M.2 and Optane - Worth Doing?
Discussion
I picked up a new PC recently and having not paid much attention to PC tech for a few years I'm still finding my feet. It's a fairly decent spec all round, but although it has two SSD drives, they're both 128GB, so I'm struggling to install two games on it - Windows and apps are on one, which doesn't leave room for a large game and if I put CoD on the other drive, I then can't install Halo etc.
So I started digging around and discovered that if I upgrade the SSDs I can add M.2 drives. I have two ports and the option to add a M.2 expansion board to let me use U.2 drives too. Whatever that is. Then I read something about running Raid 0 on tow M2 drives for even better speeds. Then I read that doesn't work as either M.2 slot can hit the motherboard's speed limit anyway. Then I read about Optane and that I could use an M.2 slot to further speed up a HDD.
I need to do a load more reading to understand what's worth doing and what's not, but thought I'd ask on here while I do that.
I have no spinny disk in the PC, I have a 9Tb Raid array sat in a cupboard instead, so my main data transfers are network limited (it's a 1Gb network). I do have a spare 2Tb and 1Tb HDD that I was planning to put in to backup my personal files on the array to, but I could keep my game installation files on here too to speed up installs. But I'm not going to be using those disks much really.
So is Optane worth adding to speed up the boot drive or an SSD that I'm running games from? Is it worth running the OS from M.2 rather than SATA3? Is it worth running M.2 in Raid for the OS drive?
The game issue just means I need to spend some money, I don't mind if the best option is to not actually add a bigger SSD for the games as I have a 500GB SSD going in the server to improve it's cache drive so I'll be left with 3 SSDs to run games off and maybe I have another somewhere anyway.
Thoughts?
Oh, It's an MSI Z270 Gaming Pro Carbon motherboard, i7 6700k, 32GB of 3000Mhz DDR4 and an 8GB GTX 1080 FTW.
So I started digging around and discovered that if I upgrade the SSDs I can add M.2 drives. I have two ports and the option to add a M.2 expansion board to let me use U.2 drives too. Whatever that is. Then I read something about running Raid 0 on tow M2 drives for even better speeds. Then I read that doesn't work as either M.2 slot can hit the motherboard's speed limit anyway. Then I read about Optane and that I could use an M.2 slot to further speed up a HDD.
I need to do a load more reading to understand what's worth doing and what's not, but thought I'd ask on here while I do that.
I have no spinny disk in the PC, I have a 9Tb Raid array sat in a cupboard instead, so my main data transfers are network limited (it's a 1Gb network). I do have a spare 2Tb and 1Tb HDD that I was planning to put in to backup my personal files on the array to, but I could keep my game installation files on here too to speed up installs. But I'm not going to be using those disks much really.
So is Optane worth adding to speed up the boot drive or an SSD that I'm running games from? Is it worth running the OS from M.2 rather than SATA3? Is it worth running M.2 in Raid for the OS drive?
The game issue just means I need to spend some money, I don't mind if the best option is to not actually add a bigger SSD for the games as I have a 500GB SSD going in the server to improve it's cache drive so I'll be left with 3 SSDs to run games off and maybe I have another somewhere anyway.
Thoughts?
Oh, It's an MSI Z270 Gaming Pro Carbon motherboard, i7 6700k, 32GB of 3000Mhz DDR4 and an 8GB GTX 1080 FTW.
I wouldn't bother with optane, it's the're in desktop PCs to speed up mechanical hard disks, I think Intel is stoping production of them (consumer grade stuff) now.
As for SSD just get the best value you can find from a reliable brand, at the moment there is next to no real world differences between a decent SATA and a high end M.2 with nearly x10 the raw performance. This may change in the future when Microsofts DirectStorage gets established, but by then fast M.2 drives will be much cheaper.
As for SSD just get the best value you can find from a reliable brand, at the moment there is next to no real world differences between a decent SATA and a high end M.2 with nearly x10 the raw performance. This may change in the future when Microsofts DirectStorage gets established, but by then fast M.2 drives will be much cheaper.
M.2 is a variety of things - a lot of the drives actually have a SATA interface, so are no different to the drives you already have. The PCIe4 ones are faster, but you really won’t notice outside very specific benchmarks. Disk throughput (the numbers that everyone brags about) are no longer the bottle neck in most systems. Disk latency (the number that is pretty much the same for all SSDs) most certainly is an issue. All disks, have catastrophically bad latency compared to memory, and what slows your machine down in the real world is “read from disk”, which is about 100x slower than memory and stalls the processor.
TL:DR - if you’re copying films from disk to disk on your PC, you’ll notice a difference. Loading games - nope, loading OS, nope, copying films to your NAS, nope.
TL:DR - if you’re copying films from disk to disk on your PC, you’ll notice a difference. Loading games - nope, loading OS, nope, copying films to your NAS, nope.
paulrockliffe said:
Thanks, sounds like I might as well just get an M.2 PCIe SSD for not all that much more than a normal SSD. Even if it's not really any faster, it's much easier to install without having to find a power connection for it.
.. Just as long as you haven't lost the little screw that came with your motherboard....Forget Optane!
