Laptop NVME question

[Zeit Eis]

Hi like to ask for opinion regarding a secondary nvme for laptop should i consider Speed and storage or only storage matters? newer laptops seems to be stuck with only 2 nvme slots without the old ssd/hdd slot. the 2nd nvme will be mainly for game storage and other files. seriously game size are getting ridiculous and with the way windows updates the main drive gets clogged up pretty fast too..

have read some forums that say speed is better or just say storage as you can't really see the difference apart from like a few sec in the loading screen. But notice that most seems to be talking about it as the primary drive.

thanks for the help

[AmaiAmai]

I have never noticed the speed difference between NVME and non-NVME in reality, what I did notice was how fast the NVME died from heat. More than speed, I would be concerned about durability.

The laptop I use (HP) really has crappy cooling and that cooling killed my NVME in less than 1.5 years.

I'd rather have better durability instead of speed any time. My drive died with 99% health, so take the heat issue into consideration. If someone says a drive runs hot, won't be long before it dies...

[Illusion of Progress]

My rule of thumb on this is if you have to ask if you need the higher sequential speed offered by NVMe/premium drives, then you probably don't have a need that justifies them if they carry a price premium.

Many drives are less (sometimes much less) than $100 per 1 TB now, even some of the former premium-ish PCI Express 4.0 drives. The premium drives that cost over this, like the latest Samsing 990 Pro and the soon to come PCI Express 5.0 drives from other brands, are just burning money for regular people. They're great if you have uses that justify the price, but games and just storage isn't it. Enthusiasts probably have this habit of looking at higher bars and numbers in reviews and benchmarks and then just spending without realizing whether it will, for their uses, actually be worth it. You see so many Samsugn Pros in gaming only PCs for this reason, even though such a drive is rather wasteful for just that use. Games and storage doesn't justify a fast drive. So you're good getting a better "value" option and prioritizing storage space over speed IMO. Like you said, games are ballooning in size. People have even used Samsung SATA QVOs (Samsung's version of a space over speed offering) and found they work great. And that's because they do.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

I would highly suggest getting a decent 2TB ssd for that 2nd slot. If you need more storage, use an external drive or network based storage.

[Zeit Eis]

hmmm so overall its storage over speed. really wonder why they took out sata ssd and let it be nvme only considering its a GAMING LAPTOP forgotten to mention looking at a avg nvme not those super budget or super premium.

Originally posted by AmaiAmai:

I have never noticed the speed difference between NVME and non-NVME in reality, what I did notice was how fast the NVME died from heat. More than speed, I would be concerned about durability.

The laptop I use (HP) really has crappy cooling and that cooling killed my NVME in less than 1.5 years.

I'd rather have better durability instead of speed any time. My drive died with 99% health, so take the heat issue into consideration. If someone says a drive runs hot, won't be long before it dies...

that kind makes it difficult lol. most nvme have reviews that says it runs hot and with a laptop its just worst with the bad heat dissipation not to mention not many laptop can use the heatsink if it works in a laptop setting.

Originally posted by Illusion of Progress:

My rule of thumb on this is if you have to ask if you need the higher sequential speed offered by NVMe/premium drives, then you probably don't have a need that justifies them if they carry a price premium.

Many drives are less (sometimes much less) than $100 per 1 TB now, even some of the former premium-ish PCI Express 4.0 drives. The premium drives that cost over this, like the latest Samsing 990 Pro and the soon to come PCI Express 5.0 drives from other brands, are just burning money for regular people. They're great if you have uses that justify the price, but games and just storage isn't it. Enthusiasts probably have this habit of looking at higher bars and numbers in reviews and benchmarks and then just spending without realizing whether it will, for their uses, actually be worth it. You see so many Samsugn Pros in gaming only PCs for this reason, even though such a drive is rather wasteful for just that use. Games and storage doesn't justify a fast drive. So you're good getting a better "value" option and prioritizing storage space over speed IMO. Like you said, games are ballooning in size. People have even used Samsung SATA QVOs (Samsung's version of a space over speed offering) and found they work great. And that's because they do.

that great except in my area even nvme like pny and crucial 2TB cost me around 1k. 1 TB is round 500. a 4 TB is like 2k++ consider a avg salary is around 3k feel like storage is a rich man luxury soon over here.

Originally posted by nullable:

Not a laptop, but I run a Sabrent Rocket 4 2TB (Gen4, 7,000MB/sec ) as my C: drive, and an Intel 660p 2TB NVMe, which is a lot more entry level tops out at 1,500 MB/sec.

