Which PCI-E SSD is better

[accessgamer]

Hi Gurus,

Planning to buy an better SSD.
Already using Samsung 840 EVO SSD.(Sold it)

My MOBO is MSI GD-65 Z87.
It does not have M.2 PCI-E SSD Capability.

BUILD A

If I buy one of this PCI-E Adapter for say 20$
a.
SilverStone ECM20 m.2 Adapter (DUAL)
OR
b.ASUS HYPERM.2X4MINICARD Interface Adapter - M.2
Expansion Slot To M.2 - M.2 Card - 32 Gbit/S

And then buy a
Samsung SM951 128GB M.2 NGFF PCIe Gen3 8Gb/s x4 Solid state drive SSD (2280), NVME ( MZVPV128HDGM-00000) for 100$

TOTAL INVESTMENT IS 120$

BUILD B

OCZ RD400A M.2 2280 + AIC 128GB PCI-Express 3.0 x4 MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

TOTAL INVESTMENT IS 120$


BUILD C

SAMSUNG 850 EVO PRO SSD 256Gb
If my mobo is bottle neck or the PCI-e 8x , 4x slots on my MOBO are bottle neck for M.2

Questions :

1.Among the 3 which one will be better in terms of faster speeds and overall performance ?

2. Will using different brand adapter for M.2 in (BUILD A) causes bottle neck or delivers 15% less speeds than BUILD B ?

3.Will there be any difference in speeds if I install BUILD B in PCI-E x16 or PCI-E x8 or PCI-E x4 of MOBO
Because I will be saving PCI-E x 16 slot for my GPU smile.gif

4.If I buy this "Samsung SM951 128GB" can I clone my OS using samsung magician SOFTWARE and do an easy replacement ?

I am leaning towards BUILD A because, I can get if for 120$ and in future if needed I can get one 128GB M.2 for 50$ maybe.But since I am buying an 128GB for my OS and primary 2 or 3 games ,I may not buy another 128GB M.2 in future , because the SSD storage space is never ending (it fills just like that) ...I want to keep all my storage on secondary HDD (Mechanical 2 TB)

Any help is greatly appreciated ?

 

[Rogue Leader]

As far as I know your Z87 chipset does not support booting from a PCIe SSD, also the most you will get out of it is x4, there is no benefit to using a higher speed slot (not that it matters the connection is only x4).

 

[Mr Kagouris]

They're all pretty much going to be practically the same (P.S. There's no "850 EVO PRO").

By the way, I hope you made sure to use one of the readily available tools to overwrite the data on your entire old drive that you sold, because if you didn't then someone with sufficient know-how could still recover data from it.

 

[accessgamer]

As far as I know your Z87 chipset does not support booting from a PCIe SSD, also the most you will get out of it is x4, there is no benefit to using a higher speed slot (not that it matters the connection is only x4).

Thank you for answering Question 3 , any light on others

 

[techgeek]

You may want to verify that your motherboard will support booting from a PCI-E adapter. Not all motherboards support booting the OS from an add-in card. If it does support booting from an add-in card, you will need drivers installed during the Windows install process so that the installer will see the drive, otherwise it won't show up in the installer. It might be better to install clean rather than try to clone. Cloning can sometimes lead to odd problems booting. Also because you are cloning a drive that is SATA bound over to a drive that will be accessed over PCI-E may offer some difficulties.

 

[Rogue Leader]

As far as I know your Z87 chipset does not support booting from a PCIe SSD, also the most you will get out of it is x4, there is no benefit to using a higher speed slot (not that it matters the connection is only x4).

Thank you for answering Question 3 , any light on others

1. The Samsung SM951 is the fastest way to go. Any PCIe 3.0x4 adapter card will give you the best speed out of that.
2. see 1
4. Yes but as I said you cannot boot from a PCIe SSD on a Z87 motherboard.

Overall I don't think this is worth it, as you will not be able to use this as your boot drive.

 

[accessgamer]

They're all pretty much going to be practically the same (P.S. There's no "850 EVO PRO").

By the way, I hope you made sure to use one of the readily available tools to overwrite the data on your entire old drive that you sold, because if you didn't then someone with sufficient know-how could still recover data from it.

Please suggest some best free tool to wipe data , I think I used C-Cleaner and did 3 pass to wipe before selling.
It is SAMSUNG 850 PRO

 

[accessgamer]

As far as I know your Z87 chipset does not support booting from a PCIe SSD, also the most you will get out of it is x4, there is no benefit to using a higher speed slot (not that it matters the connection is only x4).

Thank you for answering Question 3 , any light on others

1. The Samsung SM951 is the fastest way to go. Any PCIe 3.0x4 adapter card will give you the best speed out of that.
2. see 1
4. Yes but as I said you cannot boot from a PCIe SSD on a Z87 motherboard.

Overall I don't think this is worth it, as you will not be able to use this as your boot drive.

Also is this card "ASUS HYPERM.2X4MINICARD Interface Adapter - M.2
Expansion Slot To M.2 - M.2 Card - 32 Gbit/S" compatible with any MOBOS or is it intended exclusively only for ASUS MOBOS ?

 

[Rogue Leader]

Also is this card "ASUS HYPERM.2X4MINICARD Interface Adapter - M.2
Expansion Slot To M.2 - M.2 Card - 32 Gbit/S" compatible with any MOBOS or is it intended exclusively only for ASUS MOBOS ?

That would work with any motherboard, its not only for ASUS.

Again though you have not responded to the fact you cannot use this M.2 SSD in a PCIe slot as a boot drive on your Z87 motherboard.

