Question I have a new Dell Alienware R13 and I need to upgrade storage. Which SATA SSD or NVME SSD will work?

[cherylC]

I have a Dell Alienware R13 currently with a i9-12900F processor and a 1TB NVMe M.2 PCIe SSD. I ordered SAMSUNG 870 EVO 4TB 2.5 Inch SATA III Internal SSD (MZ-77E4T0B/AM) Black for around $219, to use as a file drive for home video files I edit. But I noticed I can get the below listed NVME cards for only a little more. For some reason it seems Samsung isn't selling 4tb NVME right now. At least I can't find them.

I know the NVME's are much faster than the Sata SSDs. But is there any advantage to the Sata drive? I know price used to be, but that's disappearing. I use a WD 4tb black IDE drive right now that's worked for 4 years, but I need faster speeds now. Will all the chips below work on a new Dell Alienware?

Any suggestions or comments would be greatly appreciated. Not sure how long these prices on drives will last!

• WD_BLACK 4TB SN850X NVMe Internal Gaming SSD Solid State Drive - Gen4 PCIe, M.2 2280, up to 7,300 MB/s - WDS400T2X0E $283.49
• Crucial P3 Plus 4TB PCIe Gen4 3D NAND NVMe M.2 SSD, up to 5000MB/s - CT4000P3PSSD8 $249
• Crucial P3 4TB PCIe Gen3 3D NAND NVMe M.2 SSD, up to 3500MB/s - CT4000P3SSD8 $214

 

[Aeacus]

But is there any advantage to the Sata drive?

While bigger than M.2 drive, one pro is better durability against physical damage. 2.5" SATA SSD sits in a 2.5" enclosure. M.2 SSD is bare PCB.
E.g if you'd put M.2 drive in your backpack, chances of it getting bent in half are high. Not so much with 2.5" SATA drive, that has metal enclosure.

Another pro is connectivity. Namely the ease of it. All PCs support SATA drives, several of them. While you need to have MoBo with M.2 drive slot + MoBo needs firmware as well, prior accessing/using M.2 drive.

3rd one would be ease of installation. It's easy to hook up SATA power and data cables. With M.2 drive, you have to carefully slot it in under ~30 degree angle and then use small and very easy to loose screw, to fasten it down and secure it. Oh, screwdriver too, unless the M.2 fastener is thumb screw or latch.
Getting the M.2 out is another ordeal, since it usually lives under GPU. Meaning that you have to take GPU out before you can get access to M.2 drive. With 2.5" SATA drive, they live either on dedicated drive cage or behind MoBo tray.

WD 4tb black IDE drive

Your 4TB HDD is not IDE (aka PATA) drive. Since IDE drives can not be larger than 137GB, while you have 4TB drive.

new Dell Alienware

"New" is vague. Better to identify your MoBo and look what gen M.2 slots it has.

E.g if it has PCI-E 3.0 M.2 slots (Gen3), then it would be pointless to buy PCI-E 4.0 M.2 drives (Gen4), since max what you can get, would be PCI-E 3.0 speeds.

 

[Bob.B]

I have a Dell Alienware R13 currently with a i9-12900F processor and a 1TB NVMe M.2 PCIe SSD. I ordered SAMSUNG 870 EVO 4TB 2.5 Inch SATA III Internal SSD (MZ-77E4T0B/AM) Black for around $219, to use as a file drive for home video files I edit. But I noticed I can get the below listed NVME cards for only a little more. For some reason it seems Samsung isn't selling 4tb NVME right now. At least I can't find them.

I know the NVME's are much faster than the Sata SSDs. But is there any advantage to the Sata drive? I know price used to be, but that's disappearing. I use a WD 4tb black IDE drive right now that's worked for 4 years, but I need faster speeds now. Will all the chips below work on a new Dell Alienware?

Any suggestions or comments would be greatly appreciated. Not sure how long these prices on drives will last!

• WD_BLACK 4TB SN850X NVMe Internal Gaming SSD Solid State Drive - Gen4 PCIe, M.2 2280, up to 7,300 MB/s - WDS400T2X0E $283.49
• Crucial P3 Plus 4TB PCIe Gen4 3D NAND NVMe M.2 SSD, up to 5000MB/s - CT4000P3PSSD8 $249
• Crucial P3 4TB PCIe Gen3 3D NAND NVMe M.2 SSD, up to 3500MB/s - CT4000P3SSD8 $214

Perf wise I doubt you would notice a diff.......sata vs nvme.