That's quite an old motherboard (2017) and CPU (2015) for a new computer.
Nothing inherently wrong with either, but a bit of a dead end for future upgrade, and doesn't support PCIe 4.0.
As for m2 SSDs, then you only need to remove the non-boot one and replace it with a bigger one for game storage. Don't bother with SATA SSDs as they'll top out at about 600MB/s (okay for a storage/back-up option I suppose, but not significantly cheaper than speedy m2 SSDs).
You haven't said what make/model of SSDs are actually in there, so we can't tell if they're cheap/slow ones or expensive/fast ones...but if you have the choice, ensure the boot SSD is a fast but smaller one that will work in your motherboard (so not one that benefits from PCIe 4.0 - e.g. a Samsung 970 Pro rather than a 980 Pro) - as it will make everything feel snappier.
The game SSD doesn't need to be quite as fast, as you probably won't notice the game load/transition difference between a 2000MB/s and 5000MB/s SSD anyway, and you'll want this to be much bigger.
You can get a 2TB fast game drive from Sabrent for about £200.
That's quite an old motherboard (2017) and CPU (2015) for a new computer.
Nothing inherently wrong with either, but a bit of a dead end for future upgrade, and doesn't support PCIe 4.0.
As for m2 SSDs, then you only need to remove the non-boot one and replace it with a bigger one for game storage. Don't bother with SATA SSDs as they'll top out at about 600MB/s (okay for a storage/back-up option I suppose, but not significantly cheaper than speedy m2 SSDs).
You haven't said what make/model of SSDs are actually in there, so we can't tell if they're cheap/slow ones or expensive/fast ones...but if you have the choice, ensure the boot SSD is a fast but smaller one that will work in your motherboard (so not one that benefits from PCIe 4.0 - e.g. a Samsung 970 Pro rather than a 980 Pro) - as it will make everything feel snappier.
The game SSD doesn't need to be quite as fast, as you probably won't notice the game load/transition difference between a 2000MB/s and 5000MB/s SSD anyway, and you'll want this to be much bigger.
You can get a 2TB fast game drive from Sabrent for about £200.
Edited by mmm-five on Friday 5th February 10:55
paulrockliffe said:
Thanks, sounds like I might as well just get an M.2 PCIe SSD for not all that much more than a normal SSD. Even if it's not really any faster, it's much easier to install without having to find a power connection for it.
If you mean 'normal SSD' as a 'M2 SATA SSD' then then M2 NVMe SSDs tend to be 5-10 times faster.It's only a few M2 SATA SSDs that you have to watch out for - as they're only about 10% cheaper for a fifth of the performance.
...and what you can use will be limited to what your motherboard supports (I believe your's supports both SATA & NVMe).
So remember (and using throughput is a very blunt benchmark):
- HDD (100MB/s)
- SATA SSD (550MB/s)
- SATA M2 SSD (550MB/s)
- NVMe M2 SSD (2000-7000MB/s)
Edited by mmm-five on Friday 5th February 10:54
Optane is a form of NVRAM and is incredibly fast - it has very low latencies, totally consistent performance which doesn’t drop off a cliff after a certain number of operations, and very high wear rates.
It’s also incredibly expensive which is why for consumers it was offered as a small chip which acts as a cache to your main disk.
You can buy it in “full” SSD sizes but they are very expensive (over £1k per TB) and aimed at enterprise or high performance use cases.
They are dropping the consumer oriented line as was mentioned above.
Personally I wouldn’t bother with this - stick to a regular PCI-E NVMe.
I have just tested all manner of RAID configurations having put 6 x Samsung 970 Evo Plus in my PCIE 3.0 workstation using Intel VROC. RAIDing them improves only sequential transfer rates which, as mentioned by another poster, looks great as a headline benchmark rate but only matters for large file transfers.
In general latency terms and “real world” metrics a single NVMe out performs any of the RAID setups, but both are still very fast.
I have settled on a mirror for my OS disk and 4xSSD in RAID10 for my data.
I’m not going for outright performance as it’s a business workstation and I have Bitlocker enabled on both volumes which knocks performance by 10-20%. You wouldn’t notice it though.
It’s also incredibly expensive which is why for consumers it was offered as a small chip which acts as a cache to your main disk.
You can buy it in “full” SSD sizes but they are very expensive (over £1k per TB) and aimed at enterprise or high performance use cases.
They are dropping the consumer oriented line as was mentioned above.
Personally I wouldn’t bother with this - stick to a regular PCI-E NVMe.
I have just tested all manner of RAID configurations having put 6 x Samsung 970 Evo Plus in my PCIE 3.0 workstation using Intel VROC. RAIDing them improves only sequential transfer rates which, as mentioned by another poster, looks great as a headline benchmark rate but only matters for large file transfers.
In general latency terms and “real world” metrics a single NVMe out performs any of the RAID setups, but both are still very fast.
I have settled on a mirror for my OS disk and 4xSSD in RAID10 for my data.
I’m not going for outright performance as it’s a business workstation and I have Bitlocker enabled on both volumes which knocks performance by 10-20%. You wouldn’t notice it though.
