Solved M.2 SSD queries?

Hi,

Have a few questions and remove confusions about my laptop's M.2 SSDs.

The laptop can hold 2 X PCI 3x4 Gen M.2 2230 (1 X TB) and M.2 2230/2280 (2 X TB) SSDs.

At the moment am getting approx. 2400 MB/s Read and 1450 MB/s Write speeds.

1. Which are the fastest PCI 3 Gen in Read, Write speeds, both 2230 and 2280?

2. If I install a PCI 4 Gen 2230 and 2280 would I get speeds similar to fastest PCI Gen 3, OR more than those but less than that for PCI 4 Gen?

Like in this link


Hoping to hear from the experts.

Thanks.

Is this a good PCI 4. M.2 2280 SSD?

Your max speed for PCIe Gen 3 woudl be around 3400/3000MB/sec. Honestly though, in almost any day to day task, you aren't going to see lick of difference between your speeds of 2400/1500.

According to Dell:


It has PCIe gen 3 capable M.2 slots. You'll want to verify this with your own Dell Service tag at support.dell.com, but if it says PCIe gen 3, any faster drive will still be limited to the PCIe gen 3 speeds, as noted by @pparks1 above.

pparks1 said:

Your max speed for PCIe Gen 3 woudl be around 3400/3000MB/sec. Honestly though, in almost any day to day task, you aren't going to see lick of difference between your speeds of 2400/1500.

johnlgalt said:

According to Dell:

Inspiron 15 5510 Setup and Specifications | Dell US

www.dell.com

It has PCIe gen 3 capable M.2 slots. You'll want to verify this with your own Dell Service tag at support.dell.com, but if it says PCIe gen 3, any faster drive will still be limited to the PCIe gen 3 speeds, as noted by @pparks1 above.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Thanks for the expert replies.

To sum up, replacing with a PCI Gen 4 2230/2280) would not possibly be more than max of PCI 3x4 i.e. 3400/3000 MB/s...correct?

If that is correct, best brands of M.2 M2230 and 2280 PCI Gen 3x 4 at speeds that you mentioned, since I have 1 slot empty, want to use for Data.

What does PCI 3.0 x 4 and NVMe 1.3 imply in the screenshot attached?

Alexey2912 said:

What does PCI 3.0 x 4 and NVMe 1.3 imply in the screenshot attached?

View attachment 45919

Click to expand...

PCIe 3.0 x4 == PCIexpress version 3.0 using 4 lanes. More info: PCI Express - Wikipedia

NVM Express version 1.3 More info: https://nvmexpress.org/wp-content/uploads/NVM_Express_Revision_1.3.pdf

johnlgalt said:

PCIe 3.0 x4 == PCIexpress version 3.0 using 4 lanes. More info: PCI Express - Wikipedia

NVM Express version 1.3 More info: https://nvmexpress.org/wp-content/uploads/NVM_Express_Revision_1.3.pdf

Click to expand...

Thanks again for the info and links.

@johnlgalt , any ideas which SSD brands would give speeds upto 3400/3000 MB/s?

New to me, less known brands like Transcend, Kings specs etc. all give 3500/3200 MB/s....? Nice.

What else should one look for in a SSD, like buffer, NAND flash, DRAM??

Thanks.

The biggest factor is the type of cells, slc, mlc, tlc, and qlc.

Having a DRAM cache can make a drive faster for access times as holds a map of where the actively held cells are.

Personally, my preference is brand names, warranty terms and price. I generally stick with Samsung and Western Digital. I've had Intel, PNY and Sandisk (these are my testing drives and secondary box drives), and they have been alright too.

pparks1 said:

The biggest factor is the type of cells, slc, mlc, tlc, and qlc.

SLC vs MLC vs TLC vs QLC vs PLC

SSDs are fast storage devices that have come down in price a lot over the years. What you may not know about is the clever use of technology that has been

www.technipages.com

Having a DRAM cache can make a drive faster for access times as holds a map of where the actively held cells are.

Personally, my preference is brand names, warranty terms and price. I generally stick with Samsung and Western Digital. I've had Intel, PNY and Sandisk (these are my testing drives and secondary box drives), and they have been alright too.

Click to expand...

Thanks again for the expert reply.
@pparks1 , which cell type would you recommend?



PS: Hoping to see you in Orl, after the soccer World cup.

Alexey2912 said:

If I install a PCI 4 Gen

Click to expand...

PCI 4.0 SSD gets hotter under load and at idle.

It is interesting that in laptops with PCIe 4.0 the drive is still connected as PCIe 3.0.
Maybe because PCIe 4.0 and PCIe 3.0 drives are connected at the same time?
I will check when I install Windows 23H1.

Alexey2912 said:

Thanks again for the info and links.

@johnlgalt , any ideas which SSD brands would give speeds upto 3400/3000 MB/s?

Click to expand...

One other thing to remember is speeds will vary with usage, too. If your system drive is NVMe and your data drive is NVMe, your system drive will probably show slower results than hte data drive - but this is not always the case, depending upon how the data drive is configured. And I've rarely ever seen drives actually hitting theoretical limits, though your values are definitely a bit slower than I'd expect.

