Should I use M.2 Socket 3 or PCIe M.2 NVMe Adapter for boot drive?

[c627627]

Asus Z170-A motherboard with one single M.2 Socket 3 with M Key.

I just ordered a new M.2 drive since I've had the old one for 4+ years and could use more storage space.
I also ordered a PCIe M.2 NVMe Adapter since I only have one M.2 Socket 3 on this motherboard.

What are the performance differences if I use the boot drive in the M.2 socket vs. through an adapter?

I bought a Western Digital BLACK SN750 NVMe M.2 2280 500GB for $62 and this M.2 NVME Adapter with Aluminum Heatsink for $13.99.
newegg gave me a $10 coupon + no tax made this deal super sweet.

https://www.newegg.com/western-digital-black-sn750-nvme-500gb/p/N82E16820250109?Item=N82E16820250109
https://www.newegg.com/glotrends-pa...m-2-card/p/17Z-00SW-00008?Item=9SIAMKHATW8853

 

[Robert17]

It shouldn't matter performance-wise. Do you have other uses for the PCIe slots?

 

[c627627]

There are free slots. Like I said I will have two M.2 drives now and the motherboard has one M.2 socket.

Does cooling come into effect, the PCIe adapter I linked to actually comes with heatsinks if you look at the picture.

 

[EarthDog]

As long as the AIC you purchased runs at PCIe 3.0 x4 speeds and you install it in a 3.0 x4 or greater slot (your manual tells you what is what), there won't be a noticeable difference.

Cooling comes into the equation for long sustained writes. Some NVMe's throttle if you are beating on them with sustained writes. Heatsink effectiveness, be it on the mobo or AIC, is spotty. You'll have to test and see what is best and if, in your use cases, you see throttling.

 

[c627627]

Thank you, and while I have you in here, and considering I've heard that you may have looked at an M.2 drive or two in your life (is this true?)
lol let's put that life experience to use

I went for the WD Black because not only is it significantly cheaper but I do transfer 22+GB files and as I understand it,

500GB Samsung 970 EVO Plus handles files above 22GB four times slower than smaller files.
1TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus handles files above 42GB four times slower than smaller files.

Here's where you come in: Why doesn't WD Black have this limitation, I do understand WD Black may be slightly slower (how slightly in your experience?) when it comes to reads, and more importantly writes?


But then is WD Black 500GB four times faster than 970 EVO Plus 500GB when transferring a single blu-ray file?

 

[MaddMutt]

IIRC this all comes down to which controller the NVME uses. I know there was a BIG difference yrs ago in the SSD market - between the Sandforce (500+ R/W) and the Marvel (500+ R/250~300W) controllers.

 

[Robert17]

And you may be constrained by the read speed on the BluRay as well.

 

[EarthDog]

Thank you, and while I have you in here, and considering I've heard that you may have looked at an M.2 drive or two in your life (is this true?)
lol let's put that life experience to use

I went for the WD Black because not only is it significantly cheaper but I do transfer 22+GB files and as I understand it,

500GB Samsung 970 EVO Plus handles files above 22GB four times slower than smaller files.
1TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus handles files above 42GB four times slower than smaller files.

Here's where you come in: Why doesn't WD Black have this limitation, I do understand WD Black may be slightly slower (how slightly in your experience?) when it comes to reads, and more importantly writes?


But then is WD Black 500GB four times faster than 970 EVO Plus 500GB when transferring a single blu-ray file?

Id need to read the source of that information. It could be the controller as MM mentions, one of the drives could be throttling, different buffer sizes... etc.

Like usb drives nvme drives, generally, larger files transfer faster than a bunch of smaller files.

I do not have experience with the western digital m.2 drives.

As far as performance, look up some reviews and see how the drives tested for file sizes. This one covers some details you are looking for. The SSD Review website is also a great source.
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-970-evo-plus-ssd,5608.html

 

[c627627]

Yeah I'm talking about blu-ray files stored on M.2s, not on on discs. The term 'Blu-ray' is more a synonym for very large files, not really contents on Blu-ray discs themselves.

I am flabbergasted, shocked that the folllowing is not common knowledge with you guys:

Quick basic short research establishes this:

Samsung's TurboWrite is not a feature - it is a LIMITATION.
So you take a 250GB Samsung 970 EVO Plus, right?

