NVME or SATA SSD for gaming?

DotaGodTV

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16 hours a day of gaming plus video editing. 7 day, everyday.
SATA or NVME? because I heard that M.2's have over heating issues.
NVME owners please help
 
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Gaming, it's not going to make much of a difference. The game isn't going to be bottled necked by your storage. The difference in nanoseconds isn't something your going to notice. But for editing, it should help out. The faster I/O should help depending on the program your using.

As for heating up to the point of throttling, yeah that can be an issue. Aside from how heavy of a load you're running, the placement of the drive is important. You want good airflow over the unit, so boards that tuck it between PCIe slots (or worse under your video cards fans) are going to have more of an issue compared to boards that have it mounted perpendicular to the board or on the side of the board facing an intake fan.
 
I'm with Azaran... though I tend to think the differences for editing are probably fairly minor unless you're scrubbing through RAW 4K HDR footage with insane bitrates or something like that.

The only thing I would add is that most M.2 NVMe drives have to be worked extremely hard (usually at high queue depths) for a sustained period before throttling becomes an issue. Then, even under normal throttled conditions, I suspect most M.2 drives are still substantially faster than any SATA drive. Putting an M.2 drive directly in the path of exhaust airflow from an overclocked 1080ti isn't a great idea, but unless it's some silly layout like that, I really can't imagine throttling would ever be an issue for you.
 


I'm curious if any change has been made in the last year with the throttling issue under high loads. Pudget systems did a bit last year reviewing the 950 NVMe from Samsung and found that they got it to throttle pretty fast, but like you were saying it was under a high load. A year is a long time in terms of firmware updates and the such so it may not be as relevant today as a year ago.
 

Anandtech have their "destroyer" test which is absolutely brutal and found no evidence of throttling. Or if there was some throttling, service times remained extremely low throughout: http://www.anandtech.com/show/9702/samsung-950-pro-ssd-review-256gb-512gb/4
The difference (as the review suggests) is that the test inserts little gaps here and there (we're talking 25ms gaps - by the way, so hardly large), which emulated desktop workloads. There just aren't many scenarios where one person sitting at a desktop can flog one of these drives for the sorts of sustained periods that are required to expose significant throttling.

If Facebook tried to use them for their database servers, handling tens of thousands of requests per second and trying to populate thousands of people's timelines as they scroll down all at the same time, and try to do that 24/7... sure, we might see some thermal throttling which makes even high client M.2 drives unsuitable for those kinds of workloads. But a single user at a desktop, I just don't think so.
 
This was the article I was referring to in my previous post. They were able to get throttling but also acknowledge that the usage needed to get to that point is pretty rare.
https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Samsung-950-Pro-M-2-Throttling-Analysis-776/
 

DotaGodTV

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so, this means for me to use it 24/7 it wont have overheating issues?
or do you guys think its better to stick with normal SATA SSD is safer?
im really worried on investing money in a new tech thats unstable.
or should i just go for NVMe its not gonna throttle for my usage.

or should i share my build so you guys will get a better picture?
 


Feel free to share the build but you should be fine. It was more a point to show that while yes, throttling can occur, you have to be doing some pretty intensive read/writes to get to that point. Just make sure your ambient temp is well controlled through adequate air flow in your case and you should be fine.
 

DotaGodTV

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here is my build:

ASUS ROG Crosshair VI Hero Motherboard
AMD Ryzen 7 1700 Processor with Wraith Spire RGB Fan
ASUS ROG GeForce GTX 1080 Strix Aura 8GB
G.Skill Trident Z RGB F4-3200C16Q-32GTZR 32GB (4x8GB) DDR4
Samsung 960 EVO NVMe M.2 500GB SSD
Thermaltake Toughpower Grand RGB 850W 80 Plus Gold Power Supply
Thermaltake View 31 TG RGB Tempered Glass Mid-Tower Chassis
ASUS PG278Q ROG Swift 27in 144Hz G-Sync Gaming Monitor
I will use my old Benq rl2755 27" 1080p 60hz monitor as a second display.

i will be spending 16 hours a day gaming + live streaming on twitch + recording the game at the same time.
after that i will video edit + content creating & music creating + upload to Youtube.
im afraid that long hours of multi tasking + gaming will fry the NVMe or any of my hardware
hahaha

i think 2 - 3 more case fans will be needed just for security.
so a total of 5 - 6 fans given the case comes with 3 fans build in.
im so confused lol
 


I wouldn't over think it. Even taking constant usage in to account your case comes with two 140mm in the front and a rear 140mm exhaust, so your airflow is decent. The drive is a professional class drive so it's going to be built for high I/O usage. Your motherboard places the NVMe drive at the front of the motherboard so it's in direct airflow of the bottom two case fans. Since you're not using an HDD, you can take the front drive cage out and have plenty of airlow over your drive. You're not going to increase the air over the drive with more fans, so don't go crazy fans if you don't want to.
 
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DotaGodTV

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thanks for analyzing my build and all the time spend.
i really really appreciate it.
now i have no more worries buying the NVMe :D
 

Talha_6862

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I've got ZOTAC 480GB NVMe SSD and trust me, if you're getting an SSD for faster loading times than standard SATA SSD, you wont notice the difference. My friend's SSD loads games at just the same speed as mine. And NCIX Tech Tips just uploaded a video to prove that.
 

DotaGodTV

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When u say loading time do you mean the loading time for games?
Or do you mean the loading time when we edit large amount of videos?
I know we can save a lot of time for rendering videos if we have lots of RAMs but im not so sure about the SSD.
I am thinking is if i get NVMe it might save me more time coz of the read and write speed.

because i will be spending 16 hours a day gaming + live streaming on twitch + recording the game at the same time.
after that i will video edit + content creating & music creating + upload to Youtube.
so its not just purely for gaming purpose.

But do you experience any overheating or throttling while doing long hours of gaming? That is my main concern.
If it overheats while we play hardcore games then i will get a SATA drive instead.
 

Talha_6862

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No No, so far it's been working pretty great for me without any issues. and my gaming sessions are like yours, can go upto 16hrs/day. For video editing you'll get the benefit that your storage will never become a bottleneck but remember that you also wont be able to use 100% speed of your drive. My drive's write speed is 1400 MB/s but the max I've hit rendering at 4k 60fps is 600 MB/s (Usage remains 40-60%).
Btw mine isn't M.2. I have a PCIE slot NVMe SSD.
 

DotaGodTV

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i get what you mean now. you mean it's not worth spending the money on NVMe yet. better invest that money on other stuff that we can profit more from its performance. since it make not much of a difference if its not a server level kind of task. am i getting it right? haha
 

Talha_6862

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Haha yes xD but if you still really feel the need to upgrade to an NVMe, best find something around 1500 MB/s if you can get it cheap, those 2GB/s and 3GB/s speed are just overkills and seem like they will be for a few years. Oh and I should've mentioned that I got mine in september 2016, so its been a while since I've been using it and have yet to see if those $200 were worth the extra speed or not. Just feel now that getting more storage in SATA SSD would've been a better choice. Hope it helps :)
 

DotaGodTV

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how about this one?
Samsung 960 EVO NVMe M.2 500GB SSD
i think the price is not too bad compare to SATA drives.
 

Talha_6862

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Yeah I checked this one. Wish it was available when i decided to buy mine :p Could've saved a lot! Sure, go with this!
 

syzygy9

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I'm thinking you really need to get out more . . .