I've currently got 3 of these in my PCIe gen 4 M.2 slots: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08RK2SR23 (I got them on a super discount early this year, but still paid more than this current price).

When I built my rig (over 2 years ago), I originally had 3 of these instead: https://sabrent.com/products/sb-rocket-nvme4-1tb

I'll post some speeds here in a bit.

So, first of all, here is an article explaining the differences between PCIe gen 4 and PCIe gen 3 (and previous generations, with a bit about the new generation also):


Now, when considering speeds, you have to consider many things, and among them are overhead for conducting processes, the source of the connection being offered, the way your motherboard handles the requests, and more. For example, my system (see the My Computers link below my posts, and check out System 1) has 3 M.2 NVMe slots, but the AMD Ryzen 9 3950X CPU I Have only allows for 4 lanes (basically 1 NVMe drive) of PCIe gen 4 support. The support for the other two come from the X570 chipset on the motherboard, and so I set my system up to make my system drive slotted in the fastest M.2 slot on my system (after some heavy testing when I initially built the machine). I then added the other 2 drives to the other two slots, whose lanes are provided by the chipset, and then benchmarked them, getting acceptable results. With my System also having 128 GB of RAM, there is very little need for page file use, which will free up the drive(s) when conducting these sorts of tests, and I've very happy with the results below.

However, you'll notice that I don't get anywhere near the 8 Gbps (2 GB/s per lane * 4 lanes) on any drive - but you'll also notice that my system drive has faster benchmark scores than the other 2 drives, even though all three are identical drives.

Drive C:



Drive D:



Drive E:



As you can see, both Drives D: and E: are relatively close in performance, but Drive C; blows both of them away (relatively speaking).

Now, let's do some math.

Drive C: has an average of 6918.325 MB/s in the Sequential Read benchmark. The theoretical limit for a 4 lane PCIe gen 4 device is 8000 MB/s (8 GB/s <==> 8000 MB/s in the hard drive and SSD world). So, that shows my Drive D: C: performing at roughly 86.48%, which is typical amount of overhead needed for various sundry tasks, OS use, etc.

In your example, your 2500 MB/s Sequential read speeds is operating at 62.5% compared to your theoretical limit of 4000 MB/s, so I'd first do some research to see if your motherboard might be limited in some way, manner or fashion in terms of the max speeds that M.2 slot can actually achieve. Also see if you can find any data showing the difference in speeds between the two slots that you have, as is seen in my three slots, where one is definitely much faster than the other two.

This is still, for all intents and purposes, a very basic dive into this, there is a lot more detail, theory, and manufacturing practices to look at before you even get close to finding out why you get the speeds that you do. The good news is that there is the Internet, where someone, somewhere, probably has already done the research and testing for your specific PC and can definitively tell you what speeds you should expect.

HTH

Thanks @johnlgalt , for the detailed reply.
From what you posted, system/windows drive irrespective Gen 4 or 3 are slower vs. Data NVMe M.2 SSDs.....correct?
My laptop's drive is slower than expected, though a few months old...….correct?

Why is the health down by 4% to 96% and temp goes into Red, despite cold temperature and laptop on a elevated 1 feet high stand.....using as a desktop?

@abactuon , posted Gen 4 m2 SSDs on PCI Gen 3 get hot while idle or in use...…..correct?

Regards!

And there is no advantage in speeds over the fastest Gen 3 drives, by installing a Gen 4 M.2 NVMe on a Gen 3...…..right?

@johnlgalt , would you still agree with me to go for Micron 2230 and 2280, PCI 4 1 TB each.
I know I won't gain, but Micron is the only brand with a M.2 2230 with 1/2 TB?

Thanks again.

Alexey2912 said:

From what you posted, system/windows drive irrespective Gen 4 or 3 are slower vs. Data NVMe M.2 SSDs.....correct?

Click to expand...

In my system, the system drive is faster than the data drives. Again, it is because of the source of the lanes, the system drive is attached to the M.2 slot getting its lanes directly from the CPU. In general, though, system drive is probably going to be slower, as, well, the system is on that drive, and it is making active use of the drive, even when benchmarking.

Alexey2912 said:

My laptop's drive is slower than expected, though a few months old...….correct?

Click to expand...

This is where you need to do the research on your laptop. The drive itself can probably perform faster, but the slot it is in may not be able to support anything faster than what you're getting, for various reasons.

Alexey2912 said:

Why is the health down by 4% to 96% and temp goes into Red, despite cold temperature and laptop on a elevated 1 feet high stand.....using as a desktop?

Click to expand...

I'm not sure about that, we'd ahve to have you look at some extended testing to see. Did you buy the drive / laptop brand new? Looking at your stats, it shows a bit less usage than my drives, which I got back in February, so I suspect the fact that it is running so warm may be a factor in how Windows / CrystalDiskInfo is calculating that value.

Alexey2912 said:

@johnlgalt , would you still agree with me to go for Micron 2230 and 2280, PCI 4 1 TB each.
I know I won't gain, but Micron is the only brand with a M.2 2230 with 1/2 TB?

Thanks again.

Click to expand...

Western Digital makes one. So does Inland:



Dell also sells one - but they can keep it at that price lol:


Here is another no name brand that can keep it for that price: