Buy cheap or expensive NVME M.2 SSD?

[Frost]

I need to decide what SSD to buy for Christmas.. I'm currently using ROG GL553VD laptop with 120GB SSD but want to upgrade it to 250GB with better speed.. i don't know what ssd brand that my laptop is currently using (i've never changed/upgrade it since i bought the laptop).

My first choice for the cheaper one is 'SSD M.2 Adata 256GB PCIe / NVMe SX6000 XPG Internal SSD Slot M2 PCIe' and expensive one is 'Samsung SSD 970 EVO NVMe M.2 250GB'

In my country, the price tag between them are pretty far.. and i don't know much about Samsung products being 'overpriced' or not. If there is no difference between the two then i'm just gonna go with the cheaper one. But if the Samsung 970 EVO is worth the price tag then i'm gonna go with that one.

Please no bullyin', i don't know much about SSDs..

[r.linder]

The difference in price has most to do with speed. ADATA is an affordable brand but their speeds tend to be pretty inconsistent and mid-range at best while Samsung pretty much rules the market when it comes to SSDs.

M.2 SSDs only matter for the OS as they won't make much of a difference over SATA SSDs for game storage, the only point of going beyond them for your OS is for enthusiast builds or really clean builds with minimal wires. For that reason, it's best for most people who want performance to use a 250GB Samsung M.2 for their OS and then using their own choice of storage drives for their games. IIRC, FireCuda HDDs from Seagate are better for games than Western Digital's drives.

tl;dr
Just buy a decent Samsung M.2 250GB and leave it at that. ADATA if you're that tight on a budget but still want an M.2.

[Vulkan]

Samsung all the way they dominant the market for a reason

[Frost]

Originally posted by Escorve:

The difference in price has most to do with speed. ADATA is an affordable brand but their speeds tend to be pretty inconsistent and mid-range at best while Samsung pretty much rules the market when it comes to SSDs.

M.2 SSDs only matter for the OS as they won't make much of a difference over SATA SSDs for game storage, the only point of going beyond them for your OS is for enthusiast builds or really clean builds with minimal wires. For that reason, it's best for most people who want performance to use a 250GB Samsung M.2 for their OS and then using their own choice of storage drives for their games. IIRC, FireCuda HDDs from Seagate are better for games than Western Digital's drives.

tl;dr
Just buy a decent Samsung M.2 250GB and leave it at that. ADATA if you're that tight on a budget but still want an M.2.

Thankss for the very detailed reply! I'll get Samsung 970 EVO

[chiefputsilao✖️ping]

if you are planning to upgrade, consider bigger storage than 250/256GB.
in my country, the philippines, 250/256GB or less are being sold at more affordable prices compared to 2017.

[ugafan]

if you go with adata, the model to get is the sx8200.

but if it that's close in price i would get the evo.

[Astraea Kisaragi]

I have a ADATA, would never buy them again, the firmware is buggy. If SSD always go primarily Samsung or Crucial.

Crucial is especially good if comes to price/performance ratio.

[bannedy]

i'm using a 1tb evo 970 m.2 for my most played games and OS. 2tb barracuda for my not so played games. it's great.

[r.linder]

Originally posted by Astraea Kisaragi:

I have a ADATA, would never buy them again, the firmware is buggy. If SSD always go primarily Samsung or Crucial.

Crucial is especially good if comes to price/performance ratio.

Benchmarks for Crucial's M.2 SSDs are not nearly as high as ADATA's XPG SX8200 line. Crucial's not even worth looking at for M.2s because they among the slowest.
I have an XPG SX8200 and it works great. It's consistent, but it's better than Crucial by a mile.

Originally posted by chiefputsi✖✖✖ 上 没什么 老挝:

if you are planning to upgrade, consider bigger storage than 250/256GB.
in my country, the philippines, 250/256GB or less are being sold at more affordable prices compared to 2017.

You don't need larger than 250/240/256 GB because it doesn't make a difference on games, not enough for it to be worth it. A standard SATA SSD is all one actually needs for games, and it's not cost efficient to go beyond a single ~256 GB M.2.

[Omega]

There are some really bad NVMe drives out there, NVMe drives which will get outperformed by SATA drives. So don't risk it, get a SSD from a well known and quality brand such as Samsung.

[nullable]

Originally posted by Omega:

There are some really bad NVMe drives out there, NVMe drives which will get outperformed by SATA drives. So don't risk it, get a SSD from a well known and quality brand such as Samsung.

Well in most general computing workloads NVMe isn't going to be faster than SATA, if your workload isn't using more than what SATA III offers all that extra bandwidth is wasted.