The wife was using an Intel 660p as her C: drive for a few years as well, and that wasn't an issue even though it's "slow" for an NVMe. But still quite a bit faster than a SATA SSD, and not even worth mentioning HDDs in comparison.

I mean as a secondary drive there's nothing wrong with an entry level NVMe if the price is right. Faster NVMe's will perform better on real data heavy workloads. But for most general purpose computing, storage, loading games pretty much any NVMe is going to be more than sufficient, way faster than a SATA SSD or HDD. Although one thing to remember is loading software isn't solely a function of disk performance, a faster disk will only speed up the disk loading portions not all the other aspects confined to the CPU/RAM/GPU which is why for a lot of things there's not a huge amount of difference between NVMe and SATA from a user perception perspective. I don't really notice a difference in load times between the Rocket4 and the 660p, even though the Rocket4 can be over 4x faster in certain workloads.

But even then as long as you're not using a HDD for C:, or if you're using any combinations of SSD it's all gravy as far as I'm concerned.

I'm planning/thinking about getting another Sabrent Rocket 4 or maybe a Samsung 980 Pro for my laptop and swip-swapping the OEM NVMe. It's not gonna be an issue. It's just storage either way you look at it.

Originally posted by AmaiAmai:

I have never noticed the speed difference between NVME and non-NVME in reality, what I did notice was how fast the NVME died from heat. More than speed, I would be concerned about durability.

I mean overall this isn't really an issue. But SSD's like any other component can fail, and someone is gonna be "lucky" to have one fail fast. I don't believe your experience is typical. I've run NVMe's in desktops and laptops for years now without issue.

Aside from bad luck, any moderate quality NVMe is gonna last longer than the average user is going to have use for the system.

i see i see. maybe i am still having the perception that a secondary nvme will be slower due to my experience with my previously laptop but that was a sata ssd drive. also cuz nvme cost a bomb here so feel like i should get a "reasonable" one. btw how is the sabrent rocket? i was considering between it and the kingston kc3000 which seems to be a comparable nvme price tho kingston is cheaper by like 40-60 when there are "discounts"

Originally posted by Bad 💀 Motha:

I would highly suggest getting a decent 2TB ssd for that 2nd slot. If you need more storage, use an external drive or network based storage.

to tell the truth been consider getting a external hdd. i mean a seagate or WD external hdd are around 500 for 5TB drive. thats way cheaper then the 2k for a 4tb drive. only thing is i wonder how good or bad the "speed is if i use it for game storage.

thanks for the help

[Illusion of Progress]

Originally posted by Zeit Eis:

that great except in my area even nvme like pny and crucial 2TB cost me around 1k. 1 TB is round 500. a 4 TB is like 2k++ consider a avg salary is around 3k feel like storage is a rich man luxury soon over here.

I was mostly just using the $100 per 1 TB as a somewhat rough reference point (many drives have moved lower than this by now), not saying that pricing had to match this in your locale or that you needed to be buying at that capacity or above for it to apply.

The overall point I was making was that you can look and see there's a rough average that drives of a given size will trend towards in cost per GB (despite the extremes and outliers), and that the premium ones (those extreme outliers) will be way above that. These drives, for a pure gaming/entertainment PC, aren't worth the added cost in a normal circumstance.

That only applies double to you if you have a more limited budget. Any SSD is still an SSD and while you can dissect them and compare seconds of differences in loading, you're not going to blindly notice/miss something for just gaming so it's not worth stretching a limited budget for it.

[Zeit Eis]

Originally posted by Illusion of Progress:

Originally posted by Zeit Eis:

that great except in my area even nvme like pny and crucial 2TB cost me around 1k. 1 TB is round 500. a 4 TB is like 2k++ consider a avg salary is around 3k feel like storage is a rich man luxury soon over here.

I was mostly just using the $100 per 1 TB as a somewhat rough reference point (many drives have moved lower than this by now), not saying that pricing had to match this in your locale or that you needed to be buying at that capacity or above for it to apply.

The overall point I was making was that you can look and see there's a rough average that drives of a given size will trend towards in cost per GB (despite the extremes and outliers), and that the premium ones (those extreme outliers) will be way above that. These drives, for a pure gaming/entertainment PC, aren't worth the added cost in a normal circumstance.

That only applies double to you if you have a more limited budget. Any SSD is still an SSD and while you can dissect them and compare seconds of differences in loading, you're not going to blindly notice/miss something for just gaming so it's not worth stretching a limited budget for it.

yeah sorry if i came off a bit rude but that wasn't my intention. Just got mad remembering the suddenly hike in price. initially just wanted to know how big of a difference a premium vs budget nvme will make being a secondary drive. but like what you and the other have said most like won't notice he split sec difference. i guess i can get a "okay" one that is within my budget.

