[SOLVED] 500gb m.2 nvme or 1tb sata ssd?

[MagBoi]

Is it worth it to buy a 500gb nvme for the extra performance but less storage? Or is the difference in speed not worth it.

note that in Denmark (where I'm buying) the cost is basically the same

I'm pairing the potential ssd with a ryzen 5 3600, a nice b550 (probably the strix model) and a separate 2tb hdd. It's going to be used for gaming and light editing.

 

[punkncat]

I would say it depends on your application. Do you need more read/write speed, or more storage?

 

[MagBoi]

I would say it depends on your application. Do you need more read/write speed or more storage?

Of course, I want more of both, but if I had to choose then I suppose more storage, but either way I'll still have at least 2,3 tb for games, 300gb of which is ssd, so I still don't know if it's worth it, but generally speaking I would prefer more storage.

 

[cryoburner]

I guess it depends on the exact models you are looking at. You should be able to find some 1TB NVMe drives for not much more than the price of a 1TB SATA SSD. If you are only looking at higher-end models, the price difference might be significantly higher, but even the lowest-end models should be faster than a SATA SSD in most scenarios. Looking at Denmark pricing on PCPartPicker, some 1TB NVMe drives only cost around 25% more than the lowest-priced SATA SSDs, though they don't seem to cover pricing from many retailers...

NVMe:
https://dk.pcpartpicker.com/product...&A=960000000000,16000000000000&sort=price&D=1

SATA:
https://dk.pcpartpicker.com/product...&A=960000000000,16000000000000&sort=price&D=0

 

[MagBoi]

I guess it depends on the exact models you are looking at. You should be able to find some 1TB NVMe drives for not much more than the price of a 1TB SATA SSD. If you are only looking at higher-end models, the price difference might be significantly higher, but even the lowest-end models should be faster than a SATA SSD in most scenarios. Looking at Denmark pricing on PCPartPicker, some 1TB NVMe drives only cost around 25% more than the lowest-priced SATA SSDs, though they don't seem to cover pricing from many retailers...

NVMe:
https://dk.pcpartpicker.com/product...&A=960000000000,16000000000000&sort=price&D=1

SATA:
https://dk.pcpartpicker.com/product...&A=960000000000,16000000000000&sort=price&D=0

Yeah, I was looking at the Samsung 970 evo m.2 ssd, but if even the cheaper ones (thinking something like Kingston a2000) is faster than a sata ssd, I'll probably go with something like that then. And almost all of the ssds on pcpartpicker, are available in denmark, but pcpartpicker only have 2 retailers listed on their danish version, so that's why most things don't have any pricing.

 

[cryoburner]

Even these lower-end NVMe drives tend to have rather good read performance, up to several times that of a SATA SSD for sequential transfers, although in terms of real-world application and game loading performance, the difference is generally more like 10%, due to the system waiting on processing data much of the time. That might change in future games designed with fast SSD asset streaming in mind though, which is something the next consoles will apparently be focusing on.

Some like a 970 Evo will be faster still, but again, since the system is waiting on other things much of the time, you are unlikely to see much of that additional read performance for the time being, at least for anything other than tasks like copying large files.

Those higher-end SSDs do offer some benefits though. If one is constantly performing a large amount of file writes to the drive, their higher write endurance could allow the drive to last longer. Many of the lower-end drives will also use QLC flash, which is slower to write to, but they dedicate a portion of that to be used as a fast SLC cache, which keeps write performance high under most common usage scenarios. If one is quickly writing many gigabytes of data to the drive within a short span of time though, it's possible to see a significant slowdown in performance until the cache can clear, though again, that write cache is typically many gigabytes in size, so it's not a problem in most scenarios.

 

[MagBoi]

Even these lower-end NVMe drives tend to have rather good read performance, up to several times that of a SATA SSD for sequential transfers, although in terms of real-world application and game loading performance, the difference is generally more like 10%, due to the system waiting on processing data much of the time. That might change in future games designed with fast SSD asset streaming in mind though, which is something the next consoles will apparently be focusing on.

Some like a 970 Evo will be faster still, but again, since the system is waiting on other things much of the time, you are unlikely to see much of that additional read performance for the time being, at least for anything other than tasks like copying large files.

Those higher-end SSDs do offer some benefits though. If one is constantly performing a large amount of file writes to the drive, their higher write endurance could allow the drive to last longer. Many of the lower-end drives will also use QLC flash, which is slower to write to, but they dedicate a portion of that to be used as a fast SLC cache, which keeps write performance high under most common usage scenarios. If one is quickly writing many gigabytes of data to the drive within a short span of time though, it's possible to see a significant slowdown in performance until the cache can clear, though again, that write cache is typically many gigabytes in size, so it's not a problem in most scenarios.

So what you're saying, is that a cheap m.2 will be faster, but likely not very noticeable and a high-end sata ssd will be able to last longer. In that case, what do you recommend going with for gaming?

 

[cryoburner]

Well, the write endurance for any of these 1TB SSDs should be quite reasonable, due to them having a large capacity to perform wear-leveling across. Even the QLC ones should have around a couple-hundred terabytes of write endurance, meaning the drive is rated to be written over entirely a couple hundred times, which most people are not likely to do during their time with it. Some professional workloads potentially could though, like maybe writing large video files to the drive on a daily basis, where one might be performing hundreds of GB of writes to the drive every day.

For gaming, the durability isn't likely to be much of a concern though, since you probably won't be installing large games to the drive on a daily basis, and reading data from the drive doesn't degrade the flash memory. And even if you were to write 50GB every day to a drive rated for 200 TBW, the flash memory should still last for around 10 years of use at that rate (assuming something else on the drive doesn't fail in the mean time).

Personally, I would probably go with one of the less-expensive NVMe drives at this point for gaming and most other tasks. While the performance difference at most current tasks isn't much higher than SATA, it's possible that will change in the future as games are built with faster storage in mind.

 

[beers]

As per others, depends if you value more storage or a slight performance increase.

Throw a few extra dollars at a 1 TB NVME so you don't have to decide

 

[MagBoi]

Well, the write endurance for any of these 1TB SSDs should be quite reasonable, due to them having a large capacity to perform wear-leveling across. Even the QLC ones should have around a couple-hundred terabytes of write endurance, meaning the drive is rated to be written over entirely a couple hundred times, which most people are not likely to do during their time with it. Some professional workloads potentially could though, like maybe writing large video files to the drive on a daily basis, where one might be performing hundreds of GB of writes to the drive every day.

For gaming, the durability isn't likely to be much of a concern though, since you probably won't be installing large games to the drive on a daily basis, and reading data from the drive doesn't degrade the flash memory. And even if you were to write 50GB every day to a drive rated for 200 TBW, the flash memory should still last for around 10 years of use at that rate (assuming something else on the drive doesn't fail in the mean time).

Personally, I would probably go with one of the less-expensive NVMe drives at this point for gaming and most other tasks. While the performance difference at most current tasks isn't much higher than SATA, it's possible that will change in the future as games are built with faster storage in mind.

Think that solves it then, thank you!