Question Is there any benefit to putting a PCIe 4 SSD in a PCIe 3 slot?

[TheyTukMyJub]

Hi all, I'm looking for a second NVMe to expand my gaming laptop's storage. It will be used only for games, maybe the occasional movie file. My priority is keeping heat at a minimum since the laptop is already hot when gaming and also I want to keep idle usage as low as reasonably possible. In general I use it more like a 'mobile desktop' for LANs, but there are moments that I might have to rely on the battery for office work on-the-go.

My laptop has a gen 3 slot.

First of all, I know that a PCIe 4 SSD NVMe will be running at gen 3 speeds and bottlenecked by the PCIe 3 slot. But I'm wondering if there are other benefits to gen 4 SSDs in a gen 3 slot such as heat, idle or loaded power usage etc. The price difference between gen 3 and gen 4 SSDs is around 10 bucks in my area. Which is not a big difference. But is still around 25% more expensive. Why pay more for something unnecessary?

So, are there are any other benefits to a gen 4 SSD in a gen 3 slot? Any benefits to heat, idle power or game startup times other than in benchmarks?

 

[Lafong]

On the on hand; you might eventually have a machine with a gen 4 port that can take advantage of gen 4 speeds. That might be worth 10 dollars?

On the other hand; the practical advantage of gen 4 is minimal, so who cares; save the 10 dollars.

I'm not aware of any heat/power differences worth talking about.

Flip a coin, but you probably are reluctant.

Are your gen 3 and gen 4 targeted drives same manufacturer? Same vendor? Same warranty? Might be some reason to choose other than generation and price?

 

[TheyTukMyJub]

My laptop is a budget-midranger, Ryzen 5 5600H cpu with a Nvidia mobile 3060 6GB-version (full 135w TDP though!). So I'm going to use it the coming few years until it collapses. I'm guessing by that time there will already be another gen SSD.

No the drives are all different but since I'm in continental Europe the consumer protection is quite good. Manufacturer are quite difference: WD, Kingston, Lexar, Samsung, Crucial. I'm just weighing all my options now. Lowest is 40 bucks, highest 55. I love to squeeze value to the last penny haha

 

[Lafong]

I can understand "the last penny".

When your laptop dies, what will you do with this drive?

Throw it away?

Or re-use it in some other machine?

What's the price difference in the following scenario:

Gen 4, capacity X

Gen 3, capacity 2X

If you might reuse the drive eventually, maybe you'd appreciate twice the capacity more than gen speed difference.

My experience generally is that more capacity is more valuable than "more speed", once you have gone beyond the spinning hard drive level......which you have.

 

[Math Geek]

i would def consider capacity over "speed" of the drive. real world difference is negligible between sata/gen 3/gen 4/ gen 5 ssd's anyway. so i'd be looking at space/price ratio above all else.

i have both gen 3 and gen 4 m.2's in my pc and i can't tell the difference between them. the only noticeable change is when i am accessing a spinning hdd and only then can i tell what drive is in use.

so as stated above, look at space you can get for your money and whatever gen it happens to be, go with it

 

[Maxxify]

Gen4 drives often have better/newer hardware so will run "better" in a Gen3 slot than a native Gen3 drive in many if not most cases, but you have to factor in pricing.

 

[USAFRet]

It will be used only for games, maybe the occasional movie file.

In that use, you'd see no difference even if you had a PCIe 4.0 drive in a 4.0 M.2 port.

Quality and size, before 3.0 vs 4.0.

 

[TheyTukMyJub]

Gen4 drives often have better/newer hardware so will run "better" in a Gen3 slot than a native Gen3 drive in many if not most cases, but you have to factor in pricing.

But better specifically in what way? I guess for me rn the priority is to keep heat and power usage at a minimum since as a gaming laptop it already runs hot.

Anyway, these are the drives that I'm thinking about. All 1tb, prices in euros:

Kingston NV2 (gen3) - €43
WD Blue SN570 (gen3) -€ 43
Crucial P3 (gen3) - €44
Lexar NM 710 (gen4) - €45
Lexar NM790 (gen4) - €53
WD Black SN770 (gen4) - €55
Samsung 980 (gen3) - €57

 

[TheyTukMyJub]

Any recommendations?

 

[Maxxify]

But better specifically in what way? I guess for me rn the priority is to keep heat and power usage at a minimum since as a gaming laptop it already runs hot.

Exactly, so you want a DRAM-less, 4-channel Gen4 solution, preferably with TLC. There are multiple good drives for this, like the SN770. There are many more with the MAP1602, IG5220, and E21T controllers, some more efficient than others. Availability depends on your region. The NV2 (which is Gen4) is not a good choice, though.

