M.2 SSD, SATA vs PCIe, does tbw matter?

[Ticity]

Hello guys.
As a lot of other AMD fanboys, I've been looking in to the new Ryzen 7 lately.

One of the things that has come to mind, with the new build I'm putting together, is trying to get my head around the m.2 stick and ssd.

I have got to this point:
- M.2 sata = around 500/500 r/w, and high TBW.
- M.2 PCIe = potential of double and higher speeds, but lower TBW.

Also different manufacturers have a hugh difference in TBW, and even the size available on the drive. Example:
-Crucial CX300 sata - 525gb, 160TBW
-Kingston SSDnow sata, 480gb, 800TBW
-Intel 600p pcie - 512gb, 288TBW

So, is the TBW, a thing to put in to account, and if so, is it worth more than the speed an pcie would give?

Personally I will use it for Win. Boot and the games i play the most that are heavy to run. (GTA5 type)
Got a HyperX 240gb now that's a bit too small for me.
Might also use it to store gameplay videos, not sure what the future holds.

I've been googling this for a long time, and I can't get a direct answer.
Hope you guys can help out.
This turned out quite long, sorry about that!

 

[USAFRet]

In normal consumer and gaming use, you will never, ever reach that level of TBW.

Of the 8 SSD's I have here, spread across 3 systems, there is a cumulative ~30TBW, as reported by CrystalDiskInfo.
Some of those SSD's are almost 5 yrs old now.

Now....if you were running a large database server, with hundreds of thousands of writes and deletes per day...then maybe we'd have an issue.

Don't stress, it will be fine.

 

[Ticity]

Thanks for the answers!

Just to be clear, the MOBO I'm looking at is this ASUS ROG Crosshair VI X370

So, then we are down to SATA vs. PCIe connections.
Some of those PCIe speeds are insane, but its also a theoretical speed if I am not mistaken.
So how much of a difference does it make?
I found the Intel 600p is at a cheaper price point, than the rest of the "PCIe SSDs" , but at a lower "write" speed.

I understand that it also depends a little bit on how many PCIe lanes you got, and how many you are using for other parts.

Thanks for the help!

 

[USAFRet]

SATA vs PCI-E.
Yes, the PCI-E is faster. And as you note, sort of theoretical.

Looks great in benchmarks. Maybe not so much in real world usage.

Personally, I would not give up size for PCI-E.
Nor $$ for the same size PCI-E over SATA.

The OS and your games won't really operate much faster. Regular SATA drives are already blindingly fast.
If, at the end of your budgeting, there is sufficient left over for the price difference of a similar size PCI-E over a SATA III drive, then go for it.
But don't sacrifice something else, just for the PCI-E drive.

 

[USAFRet]

And for further clarification on the TBW thing, I did some calcs:

188TBW is a massive number.

Gamer
Lets assume a game install of 50GB (GTA V)
That is a full reinstall of the game every single day, 7 days a week, for 10 years.

Movie watcher
Lets assume a typical movie is 5GB
That is downloading or copying 10 movies every day, for 10 years. There aren't enough hours in the day to watch 10 movies @ 2 hours each.

Photographer
A recent medium grade DSLR or mirrorless will create an image of 30-35GB in RAW format.
That equates to 1000 shots, every day, for 16 years.


Now...that 188TBW does not scale 100% linearly. The drive housecleaning consumes some, in the TRIM function. But that is trivial, when taken in context.

And lastly, that 188TBW (or whatever number) is just the warranty number. Actual endurance tests have shown regular consumer grade drives to last to 750TBW and beyond, before actually starting to die from too many writes.

 

[Ticity]

Thanks for all the answers and the help!
Was not sure how taking data off the drive, while gaming, would count towards the TBW, but it seems to be just complete downloads and deletes.

I've seen that the "Intel 600p ssd" is kinda the best of both worlds.
Having a high capacity, high TBW, fast read speed, using PCIe and is at the same price as other "M.2 SATA III" drives of the same capacity.
I would belive that the faster read speed is the only thing needed, when gaming off the SSD.

Thanks for the help again, its great to learn new stuff! Thanks


It is a shame too put Intel parts in a AMD build tho' :lol:

 

[LordLuciendar]

Yes, the PCI-E is faster. And as you note, sort of theoretical. Looks great in benchmarks. Maybe not so much in real world usage.

I disagree that the performance difference is theoretical. While it is true that you'll essentially never see the theoretical maximum sequential performance, the performance benefit of NVMe vs SATA is still very significant.

I agree that the levels of TBW you are referencing are of non-concern for a consumer, even a gamer. Although with that said, I suggest that anyone considering an SSD consider the actual workload on their system. Do you use your system to create (graphics, engineering, animation, video capture, etc.)? If so you should just do some basic calculations based on some guesses about how much you write. Chances are that you'll still be way under, but it never hurts to be safe.

Back to the question of performance. In terms of effects on framerates for most of today's games, the difference will be negligible. With that said, there are still plenty of scenarios where NVMe shines. The parallel nature of NVMe (PCIe based SSDs) allows for significantly greater IOPS, which means random access for things like game files is greatly sped up and load times are greatly reduced, at least when they're not bottlenecked by graphics power. NVMe has a parallel queue, with something like 64k queue lanes compared to SATAs 1 queue lane. This parallel nature works extremely well with SSDs where any part of the disk can be read at any time without a performance hit, even simultaneously.

Tl;dr: NVMe was made for SSDs, SATA was made for HDD. If you have the choice of NVMe, I suggest it.

 

[Ticity]

Thanks for more answers!

So with the NVMe drive I was looking at, is the
Intel SSD 600p Series
Price here in Norway is 177USD
Is that an OK drive, the write speed is a bit low compared to the other NVMe drives like:
SAMSUNG 960 EVO
But the price on the samsung here in norway is closer to 300USD, so is it worth it?

At that price point i could just pay like 30USD more, and get a 1TB Crucial CX300, even with SATA its still twice the capacity.

But for my needs, booting up windows and running games, might be streaming, do i need fast Write, or is Read enough?

Thanks!