Using multiple M.2-2280 SSDs on mobo with 1 slot? How to know if I can use expansion slot for more?

[Kobe Eveleigh]

I initially ruled out the M.2-2280's but have seen prices come down a little so now I think I'd prefer to buy those over the previous type.

But my motherboard I've just ordered ( MSI Z270-A Pro) only has one compatible slot for M.2 2280-B-M.

Can I use a PCI-e expansion card for an additional M.2 slot or maybe 2? Such as this one:

https://www.amazon.ca/PCIE-SSD-3-0-4-LANE-ADAPTER/dp/B00KDM75XK

I am going to be using only 1 HDD (Seagate Barracuda 2TB)
and will probably use 2 or 3 SSD that will be bought at separate times.
1. Western Digital Green 120GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive: Mainly for Windows 10 plus it'll be a starter SSD for a bit.
2a. Samsung 850 EVO 500GB M.2-2280

2b. Samsung 850 EVO 1TB M.2-2280 OR Western Digital Blue 1TB M.2-2280

3. If I bought Samsung 850 EVO M.2-2280, getting a second eventually

 

[elbert]

Yup but most motherboards will only boot from the M.2 slot. IE the PCI slot ones must be used as extra space.

 

[Kobe Eveleigh]

Can I use the WD Green 120GB M.2-2280 in main M.2 slot then throw in the Samsung 850 EVO 1T OR 500GB M.2-2280 in the expansion card's M.2 slot?

Can I possibly use 2 expansion slots to run 2 Samsung 850 EVO 500GB M.2-2280's if I wanted to. Don't know when I'd buy the 2nd/3rd.

Going to be playing Fallout 4 on the WD Green initially, probably will buy the EVO after I start running out of space. While I am running with WD Green & HDD only I will only have Windows & FO4 on the 120GB SSD till I can buy the EVO.

After I run out of SSD space I'll either buy 500GB or 1TB depending on what I can afford. I think I prefer sticking to M.2-2280 only if possible since the increased speed over SATA SSDs appears to be significant. Thanks

 

[rhysiam]

So you understand that M.2 drives are a "form factor", but depending on the type of drive, they use different types of interfaces to connect with the PC.

All the M.2 drives you've listed there are "SATA" M.2 Drives. So that means they are identical to the standard 2.5" SATA drives models, expect they come in the M.2 form factor. The won't run any faster (or slower) than the 2.5" units.
You can get PCIe cards that take an M.2 SSD, but almost all of them require "PCIe" SSDs (not SATA SSDs), because all they're doing is routing the PCIe lanes from the M.2 card to the correct pins in a PCIe slot. A SATA M.2 SSD needs to sit behind a SATA controller. Most M.2 slots manage (those compatible with "B" type M.2 drives), because the motherboard will route the appropriate pins to either a SATA controller, or PCIe lanes, depending on the type of drive connected. But a PCIe slots is just a PCIe slot, so it cannot take a SATA drive.

Usually it's not worth getting high speed SSDs unless you have particularly IO intensive workloads - and gaming and even most productivity workloads just don't push storage systems hard enough to separate expensive SSDs from entry level ones. It's a bit like taking your high end sports car on a busy commute to work. Sure it's theoretically faster when presented with the right conditions, but if there's never a point when you can actually put your foot to the floor, all the extra theoretical speed of that "faster" car can't be tapped.

If you really do want high speed storage then look at "NVMe" drives, like the Intel 600P (entry level), Samsung 960 EVO or similar. They are PCIe NVMe drives which will work either in an M.2 slot or in a PCIe -> M.2 adapter.
But any of those drives you're looking at are just SATA drives, so by all means get them, but if you want more than one just buy the 2.5" equivalent and connect them using standard SATA cables.

 

[USAFRet]

A 120GB drive, of any type, is too damn small.
Don't get so wrapped up in the m.2 concept that you short yourself on actual usable space.

Secondarily, the "m.2" is simply the connection type.
You're looking at SATA m.2 drives. Which run at exactly trhe same speed as 2.5" SATA SSD's.

 

[elbert]

Can I use the WD Green 120GB M.2-2280 in main M.2 slot then throw in the Samsung 850 EVO 1T OR 500GB M.2-2280 in the expansion card's M.2 slot?