Originally posted by nullable:

Originally posted by Zeit Eis:

hmmm so overall its storage over speed. really wonder why they took out sata ssd and let it be nvme only considering its a GAMING LAPTOP forgotten to mention looking at a avg nvme not those super budget or super premium.

Well NVMe's are much smaller than SATA drives, and the SATA interface. So for a small form factor M2 takes up a lot less space and you don't have to have multiple interfaces.

I'm not clear what the explicit value of SATA is for a gaming laptop?

And the way SSD's have dropped in price SATA drives aren't that much cheaper. There might be a convenience argument if you had an old SATA SSD laying around, but new products aren't often designed around what spare parts you might have laying around.

https://www.amazon.com/SAMSUNG-870-QVO-SATA-MZ-77Q2T0B/dp/B089C6LZ42

https://www.amazon.com/Intel-PCI-Express-Internal-Solid-SSDPEKNU020TZX1/dp/B08X4XL71S

https://ssd.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Samsung-870-QVO-2TB-vs-Intel-670p-NVMe-PCIe-M2-2TB/m1260265vsm1393067

In this example unless you had your heart set on paying the Samsung tax I'm not clear what the issue would be. I'd opt for the Intel 670p.

Originally posted by Zeit Eis:

i see i see. maybe i am still having the perception that a secondary nvme will be slower due to my experience with my previously laptop but that was a sata ssd drive. also cuz nvme cost a bomb here so feel like i should get a "reasonable" one. btw how is the sabrent rocket? i was considering between it and the kingston kc3000 which seems to be a comparable nvme price tho kingston is cheaper by like 40-60 when there are "discounts"

Well I'm not sure where "here" is, so forgive my above links for being in USD. I'm sure that favorable pricing or availability may not be the same world wide.

The Sabrent Rocket4 is fine, I was originally gonna get a Samsung 980/980 Pro because I was satisfied with paying the Samsung tax (most of my SSDs over the past 6-7 years have been Samsung drives). The Sabrent drives had fared really well in most reviews I read so I opted to go that way instead of just buying Samsung because Samsung. For a primary drive I'd go Samsung/Sabrent at the moment. I've been fine re-using my older Intel 660p (similar to the 670p I linked to) for a secondary drive.

My developer workstation at work uses an old Samsung 850 evo SATA drive, I've used a Samsung 970 evo in my last system, the Sabrent Rocket 4 in my current system. The wife used an Intel 660p as her C: drive in her old system. And for most general purpose uses, running Windows, gaming, etc. There's really not much difference in the user experience between them that I could ever detect. I've got games installed on the Sabrent Rocket 4, and on the Intel 660p and based on loading performance I couldn't tell you which one was which nine times out of ten, and even then it would just be a lucky guess.

There are some differences in benchmarks or if you had a stopwatch, but in either case the users experience is pretty good with any of the SSDs I mentioned, despite all four of the drives having dramatically different performance. As long as you're not using an HDD or SD card most SSDs are faster than most users need at any random moment and don't really cause any sort of performance bottleneck.

Probably the only reason I buy highend drives for C: is because I just can't talk myself into cutting corners and I'm glad to pay nerd tax.

well i agree too for primary its hard to cut corners since the daily load would be on it. really need to remind myself its both nvme not ssd or hybrid and so on. and as mention wasn't trying to be rude about the pricing thing. so do forgive me. as mention i guess i will just get a affordable one. kinda thinking of just getting a gen 3 nvme a 4tb crucial p3 is just 1.2k seems more value for money.

[Illusion of Progress]

Originally posted by Zeit Eis:

yeah sorry if i came off a bit rude but that wasn't my intention. Just got mad remembering the suddenly hike in price. initially just wanted to know how big of a difference a premium vs budget nvme will make being a secondary drive. but like what you and the other have said most like won't notice he split sec difference. i guess i can get a "okay" one that is within my budget.

No, you didn't come off rude. I just thought you didn't understand what I said so I was clarifying it.

I definitely get the "can't pay as much as what all of you people are talking about" position, haha.

But yeah, whether a premium storage drive is worth it mostly it boils down to the premium drives being faster either for selective workloads (ones that push a lot of sequential data, namely) or to a minute extent (a second shorter for a loading screen, which you won't blindly notice). So unless you're doing something that benefits from those higher sequential speeds, or you have money to burn just to have a certain brand name or particular product, then they aren't worth it.

Space over speed unless you know you need the speed and/or have the budget to burn IMO.

[Zeit Eis]

again thanks for the help