OS on Raid 0 m.2 SSD vs. m.2 PCIe

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2DMaximus

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I'm thinking about buying a Sager NP9773-S Laptop. Would the Operating System run faster and smoother on Raid 0 m.2 SSDs or running on an m.2 PCIe? I can't decide which configuration would be faster. Are the differences in speed negligible? Even if they are negligible, does anyone know which would be faster? I found video on youtube saying that an m.2 PCIe would be extremely fast, but he doesn't exactly compare it to Raid 0 m.2 SSDs. Does anyone know anything about this?

The Sager NP9773-S Laptop has two m.2 slots, and is also able to have two disc drives (which are also raid 0 configurable). If Raid 0 m.2 SSD is faster, then I'd just use both m.2 slots for a raid 0 configuration using two 256gb m.2 SSD's. If m.2 PCIe is faster, then I could use one m.2 slot for that and then have a free m.2 slot for fast m.2 SSD storage. If I choose the latter, I would probably just get a large HDD for one of my disc drives to regularly backup the machine and I'd leave the other disc drive slot empty.

Here is the customization options for the Sager NP9773-S:
http://www.sagernotebook.com/customize.php?productid=778

Here is the video on youtube. He talks about PCIe at about 3:15:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVMVjyBA7Q0&index=1&list=LL8NIg9T30mjNsWhxzV57lAg

Also, what do you guys think about Sager Laptops?
 
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BigBadBeef

BigBadBeef

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I have done this research myself a while back, all it has done is that it pissed me off and I ended up buying HHD for the capacity:

M.2 PCI-e has faster read times, but the same write times.
The fastest ones are the ones which have a slot on the mobo itself, which means a direct channel into the controller, right up the CPU.
Most mobo's built after late 2014 are expected to have one!

Unfortunately, RAID implementation is proving difficult as most have only one M.2 mobo slot. But if you go for M.2 SSD or M.2 PCI-e RAID, you will have faster write speeds but total read speeds will be actually a bit slower!

So that is your choice - one M.2 on the mobo that reads faster, or more M.2 on the slot or SSD which write faster in RAID mode.
 
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2DMaximus

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Alright I figured it all out. Running an M.2 PCIe Raid 0 setup would be a lot faster than running an M.2 SSD Raid 0 setup. If you look at the non-raid 0 Read/Write speeds of a single Samsung Evo M.2 256gb SSD vs a single 256gb M.2 PCIe, you get this:

Single Samsung Evo M.2 256gb SSD:
Sequential Read: Up to 550mb/s
Sequential Write: Up to 520mb/s

Single 256gb M.2 PCIe
Sequential Read: 2150mb/s
Sequential Write: 1200mb/s

Running an OS on a single (no raid) m.2 SSD instead of on a normal SATA3 (no raid) SSD serves no benefit in speed (maybe 20mb/s but its negligible imo). They both have about the same read and write speeds. However m.2's benefit comes into play when you run two m.2 SSDs in a Raid 0 setup since it no longer has a 500mb/s bottleneck. If you ran two SATA3 SSDs in raid 0, there wouldn't be any increase in speed because of the SATA3 bottleneck.

If you used two m.2 PCIe in raid 0, you would have a huuuuuge increase in speed. Unfortunately, current chipsets fail to support m.2 PCIe Raid (at least I haven't found anything yet). However, you can setup a dynamic RAID array in Windows 7 for the RAID 0 array (I'm not really familiar with software Raids and I'd prefer to just stay away from them).





So here are my options:
I can get the m.2 SSD storage (two of them for a Raid 0 setup) for cheaper and utilize both m.2 slots to get up around 1000mb/s read&write.

OR

I can get the single m.2 PCIe SSD and get:
Sequential Read: 2150mb/s
Sequential Write: 1200mb/s

And I'd be left with an m.2 slot that would be used for storage, which would be more expensive and of equal performance compared to using a SATA3 slot for storage.On a side note, I think Samsung released the newer NVMe PCIe which has 3x higher IOPS than the ACHI (no difference in read/write though)

I think I'm going to go for the second option and just get the 256gb m.2 PCIe SSD. Hopefully they have the newer NVMe. I'll just buy the cheapest 120gb m.2 SSD for the second m.2 slot since it's not an option to leave it empty.


Just give me a shout if you think I'm wrong about some of this.
 
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Darth Monroe

Darth Monroe

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