Solved Hey hardware guys. Need advice on m.2 drive

Scannerman said:

Flashorn has aced us both with respect to bang for the buck

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That's the way I look at it, too. The price is more than right for me at this point in time. I can use it now in my gen 3 board and IF I live long enough and IF I still have my wits to ever buy another computer on down the road (by then it would be gen 6-7-8) this drive would still be fast enough to make a great storage drive. I'm so glad I made this thread because I was floundering trying to make a decision. @Flashorn is the man. It's ordered and paid for so now I don't have to stress over making the wrong choice anymore.
PS. I did buy a cheap heatsink for it but may not have needed to.

I've been using Crucial P5 1Tb NVMe's for some years now in two of my 3 laptops. Gen3 only since my laptop motherboards are not Gen4 so the extra capital was pointless. The 3rd laptop - an HP250 - is older technology without the NVMe socket.

An advantage for Crucial NVMe's is the supply of what Crucial name as "Crucial Storage Executive" - essentially a SMART configuration UI. This programme contains what is called a "Momentum Cache", useable in laptops as they have battery as a power backup. This obviously caches the NVMe drive (as the boot drive) using a segment of RAM. While this cache does indeed work fine in a laptop (Crystal Disk reports about 7260Mb/s for sequential read on the 1 queue, 1 thread reading for a P5), it doesn't apply to a PC without battery backup.

Performance drops about 20% as the P5 heats up but it stabilises when the SSD reaches about 50C.

To date (over 2 years now) I've had no problems with the P5's in either of the two laptops.

1200 TBW, .... For 55 bucks (30% off at Amazon).

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You found the 2 tb for $55 ? that is a great deal. Have you got a link to it ?

I can see the p44 1tb at that price, which is a good buy.

Solidigm software is nice though it is quite big. As far as I know the hmb function is only for the cheaper solidigm p41 which is QLC and doesnt have dram.

(confusingly the solidigm p41 is a completely different animal from the hynix p41. It is the solidigm p44 that is similar to hynix p41 )

Most of the functionality in the solidigm software works for all brands of ssd. So it is worth installing if you have some ssd without decent manufacturer software.

glasskuter said:

A kink indeed. Looks like the best of both worlds to me. A gen 4 drive by a SKHynix company, using a SKHynix controller, 1200 TBW, similar SKHynix thermals, and comparative to the SKHynix Platinum in performance.... For 55 bucks (30% off at Amazon). Uhhh-Yeah.
Excellent advice!!! Thank you.

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Solidigm is SK Hynix company that is basically the ssd division that SK Hynix acquired from Intel. It looks to me that they are more mainstream and less performant than the SK Hynix P ( performance) series. They look to be priced well.

SIW2 said:

You found the 2 tb for $55 ? that is a great deal. Have you got a link to it ?

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No, it's 1tb for $55 which is more than enough storage for me. This is for the gen 4 7000 MB/s Solidigm P44 PRO M.2
HERE


2 tb p44 PRO is sold out from Amazon except from 3rd party Amazon sellers. NewEgg does have the 2 tb PRO in stock for $130

For $65 one can get the slower 2 tb gen 4 4125 MB/s Solidigm P41 PLUS which is a steal for storage or just because one has a gen 3 board. I started to go with this one since I have gen 3 but I really don't need that much system drive storage. Even though the price was about the same with double the storage, I went with the faster drive just in case I ever did get another mobo that could utilize its speed.

Yes, I guessed it was the p44 1tb from the $55. It doesnt have 1200tbw rated endurance, it has 750tbw which is pretty decent for a 1tb.

It also has an 8 channel controller and not the 4 channel controller used in the gen3 hynix p31. So the power draw will be higher but still they have paid attention to the controller design and firmware so the power draw is good compared to other gen4 disks, but not the same as the p31.

I think you have made sensible decision, I am sure you will be happy with it and it is a good price.

If I was looking for a gen4 nvme I would get the solidigm p44. The overall package of performance, endurance, efficiency and price makes it my top choice for gen4 nvme atm.

So, to sum this up like I earlier said, for just a few measly extra bucks you could've went for the Samsung 980 PRO with heatsink instead of the Solidigm/SK Hynix/whatever. Then you would've gotten a heatsink + the benefit of not having to rely on a proprietary driver (i.e. the risk of incompatibility with imaging softwares etc. or the SSD not being detected due to the driver). But oh well... to each his/her own I guess.

