[SOLVED] NVMe Inquiry

[Pez]

Hi all.

I'm looking to get my first NVMe drive for some storage. I know that these types of drives have been around for a little while now, but they're new to me 😉

Heck, I remember back in the 90's, and the "A" drive with the diskette; 1.44 MB if I recall correctly. And also the hard drives back then had the flat IDE ribbon cable; anyone remember those?

And then of course the internal hard drives eventually went to a SATA cable connection. At some point years ago I went to a Solid State Drive, and boy, what a noticeable speed difference as far as data access goes! FAST!!!

Anyway, as hard drive-types keep changing, I want to keep up with those changes, plus, there's always the chance of a hard drive failing and losing data.

I know that one of the ways that Solid State Drives are better (besides being fast) is that there are no moving parts unlike standard typical hard drives that have the spinning platters inside.

Right now I have a Windows 11-based system. I have an SSD as my bootable "C" drive, but I also have - for storage - an internal, standard Western Digital 1 TB Hard Drive. I've had the 1 TB hard drive for somewhere around 6 years and have gotten much use out of it. But, I'd like to look into getting an NVMe drive for, one thing, keep up with modern storage, and, supposedly the access speed on these NVMe's is very fast.

Here's what I want to know:

If a motherboard has a slot for an NVMe drive, can just any NVMe drive fit? Or are there certain conditions that must be met? Are there different "generations" or "versions" of these types of drives that all systems may not meet?

My Motherboard is a Gigabyte B450M DS3H V2. It has a 1 x M.2 connector (Socket 3, M key, type 2242/2260/2280/22110 SATA and PCIe 3.0 x4/x2 SSD support). In the motherboard's manual, it states this:

"M2A_SOCKET (M.2 Socket 3 Connector)
The M.2 connectors support M.2 SATA SSDs or M.2 PCIe SSDs and support RAID configuration. (Please note that an M.2 PCIe SSD cannot be used to create a RAID set either with a SATA hard drive. To create a RAID array with an M.2 PCIe SSD, you must set up the configuration in UEFI BIOS mode. Refer to Chapter 3, "Configuring a RAID Set," for instructions on configuring a RAID array.)

I'm not interested in the RAID configuration aspect, so anyway.....

So, if I was interested in this Western Digital NVMe drive, would it work with my motherboard?
https://www.westerndigital.com/products/internal-drives/wd-black-sn850-nvme-ssd#WDS100T1X0E

And oh.....I noticed on my searches that NVMe's mention a "heatsink"; are these really necessary, or can you do without them and still get good performance and no danger of "overheating" 😛

Thanks for any helpful advice;
Pez

 

[USAFRet]

"Gigabyte B450M DS3H V2. It has a 1 x M.2 connector (Socket 3, M key, type 2242/2260/2280/22110 SATA and PCIe 3.0 x4/x2 SSD support) "

A Samsung 970 EVO or EVO Plus would be the default choice there.

The linked WD SN850 is a PCIe 4.0 device.
You'll not see its rated speed in that particular motherboard.

 

[SkyNetRising]

If a motherboard has a slot for an NVMe drive, can just any NVMe drive fit? Or are there certain conditions that must be met? Are there different "generations" or "versions" of these types of drives that all systems may not meet?

Generally - no. You have to check motherboard specifications, to find out compatible M.2 drive types.
There are M.2 slots, that can support only sata M.2 drives.

So, if I was interested in this Western Digital NVMe drive, would it work with my motherboard?
https://www.westerndigital.com/products/internal-drives/wd-black-sn850-nvme-ssd#WDS100T1X0E

Yes, it would work. In PCIE 3.0 mode though.

And oh.....I noticed on my searches that NVMe's mention a "heatsink"; are these really necessary, or can you do without them and still get good performance and no danger of "overheating" 😛

For PCIE 4.0 drives - yes they can get rather hot and heatsink is recommended.
PCIE 3.0 NVME drives usually are fine without a heatsink.

 

[Bob.B]

Hi all.