Can I possibly use 2 expansion slots to run 2 Samsung 850 EVO 500GB M.2-2280's if I wanted to. Don't know when I'd buy the 2nd/3rd.

Going to be playing Fallout 4 on the WD Green initially, probably will buy the EVO after I start running out of space. While I am running with WD Green & HDD only I will only have Windows & FO4 on the 120GB SSD till I can buy the EVO.

After I run out of SSD space I'll either buy 500GB or 1TB depending on what I can afford. I think I prefer sticking to M.2-2280 only if possible since the increased speed over SATA SSDs appears to be significant. Thanks

Yup you can do this by linking them. Do know the only advantage with the 850 m.2's are the pcie latency. The 960 evo's are faster by a lot.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2110095/the-ultimate-guide-to-proper-ssd-management.html

 

[rhysiam]

Yup you can do this by linking them. Do know the only advantage with the 850 m.2's are the pcie latency. The 960 evo's are faster by a lot.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2110095/the-ultimate-guide-to-proper-ssd-management.html

850 EVOs in M.2 are simply SATA drives. PCIe latency has nothing to do with it. AND, putting a SATA SSD in a standard PCIe M.2 adapter will NOT work. There are some which will draw power from the PCIe slot, and you can plug a standard SATA cable into the "card" which then gets routed to the SATA M.2 SSD. I suspect there are also some with SATA controllers built in. But the bottom line is, a SATA M.2 drive needs to be connected directly to a SATA controller, as I said in my first post. Which makes any PCIe solution kinda janky. You can run a cable to PCIe adapter, but why at that point would you not just buy a 2.5" drive?

 

[elbert]

Yup you can do this by linking them. Do know the only advantage with the 850 m.2's are the pcie latency. The 960 evo's are faster by a lot.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2110095/the-ultimate-guide-to-proper-ssd-management.html

850 EVOs in M.2 are simply SATA drives. PCIe latency has nothing to do with it. AND, putting a SATA SSD in a standard PCIe M.2 adapter will NOT work. There are some which will draw power from the PCIe slot, and you can plug a standard SATA cable into the "card" which then gets routed to the SATA M.2 SSD. I suspect there are also some with SATA controllers built in. But the bottom line is, a SATA M.2 drive needs to be connected directly to a SATA controller, as I said in my first post. Which makes any PCIe solution kinda janky. You can run a cable to PCIe adapter, but why at that point would you not just buy a 2.5" drive?

They are but being directly connected to pci lane means less latency. Plus this does make them a bit faster.

 

[Kobe Eveleigh]

So only the 960 EVO actually offers the higher speeds? Should i consider the 960 if my only uses are Windows 10, Fallout 4, Skyrim SE & your average AAA all at 4K.

I'm hesitant to get one as the price is quite high.

 

[USAFRet]

They are but being directly connected to pci lane means less latency. Plus this does make them a bit faster.

Numbers from your charts:
0.217 v 0.222
511 v 510
312 v 309

Those differences are so small as to be completely lost in the noise.
Absolutely inconsequential.

 

[rhysiam]

They are but being directly connected to pci lane means less latency. Plus this does make them a bit faster.

Do you mind linking the source to that. I'm confused as to what you're arguing here.

An 850 EVO has to go into a SATA controller... whether M.2 or 2.5" doesn't really make a difference it's a SATA drive and thus needs a SATA controller.

The PCIe expansion card OP has linked in the initial request is for PCIe M.2 cards only. The 850 EVO is B+M keyed so will physically fit in that expansion card, but all that PCIe card is doing is routing PCIe lanes from the M.2 slot to the PCIe slot. 850 EVO needs a B keyed SATA M.2 slot to work. If OP plugs an 850 EVO or WD Green into that expansion card it will not be detected... it will not work.

I don't want to be pedantic or annoying here. It's just that unless I'm very much mistaken, you're advising OP to do something that flat-out will not work. If I am very much mistaken, I'd appreciate being set straight here, I absolutely do not want to be giving incorrect advice! But 850 EVO is SATA drive... needs SATA controller whether M.2 or 2.5".
As I said earlier, there are some PCIe cards which support "SATA" M.2 Drives, but they have a SATA port on them (which you use to connect to your motherboard's SATA controller, like this one: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815283040&cm_re=M.2_PCIe_adapter-_-15-283-040-_-Product
With that product above... why wouldn't OP just get a normal 2.5" drive?

 

[elbert]

I took the pcie card as just an example. IE can he use more than one once the one fills up. He's asking theretical so he needs to come back to toms when he's about to purchase. He will need a card down the road depending on which second ssd he hasnt purchased yet. Now if the OP gets those ssd's it will take a different card. Now as the tech report test show the m.2 versions are faster. You can right click on the images to see where they are from.

Given the future SSD's the OP should get a card for 2 x m.2's. Somthing that will work with whatever type. Such as this one.
http://

 

[rhysiam]

I took the pcie card as just an example. IE can he use more than one once the one fills up. He's asking theretical so he needs to come back to toms when he's about to purchase. He will need a card down the road depending on which second ssd he hasnt purchased yet. Now if the OP gets those ssd's it will take a different card. Now as the tech report test show the m.2 versions are faster. You can right click on the images to see where they are from.

Given the future SSD's the OP should get a card for 2 x m.2's. Somthing that will work with whatever type. Such as this one.
http://

RE Performance, I'm totally with @USAFRet, those performance stats are totally within margin of error.
Those charts are coming through as images for me, so no source available, but Googling, I'm guessing it's this review: http://techreport.com/review/28025/samsung-850-evo-m-2-solid-state-drive-reviewed
Which concludes that the drives are "pretty much identical" outside the form factor.
Also, with respect, your statement above that: "being directly connected to pci lane means less latency" is not correct, because they're not connected to PCIe lanes, they're connected to a SATA controller just like the 2.5" drives are.

That adapter you linked is similar to the one I linked earlier. It supports 2 drives, but only ONE of each type. So one PCIe drive, and one SATA drive via the SATA cable. Unless OP intends to get an expensive PCIe drive, that adapter doesn't offer anything.
I still don't really understand why you'd go M.2 SATA + expansion card upfront over just getting a regular 2.5" SSD. Either way you use a SATA port and have a SATA cable to route/deal with. But the M.2 + adapter options takes one of your limited PCIe slots. The only thing it saves is routing an additional SATA power cable, but OP has a HDD anyway, so mounting a 2.5" SSD next to the HDD, there should be a spare SATA power cable sitting right there. Anyway - whatever OP wants is fine here, as long as she/he is making an informed decision.

The key point here, and one that people regularly get confused about and we need to make sure people spending their money understand: M.2 is form factor and on it's own has no impact on performance.
PCIe NVMe drives (Intel 750, Intel 600p, 960 Evo, 960 Pro) tend to be faster and the form factor, whether PCIe, 2.5" U2 or M.2 has little impact.
SATA drives (WD Green, 850 Evo) tend to be "slower", but plenty fast enough for most workloads and more affordable. But again - the form factor (whether M.2, mSATA or 2.5") has no impact.

If we want to get really pedantic some NVMe drives get hot under sustained load and can start to throttle. That can give larger 2.5" drives, or drives with a heatsync, or drives that aren't getting baked in warm GPU air a performance advantage. But generally speaking, form factor does not impact on performance.

OP: can I get back to your original question.
1) I 100% agree with @USAFRet: 120GB is annoyingly small, and priced so close to 250GB drives that it very rarely makes sense.
2) For a normal gaming computer, the extra money on a PCIe NVMe drive is normally much better spent elsewhere. I'd just get a SATA drive if I was you.
NCIX have a great special on the 3D MLC SU900 right now, 256GB for $85 (that's normally a $130 drive) - but sale ends soon: http://www.ncixus.com/products/?usaffiliateid=1000031504&sku=138851
If you really want an M.2 SATA drive (remember it's no faster, just a different form factor):
Budget option SP550 for $80: https://pcpartpicker.com/product/yVWrxr/a-data-premier-sp550-240gb-m2-2280-solid-state-drive-asp550ns38-240gm-c
Or $20 extra for the 850 EVO: https://pcpartpicker.com/product/8WZ2FT/samsung-internal-hard-drive-mzn5e250bw
Personally I'd leave your M.2 slot free, because in future PCIe drives should drop in price, and you could upgrade to one in future. While you could then buy an adapter to reuse your current SATA m.2 drive and free up the slot... it's a hassle. I'd keep the M.2 slot free for future.
Down the track you can expand your storage with whatever you want. Start a new thread if you're looking for upgrade advice in the future.

