUS ROG mobos add about 20 seconds to startup time, making the overall difference even smaller.

 

If the price was the same... but it isn't. So for a desktop you want a SSD, any SSD. Larger is better, because you'll have fewer things booting from HDD, otherwise that's it, performance differences within the class don't affect your end experience.

 

The 850 Evo OTOH is fine, it's a good drive at not much premium over the cheapest ones the same size.

[TheMastersSon]

I agree with most of that, except the "no real point" claim which is entirely subjective. In my book, if the options are $100 for an 850 Evo or $180 for an SM951 the decision is a no-brainer. Evo drives use the older and much slower SATA interface (6Gbps compared to 32Gbps), and is severely limited in IOPS compared to NVMe. I agree that any SSD is better than none, I just don't see the point of paying $100 for obsolete technology.

[FMod]

First of all, whichever you get, the end result is the same. They do the same thing with a negligible difference in user experience.

 

Second, the options are not. For 500 GB versions, the SM951 costs $350, the 850 Evo under $160, and other 500 GB SSD as little as $100.

 

Third, SATA isn't obsolete technology, it's the mainstream technology that's here to stay. How many motherboards have more than one M.2 slot with PCI-E? How many of them will let you use that slot without losing the ability to use at least 8x speed SLI and a PCI-E sound card?

[TheMastersSon]

You're probably right about your first claim, although benefit depends on usage so the difference may not be negligible. As for your second claim, last week we paid $280 (not $350) for a 512GB SM951 (the 256GB was $180), and the answer to your last question is more than a few. Some mobos (e.g. Asrock models) have not two but three M.2 slots, and all of them can be used without losing 8X on the PCI-E bus. But for a gaming/SLI rig it often makes more sense to use just one M.2 slot and keep 16X for video.

[FMod]

You're probably right about your first claim, although benefit depends on usage so the difference may not be negligible. As for your second claim, last week we paid $280 (not $350) for a 512GB SM951 (the 256GB was $180), and the answer to your last question is more than a few.

The difference is negligible.

In the few applications where you would see a real difference, you'd be starting with a $3,000+ budget, and gaming-wise you'd have Hearts and Minesweeper.

 

There are some other applications for fast SSD, which do happen in conjunction with gaming, but ramdrives handle them better. A ramdrive is at least 16 times faster than the SM951 (the SM951 is only 4 times faster than an average SSD), so for any workloads that don't require handling more than 50-100 GB of data at once, a ramdrive is strictly superior.

 

 

 

As for your second claim, last week we paid $280 (not $350) for a 512GB SM951 (the 256GB was $180)

That's still 2.5 times more than you can get a regular SATA SSD the same size for, or 3 times more for the 256GB version.

 

Yeah, it's cool and all, but in a basic budget desktop with 1 HDD and 1 SSD, it just doesn't provide any perceivable benefit over what a basic SATA SSD gives you. Put it this way: for consumer workloads, if a ramdrive is 100% performance, then a cheap SATA SSD is 65%, a great SATA SSD is 70%, a PCI-E SSD is 75%, and a HDD is 5% defragged or 2% fragmented.

 

It's the 3% to 65% leap that makes a difference, not the 65% to 75% one.

And the OP is on a limited budget. If he's paying extra for a faster SSD, that's money coming out of their video card (real bad), or their CPU (bad), or all of the PSU, the CPU cooler, and RAM (bad), or something else they shouldn't skimp on, or they're getting a tiny SSD and putting all their games on HDD, going back to that 3% for everything but OS boot, which they do once a day.

 

In a budget-constrained build, everything has to be considered in terms of marginal value per added dollar, and faster-than-the-cheapest SSD just don't have it. Now, if you've got an all-SSD rig already, then you should consider faster drives if you have the kind of workloads that call for them - but only if.

 

 

 

 

Some mobos (e.g. Asrock models) have not two but three M.2 slots, and all of them can be used without losing 8X on the PCI-E bus. But for a gaming/SLI rig it often makes more sense to use just one M.2 slot and keep 16X for video.

Actually, the Asrock motherboard (there's three versions that's the same except for kit and a couple small detail) has the M.2 slots on the chipset lanes, so, while not as fast as CPU lanes, they don't take away from the graphics lanes, which are CPU connected.

[TheMastersSon]

Here are comparative specs:

 

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9702/samsung-950-pro-ssd-review-256gb-512gb

 

Note the 4x faster read and 3x faster write times, and IOPS difference. That second part makes a big difference for everything from large data transfers to defragging volumes. Try comparing defrag times for a 256 or 512GB volume between SATA and NVMe and you'll thank yourself for spending the extra money.

 

I'm not pushing the SM951 specifically, just NVMe. E.g. Samsung's 950 Pro is a better product in every regard to either the 850 or SM951.

[FMod]

So how often do you defragment a SSD?

Even should that for some reason be your workload - compare the time to defrag a 250 GB NVMe SSD plus a 500 GB HDD volume against the time to defrag a 750 GB SATA SSD only (MX300, which also costs $180).

 

Because that's the choice a user faces. If they have $180 to spend on a SSD, they're choosing between getting a small extra-fast SSD and playing most their games off a hard drive, or get a large fast SSD that fits all their games and software.

[Erik005]

Here are comparative specs:

 

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9702/samsung-950-pro-ssd-review-256gb-512gb

 

Note the 4x faster read and 3x faster write times, and IOPS difference. That second part makes a big difference for everything from large data transfers to defragging volumes. Try comparing defrag times for a 256 or 512GB volume between SATA and NVMe and you'll thank yourself for spending the extra money.

 

I'm not pushing the SM951 specifically, just NVMe. E.g. Samsung's 950 Pro is a better product in every regard to either the 850 or SM951.

Never defrag a ssd

Edited August 21, 2016 by Erik005

[TheMastersSon]

 

Here are comparative specs:

 

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9702/samsung-950-pro-ssd-review-256gb-512gb

 

Note the 4x faster read and 3x faster write times, and IOPS difference. That second part makes a big difference for everything from large data transfers to defragging volumes. Try comparing defrag times for a 256 or 512GB volume between SATA and NVMe and you'll thank yourself for spending the extra money.

 

I'm not pushing the SM951 specifically, just NVMe. E.g. Samsung's 950 Pro is a better product in every regard to either the 850 or SM951.

Never defrag a ssd

 

You say that as if defragging might damage something. It won't, although it's usually not required for TRIM-enabled OS's (Win 7 and up).