The solidigm driver is not required. It is optional. Works fine with windows in box nvme driver.

Heatsink.

Scannerman said:

Not sure what you're disagreeing with here, but if a GEN 4 stick is the goal I think Flashorn has aced us both with respect to bang for the buck. Glasskuter still isn't going to see GEN 4 speeds even with the SKHynix Platinum on their PCIe GEN3 system but @ 55 bux US it's hard to beat. Too bad about that short-lived cache though :::shrugs::: Practically all NVMe has this problem.

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Please read my posts... I am limited to PCIe 3.0 speeds myself (due to my laptop's internal M.2 NVMe socket). These days, the price gap between a decent PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSD and a PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD is negligible at best (as a matter of fact when I looked on Amazon.com yesterday, the 1TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus was actually more expensive than the 1TB Samsung 980 PRO with heatsink... lol). The 980 PRO with heatsink continues to write at ~3400MB/s on a motherboard with a PCIe 3.0 NVMe socket. By comparison, SSDs costing a few bucks less all tend to have the type of sustained write speed curve that shows a serious dip some time after the writing starts. If the price difference also means that you're going to have to eat top ramen for a week, then go for the cheaper SSD. Else, skimping in this manner just translates to the exact oppositite of "best bang for the buck", unfortunately. That's just because the price difference has to be calculated as a percentage of your total computing budget that not only includes all the computer hardware, but also includes all the various software you use plus the electric bill. Just sayin'. Even in a desktop PC with proper airflow, the heatsink still matters. Likewise, sustained write speeds dipping vs not dipping very far below 3400MB/s still matters.

hdmi said:

just a few measly extra bucks you could've went for the Samsung 980 PRO with heatsink

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I know, and the few measly bucks didn't matter to me. I'm just unable to shake this mental thing I have from reading about issues with Samsung and something told me I shouldn't buy one. I know it's irrational on my part. They would have to be exceptional drives as it seems they've cornered the enthusiasist market. I fully realize there are many real puter geeks & gamers here so it's natural many have the latest, greatest, fastest, biggest, most powerful, best of the best tech. I enjoy learning about all that stuff, but having it all is just not me because I don't need it. I'm just riding along with the rest of you until you kick me out of the car.

glasskuter said:

I know, and the few measly bucks didn't matter to me. I'm just unable to shake this mental thing I have from reading about issues with Samsung and something told me I shouldn't buy one. I know it's irrational on my part. They would have to be exceptional drives as it seems they've cornered the enthusiasist market. I fully realize there are many real puter geeks & gamers here so it's natural many have the latest, greatest, fastest, biggest, most powerful, best of the best tech. I enjoy learning about all that stuff, but having it all is just not me because I don't need it. I'm just riding along with the rest of you until you kick me out of the car.

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Just to put a few things back into perspective. I am on a grocery store laptop that I bought new, 2 years and 9 months ago for 599 Euros so please. Talk to me more about latest greatest fastest biggest strongest.

Here ya go:

1. Samsung forever! Nobody does a better job on their controllers, thermal control, and longevity of the drive. I've worked for Intel, MSFT, Micron, and IMFlash. I speak from experience. I don't work for Samsung.

2. Make sure you buy the right drive spec for your motherboard.
M.2 is a form factor, not a transfer spec. You can get an SSD with a M.2 form factor. It's just an SSD in a different smaller package (i.e. M.2). NVME is a different transfer spec in the same M.2 package. Make sure your system supports NVME. Otherwise, you're just getting an SSD in an M.2 package.

3. Almost all retail NVMEs require an M.2 package with 2280 dimensions.
This is 22mm wide by 80 mm long. Think of a wide stick of chewing gum, 80mm long.
That's the size of it. Be sure your system supports 2280. Otherwise, your going to be
looking for a smaller footprint like 2240, 2260, for your system.

4. Systems typically support the following transfer specs:
PCIe 3.0x4=Samsung 980 Nvme
PCIe 4.0x4=Samsung 990 Pro or Samsung 980 Pro
The 3x4 spec should be about 3500Mb/sec.
The 4x4 spec should be about 7000Mb/sec or greater.
Don't accept anything slower.