You guys are saying that it's news to you that files above 13GB on this EVO Plus will slow down to a paltry (for an M.2) 300MB/s write speed, which is mere twenty percent of 1500 MB/s speed for smaller files. Allow that to sink in. You transfer files five hundred percent faster... then when you hit a 13GB+ file on a 250GB Samsung 970 EVO Plus.

In other words once the DRAM Cache runs out, you are FIVE TIMES slower. Right? So that's Exhibit A.
The "fastest" drives in 2020 have a major, major limitation.
That's crucial knowledge when talking about this topic in 2020. I have been out of the loop for 4-5 years on M.2s.


As for the WD Black SN750. Okay this is a 500GB speed racer that costs sixty bucks (!!!)
It does not have any of these limitations.
How are these things even in stock, who is in a market for a half a Terabyte boot drive and buys anything else and...why, when WD Black is right there?


Who is the storage knowledge master on the forums nowadays, let's get him in this thread.

 

[EarthDog]

Quick basic short research establishes this:

Glad you read the link that was provided.

who is in a market for a half a Terabyte boot drive and buys anything else

Seems like its use specific again, no? How often are users writing massive singular files like that on a "boot" drive? That said, I'm aware of this phenomenon, but it doesn't effect me as I don't write massive 13GB+ files to my boot drive.

Anyhoo, it's common that once the dram buffer runs out that some drives slow down. Some don't have a DRAM buffer and use other methods (and can be slower). Reviews show this. Not all drives behave the same as you are now learning. Be it buffer size or behavior, controller, etc.. a slew of reasons as mentioned in the previous post. Apologies for not knowing this off the top of our heads how those two specific drives work???

I had to look it up just as you would have. I haven't reviewed drives in years, and we haven't reviewed those specific drives at OCF.

 

[c627627]

Thank you. Boot drive is also an operational drive for handling workloads, when editing videos for example.
M.2 drive is absolutely crucial for super-fast computing - it is KEY to a fast computer setup.

Knowledge on this topic is extremely important when it comes to computer hardware, it is very relevant here because ocforums was and I hope still is the best computer hardware web site in the world. Samsung and WD top the lists of what most people consider when they research price to performance ratios and when it comes to raw speed of modern computer usage.


Although Samsung's stuff used to be the Holy Grail of this topic, Sabrent is about to release Rocket 4 Plus which will smoke the yet to be released Samsung 980 Pro line. We know this because Samsung leaked performance figures so we can compare them to Sabrent's upcoming Rocket 4 Plus:
Roughly 40% smokage factor.

Samsung's flagship 980 Pro will also have only 50% of endurance of its predecessor 970 Pro. It will only last you half the time of its predecessor before failure. When you add the above mentioned TurboWrite limitation, there is no question we should run, not walk away from Samsung's new upcoming 2020 line-up. And this is important because Samsung was at the top of the mountain and it is about to fall off the cliff, head first.



Here's my graphic take on TurboWrite in terms that people can understand.
Getting a drive with TurboWrite limitation is like buying a toilet bowl which for some reason can't handle diarrhea.
Because "who's gonna get diarrhea!?"

YOU ARE!
When you load up on those burritos and flush them down with a couple of bottles of tequila.
So buy a toilet bowl that can handle that sh**.

And conversely - buy an M.2 drive with no "TurboWrite" feature limitation.

 

[Robert17]

Just 'cause you can't handle your tequila.........or burritos..........

 

[EarthDog]

Yeah, my 'boot' drive is a bit more literal... I just boot off of it, lol. Any scratch area is on different drives. Makes reimaging your OS without losing anything a breeze. The back end of my boot drive is for frequently played games. I use a different drive, better at sustained writes (also smoking reads!), for any scratch data like that. Though, I understand many(most, a majority for sure) take your approach using a drive for general use.

Samsung's flagship 980 Pro will also have only 50% of endurance of its predecessor 970 Pro. It will only last you half the time of its predecessor before failure. When you add the above mentioned TurboWrite limitation, there is no question we should run, not walk away from Samsung's new upcoming 2020 line-up. And this is important because Samsung was at the top of the mountain and it is about to fall off the cliff, head first.