 

[elbert]

Can I use the WD Green 120GB M.2-2280 in main M.2 slot then throw in the Samsung 850 EVO 1T OR 500GB M.2-2280 in the expansion card's M.2 slot?

Can I possibly use 2 expansion slots to run 2 Samsung 850 EVO 500GB M.2-2280's if I wanted to. Don't know when I'd buy the 2nd/3rd.

Going to be playing Fallout 4 on the WD Green initially, probably will buy the EVO after I start running out of space. While I am running with WD Green & HDD only I will only have Windows & FO4 on the 120GB SSD till I can buy the EVO.

After I run out of SSD space I'll either buy 500GB or 1TB depending on what I can afford. I think I prefer sticking to M.2-2280 only if possible since the increased speed over SATA SSDs appears to be significant. Thanks

Yes you can just come back to toms when you ready to buy get the best PCIE card. They are a small bit faster
so sure its the way to go now for the price. Later tho this may change when your ready to buy. The cards with baked in sata 3 may be better priced then also. There are many options and will be more in the future.
http://

 

[rhysiam]

Yes you can just come back to toms when you ready to buy get the best PCIE card. They are a small bit faster
so sure its the way to go now for the price. Later tho this may change when your ready to buy. The cards with baked in sata 3 may be better priced then also. There are many options and will be more in the future.
http://

If you are considering one of the cards like that one linked above that have a SATA3 controller onboard, just bear in mind that the SATA controller does have a huge impact on the performance of the SSD it's connected to. Here's an old article if you're interested: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/storage-controller-performance-ssd,3540.html
Hopefully ASMedia and Marvel have upped their game since that article was written, but the point is, if you're connected your SSD to something other than a non built-in Intel or AMD SATA controller, you'd want to do some careful research to make sure that specific controller is a high quality one with good driver support. Because if not, you will be sacrificing performance.

OP - I don't know whether my previous wall-of-text post was too much information? Even if you can't be bothered reading it all, the last paragraph is directly answering your question with some specific recommendations that should be helpful.

 

[Kobe Eveleigh]

Yes you can just come back to toms when you ready to buy get the best PCIE card. They are a small bit faster
so sure its the way to go now for the price. Later tho this may change when your ready to buy. The cards with baked in sata 3 may be better priced then also. There are many options and will be more in the future.
http://

If you are considering one of the cards like that one linked above that have a SATA3 controller onboard, just bear in mind that the SATA controller does have a huge impact on the performance of the SSD it's connected to. Here's an old article if you're interested: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/storage-controller-performance-ssd,3540.html
Hopefully ASMedia and Marvel have upped their game since that article was written, but the point is, if you're connected your SSD to something other than a non built-in Intel or AMD SATA controller, you'd want to do some careful research to make sure that specific controller is a high quality one with good driver support. Because if not, you will be sacrificing performance.

OP - I don't know whether my previous wall-of-text post was too much information? Even if you can't be bothered reading it all, the last paragraph is directly answering your question with some specific recommendations that should be helpful.

On the contrary it gave me a lot to think about, it's clear right away my original idea isn't what I ought to be doing. Pretty much had to reevaluate the plan as I had a bunch of M.2-2280's that were actually SATAs saved on PCpartspicker so I removed those. Since 960 EVO's are the ones that actually offer the increased speed vs SATA I have to give them another look. Need to think about what's a reasonable price limit for me.

Current decision is to buy the 850 EVO 500 GB 2.5" as my 1st SSD and I'm considering saving up for a 960 EVO 500GB/250GB afterwards. I think I'll first order the 850 now then buy my GPU which will then allow me to actually build my PC. After that I may buy the 960 EVO as a 2nd SSD and it will be my main with the 850 as a secondary.

I also had another question about what I think may be a myth a friend told me: Are the larger SSDs like 1TB/500GB slower due to their size? He stuck with the 250GB model because of this. I've not been able to find anything on the internet about this exact question.