Good luck!

If you had bothered to read the thread you would know that that the op has already made a good choice and ordered it.

SIW2 said:

If you had bothered to read the thread you would know that that the op has already made a good choice and ordered it.

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I assure you that it would have been a much greater waste of my time to have read the entire thread, than to just state the facts about the issue.
Thank you for reminding me about why I don't post very often in Elevenforum.

too often

SIW2 said:

If you had bothered to read the thread you would know that that the op has already made a good choice and ordered it.

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Yes, that is a fact. Unfortunately however, if you had bothered to read the thread you would have known that the OP has already made it clear that facts don't matter, as it's just a mental thing.

glasskuter said:

PS. I did buy a cheap heatsink for it but may not have needed to.

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Glad you made a decision. Took me allot longer.
The heat sink , make sure it is not to high as to interfere with GPU or the heat sink
from the CPU. Sometimes, replacing the SSD means removing the GPU to get at
the SSD slot. Even though you don't game, doesn't mean the SSD will not get hot.
In my research, I saw that I could install a low profile heat sink in this notebook as
there is more than enough space. My point is, if you can install a Good heat sink
then, you should. I'm guessing you might be doing something along the lines of
using creative software or maybe video or photo editing which will be demanding
and having as little heat as possible inside that case will be beneficial to all hardware.

Here is a youtube explaining where Solidigm started from. (it's long if you have the time)

glasskuter said:

From what you all have said I've deemed that I can't go wrong either way in choosing between the Hynix or the WD drives. Except for maybe startup time, for what I do I doubt I would see any difference in using either of the 2 different generation drives even if in the future I owned a later generation mobo.

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Honestly, you won't notice any startup time differences between these drives. You probably couldn't even prove their was a difference if you used a stopwatch. On benchmarks, I can tell you that my Gen 4 WD NVMe's are 2x faster than my Gen 3 WD NVMe's. I can assure you that booting the OS, starting my apps, and launching games there is no noticeable difference whatsover. However, if I have a pair of Gen 4 drives in the box, and I copy a 5GB ISO from drive 1 to drive 2, it's certainly faster than when using Gen 3 drives.

People really get hung up on the specs, and the benchmarks of these SSD drives. But in the real world, under most general purpose use....most people won't notice any difference whatsoever. The #1 benefit of the SSD is ultra low random access times, a fraction of a millisecond versus 12-15ms on spinning discs.

glasskuter said:

I know, and the few measly bucks didn't matter to me. I'm just unable to shake this mental thing I have from reading about issues with Samsung and something told me I shouldn't buy one. I know it's irrational on my part. They would have to be exceptional drives as it seems they've cornered the enthusiasist market. I fully realize there are many real puter geeks & gamers here so it's natural many have the latest, greatest, fastest, biggest, most powerful, best of the best tech. I enjoy learning about all that stuff, but having it all is just not me because I don't need it. I'm just riding along with the rest of you until you kick me out of the car.

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End of the day, just get what you want and what makes you happy. If for any reason, you went against your gut and got a Samsung and then had a problem, you would be even more unhappy as you would always second guess that you made the wrong choice even thought you had a feeling. If there was one truly BEST drive, it's what absolutely everything would use and no other manufacturers would even market a drive in the space.

At the end of the day, specs are just specs. But your implementation and expectations may make them less relevant.

For example, i drive a Honda Accord. It's nowhere near as fast as my friends new Stingray Corvette. He can go much faster than I can, and he can sustain these higher speeds than I can long periods of time. But I live in the US, in a state where the fastest speed limits are 75mph, I don't ever drive in excess of 80mph.....so as long as my Accord can do that, I have no need to go any faster.

Previous to my Accord, I had a diesel VW. That thing got better miles per gallon that my current Accord. My fuel records prove that I got more MPG in the diesel, and I could go quite a bit further on a full tank of diesel in total miles. However, because the price of diesel is more than gasoline, the cost per mile on my Accord is better than my diesel VW. So, the accord has saved me money even with less fuel mileage. However, the diesel engine is built like an absolute tank and would probably last longer in terms of total useful life than the gasoline engine. Of course, the cost to maintain the diesel engine for that long period of time cannot go uncalculated. So, which stat is truly the one that makes one better than the other?