Is Samsung 960 Evo NVMe good for my system? Z97 with x2 M.2

[TechiGamer]

Hi,

I'm looking to get a new drive for my system, consisting of a MSI Z97 Gaming 5 motherboard, and an i5-4670k. As such, I want the fastest and most up to date solution to use just as my boot drive.

From my understanding, NVMe is supported by my motherboard, but if other people's posts are correct (couldn't find the specs on this), the M.2 interface is only x2. However, the Samsung 960 Evo 250gb that I'm looking at uses x4 according to the spec sheet. Will that have a significant impact on the performance of the drive? Is it still worthwhile to get it? Or should I just get a regular sata ahci drive?

Overall, what drive do you think my best bets are to get the most up-to-date and fastest experience?
Note also, that I could be upgrading my whole system in about 2 years, so it would be worth choosing a drive that would be worthwhile to use then as well. Right now, I just need to replace my Crucial M4 ssd that died.

Thanks!

http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX64407

 

[mcnumpty23]

you wont notice a huge difference with a m2 over a good ssd

i have a m2

a Samsung 850 evo

2 x 850 evos in raid 0

to be honest i cant really tell the difference which ever i boot from

its only when you have some thing else as fast as the m2 to copy to/from that m2 drives blow away ssd drives ssd drives are just so fast any way

 

[mcnumpty23]

and is a m2 actually bootable on that motherboard?

 

[Dunlop0078]

I think you can boot off an m.2 on z97, however it will be limited to pcie 2.0 x2 optimally you would want pcie 3.0 x4. I own a 960 evo and I would agree it does not offer much of a performance improvement over a good sata ssd in things like gaming or boot times. The 960 evo shaved a few seconds off load times in games versus my crucial m500 but that was about it.

 

[Eximo]

I went from a nearly 5 year old RAID of two 256GB OCZ Vertex 4 to the 1TB 960 Evo M.2. Really about the same for day to day feel, but I like the minimalistic appeal of not having any 'drives' in my gaming system.

 

[Flying Head]

I recently got the M.2 EVO non-Pro. It is extremely fast compared to a SSD. The 4x has something to do with that. Practically, waiting 4ms instead of 40ms has little effect on user experience. It surely looks great in a benchmark!

 

[mcnumpty23]

guess we all pretty much agree then

unless you run benchmarks you wont really notice much difference

and thats x4 m2 drives we are using not x2

but yes in the future you could put it in another board that has x4

though again my opinion is unless you have a second one or ssds in raid and copy to/from one to the other a lot still wont feel faster

guess if the m2 was close to the ssd in price i would probably get the m2 any way with the aim of getting a second m2 in the future

if theres a big price difference i would get the ssd--if the cost isnt important then get the m2 any way long as you know its bootable on that board

 

[Rexper]

you wont notice a huge difference with a m2 over a good ssd

i have a m2

a Samsung 850 evo

2 x 850 evos in raid 0

to be honest i cant really tell the difference which ever i boot from

its only when you have some thing else as fast as the m2 to copy to/from that m2 drives blow away ssd drives ssd drives are just so fast any way

The m.2 is an SSD form factor. So is 2.5" inch. The form factor itself doesn't dictate the speed which is why you m.2 850 evo performs equally to your 2.5" evo.

The m.2 form factor however, does open up possibilities to PCIe NVMe SSDs which may perform much better than a regular AHCI Sata SSD.

 

[TechiGamer]

Thanks to everyone for the input!

I checked and my mother apparently does support NVMe boot (Source: http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-3104936/msi-z97-gaming-question.html)

I think I might just go with a regular M.2 drive from WD, or maybe just the regular sata version, since they are about $55 cheaper than the Samsung 960.

 

[mcnumpty23]

you wont notice a huge difference with a m2 over a good ssd

i have a m2

a Samsung 850 evo

2 x 850 evos in raid 0

to be honest i cant really tell the difference which ever i boot from

its only when you have some thing else as fast as the m2 to copy to/from that m2 drives blow away ssd drives ssd drives are just so fast any way

The m.2 is an SSD form factor. So is 2.5" inch. The form factor itself doesn't dictate the speed which is why you m.2 850 evo performs equally to your 2.5" evo.

The m.2 form factor however, does open up possibilities to PCIe NVMe SSDs which may perform much better than a regular AHCI Sata SSD.

just to clarify

we were talking about the 960 evo

which is a m2 x4 pci-e drive--these were what we were discussing compared to the older 2.5 ssd or sata m2 drives

and i did not actually say i had a m2 850 evo

i actually have a sm951 x4 pci-e drive

so its read/write speeds are hugely faster than my 2.5 850 evo

but it still doesnt feel faster in every day use

as a lot of it is down to access speed not just read/write speed

and the difference in access speed from a 2.5 sata ssd to a m2 x4 pci-e is only going to be noticable in a benchmark

not in every day use its just too fast on both drives for a human to tell the difference

 

[Rexper]

you wont notice a huge difference with a m2 over a good ssd

i have a m2

a Samsung 850 evo

2 x 850 evos in raid 0

to be honest i cant really tell the difference which ever i boot from

its only when you have some thing else as fast as the m2 to copy to/from that m2 drives blow away ssd drives ssd drives are just so fast any way

The m.2 is an SSD form factor. So is 2.5" inch. The form factor itself doesn't dictate the speed which is why you m.2 850 evo performs equally to your 2.5" evo.

The m.2 form factor however, does open up possibilities to PCIe NVMe SSDs which may perform much better than a regular AHCI Sata SSD.

just to clarify

we were talking about the 960 evo

which is a m2 x4 pci-e drive--these were what we were discussing compared to the older 2.5 ssd or sata m2 drives

and i did not actually say i had a m2 850 evo

i actually have a sm951 x4 pci-e drive

so its read/write speeds are hugely faster than my 2.5 850 evo

but it still doesnt feel faster in every day use

as a lot of it is down to access speed not just read/write speed

and the difference in access speed from a 2.5 sata ssd to a m2 x4 pci-e is only going to be noticable in a benchmark

not in every day use its just too fast on both drives for a human to tell the difference

I see you now. Just the previous comments could've been a bit misleading to the audience. The difference of performance between a decent AHCI Sata SSD and high end NVMe PCIe SSD shouldn't be very noticeable for general usage (general application loading, boot loading, some game loading). They really stand out, however, when transferring large files or within high end video editing.

 

[Richard_253]

Hi,

I'm looking to get a new drive for my system, consisting of a MSI Z97 Gaming 5 motherboard, and an i5-4670k. As such, I want the fastest and most up to date solution to use just as my boot drive.

From my understanding, NVMe is supported by my motherboard, but if other people's posts are correct (couldn't find the specs on this), the M.2 interface is only x2. However, the Samsung 960 Evo 250gb that I'm looking at uses x4 according to the spec sheet. Will that have a significant impact on the performance of the drive? Is it still worthwhile to get it? Or should I just get a regular sata ahci drive?

Overall, what drive do you think my best bets are to get the most up-to-date and fastest experience?
Note also, that I could be upgrading my whole system in about 2 years, so it would be worth choosing a drive that would be worthwhile to use then as well. Right now, I just need to replace my Crucial M4 ssd that died.

Thanks!

http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX64407

You can get full speed from the 960 EVO on your MB by using a PCIe x4 M.2 adpater card. Otherwise you will only get about 700mb/s R/W if you plug it into your MB's M.2 slot.

I have a gigabyte Z97 board and get the following speeds with the adapter: https://image.ibb.co/kTMxYF/Capture.jpg