Can I choose Solution and have the discussion continue or does it end thread? I think I've reached a decision for now but still have potential interest in an PCIE NVMe SSD in the future. Although from your most recent post I think I'll probably avoid the expansion at least for now. Evidently it requires research as I wouldn't want to end up buying junk. I think I'd choose your earlier post as Solution as it's saved me from some pretty significant annoyances like buying an M.2 850 and not getting faster performance than the 2.5" as both are actually SATA or getting a bad expansion card and ending up with bad SSD performance which would be very disappointing and a significant waste of money. I am a bit concerned about that article(seemingly) comparing also different motherboard's integrated slots, does that mean this is something that should have been factored into my motherboard choice? I bought an MSI Z-270-A Pro, hopefully the SATA 6 GB/S slots are good(do these vary between mobos)?

Just am debating if I want to stick with SATAs or buy an NVMe 960 EVO either 500GB or 250GB at some point. I'll rule out an 850 EVO M.2-2280, as AFAIK form factor won't matter at all. I have a Corsair 200R ATX Mid Tower case so space shouldn't be a problem. My full storage configuration should easily fit on my motherboard, it'll be at maximum 1 HDD, 2-3 SSDs, 16GB(2x8) RAM with a slim possibility of eventually upping it to 32GB and IDK maybe a sound card. SLI not supported so that won't be happening.

Would the 960 EVO offer a significant further improvement in boot times or in-game loading times for games like Fallout 4/Skyrim over the 850 EVO?

I live in Canada so prices are significantly higher.
Pricing(from ca.PCpartspicker):
1TB:
Samsung 850 EVO 1TB 2.5" = $432
Mushkin Reactor 1TB 2.5" = $330
Samsun 960 EVO 1TB M.2-2280 = $700(It would cost me as much as a decent GTX 1080 model!)
500GB:
Mushkin ECO2 512GB 2.5" =$229.99
Samsung 850 EVO 500GB =$239(Sale price down from $300)
Samsung 960 EVO 500GB =$350+
250GB:
Samsung 960 EVO 250GB =$170+

About the 120GB SSD, it was on for CAD $71 which is quite cheap and usually the 120GB are priced about the same price as the 250GB models. I'd use it only for Windows plus maybe 1 game only and I'd use this setup until space runs out or I have cash for a bigger SSD. Afterwards I'd use it for Windows only(I might put a couple random programs like Blender or something). Just an idea I had, for all I know it may be insufficient for even only the OS? From what I read Windows 10 doesn't require too much space but does get larger with each update. From the replies in this thread I'm thinking I shouldn't bother with this 120GB, too small to be useful.

EDIT: Just ordered the Samsung 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive

 

[elbert]

I woudn't suggest making a choice on old 840 reviews with older addon cards. There are good ones out there. I would suggest the 960evo but you should using it as a boot drive and move the 850 you plan now to a card. Your friend is wrong on the larger myth being slower. They are faster with a larger fast cache SLC of 42MB's among other advantages. Do understand SSD for game drives dont make a big advantage. Most games live in RAM which is way faster. Linking your SSD to your HD would do about as good a job.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/10833/the-samsung-960-evo-1tb-review

 

[rhysiam]

I also had another question about what I think may be a myth a friend told me: Are the larger SSDs like 1TB/500GB slower due to their size?