Less cable clutter going m.2.

 

[Misgar]

Have you visually inspected your Dell PC and confirmed it has at least one M.2 slot somewhere on the motherboard. It might be hidden under a large graphics card if one is installed. Most M.2 slots in modern PCs work with NVMe drives, but some older motherboards can only support M.2 SATA drives.

When buying an NVMe drive, you pay a premium for speed. Hence a really fast 2TB drive might be the same price as a really slow 4TB drive.

Gen4 drives are faster than Gen3 drives, but only if the motherboard supports Gen4. If not, a Gen4 drive will run at slower Gen3 speeds.

LBA48 (48-bit addressing) theoretically allows you to use an ATA drive larger than 137GB. Source WikiPedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_ATA

If you want to optimize your storage system for video editing, check out Puget System's recommendations for Premiere Pro.
https://www.pugetsystems.com/soluti...remiere-pro/hardware-recommendations/#storage

 

[Aeacus]

Perf wise I doubt you would notice a diff.......sata vs nvme.

Diff is noticeable when moving large files that take time to read/write. Oh, boot-up times are 1-2 seconds faster as well. Other than that, no diff can be noticed. Well, except synthetic benchmarks, there you get bigger number on read/write speeds.

 

[Bob.B]

Diff is noticeable when moving large files that take time to read/write. Oh, boot-up times are 1-2 seconds faster as well. Other than that, no diff can be noticed. Well, except synthetic benchmarks, there you get bigger number on read/write speeds.

Most users are not playing with files that are large enough for a diff to show.

Boot time....I suppose if you have a boat-load of startup items and a stop watch it will show a diff.

 

[cherylC]

While bigger than M.2 drive, one pro is better durability against physical damage. 2.5" SATA SSD sits in a 2.5" enclosure. M.2 SSD is bare PCB.
E.g if you'd put M.2 drive in your backpack, chances of it getting bent in half are high. Not so much with 2.5" SATA drive, that has metal enclosure.

Another pro is connectivity. Namely the ease of it. All PCs support SATA drives, several of them. While you need to have MoBo with M.2 drive slot + MoBo needs firmware as well, prior accessing/using M.2 drive.

3rd one would be ease of installation. It's easy to hook up SATA power and data cables. With M.2 drive, you have to carefully slot it in under ~30 degree angle and then use small and very easy to loose screw, to fasten it down and secure it. Oh, screwdriver too, unless the M.2 fastener is thumb screw or latch.
Getting the M.2 out is another ordeal, since it usually lives under GPU. Meaning that you have to take GPU out before you can get access to M.2 drive. With 2.5" SATA drive, they live either on dedicated drive cage or behind MoBo tray.



Your 4TB HDD is not IDE (aka PATA) drive. Since IDE drives can not be larger than 137GB, while you have 4TB drive.


"New" is vague. Better to identify your MoBo and look what gen M.2 slots it has.

E.g if it has PCI-E 3.0 M.2 slots (Gen3), then it would be pointless to buy PCI-E 4.0 M.2 drives (Gen4), since max what you can get, would be PCI-E 3.0 speeds.

Thanks for the reply. The Dell R13 is a desktop so I probably won't be carrying it around in a back pack. I mean New as in got it two days ago new. It's the standard Dell branded proprietary board that comes with Gen 12 Intel cpus. I have installed M2 chips before. While the Sata drives are easy, not as easy as the m2's that need only one screw. The MoBo I have supports upt to PCI-e Gen 4 I understand.

I was mainly worried about compatibility and which chips were best suited to what I have with out buying too much.

Thanks!

 

[cherylC]

Have you visually inspected your Dell PC and confirmed it has at least one M.2 slot somewhere on the motherboard. It might be hidden under a large graphics card if one is installed. Most M.2 slots in modern PCs work with NVMe drives, but some older motherboards can only support M.2 SATA drives.

When buying an NVMe drive, you pay a premium for speed. Hence a really fast 2TB drive might be the same price as a really slow 4TB drive.

Gen4 drives are faster than Gen3 drives, but only if the motherboard supports Gen4. If not, a Gen4 drive will run at slower Gen3 speeds.

LBA48 (48-bit addressing) theoretically allows you to use an ATA drive larger than 137GB. Source WikiPedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_ATA

If you want to optimize your storage system for video editing, check out Puget System's recommendations for Premiere Pro.
https://www.pugetsystems.com/soluti...remiere-pro/hardware-recommendations/#storage

Hi, yes, I looked inside and saw where it seems to support two 2280 slots. I also checked online and they said it does too. Of course, actual milage may vary. Sorry about the confusion on the Older WD Black hard drive. Thanks...