Edited by theboss on Friday 5th February 11:19
mmm-five said:
Forget Optane!
That's quite an old motherboard (2017) and CPU (2015) for a new computer.
Nothing inherently wrong with either, but a bit of a dead end for future upgrade, and doesn't support PCIe 4.0.
As for m2 SSDs, then you only need to remove the non-boot one and replace it with a bigger one for game storage. Don't bother with SATA SSDs as they'll top out at about 600MB/s (okay for a storage/back-up option I suppose, but not significantly cheaper than speedy m2 SSDs).
You haven't said what make/model of SSDs are actually in there, so we can't tell if they're cheap/slow ones or expensive/fast ones...but if you have the choice, ensure the boot SSD is a fast but smaller one that will work in your motherboard (so not one that benefits from PCIe 4.0 - e.g. a Samsung 970 Pro rather than a 980 Pro) - as it will make everything feel snappier.
The game SSD doesn't need to be quite as fast, as you probably won't notice the game load/transition difference between a 2000MB/s and 5000MB/s SSD anyway, and you'll want this to be much bigger.
You can get a 2TB fast game drive from Sabrent for about £200.
Thanks, when I said new, I meant new to me rather than new-new. It's lighting quick compared with the 2010 vintage machine it replaced and was bought on a value for money basis.That's quite an old motherboard (2017) and CPU (2015) for a new computer.
Nothing inherently wrong with either, but a bit of a dead end for future upgrade, and doesn't support PCIe 4.0.
As for m2 SSDs, then you only need to remove the non-boot one and replace it with a bigger one for game storage. Don't bother with SATA SSDs as they'll top out at about 600MB/s (okay for a storage/back-up option I suppose, but not significantly cheaper than speedy m2 SSDs).
You haven't said what make/model of SSDs are actually in there, so we can't tell if they're cheap/slow ones or expensive/fast ones...but if you have the choice, ensure the boot SSD is a fast but smaller one that will work in your motherboard (so not one that benefits from PCIe 4.0 - e.g. a Samsung 970 Pro rather than a 980 Pro) - as it will make everything feel snappier.
The game SSD doesn't need to be quite as fast, as you probably won't notice the game load/transition difference between a 2000MB/s and 5000MB/s SSD anyway, and you'll want this to be much bigger.
You can get a 2TB fast game drive from Sabrent for about £200.
Edited by mmm-five on Friday 5th February 10:55
Good point re PCIe, you're right it's 3 isn't it.
The SSDs are both Corsair somethings, I don't know what exactly without taking them out or rebooting the machine into BIOS.
That sounds like a good strategy, M.2 boot drive now, then get a bigger one for the games down the line. I'll be fine installing games to my rag-tag collection of small SSDs in the short term, I'm not a massive gamer, just playing a bit here and there seeing as I have a decentish setup for it now.
mmm-five said:
If you mean 'normal SSD' as a 'M2 SATA SSD' then then M2 NVMe SSDs tend to be 5-10 times faster.
It's only a few M2 SATA SSDs that you have to watch out for - as they're only about 10% cheaper for a fifth of the performance.
...and what you can use will be limited to what your motherboard supports (I believe your's supports both SATA & NVMe).
So remember (and using throughput is a very blunt benchmark):
By normal SSD I meant the SATA SSDs. To run SATA M2 I need to add a bridging board thing to the motherboard, so you need to factor in a) finding one of those and b) paying for it, so there's no way it makes sense to go that route.It's only a few M2 SATA SSDs that you have to watch out for - as they're only about 10% cheaper for a fifth of the performance.
...and what you can use will be limited to what your motherboard supports (I believe your's supports both SATA & NVMe).
So remember (and using throughput is a very blunt benchmark):
- HDD (100MB/s)
- SATA SSD (550MB/s)
- SATA M2 SSD (550MB/s)
- NVMe M2 SSD (2000-7000MB/s)
Edited by mmm-five on Friday 5th February 10:54
Thanks!
xeny said:
Windows key and x, select device manager and the Disk Drives section will tell you.
I wondered if it was hidden somewhere and figured someone would let me know if I feigned ignorance. Didn't know that Windows shortcut, that's handy. San Disk SDSSDA 120G and SanDIsk SSD Plus 120GB
Apparently.
paulrockliffe said:
I wondered if it was hidden somewhere and figured someone would let me know if I feigned ignorance. Didn't know that Windows shortcut, that's handy.
San Disk SDSSDA 120G and SanDIsk SSD Plus 120GB
Apparently.
I think they're 2.5" SATA SSDs (~530MB/s).San Disk SDSSDA 120G and SanDIsk SSD Plus 120GB
Apparently.
ebuyer page for the Plus 120
Not strictly relevant to the OP's query, but I am in the process of setting up a new PC which includes a pair of Samsung 1TB NVMs and a pair of Seagate Barracuda 1TB SATA SSDs. The Samsung NVM management/benchmarking software shows the following for the NVM vs the SSDs:
Yet to complete the setup and actually use it, but it looks promising in terms of speed.
Yet to complete the setup and actually use it, but it looks promising in terms of speed.
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