@Elbert answered this already - but yeah - your friend is wrong on this. Actually, it's often the other way around. These a few reasons for this if you're interested. Actually writing and reading to a NAND cells (the storage that SSDs are based on) is not dramatically faster than old spinning HDDs. But one of the key reasons SSDs are so fast is that controllers have multiple channels and NAND chips, and they read/write to/from these simultaneously. So when you write to an SSD like the 850 EVO, the controller can address 8 different portions of the NAND and will split up those writes over the 8 different locations. Later read operations on that data are then similarly be "parallelised" - i.e. 8 different reads occurring simultaneously - which has an obvious performance benefit over an old HDD which has to move a single physical head over a spinning disk to read data back one block at a time. To reduce the cost of SSDs, NAND dies have gotten higher and higher density (able to store more data in a single NAND die), but that reduces the number of channels available on smaller SSDs... thus reducing performance.
Also, most SSDs devote a portion of NAND to an SLC cache - which is much faster (particularly for writes). As long as your writes are small enough to fit within the SLC cache performance is great, but exceed it, and many SSDs (particularly cheaper ones) will slow down dramatically. Larger drives often have larger SLC caches, and thus cope with more writes before performance suffers.
Finally - SSD controllers use spare area to maintain good performance under sustained writes (once the SLC cache is full). Obviously larger drives tend to have more spare area, and thus can hold up better under sustained load.
Here's an (extreme!) example: http://www.anandtech.com/show/8747/samsung-ssd-850-evo-review/7
Look at the "Heavy Workload" and see how much faster the larger 850 EVOs are.
FYI -> That is a VERY intense workload that is NOT representative of real-world use AT ALL! So don't think you need to go out and buy the 500GB Drive because otherwise it'll be slow... the 250GB 850 EVO is great under most workloads (the "light" chart below demonstrates that). I'm just making the point that larger drives to tend to be "faster" theoretically. And 120GB drives are often noticeably slower.

Can I choose Solution and have the discussion continue or does it end thread?

Yes - feel free. A thread doesn't get closed unless a mod actively closes it, which usually only happens if it gets off track or excessively trolled. I'm happy to answer a few more questions if you have them. Others may or may not, I don't know.

I am a bit concerned about that article(seemingly) comparing also different motherboard's integrated slots, does that mean this is something that should have been factored into my motherboard choice? I bought an MSI Z-270-A Pro, hopefully the SATA 6 GB/S slots are good(do these vary between mobos)?

Intel built-in SATA controllers are fantastic and always have been. You've got an Intel board which includes the fantastic Intel SATA controllers. There's nothing to worry about here. Those add-in cards with SATA controllers onboard, as well as some higher end motherboards which provide additional SATA ports over those baked into Intel & AMD chipsets, will use 3rd party controllers from the likes of ASMedia and Marvel. As I noted, that article I linked is really old and it's entirely possible those 3rd party controllers are equally good these days. I honestly don't know. All I was trying to do is make the simple point that if you're going to pay a little more for a fast SSD, it's not a good idea to plug it into a 3rd party controller which has a significant chance of being quite a bit slower and is difficult to get reliable performance data on.
Baked in Intel (and I'd expect modern AMD) SATA controllers should be great... nothing to worry about.

Would the 960 EVO offer a significant further improvement in boot times or in-game loading times for games like Fallout 4/Skyrim over the 850 EVO?

No... real world performance metrics consistently show very little difference even between entry level and premium SSDs, let alone distinguish a solid mid range SSD (like the 850 EVO) from a high-end-but-not-premium one (like the 960 EVO).
Here's Tom's Hardware review for the premium 960 Pro - probably the best consumer SSD on the market: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-960-pro-ssd-review,4774-2.html
Don't get wooed by the benchmarks... just look at the suite of charts you can click on under the headin "PCMark 8 Real-World Software Performance". There's very little difference.
Here's the 850 EVO review which reports on the same benchmarks (unfortunately the drives are not included in both review, so you have to compare): http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-850-evo-4tb-ssd-review,4623-3.html
There a few % difference between the 960 Pro and 850 EVO - which costs roughly half the price.
That's why the best advice from many people here on the forums says that fast storage is very rarely the best way to allocate a limited budget... and never the right choice for a gaming machine unless your budget is so large that you've basically got the best of everything else and still have money to burn.

The 850 EVO 250GB is a great purchase. It should serve you well. If you want to upgrade in future by all means start a new thread. But at this point in time, you'd likely be better served getting a large cheap SSD to fit your entire game library, than you would switching your OS to an NVMe SSD (like the 960 EVO) and battling with game shuffling or running some games off a HDD.

 

[Kobe Eveleigh]

I woudn't suggest making a choice on old 840 reviews with older addon cards. There are good ones out there. I would suggest the 960evo but you should using it as a boot drive and move the 850 you plan now to a card. Your friend is wrong on the larger myth being slower. They are faster with a larger fast cache SLC of 42MB's among other advantages. Do understand SSD for game drives dont make a big advantage. Most games live in RAM which is way faster. Linking your SSD to your HD would do about as good a job.