I'm looking to get my first NVMe drive for some storage. I know that these types of drives have been around for a little while now, but they're new to me 😉

Heck, I remember back in the 90's, and the "A" drive with the diskette; 1.44 MB if I recall correctly. And also the hard drives back then had the flat IDE ribbon cable; anyone remember those?

And then of course the internal hard drives eventually went to a SATA cable connection. At some point years ago I went to a Solid State Drive, and boy, what a noticeable speed difference as far as data access goes! FAST!!!

Anyway, as hard drive-types keep changing, I want to keep up with those changes, plus, there's always the chance of a hard drive failing and losing data.

I know that one of the ways that Solid State Drives are better (besides being fast) is that there are no moving parts unlike standard typical hard drives that have the spinning platters inside.

Right now I have a Windows 11-based system. I have an SSD as my bootable "C" drive, but I also have - for storage - an internal, standard Western Digital 1 TB Hard Drive. I've had the 1 TB hard drive for somewhere around 6 years and have gotten much use out of it. But, I'd like to look into getting an NVMe drive for, one thing, keep up with modern storage, and, supposedly the access speed on these NVMe's is very fast.

Here's what I want to know:

If a motherboard has a slot for an NVMe drive, can just any NVMe drive fit? Or are there certain conditions that must be met? Are there different "generations" or "versions" of these types of drives that all systems may not meet?

My Motherboard is a Gigabyte B450M DS3H V2. It has a 1 x M.2 connector (Socket 3, M key, type 2242/2260/2280/22110 SATA and PCIe 3.0 x4/x2 SSD support). In the motherboard's manual, it states this:

"M2A_SOCKET (M.2 Socket 3 Connector)
The M.2 connectors support M.2 SATA SSDs or M.2 PCIe SSDs and support RAID configuration. (Please note that an M.2 PCIe SSD cannot be used to create a RAID set either with a SATA hard drive. To create a RAID array with an M.2 PCIe SSD, you must set up the configuration in UEFI BIOS mode. Refer to Chapter 3, "Configuring a RAID Set," for instructions on configuring a RAID array.)

I'm not interested in the RAID configuration aspect, so anyway.....

So, if I was interested in this Western Digital NVMe drive, would it work with my motherboard?
https://www.westerndigital.com/products/internal-drives/wd-black-sn850-nvme-ssd#WDS100T1X0E

And oh.....I noticed on my searches that NVMe's mention a "heatsink"; are these really necessary, or can you do without them and still get good performance and no danger of "overheating" 😛

Thanks for any helpful advice;
Pez

If you want to keep it simple just get a 2.5 ssd.
Straight swap for the hdd.

Perf wise the diff between the 2.5 and the nvme m.2 is about zip.

If you have those benchmark numbers dancing in your eyeballs get the m.2.
BTDT.

 

[Pez]

Hi again; thanks for all the replies.

Sorry it took me a while to get back to you.......

So, it sounds like I was onto something in my original post when I asked about if there were different "generations" or "versions". So there's this 3.0 and 4.0 drives, eh?

USAFRet: If I get your meaning correctly, it sounds like from what you're saying in your reply ("You'll not see its rated speed in that particular motherboard") that the Western Digital drive I left in the link would be able to be put in my system, but, I would not see its top performance due to limitations of my motherboard, correct?

SkyNetRising: You mentioned "Generally - no. You have to check motherboard specifications, to find out compatible M.2 drive types. There are M.2 slots, that can support only sata M.2 drives ". I gave my motherboard's specifications in my original post regarding the slot for the M.2 connector socket.

BTW....cool screen-name 😉

Bob.B: You said "If you want to keep it simple just get a 2.5 ssd"; as a matter of fact, right now - as mentioned in my original post - I do have a 2.5 SSD as my bootable "C" drive. Nothing's wrong with it. I'm going to keep using that SSD as my boot drive. An NVMe drive that I'm interested in getting, for now, will replace the 2nd drive I have in my system, a standard Western Digital 1TB hard drive that I use for storage (pictures, videos, etc.).