You should drop this idea because of that.

 

[accessgamer]

Also is this card "ASUS HYPERM.2X4MINICARD Interface Adapter - M.2
Expansion Slot To M.2 - M.2 Card - 32 Gbit/S" compatible with any MOBOS or is it intended exclusively only for ASUS MOBOS ?

That would work with any motherboard, its not only for ASUS.

Again though you have not responded to the fact you cannot use this M.2 SSD in a PCIe slot as a boot drive on your Z87 motherboard.
You should drop this idea because of that.

Still not convinced why MSI GD 65 Z87 Cannot boot from PCI-e SSD ? when others are able to on Z87
Please see this link (page 17) , there should be a way
http://download.intel.com/support/ssdc/hpssd/sb/nvme_boot_guide_332098001us.pdf

 

[Rogue Leader]

As far as I had always known most Z87 motherboards don't support it. The BIOS needs to support NVMe booting which I don't see anything on the MSI saying that it does. Honestly that Intel document is the only thing I can find that says it works, which causes me to question whether it will actually work.

Example:

http://www.pcper.com/news/General-Tech/Intel-SSD-750-Series-PCIe-Compatibility-Tested

 

[Mr Kagouris]

It is possible that Intel built the chipset to be capable of it, but it wasn't implemented in Z87 boards because the manufacturers figured anyone buying a PCIe drive wasn't buying Z87 anyway (going X79 or X99 instead), and M.2 drives only recently became readily available, hence why you only see the very latest and high end Z97 boards having M.2 NVMe support, while almost every single Z170 board has an PCIe-capable M.2 slot.

 

[accessgamer]

As far as I had always known most Z87 motherboards don't support it. The BIOS needs to support NVMe booting which I don't see anything on the MSI saying that it does. Honestly that Intel document is the only thing I can find that says it works, which causes me to question whether it will actually work.

Example:

http://www.pcper.com/news/General-Tech/Intel-SSD-750-Series-PCIe-Compatibility-Tested

Thank you for your time in sharing your inputs...

One quick question ?

Say I install my OS on Samsung 850 or 750 EVO and if I use BUILD A as secondary PCI-e SSD and install my 2 or 3 fav games on it , will I be able to leverage or use the 2000mbps reads / 900mbps writes OR does my OS SSD causes bottle neck since it has max of 550 MBPS?

 

[Rogue Leader]

As far as I had always known most Z87 motherboards don't support it. The BIOS needs to support NVMe booting which I don't see anything on the MSI saying that it does. Honestly that Intel document is the only thing I can find that says it works, which causes me to question whether it will actually work.

Example:

http://www.pcper.com/news/General-Tech/Intel-SSD-750-Series-PCIe-Compatibility-Tested

Thank you for your time in sharing your inputs...

One quick question ?

Say I install my OS on Samsung 850 or 750 EVO and if I use BUILD A as secondary PCI-e SSD and install my 2 or 3 fav games on it , will I be able to leverage or use the 2000mbps reads / 900mbps writes OR does my OS SSD causes bottle neck since it has max of 550 MBPS?

You will be able to, the game will not be limited by the OS drive at all.

 

[Mr Kagouris]

Yes, anything installed on a PCIe SSD will leverage the speeds. Games for example will see a definite improvement in initial load times, however in-game loading (e.g. loading assets into a game world) won't improve that much because that depends on random reads which don't improve much between a SATA and PCIe drive because it's limited by the NAND cells and the controllers used rather than the protocol.

 

[accessgamer]

As far as I know your Z87 chipset does not support booting from a PCIe SSD, also the most you will get out of it is x4, there is no benefit to using a higher speed slot (not that it matters the connection is only x4).

Thank you for answering Question 3 , any light on others

1. The Samsung SM951 is the fastest way to go. Any PCIe 3.0x4 adapter card will give you the best speed out of that.
2. see 1
4. Yes but as I said you cannot boot from a PCIe SSD on a Z87 motherboard.

Overall I don't think this is worth it, as you will not be able to use this as your boot drive.

For your reply to 4. I give you -1 score

As you said some trash. (When you have no knowledge on something , please say NO CLUE...dont misguide)..I was able to successfully boot my pcie-ssd from MSI GD65 Z87 MOBO wich does not have a M2 Slot.
I brought some adapter and installed the PCI-E ssd into it on pcie-4x slot.I have UEFI enabled in BIOS and everything is smooth.

 

[Rogue Leader]

As far as I know your Z87 chipset does not support booting from a PCIe SSD, also the most you will get out of it is x4, there is no benefit to using a higher speed slot (not that it matters the connection is only x4).

Thank you for answering Question 3 , any light on others

1. The Samsung SM951 is the fastest way to go. Any PCIe 3.0x4 adapter card will give you the best speed out of that.
2. see 1
4. Yes but as I said you cannot boot from a PCIe SSD on a Z87 motherboard.

Overall I don't think this is worth it, as you will not be able to use this as your boot drive.

For your reply to 4. I give you -1 score

As you said some trash. (When you have no knowledge on something , please say NO CLUE...dont misguide)..I was able to successfully boot my pcie-ssd from MSI GD65 Z87 MOBO wich does not have a M2 Slot.
I brought some adapter and installed the PCI-E ssd into it on pcie-4x slot.I have UEFI enabled in BIOS and everything is smooth.

I am glad it worked out for you.

Before you rudely reply to someone for a mistake, you should try to use your powers of google-fu where you will find that any place where you can find info on the very thing you are trying to do says it will not boot. Except 1 white-paper from Intel. I even provided a link above.

Way to be, buddy, way to be.