The main thing that sold me on SSDs was seeing a Youtube video showing Skyrim running on an SSD. My current laptop loading from main menu can take 3-5 minutes, maybe longer with many mods installed. Entering buildings can be 2 minutes easily, entering a city gate can be 3 minutes easily. Long loading times are probably the #1 reason I don't play the game anymore. I'm looking forward to going back on my new PC, there'll be a lot of mods I haven't tried yet since I didn't play since 2012.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqoKUFGjFR0

I think I am going to refrain from using an Expansion Card for an additional M.2 slot unless there is one I can be sure will not compromise performance when compared to Intel's. I will consider a 960 EVO in the future or maybe Pro if prices come down at all but from what rhysiam said it may not result in significant gains vs the 850 EVO. I will wait until my 850 EVO 500GB fills up before either buying another 850 or a 960. I guess RAM could have been another cause for my long loading as I am currently using 8GB DDR3 540mhz, HDD is a 5400RPM.

[strike]Western Digital Green 120GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive[/strike]: Not buying this thing, the information in this thread has 100% convinced me this won't be a good purchase for me. I am starting out with 500GB 850 EVO 2.5" and will buy a second SSD with either 500GB or 1TB. Going to stick with larger SSDs only.

I also had another question about what I think may be a myth a friend told me: Are the larger SSDs like 1TB/500GB slower due to their size?

@Elbert answered this already - but yeah - your friend is wrong on this. Actually, it's often the other way around. These a few reasons for this if you're interested. Actually writing and reading to a NAND cells (the storage that SSDs are based on) is not dramatically faster than old spinning HDDs. But one of the key reasons SSDs are so fast is that controllers have multiple channels and NAND chips, and they read/write to/from these simultaneously. So when you write to an SSD like the 850 EVO, the controller can address 8 different portions of the NAND and will split up those writes over the 8 different locations. Later read operations on that data are then similarly be "parallelised" - i.e. 8 different reads occurring simultaneously - which has an obvious performance benefit over an old HDD which has to move a single physical head over a spinning disk to read data back one block at a time. To reduce the cost of SSDs, NAND dies have gotten higher and higher density (able to store more data in a single NAND die), but that reduces the number of channels available on smaller SSDs... thus reducing performance.
Also, most SSDs devote a portion of NAND to an SLC cache - which is much faster (particularly for writes). As long as your writes are small enough to fit within the SLC cache performance is great, but exceed it, and many SSDs (particularly cheaper ones) will slow down dramatically. Larger drives often have larger SLC caches, and thus cope with more writes before performance suffers.
Finally - SSD controllers use spare area to maintain good performance under sustained writes (once the SLC cache is full). Obviously larger drives tend to have more spare area, and thus can hold up better under sustained load.
Here's an (extreme!) example: http://www.anandtech.com/show/8747/samsung-ssd-850-evo-review/7
Look at the "Heavy Workload" and see how much faster the larger 850 EVOs are.
FYI -> That is a VERY intense workload that is NOT representative of real-world use AT ALL! So don't think you need to go out and buy the 500GB Drive because otherwise it'll be slow... the 250GB 850 EVO is great under most workloads (the "light" chart below demonstrates that). I'm just making the point that larger drives to tend to be "faster" theoretically. And 120GB drives are often noticeably slower.

Can I choose Solution and have the discussion continue or does it end thread?

Yes - feel free. A thread doesn't get closed unless a mod actively closes it, which usually only happens if it gets off track or excessively trolled. I'm happy to answer a few more questions if you have them. Others may or may not, I don't know.

I am a bit concerned about that article(seemingly) comparing also different motherboard's integrated slots, does that mean this is something that should have been factored into my motherboard choice? I bought an MSI Z-270-A Pro, hopefully the SATA 6 GB/S slots are good(do these vary between mobos)?

Intel built-in SATA controllers are fantastic and always have been. You've got an Intel board which includes the fantastic Intel SATA controllers. There's nothing to worry about here. Those add-in cards with SATA controllers onboard, as well as some higher end motherboards which provide additional SATA ports over those baked into Intel & AMD chipsets, will use 3rd party controllers from the likes of ASMedia and Marvel. As I noted, that article I linked is really old and it's entirely possible those 3rd party controllers are equally good these days. I honestly don't know. All I was trying to do is make the simple point that if you're going to pay a little more for a fast SSD, it's not a good idea to plug it into a 3rd party controller which has a significant chance of being quite a bit slower and is difficult to get reliable performance data on.
Baked in Intel (and I'd expect modern AMD) SATA controllers should be great... nothing to worry about.