I just want to keep up with the changing "types" of storage drives. Plus, after much time goes by, there is always the chance of drive failure 🙁

So, since with my current motherboard I would not be able to take advantage of a 4.0 type of drive, how about either of these:

https://www.westerndigital.com/products/internal-drives/wd-blue-sn550-nvme-ssd#WDS100T2B0C

https://www.samsung.com/us/computin...ssd-970-evo-plus-nvme-m-2-1-tb-mz-v7s1t0b-am/

Both of those are gen 3.0, correct?
Pez

 

[USAFRet]

Both of those are gen 3.0, correct?

Correct, and either will work.

Be advised....for 'storing picstures', you'll not really see any difference over a SATA III SSD.

 

[Nighthawk117]

If your motherboard supports NVME, then any NVME drive will work. The different PCI-E versions are backwards and forwards compatible.

I would recommend a 1TB Samsung 970 Evo Plus or 1TB Samsung 980. The WD Black SN850 is a very good drive but it's significantly more expensive where I live and you won't get the full speed. It does depend on your use case, but for storage you don't necessarily need the best SSD's on the market. SATA SSD's are still very worthwhile as you can often get a 2TB for similar price to something like a 1TB SN850.

As for the heatsink and NVME, from experience high performance drives run extremely hot without one. My Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1TB would run at 92C+ for the NAND Flash and 70C+ for the controller after doing very little.

 

[Pez]

Hi again; thanks for the replies, USAFRet & Nighthawk117.

Sorry for the delay; I know it's been a bit since I've come back to this message thread.....

USAFRet: I know I mentioned that I want an NVMe drive for storing pictures, videos, etc., and you mentioned that "you'll not really see any difference over a SATA III SSD", but I'm not really interested in the fastest speed for now (I will be, in a future system build I'll do, but that's not for a while yet). For now, I just want to get an NVMe drive so I can keep up with the latest "type" of drive.

In my original post, I mentioned about the old days, with things like the diskette "A" drive, and hard drives with the flat ribbon cable connector, and then hard drives went to a SATA cable connection, and then there was the introduction of Solid State Drives at one point. So, whether it's the connection cable that changes, or the physical drive itself that changes, ya gotta keep up with the latest & greatest 😉

Plus, as I also mentioned in my original post, my additional internal hard drive, in addition to my SSD boot drive, is a standard Western Digital hard drive, and hard drives have those spinning platters inside, and, there's always that possibility of the drive failing one day when the platters won't spin up anymore and then FAILURE. I've had that drive somewhere around 6 years, and who knows, maybe it's getting closer to 10 😛 So, I want to transfer all the data on this drive over onto an NVMe drive that I'm looking to get; it doesn't have to be the fastest right now, just the fact that it will be an NVMe type of drive. In the future when I do a new system build, I'll probably get a Western Digital Black NVMe drive, their fastest drives.

But for now.....

In my post above I gave this link:
https://www.westerndigital.com/products/internal-drives/wd-blue-sn550-nvme-ssd#WDS100T2B0C

When I went to Amazon.com to look for it, it led here:
https://www.amazon.com/Blue-SN550-1...x=wd+blue+sn550+nvme+ssd,computers,109&sr=1-3

....and I noticed on this page that there was a little insert that said "There is a newer model of this item" with another link that leads to this:
https://www.amazon.com/Western-Digi...p-B09HKDQ1RN/dp/B09HKDQ1RN/ref=dp_ob_title_ce

If I'm reading it correctly, the difference between these two Western Digital drives is:
- The Model number (SN550 & SN570)
- And the speed transfer (SN550 up to 2,600 MB /s, and SN570 up to 3,500 MB /s)

But, they're both Gen 3, so that should be good with my motherboard, correct? I know it's been stated that these drives are forward and backward compatible, but for my current system build (Gen 3 on motherboard), I don't need the fastest NVMe drive.

So, does the WD SN570 look good for my system?
Pez

 

[USAFRet]

SN550 or SN750....either will work.
You'll see little if any difference between the two.

Whichever is less expensive.