Wow. Damning.

If you can manage to write that much over the warranted life, I'd be just as concerned as you are and would do an about face for something else. Like shopping for anything, you need to know your products and your use case before jumping in to get the most out of them.If we don't know the answer, we can get it (God bless google and those who have done it!). Even with its TBW value clipped (I believe it is said to use a different type of NAND), that life is still something 95% of users won't go through. Think of the drive like a 'track car'. Does well at the track, isn't great on the street/not streetable . Thing is, most computing is done on the track and isn't a marathon.... at least, that is what Samsung is betting on (along with ignorant consumers).

As far as reviews... the last time we talked with Samsung, they wanted the drives returned. At the time we could not pay for reviews and part of the benefit for our reviewers is to be able to keep and use the hardware. Same with WD. Things have changed a bit today and it's a good idea to look into reviewing those drives.


EDIT: I want to say 'boot drive' one more time. Boot drive. Because it sounds funny now.... like when you look at a word and spell it and it never looks right.

 

[c627627]

Makes reimaging your OS without losing anything a breeze.

Absolutely, however, even on the 128GB M.2 I've used in the past 4+ years, 40GB partition was OS, and 80GB was operational. The half a TB drive will also have the same 40GB partition for OS, with 450GB left for operational space.

I expect reimaging drive images from one M.2 to this new M.2 to be done in seconds, rather than minutes.


I thought we always called them boot drives, differentiating them from storage drives. Do you remember when they were all over us to be politically correct and call motherboards - mainboards? Do people say 'mainbord' in 2020, did that catch on anywhere?


And yea review and return, M.2s are important. But I would ask a prepad shipping label like they give to RMA customers

 

[trents]

I would also add, don't put much stock in he marketing claims of these companies. Their numbers can be misleading because they only hold true in very controlled and specific scenarios. Look at real world testing reviews instead.

 

[c627627]

I made a choice for WD SN 750 because of sixty bucks and user reported benchmarks. Yes, there are user reported benchmark sites which are the main source of my claims that WD Black and especially Samsung are the drives to look at.
That's when it comes to performance. When it comes to endurance (time to failure) well the companies themselves made claims of the 50% reduction of time before failure (in Samsung's case).

I'd say the most significant side comment when the news of Sabrent's Rocket 4 Plus (as of yet unreleased) numbers being extraordinarily better than (as of yet unreleased) Samsung 980 Pro was to hold off on making a purchase of a high end M.2 just yet. There's no question we are sitting on the eve of a major quantum leap in speeds, because 980 Pro will be much faster than anything available today - but it appears that Sabrent will still go higher, 7000 MB/s reads and 6850 MB/s writes.

It's strange that Sabrent hasn't revealed their TBW values (expected time before failure).
But it should be at least as bad as Samsung 980 Pro, if not better and increase in speed compared to Samsung's own leaked number leaves no room for doubt that Sabrent will really kick their butt in the next generation of M.2s coming out any time now.

 

[EarthDog]

We'll see what the sabrant has to offer.

TBW values (expected time before failure).

TBW stands for Terabytes Written and isn't a time thing...it just depends on how much you've written to the drive. For example, if you're writing 100GB a day versus 10GB per day, clearly you'll reach that value (which isn't a hard wall, note - see link below) quicker with more writes so it doesn't measure time.

MTBF = Mean Time Before Failure (typically written in hours). Thats time.

https://techreport.com/review/27909/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-theyre-all-dead/
(Link has been in my signature for years!) I know that link is older, but it still goes to show how soft that TBW wall can be (yes, it would apply to nvme) and how writes havent been an issue for years/a few generations of ssds.

 

[c627627]

As long as... you install it in a 3.0 x4 or greater slot, there won't be a noticeable difference.

What if the options are M.2 Socket 3 slot or these:

 

[JLK03F150]

You would put the add-in card in either slot 5 or 7. Those slots will run at PCIe 3.0 x4.

 

[EarthDog]

What if the options are M.2 Socket 3 slot or these:

m.2 socket is pcie 3.0 x4 i believe (confirm in your manual/mobo website). Assuming that is true, it wouldn't make a difference if you used an AIC in a pcie 3.0 x4 capable slot (5 and 7 as said above) or the slot.