 

[cherylC]

Perf wise I doubt you would notice a diff.......sata vs nvme.

Less cable clutter going m.2.

No difference in practical terms? Wow.. I know the transfer rate on NVME's are a lot faster, but didn't know in real terms it didn't make a difference. Thanks!

 

[cherylC]

Diff is noticeable when moving large files that take time to read/write. Oh, boot-up times are 1-2 seconds faster as well. Other than that, no diff can be noticed. Well, except synthetic benchmarks, there you get bigger number on read/write speeds.

I am going to be working with large video home movie files. Some in the 9-12gb range. Will it help then? Thanks for the insight!

 

[cherylC]

Most users are not playing with files that are large enough for a diff to show.

Boot time....I suppose if you have a boat-load of startup items and a stop watch it will show a diff.

So there's no difference for between the Sata and NVME drives even though I work on 9-13GB video files at a time. I do a lot of video rendering too when I edit the files I have a 3080 GPU to help with some of that and 32gb of Ram. Thanks !

Nobody said anything about which is better. The Crucial NVME or the WD Black NVME

 

[Bob.B]

So there's no difference for between the Sata and NVME drives even though I work on 9-13GB video files at a time. I do a lot of video rendering too when I edit the files I have a 3080 GPU to help with some of that and 32gb of Ram. Thanks !

It's your call.
If you go the sata route you will always be left wander if things would have been faster if you had gone nvme.

 

[cherylC]

It's your call.
If you go the sata route you will always be left wander if things would have been faster if you had gone nvme.

Kinda like an old boyfriend or girlfriend? What I have is not as good as what I could have had? Thanks for the insight... 🙂

 

[Misgar]

I'm moving 55GB 4K video files around and the slowest transfers are from NVMe back to hard disk archives. My 8TB hard disks start off at 250MB/s when empty and slow down as they fill up.

I have one Gen4 M.2 drive for OS and programs, a second Gen4 M.2 for work in progress and a third M.2 for scratch files. How much difference SATA drives would make is hard to say, without tests.

Make sure you have adequate cooling in your computer case for the 3080. Things can get quite warm after a few hours of rendering. I use MSI Afterburner to reduce my GPU card's power consumption to 95%, to improve stability.

 

[Aeacus]

I mean New as in got it two days ago new.

If i were to buy i7-4790K today, it doesn't mean that it's "new". Sure, for me, it's new, but in grand scheme of things, that Intel 4th gen chip is 9 years old.

Gave a quick look and R13 was released Oct '21. So, it's almost 2 years old now.
But i digress.

I was mainly worried about compatibility

Compatibility question is solved. Your MoBo supports PCI-E 4.0.

and which chips were best suited to what I have with out buying too much.

Here, you have a choice:
* cheap-ish drive but questionable reliability (e.g Crucial, WD)
* best performance, reliability and durability but premium price (Samsung)

I run Samsung drives myself. Both M.2 NVMe and 2.5" SATA SSDs. Since in the end of the day, my data lives there and i won't jeopardize my data due to inferior drive. Instead, i get the best drive and be in peace of mind.

No difference in practical terms? Wow.. I know the transfer rate on NVME's are a lot faster, but didn't know in real terms it didn't make a difference.

Like i said, only noticeable diff would be moving around big files.

For example; 10GB file read speed at theoretical max, what the protocol can do;
PCI-E 4.0 = ~1.5 seconds
PCI-E 3.0 = ~3 seconds
SATA = ~16 seconds

But for everything else (OS load time, game load time etc), diff isn't noticeable, despite the PCI-E 4.0 being easy 10x faster than SATA.

Video showcasing the real world diff (except moving large files):

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YoRKQy-UO4

I am going to be working with large video home movie files. Some in the 9-12gb range. Will it help then? Thanks for the insight!

Want to save ~15 seconds per file? Sure, pay the extra 60 bucks over 4TB SATA drive,
pcpp: https://pcpartpicker.com/products/compare/RBD7YJ,p7nypg/

Note: These two would be what i'd buy, but there are cheaper 4TB SATA SSDs out there, saving you more money compared to PCI-E 4.0 drive.

Nobody said anything about which is better. The Crucial NVME or the WD Black NVME

WD is better but i, personally, consider only Samsung.

