Big upgrade, need some information on M.2 drives

Just Another Guy

Distinguished
Mar 10, 2012
123
0
18,690
Hi, I'm in the process of a big upgrade, I was going move the SSD containing my windows install into the new PC, until a friend told me that generally doing that doesn't end up well. Instead of formatting the drive, I'm considering going for an M.2 drive (the ASUS Prime Z370-A which I'm getting has a built in slot).

I'm seeing on Amazon that some are SATA, some are PCI, etc, would all be compatible with the motherboard? I know SATA has lower read/write speeds, would there ever be any noticeable difference for anything other than if you were caching heavy amounts of data? I'm also curious if the reliability (in terms of writing lots over time) is better or worse than the non M.2 SSDs?

Finally, what's some good makes you'd recommend that aren't super expensive? I'd never even heard the term M.2 until last week, so I'm completely in the dark as to what's good :)
 
Solution
M2 drives can be SATA, NVME or PCIe. The M2 refers to just the compact form factor. If you are gaming, then there is not much difference. If you are into productivity, NVME can give you faster read/write/copy speeds, as they are significantly faster. PCIe is very expensive.

Samsung has some of the best m2 drives out there, both SATA and NVME. However, if you want a NVME at the price SATA, then this should be good...

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Storage: ADATA - XPG SX8200 240GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive ($69.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $69.99
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-09-29 15:57 EDT-0400

Here is a...
M2 drives can be SATA, NVME or PCIe. The M2 refers to just the compact form factor. If you are gaming, then there is not much difference. If you are into productivity, NVME can give you faster read/write/copy speeds, as they are significantly faster. PCIe is very expensive.

Samsung has some of the best m2 drives out there, both SATA and NVME. However, if you want a NVME at the price SATA, then this should be good...

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Storage: ADATA - XPG SX8200 240GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive ($69.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $69.99
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-09-29 15:57 EDT-0400

Here is a review... https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/adata-xpg-sx8200-ssd-review,5584-4.html
 
Solution
As Hellfire13 says, M2 is just the form factor, or slot the drive fits into, the same slot can accept NVMe, NVMe PCI-E or SATA drives, and the PCI-E drives can be of various configurations; PCI-e 3.0x4, PCI-e 2.0 X2 ETC, so it's very flexible.

For value the 2.5" SATA drives are best, and most cases can either accept them in a 3.5" mount or tucked away behind the motherboard.
One often large downside of the M2 design is the drives can get hot under load, an issue that can be magnified if the slot is not placed out in the open, my setup has a M2 drive but it's located right under the GPU PCI-E slot and as a result the drive quickly gets hot when transferring large files or under sustained gaming loads where the GPU dumps plenty of heat onto the drive.

For a normal build I'd go for a 2.5" SATA drive and not fall for the hype I did when I purchased my big M2 drive, but DO aim for the largest drive your budget can handle.
Samsung are amongst the best available and their Magician software is also very good; Stable, useful and 'free' it includes an integrated cloning module so if you get a large enough drive you can simply copy your existing HDD to the SSD and forgo the very time consuming process of reinstalling your entire software library to the new drive.
 

Just Another Guy

Distinguished
Mar 10, 2012
123
0
18,690
Thanks for the info, I think one of the M.2 slots has a heatsink above so hopefully that won't be a huge issue. I'm considering 1tb, definitely an M.2 over a 2.5 inch one, and I'm not a fan of reinstalling windows (I'd prefer that over cloning though) so I'm wanting this drive to last :)

So I've had a quick look around and found these options, the Kingston one has mixed reviews, but is also PCI, so I'm not sure if it's generally a ton better than the 860 or not.
Samsung 1 TB 860 EVO M.2
Kingston Technology SSD A1000

I'm also thinking of just paying a bit extra and getting the 970 evo (depending on how my bank looks after the other orders have shipped) as I'm pretty much upgrading everything else to fairly high end anyway. It's quite a bit of money, but my reasoning is that buying a cheaper one then upgrading later is probably gonna cost more than just getting a good one straight away.


That's one bit I'm a little curious about. Would there be any noticeable difference in normal PC usage, or would it literally only have an effect if you were reading/writing multiple GB of files every second?

Edit: Since the prices are actually dropping pretty fast, it'll be a bit more work, but I'll get windows running on an old hard hard drive first, then if that's fine, format and reinstall on my SSD, and just wait for the 970 evo to become cheaper :)