Major upgrade

On 04/27/2019 8:56 PM, Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 04/27/2019 5:47 PM, Paul wrote:
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

Â*Â*Â* "that boasts up to 3.5/2.9GB/s of read/write"Â* Bull**** (violates
a law
Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â* Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â* of physics)

Â*Â*Â* DRAMÂ*Â*Â* 512MB DDR3 etc.Â* (various sizes of DRAM cache)
Â*Â*Â* Micron 64L TLC

https://www.anandtech.com/show/13759...ro-vs-hp-ex950


Â*Â*Â* Silicon Motion SM2262EN

Â*Â*Â* Random ReadÂ*Â* 390k IOPSÂ*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â* (SATA SSDs are in the 100K ballpark)
Â*Â*Â* Random WriteÂ* 370k IOPS

Â*Â*Â* Page 2 shows the "real sustained write" is 800 or 1300MB/sec.

Â*Â*Â* The Sequential Performance page shows 2600 and 2700MB/sec
Â*Â*Â* (consistent with the hardware buffer size choices available
Â*Â*Â*Â* in Intel desktop chipset, which is a bottleneck at ~60% of
Â*Â*Â*Â* PCIe link bandwidth - there's a graph available which relates
Â*Â*Â*Â* hardware buffer size to link efficiency, that predicts 3.5GB/sec
Â*Â*Â*Â* cannot be achieved).

*******

SRG SX8200

Â*Â*Â* older SM2262 controller ??? Dunn

Â*Â*Â* Sounds suspiciously similar to the HP design above, with an ADATA
Â*Â*Â* branding on the above article example. Double check the branding.

*******

WD black SN750

https://www.anandtech.com/show/13760...750-ssd-review


Â*Â*Â* "Secret squirrel brand controller"

Â*Â*Â* Size-dependent IOP, like all designs.

Â*Â*Â* Random ReadÂ*Â* 220k IOPSÂ* 420k IOPSÂ* 515k IOPSÂ* 480k IOPS
Â*Â*Â* Random WriteÂ* 180k IOPSÂ* 380k IOPSÂ* 560k IOPSÂ* 550k IOPS

Â*Â*Â* Page 2 shows the "real sustained write" is 1500MB/sec for 1TB model.

Â*Â*Â* The Sequential Performance page shows only 800MB/sec read.

Â*Â*Â* [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

Â*Â*Â* Article reveals IOPS spec is a crock :-/
Â*Â*Â* Desktop loads don't do QD128, except under synthetic conditions.
Â*Â*Â* Hard to see how we can trust this spec at all.
Â*Â*Â* It's like your 2W audio amp having a "300W PMP power rating",
Â*Â*Â* where PMP stood for "Peak Music Power". Which translated to
Â*Â*Â* English meant "We Pulled This Number Out Of Our Ass".

Â*Â*Â* Page 2 shows the "real sustained write" is 1700MB/sec for 1TB
model (orange).

Â*Â*Â* The Sequential Performance page shows 2300MB/sec read at 1TB
capacity.
Â*Â*Â* (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.

Â*Â*Â* Paul


The new SRG SX8200 PRO is 512 instead of 480 and sports the new SM2262en
controller, Yes both that one and the HP are very nearly identical.

I have read so many long reviews today my Eyeballs are still spinning.Â* :-)
Â*It was a real learning experience believe me but worth it,
Trusting my judgement and trying to remember all the facts with lots of
notes.
Â*I choseÂ* Door 2, The Adata SRG SX8200 512 GB unit and ordered it from
Amazon at a price of $129 cdn. free shipping 2 day delivery.

When I get all this stuff bolted together I will certainly do a lot of
bench-marking and post results and then the truth will shine forth.
Â*I am really looking forward to this as I haven't done a new build in 9
years
Â*Thanks for your help and research

Rene



Well I put it all together today as the last part came in yesterday
afternoon.
Two problems slowed me down.

1: the IO shield would not install, I have to work it over carefully
with pliers before it would snap in.

On 1rst boot it brought up the bios and would go no further, Had to do a
lot of manual perusal before I figured what to do, which was Enable CSM
whatever that does.

After that it booted right into my old Windows without any problems.
I then loaded the driver disk and everything works A1.

Tomorrow I will have to reactivate it with Microsoft, And clone Windows
onto the new NVMe

I did two quick benchmarks as follows

CrystalMark.
Read 3,470
Write 2,386

ATTO
Read 3,281
Write 2,399

So this pleases me beyond my expectations, Hadn't hoped for that much
improvement.

Rene

On Tue, 30 Apr 2019 18:42:34 -0500, Rene Lamontagne
wrote:

On 04/27/2019 8:56 PM, Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 04/27/2019 5:47 PM, Paul wrote:
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

[Deleted Text]

On 1rst boot it brought up the bios and would go no further, Had to do a
lot of manual perusal before I figured what to do, which was Enable CSM
whatever that does.

CSM is Compatibility Support Module. It's for newer motherboards that
boot using UEFI to provide a BIOS style boot environment for older
operating systems like Windows 7 or older.

--

Roy Smith
Windows 10
Forté Agent 8.0

Wow, almost like mine but I'm not planning to upgrade yet unless
something break. I used to upgrade like crazy because I was computer
gaming. :P

Rene Lamontagne wrote:
I am contemplating upgrading my I7 950 system due to age, which I built
in 2010.
I would be looking at replacing 5 items.

CPU
Motherboard
Memory
Video card
CPU cooler.

I will keep the
Coolermaster CM690 II case
Corsair RM750i PSU
500 GB and 1 terabyte HDDs
5x 120 GB SSDs
Asus optical DVD burner

At the moment I am looking at

Intel i7 8700 CPU $400
Asus Z390 Prime MB $260
Asus RX 580 GPU $255
16 GB of G.Skill Trident 3200 Ghz memory $160
Coolermaster Hyper 212 Evo CPU cooler $35

For a total of $1110 CDN

Seems like a lot of cash for an upgrade to a system which is already
fast enough and is totally trouble free, But I am looking to the future
and will pass it on to my Son, After all I am 85 years old and may not
be able to do this if I wait too long.

So Look at the component choices I have made and let me know if there
are better choices without going to extreme high end kit which I really
don't need. This is not set in stone as I need to have a serious
discussion with my Financial advisor (myself). :-)

Thanks to all

Rene
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