 

[LinuxDevice]

Whenever you back off speed from higher to lower (PCIe v4 is 16 GT/s, PCIe v3 is 8 GT/s) you lower the power consumption. Sometimes the ability to upgrade tech from a lower speed to a higher speed is related to power wasted; the smaller die sizes with lower capacitance will produce less waste heat if the data rate is kept the same. Then, with the smaller die size, bringing up the speed can bring heat back up to whatever limit was previously allowed. Perhaps (I don't know the specific chip) this PCIe v4 chip in PCIe v3 mode will generate less heat than the PCIe v3 chip in PCIe v3 mode (PCIe can revert back to lower speeds if signal quality is insufficient).

Whether it means anything to you or not I don't know, but it is possible the PCIe v4 SSD will generate less heat and consume less power running as PCIe v3. How significant of a difference? I have no idea (it would be interesting for Tom's Hardware to study power consumption and thermal camera output for this use-case).

 

[Lafong]

Any recommendations?

Assuming whatever you choose doesn't arrive DOA, I'd guess it makes little difference for performance per se.

Considerations would be:

Capacity
Price and your sensitivity to it
Warranty/returns; aneurysms if you ever contact customer service?
Opinions from strangers on the net; how much value do you give them?
Weird/unusual use case, which you don't appear to have.
Your tendency to second-guess yourself; buyer's remorse; "I shoulda..."


I use WD SN550, WD SN770, Intel 660p; all without issues and just another anecdote from a stranger on the net. One's as good as the other, barring failure.

 

[Maxxify]

Whether it means anything to you or not I don't know, but it is possible the PCIe v4 SSD will generate less heat and consume less power running as PCIe v3. How significant of a difference? I have no idea (it would be interesting for Tom's Hardware to study power consumption and thermal camera output for this use-case).

This is true. Most Gen3 controllers are 28nm and often have 8 channels (rather than 4) which makes them objectively less efficient than 4-channel Gen4 controllers at 12nm, especially when run at 3.0. Phison throttles their Gen5 E26 with the new firmware to prevent overheating by lowering the link speed. It's also possible to reduce link width, which may be even more efficient, that is a Gen4 running at x2 4.0 will even be a little more efficient than x4 3.0. But I digress...

I think Tom's does test this on the 2230 drives (3.0 and 4.0 modes) and you can also compare the Crucial P3 to the P3 Plus. You do get a bump in efficiency, probably because the bus drops down. Samsung has documentation on how flash can use more power-efficient methods with tapping if the bus or I/O rate is reduced, sometimes way more efficient. Less power, less heat, if same drive.

 

[TheyTukMyJub]

Then I think I'll just get the Lexar NM 710, the cheapest gen4 drive I can get. Synthetic benchmarks seem to be very good for the price but honestly I've never heard of the brand and I can't find much info about the controller. Doesn't matter much since it will be purely a gaming drive but still.

 

[LinuxDevice]

Then I think I'll just get the Lexar NM 710, the cheapest gen4 drive I can get. Synthetic benchmarks seem to be very good for the price but honestly I've never heard of the brand and I can't find much info about the controller. Doesn't matter much since it will be purely a gaming drive but still.

If you know what chipset or memory chips are used in such a device, then that would probably offer clues even if the manufacturer of the device (as a whole) is unknown.

 

[TheyTukMyJub]

If you know what chipset or memory chips are used in such a device, then that would probably offer clues even if the manufacturer of the device (as a whole) is unknown.

Those are the ones that are unknown though. I've never heard of them lol

 

[Math Geek]

why go for an unknown when the price is so close for all of them. the SN770 is a solid well known drive.

it's a no brainer to me

 

[LinuxDevice]

If you know what chipset or memory chips are used in such a device, then that would probably offer clues even if the manufacturer of the device (as a whole) is unknown.

If you boot under Linux (it could be a Live DVD), and run "sudo lspci -vvv", then you might get more information. You could log this with "sudo lspci -vvv 2>&1 | tee log.txt", and then copy the log to a Windows partition or thumb drive, so on.

 

[TheyTukMyJub]

I could only find info saying it is a Maxiotek-controller en Longsys-nand

 

[Maxxify]

I could only find info saying it is a Maxiotek-controller en Longsys-nand

NM710 should be the Maxio MAP1602 with YMTC TLC. There's a Windows utility that can verify by VLO (google it). Pretty good combo, performance-wise.

 

[TheyTukMyJub]

NM710 should be the Maxio MAP1602 with YMTC TLC. There's a Windows utility that can verify by VLO (google it). Pretty good combo, performance-wise.

I got a deal for it for 39 bucks so I just immediately bought it before price hikes begin