Would the 960 EVO offer a significant further improvement in boot times or in-game loading times for games like Fallout 4/Skyrim over the 850 EVO?

No... real world performance metrics consistently show very little difference even between entry level and premium SSDs, let alone distinguish a solid mid range SSD (like the 850 EVO) from a high-end-but-not-premium one (like the 960 EVO).
Here's Tom's Hardware review for the premium 960 Pro - probably the best consumer SSD on the market: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-960-pro-ssd-review,4774-2.html
Don't get wooed by the benchmarks... just look at the suite of charts you can click on under the headin "PCMark 8 Real-World Software Performance". There's very little difference.
Here's the 850 EVO review which reports on the same benchmarks (unfortunately the drives are not included in both review, so you have to compare): http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-850-evo-4tb-ssd-review,4623-3.html
There a few % difference between the 960 Pro and 850 EVO - which costs roughly half the price.
That's why the best advice from many people here on the forums says that fast storage is very rarely the best way to allocate a limited budget... and never the right choice for a gaming machine unless your budget is so large that you've basically got the best of everything else and still have money to burn.

The 850 EVO 250GB is a great purchase. It should serve you well. If you want to upgrade in future by all means start a new thread. But at this point in time, you'd likely be better served getting a large cheap SSD to fit your entire game library, than you would switching your OS to an NVMe SSD (like the 960 EVO) and battling with game shuffling or running some games off a HDD.

Great post that answers pretty much everything IMO. I strongly agree on the budget point as I'm needing to buy the GPU and a better monitor still and have to choose between 1080 and 1080 Ti. GPU is last purchase needed before I can build.


I'll just note that I bought the 500GB version, not the 250GB version. I had wanted larger SSDs as I'm going to be modding Fallout 4 & Skyrim(#1 purpose for this PC), using many different mods and trying to create my own . I'm 90% sure I'll just buy 850 EVO eventually, either another 500GB or maybe a 1TB.

 

[Kobe Eveleigh]

The 850 EVO 250GB is a great purchase. It should serve you well. If you want to upgrade in future by all means start a new thread. But at this point in time, you'd likely be better served getting a large cheap SSD to fit your entire game library, than you would switching your OS to an NVMe SSD (like the 960 EVO) and battling with game shuffling or running some games off a HDD.

I had a question about this. Do you think a 1TB SSD like Mushkin Reactor 1TB or Mushkin Enhanced Reactor 1TB would do alright as a secondary SSD? These are definitely the cheapest 1TB options. Although this 2nd SSD won't be purchased too soon I wonder if I should consider it an okay SSD or rule it out?

 

[rhysiam]

I had a question about this. Do you think a 1TB SSD like Mushkin Reactor 1TB or Mushkin Enhanced Reactor 1TB would do alright as a secondary SSD? These are definitely the cheapest 1TB options. Although this 2nd SSD won't be purchased too soon I wonder if I should consider it an okay SSD or rule it out?

I honestly don't know what the "Enchanced" version actually means, and PCPartPicker link to it as a standard "Reactor". I don't think the "enhanced" version is actually any different because I can't find any information on it from Mushkin's website and the specs on Newegg are lifted straight from Muskin's page on the standard "Reactor" drive. The Reactor is an older drive, but it's MLC and actually quite decent. It's exactly the sort of drive I was referring to when I suggested getting a cheap drive for the game library.

Looking at the pricing right now you can get an 1TB Adata SU800 for $226 with a promo code: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820215018&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-PCPartPicker,%20LLC-_-na-_-na-_-na&cm_sp=&AID=10446076&PID=3938566&SID=
That's definitely a budget drive, but it's not trash and is fine for a game library.
Of the next tier up, the Crucial MX300 is probably the pick of the lot. It offers a 10% higher capacity (1.1TB) and Crucial has an excellent reputation with SSDs. The M.2 version (still SATA) is $270, with the 2.5" version a few dollars more. The Reactor is a decent choice too.