NVMe M.2. vs SATA SSD

[Ian]

Are there any forum users here using an NVMeSSD? I've had a SATA SSD for quite a few years now, and I'm very happy with the speed - but it won't be long before I'll need to upgrade the capacity.

I'd be interested to hear if you thought switching to NVMe gave much of a performance boost over a traditional SATA SSD. I've seen the benchmarks and articles, but how they translate in to real world situations is a different matter entirely.

 

[Tim Locke]

Depends on the cpu model and the mobo. NVME needs more lanes than the SATA controller. So it also depends on what video cards you are going to use.

I have read the reviews and articles as well and I am fairly sure my next PC will have a mobo ( Z270 type) and a fast I5 cpu that can support NVME and a reasonably fast single video card...no SLI as I am not a gamer.

 

[Ian]

I've had my current PC for about 6 years now (apart from upgraded graphics card - 960GTX), and it just keeps on going. I think it may last me another couple of years yet .

However, I'm looking at upgrading the web server, as the current company is becoming quite frustrating to deal with - so I'm making the most of fresh hardware. I think normal SSDs may be the way to go for now, as I've seen how much they charge for NVMe!

 

[Tim Locke]

Forum web server? Will this be Windows or Linux? I am not familiar with web serving but the wisdom used to be Linux and Apache. I would think that is not demanding on cpu and disk speed but would like lots and lots of memory. If it is for this forum I'd imagine Xenforo would have an opinion. A SSD in this case would only help it it contained the whole forum database.

 

[Ian]

Yep, that's the one. We're moving to Windows Server 2016 and IIS 10 - as it supports HTTP2, so should mean that it speeds things up a little bit .

 

[Tim Locke]

OK. While you are at it how about IPV6 as well....just to keep up to date. I see more and more sites have V6 as well as V4. presuming that is that your ISP supports V6.

 

[Ian]

I've not used IPV6 for hosting before, so I'll do some reading up on it - the host supports it, so may as well add it as an "extra" if it's easy.

 

[Tim Locke]

Should be easy as Windows actually prefers V6 nowadays

 

[Clintlgm]

Yes if your motherboard support M.2 NVME they are about 4 times as fast and the SATA SSD, My Samsun 960 Pro reads at 2700 and writes ant about 1900 those are real time stats Bench marks are faster on a clean SSD with out anything on it. Running a little slower today but these are real time reading on a 52% full SSD
The 850 Pro is 2.5" format SATA 50% Plus full of data
Today only 3x faster benchmarking is tricky you can set up for them and get great results, I prefer to run them on my computers just as I use them

 

[Tim Locke]

IIRC many mobos support M2 but not all M2 slots support NVME and not all cpus can support a NVMe drive and a fast video card at the same time.

 

[Ian]

Thanks for the benchmarks @Clintlgm - that's super fast .

BTW, if you're running the Samsung 960 Pro, be careful of the latest firmware: https://www.kitguru.net/components/.../samsung-botches-960-pro-ssd-firmware-update/

 

[Clintlgm]

Hmm, just looked no firmware update available, either they pulled it or I already installed it. I did do a clean install a few weeks ago and took it off the RAID driver and put it back on AHCI so that Samsung magician could see the SSD and it did run a Firmware update. If I'm having issues it could explain he loss of read speed from 2900 ot 2200? I haven't noticed any other issues.

 

[Clintlgm]

IIRC many mobos support M2 but not all M2 slots support NVME and not all cpus can support a NVMe drive and a fast video card at the same time.

Yes the first MB that came out with M.2 slots were still running off the SATA Controller