I mean one of my favorite examples, where just having more bandwidth for loading things doesn't mean measurable improvement:

https://hardforum.com/threads/nvme-m-2-ram-drive-raid-sata-iii-ssd-game-load-time-comparisons.1911914/

I like it because the comparison to a serious RAID array and a RAM drive really highlights how gobs of bandwidth don't matter if you're not using it. And SSDs and NVMe's haven't changed so much where you can say that a 970 and 860 would have completely different results.

[Omega]

Originally posted by Brockenstein:

Originally posted by Omega:

There are some really bad NVMe drives out there, NVMe drives which will get outperformed by SATA drives. So don't risk it, get a SSD from a well known and quality brand such as Samsung.

Well in most general computing workloads NVMe isn't going to be faster than SATA, if your workload isn't using more than what SATA III offers all that extra bandwidth is wasted.

I mean one of my favorite examples, where just having more bandwidth for loading things doesn't mean measurable improvement:

https://hardforum.com/threads/nvme-m-2-ram-drive-raid-sata-iii-ssd-game-load-time-comparisons.1911914/

I like it because the comparison to a serious RAID array and a RAM drive really highlights how gobs of bandwidth don't matter if you're not using it. And SSDs and NVMe's haven't changed so much where you can say that a 970 and 860 would have completely different results.

With performance I am refering to the actual speeds these drives are able to achieve. And I am talking about the worst and cheapest drives you can buy, there is more available on the market then just the latest from Samsung. These is a lot of 4 year old crap still for sale online and it's hard to spot the difference between the modern and the old stuff.

The WD Black 256gb and 512gb NVMe drives for example. This old crap is not much faster then a 860 evo and gets nuked from orbit by a 960 evo which is 2x as fast.


But you are also right it's not as simple as drive A is better then drive B.

[Astraea Kisaragi]

Its M2 even worth compared common SSD? My mobo has the slot it but I still run on a ADATA 128GB with SATA III. They seem quite a tad more expensive compared SATA.

[Omega]

Originally posted by Astraea Kisaragi:

Its M2 even worth compared common SSD? My mobo has the slot it but I still run on a ADATA 128GB with SATA III. They seem quite a tad more expensive compared SATA.

M.2 is only the port not the implementation. M.2 can be used for SATA which is capable of performing identical in performance to a normal 2.5" SATA drive because they both use SATA.

NVMe (PCI-e x4) is capable of pushing up to 4GB/s, SATA (version 3, 6Gb/s) can only push up to 750MB/s. Here I am ignoring overhead, encoding, latency and all that stuff, these are the theoretical max speeds of these interfaces.

If you can untilize the extra speed of NVMe, yes it's totally worth it. For gaming and normal computer use it might save you a couple of seconds in a game loading screen and on boot, in this case it's not really worth it.

[nullable]

Originally posted by Astraea Kisaragi:

Its M2 even worth compared common SSD? My mobo has the slot it but I still run on a ADATA 128GB with SATA III. They seem quite a tad more expensive compared SATA.

Well m.2 is a form factor, there are NVMe m.2 drives and SATA m.2 drives. The only real benefit over the 860 evo m.2 and the 2.5" (for example) is there's no cables. Performance is the same between m.2 SATA and 2.5" SATA and the cost is pretty close or the same. I think my next build will just use m.2 SATA drives. Why bother with cables.

As for NVMe drives, for general computing, gaming, loading windows, programs, no. There's no benefit because of how that data is being loaded just doesn't require the bandwidth that makes NVMe drives faster. But there are use cases where those NVMe speeds do have value, so it's just a question of if you fall into any of those data intensive/bandwidth intensive uses cases where NVMe can really shine. Mostly the answer is no. And if the answer was yes for you, you probably wouldn't be asking.

[r.linder]

Originally posted by Brockenstein:

Originally posted by Astraea Kisaragi:

Its M2 even worth compared common SSD? My mobo has the slot it but I still run on a ADATA 128GB with SATA III. They seem quite a tad more expensive compared SATA.

Well m.2 is a form factor, there are NVMe m.2 drives and SATA m.2 drives. The only real benefit over the 860 evo m.2 and the 2.5" (for example) is there's no cables. Performance is the same between m.2 SATA and 2.5" SATA and the cost is pretty close or the same. I think my next build will just use m.2 SATA drives. Why bother with cables.

As for NVMe drives, for general computing, gaming, loading windows, programs, no. There's no benefit because of how that data is being loaded just doesn't require the bandwidth that makes NVMe drives faster. But there are use cases where those NVMe speeds do have value, so it's just a question of if you fall into any of those data intensive/bandwidth intensive uses cases where NVMe can really shine. Mostly the answer is no. And if the answer was yes for you, you probably wouldn't be asking.

Apparently there are even faster drives than Intel's fastest drives on the enterprise-level market, but they aren't going to hit the consumer market anytime soon as they'd be too expensive, way more than Optane.