Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 04/27/2019 11:00 AM, Char Jackson wrote:
On Sat, 27 Apr 2019 09:58:09 -0500, Rene Lamontagne
wrote:
Further to the above upgrade I have been looking at M.2 NVME drives and
now find the prices quite attractive.
I am looking at 3 brands for about the same price range for a 512 GB
unit as follows.
HP EX 950
SRG SX8200
WD black SN750
Now I have to admit I have never looked at NVME drives much before so I
am kinda behind the curve on this, I have looked at piles of reviews and
these 3 all get excellent marks, so now I am torn between them and can't
decide which one to buy.
So if anyone out there has any preferences or warnings I would
appreciate their input, Thanks in advance.
I'm no help on the choices above because each of my m.2 drives is
Samsung. (I've had zero issues and personally won't be looking at other
brands.) You're starting out well, though, because you're specifying m.2
NVMe and not m.2 SATA. m.2 is only the form factor, where the numbers
that immediately follow refer to the drive's size in mm. I.e., m.2 2280
is 22mm wide and 80mm long. Whatever you decide, be sure your mobo
physically supports it. You'll need the standard m.2 socket, plus a hold
down screw at the desired distance from the socket. Also take a look at
the mobo manual because, typically, adding an m.2 drive will take away
some other capability, such as disabling one or two SATA ports or
stealing a couple of PCIe lanes from one of your PCIe slots. Make an
informed decision and you'll be fine.
One final note: the boot drive in my latest build is an m.2 NVMe, which
specs out at some crazy data transfer speed, but other than super fast
boot times you'll very quickly become accustomed to it such that it no
longer seems 'fast'. It just seems normal, as if things have always been
that way. Even so, I wouldn't go back to vanilla SATA.
Yes the Mobo supports X4 and will come with 2 M.2 slots for all lengths
40, 60, 80 and 110 mm and 2 mounting standoffs and screws, Sata 1 will
be disabled when adding the NVMe drive.
Yes Samsung is pretty well tops but for my casual use the lower price
ones should be OK.
Thanks, Rene
HP EX 950
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews...-2tb,5306.html
"that boasts up to 3.5/2.9GB/s of read/write" Bull**** (violates a law
of physics)
DRAM 512MB DDR3 etc. (various sizes of DRAM cache)
Micron 64L TLC
https://www.anandtech.com/show/13759...ro-vs-hp-ex950
Silicon Motion SM2262EN
Random Read 390k IOPS (SATA SSDs are in the 100K ballpark)
Random Write 370k IOPS
Page 2 shows the "real sustained write" is 800 or 1300MB/sec.
The Sequential Performance page shows 2600 and 2700MB/sec
(consistent with the hardware buffer size choices available
in Intel desktop chipset, which is a bottleneck at ~60% of
PCIe link bandwidth - there's a graph available which relates
hardware buffer size to link efficiency, that predicts 3.5GB/sec
cannot be achieved).
*******
SRG SX8200
older SM2262 controller ??? Dunno
Sounds suspiciously similar to the HP design above, with an ADATA
branding on the above article example. Double check the branding.
*******
WD black SN750
https://www.anandtech.com/show/13760...750-ssd-review
"Secret squirrel brand controller"
Size-dependent IOP, like all designs.
Random Read 220k IOPS 420k IOPS 515k IOPS 480k IOPS
Random Write 180k IOPS 380k IOPS 560k IOPS 550k IOPS
Page 2 shows the "real sustained write" is 1500MB/sec for 1TB model.
The Sequential Performance page shows only 800MB/sec read.
[The SM2262EN in the table, does much better on the same graph (2300MB/sec).]
*******
Throw in one more.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/13761...lus-ssd-review
Article reveals IOPS spec is a crock :-/
Desktop loads don't do QD128, except under synthetic conditions.
Hard to see how we can trust this spec at all.
It's like your 2W audio amp having a "300W PMP power rating",
where PMP stood for "Peak Music Power". Which translated to
English meant "We Pulled This Number Out Of Our Ass".
Page 2 shows the "real sustained write" is 1700MB/sec for 1TB model (orange).
The Sequential Performance page shows 2300MB/sec read at 1TB capacity.
(As usual, "no, it doesn't read at 3500MB/sec".)
You would compare the HP EX950 to the Samsung 970 EVO PLus
and see if the price of the Samsung is work an extra 200MB/sec write.
Since the HP performance is size-dependent, you have to
compare "like to like". Then see what price the name brings.
You consider the power rating, if there is any danger of the
product "throttling" due to overheat. This has been a bit of
a problem in the past with NVMe. Maybe the bottom
gets a bit warm on them. You can't expect to be pushing
2GB/sec toggle rate on logic gates, doing ECC at speed,
without something getting warm :-)
The record for warmth goes to some of the PCIe card form
factor products, like an Optane card. Which is probably
over 15W or so. Whereas a tiddly SATA SSD can be 5V @ 300mA
when writing.
Paul