WD review: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/wd-black-sn850x-ssd-review-back-in-black
Crucial gen4 review: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/crucial-p3-plus-ssd-review-capacity-on-the-cheap

Kinda like an old boyfriend or girlfriend? What I have is not as good as what I could have had? Thanks for the insight...

This is almost always an issue for practically everyone. It only won't be an issue if you have loads of money to buy the best money can buy. And as soon as better tech is released, you buy it, thus keeping only the very best in service. <- Huge waste of money + then some.

 

[USAFRet]

In my current system, I have 6x SSDs. (in my sig info under Viper)
PCIe 4.0 980 Pro
PCIe 3.0 Intel 660p
4x SATA III

Each dedicated to a particular use. CAD/photo/video/games....
In my daily use, it is actually hard to tell the difference.

If there is price parity per GB between NVMe and SATA III, go for a good quality NVMe.

But don't fall into the trap of "10x faster!!!" Outside specific limited use cases, it isn't.

 

[MWink64]

Your 4TB HDD is not IDE (aka PATA) drive. Since IDE drives can not be larger than 137GB, while you have 4TB drive.

While I doubt his 4TB drive is IDE, they can definitely be larger than 137GB. I know I've worked with at least 320GB IDE drives.

 

[Aeacus]

While I doubt his 4TB drive is IDE, they can definitely be larger than 137GB. I know I've worked with at least 320GB IDE drives.

Very 1st IDE (pre-ATA) max drive capacity is 2.1 GB. Standard IDE (ATA-1) max drive capacity is 137 GB. Same is for Fast IDE (ATA-2), EIDE (ATA-3), Ultra ATA/33 (ATA-4) and Ultra ATA/66 (ATA-5). Only when Ultra ATA/100 (ATA-6) launched, it increased the max drive capacity to 144 PB.

Though, you can make 320GB drive to be compatible with ATA-5 and older, e.g if you partition the drive to smaller than 137GB partitions.

 

[cherylC]

If i were to buy i7-4790K today, it doesn't mean that it's "new". Sure, for me, it's new, but in grand scheme of things, that Intel 4th gen chip is 9 years old.

Gave a quick look and R13 was released Oct '21. So, it's almost 2 years old now.
But i digress.


Compatibility question is solved. Your MoBo supports PCI-E 4.0.


Here, you have a choice:
* cheap-ish drive but questionable reliability (e.g Crucial, WD)
* best performance, reliability and durability but premium price (Samsung)

I run Samsung drives myself. Both M.2 NVMe and 2.5" SATA SSDs. Since in the end of the day, my data lives there and i won't jeopardize my data due to inferior drive. Instead, i get the best drive and be in peace of mind.


Like i said, only noticeable diff would be moving around big files.

For example; 10GB file read speed at theoretical max, what the protocol can do;
PCI-E 4.0 = ~1.5 seconds
PCI-E 3.0 = ~3 seconds
SATA = ~16 seconds

But for everything else (OS load time, game load time etc), diff isn't noticeable, despite the PCI-E 4.0 being easy 10x faster than SATA.

Video showcasing the real world diff (except moving large files):

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YoRKQy-UO4



Want to save ~15 seconds per file? Sure, pay the extra 60 bucks over 4TB SATA drive,
pcpp: https://pcpartpicker.com/products/compare/RBD7YJ,p7nypg/

Note: These two would be what i'd buy, but there are cheaper 4TB SATA SSDs out there, saving you more money compared to PCI-E 4.0 drive.


WD is better but i, personally, consider only Samsung.

WD review: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/wd-black-sn850x-ssd-review-back-in-black
Crucial gen4 review: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/crucial-p3-plus-ssd-review-capacity-on-the-cheap


This is almost always an issue for practically everyone. It only won't be an issue if you have loads of money to buy the best money can buy. And as soon as better tech is released, you buy it, thus keeping only the very best in service. <- Huge waste of money + then some.

Thanks for the Heads Up on Samsung. That's what I wanted, but they didn't have any 4TB NVME's. I went ahead and got the WD Black

 

[cherylC]

While I doubt his 4TB drive is IDE, they can definitely be larger than 137GB. I know I've worked with at least 320GB IDE drives.

I have been duly chastised over this faux pas. Sorry, I wasn't paying attention.

 

[Daniiell]

For your Dell Alienware R13, you should go for an NVMe SSD for faster performance. The laptop is likely to support M.2 2280 NVMe SSDs. Look for reputable brands like Samsung, Western Digital, or Crucial. Make sure to check the laptop's specifications or contact Dell support for compatibility confirmation before making a purchase.

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