256GB M.2 NVMe SSD or a 500GB 850 Evo?

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dudewithnobrain

dudewithnobrain

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Dec 10, 2017
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I'm new to the PC-building world, and I'm stuck debating whether ridiculously faster speeds (but lower storage) in NVMe drives are worth buying over a normal Samsung SSD, like the 850 Evo. Any suggestions?
 
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Get the 500gb 850 Evo. Storage matters more in today's standards.

M.2 WOULD be better, BUT almost no programs in today's world make use of the super fast speeds of NVMe. Only benchmarking programs and moving LARGE amounts of files really benefit from having the faster storage of NVMe.

Games, OS, and other applications would generally only see a few seconds difference, if that, between load times and write times. Usually not as big of a difference compared to another 250gb of storage.
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JalYt_Justin

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Get the 500gb 850 Evo. Storage matters more in today's standards.

M.2 WOULD be better, BUT almost no programs in today's world make use of the super fast speeds of NVMe. Only benchmarking programs and moving LARGE amounts of files really benefit from having the faster storage of NVMe.

Games, OS, and other applications would generally only see a few seconds difference, if that, between load times and write times. Usually not as big of a difference compared to another 250gb of storage.
 
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mikeynavy1976

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Which NVMe drive are you looking at, and what would you be using your PC for? I had the same question last year, prior to my build, and went with the same drive...850 EVO. General consensus is that for standard use...games, average productivity, web browsing, multimedia, etc. you won't notice any difference. If you are going to be working with a lot of very large files, or transfering large amounts of data around regularly, you would probably see the difference. In terms of general use...my laptop as NVMe and in benchmarks it crushes the 850 EVO...but for most consumers, who don't worry about benchmarks, they'd never know the difference as boot times, application loading times, and responsiveness both seem the same. It's not like the difference between SSD (SATA or PCIe/NVMe) and HDD...where it is definitely noticeable. That being said, if my budget didn't limit me to choosing between the 2 I'd go for NVMe of course:)
 
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mazboy

mazboy

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If you can afford it, and your motherboard can support it (at both its rated speed and as a boot device) a Samsung 960 Pro m.2 NVMe is as fast as it gets, and worth the money for gamers, video editors, etc. Splurge on a 1TB if you can afford it, but don't go any smaller than 256GB. The Evo is slower but cheaper. You can get away with an HDD for a data drive, but the price of the Samsung 850 Evo SATA SSD is coming down, and again, the speed is worth it (and once again, if you can afford the 850 Pro, go that way...). I have a 256GB Samsung 850 Pro SATA SSD for my C:\ drive and a 1TB Samsung 960 Pro m.2 NVMe as my data drive (backed up by 2x 1TB HDDs). Yeah, that's backwards, but I was promised by Dell that their motherboard supported boot from the NVMe socket, and it sort of does...unless you're running Win10 Insider Preview and trying to run Ubuntu on Windows Subsytem for Linux. Anyway, as we say in the racing business, speed costs money...how fast do you want to go?
 
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raisonjohn

raisonjohn

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It entirely depends on what you are building the PC for. If your PC is going to be used for professional work, saving/extracting/transferring enormous file sizes, and the like, where time is of the essence, then, yes, the NVMe (PCIe x4) SSD drive may be worth it.

On the other hand, if your PC is just going to be used for casual work, some gaming, boot drive, and the like, then, the SATA-based SSD wins over price/performance as the difference in time/speed versus the NVMe is only about a few seconds.

Here's a very general comparison for you to have a general idea of how real-world speeds of these SSDs are:
[video="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4zdft1HDbY"][/video]

Windows 10 Pro (Boot Time):
NVMe SSD: ~6 secs. | SATA SSD: ~9 secs. | SATA HDD: ~37 secs.

Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare (Game & Level Load Time):
NVMe SSD: ~11 secs. | SATA SSD: ~25 secs. | SATA HDD: ~53 secs.

Civilization VI (Game & Level Load Time):
NVMe SSD: ~43 secs. | SATA SSD: ~53 secs. | SATA HDD: ~66 secs.

Premiere Pro CC (Load Test):
NVMe SSD: ~6 secs. | SATA SSD: ~11 secs. | SATA HDD: ~63 secs.

7-Zip (38.12 GB File Extraction):
NVMe SSD: ~61 secs. | SATA SSD: ~251 secs. (~4 mins.) | SATA HDD: ~585 secs. (~10 mins.)
 
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