[SOLVED] Will a Samsung 860 Evo make a difference for me?

H4X0R46

Honorable
Sep 25, 2016
141
2
10,685
So I have an SSD as a system drive in my Desktop already, but it's a cheaper ADATA one. Will a Samsung SSD make an actual difference for me as far as boot time goes?

NOTE! My motherboard is SATA 2, so I won't get SATA 3 speeds unfortunately.

Disk benchmark for my current ADATA SSD attached.
95999f6dcd7ed2a3c12a307ff4b51030.jpg
 
Solution
None of them are completely good, like most things even the decent brands have both good and poor quality models. Some decent ones available from Startech, Silverstone, SIIG and probably, maybe, Rosewill. Personally, I'd put that money towards a newer platform if it were me. Seems like a waste on a platform that isn't going to get any better no matter what you do to it. My point was, better to spend 60 on a board that has native SATA3 than forty on an adapter that has addtional latency through the PCI bus and these 3rd party controllers, much like the old ASmedia secondary ones on motherboards, tend to have their own issues as well.
So I have an SSD as a system drive in my Desktop already, but it's a cheaper ADATA one. Will a Samsung SSD make an actual difference for me as far as boot time goes?

NOTE! My motherboard is SATA 2, so I won't get SATA 3 speeds unfortunately.

Disk benchmark for my current ADATA SSD attached.
95999f6dcd7ed2a3c12a307ff4b51030.jpg
How long does it take to boot? I have a 1TB 860 evo 2.5” and I’m onto login within 10 seconds from power on.
That being said you’re probably being kneecapped by SATA 2. So it might not make a difference, unless you run 2 in RAID 0.
 
It COULD, but it wouldn't be much, not with you being limited to the SATA 2 bus speeds already.

If it DID, it would be very minimal, and probably not worth the cost of a purchasing a new drive. If you were on a HDD now, then clearly yes it would be a good idea. I'd wait until you are either on a motherboard that can take advantage of it or your current drive starts showing signs of being end of life.

On another side of that however, if you were to get a newer SSD for the purpose of using that as your primary drive and using the existing one for backing up important data, THEN it would make some sense.
 

H4X0R46

Honorable
Sep 25, 2016
141
2
10,685
It COULD, but it wouldn't be much, not with you being limited to the SATA 2 bus speeds already.

If it DID, it would be very minimal, and probably not worth the cost of a purchasing a new drive. If you were on a HDD now, then clearly yes it would be a good idea. I'd wait until you are either on a motherboard that can take advantage of it or your current drive starts showing signs of being end of life.

On another side of that however, if you were to get a newer SSD for the purpose of using that as your primary drive and using the existing one for backing up important data, THEN it would make some sense.
Do you by chance think I would at least be able to hit that 300mb/s cap that SATA 2 caps out at? I kind of already ordered it. Oof. I'm probably going to wipe my current SSD and move it to my laptop, and use the 860 Evo as my desktop system drive. I ALWAYS turn off fastboot in Windows 10 just because I prefer my system to COMPLETELY shut off, so that increases load time a bit.
 

H4X0R46

Honorable
Sep 25, 2016
141
2
10,685
How long does it take to boot? I have a 1TB 860 evo 2.5” and I’m onto login within 10 seconds from power on.
That being said you’re probably being kneecapped by SATA 2. So it might not make a difference, unless you run 2 in RAID 0.
Not entirely sure on boot time exactly, but I KNOW it's longer than 10 seconds. Usually a minute or two. I also always turn off fastboot in Windows 10, so that adds a bit.
 
No, you wouldn't. Even with a very high end system, I don't hit the 600MB/s that my SATA 3 SSDs are supposed to be capable of, even on benchmarks when the drives are clean. It's only a theoretical bandwidth. In real world use, it is rarely seen.

If you get a new SSD, do it with the idea in mind that you are doing it in order to have a secondary drive to back things up to so they are not lost if your OS takes a crap, not because you are going to see an increase in drive speed, and that way if you do see a small bump in speed it's great but if you don't, then it wasn't already unexpected anyhow.
 
  • Like
Reactions: H4X0R46

H4X0R46

Honorable
Sep 25, 2016
141
2
10,685
No, you wouldn't. Even with a very high end system, I don't hit the 600MB/s that my SATA 3 SSDs are supposed to be capable of, even on benchmarks when the drives are clean. It's only a theoretical bandwidth. In real world use, it is rarely seen.

If you get a new SSD, do it with the idea in mind that you are doing it in order to have a secondary drive to back things up to so they are not lost if your OS takes a crap, not because you are going to see an increase in drive speed, and that way if you do see a small bump in speed it's great but if you don't, then it wasn't already unexpected anyhow.
Welp, that bums me out. But thanks guys for being honest! Appreciate the help y'all! I'll just wait and see what happens when the SSD gets here. I'm gonna be changing my board,CPU, and RAM next, not sure how soon, but that's my next project anyway. So this might not all be a loss in the end, just gotta wait till I either find a deal, or save more money.
 
If his motherboard is older than mid 2010, then it probably doesn't have PCIe 3.0, and wouldn't be able to even take advantage of faster speeds through the use of that add in card. If it's a newer motherboard than 2010, then it might be able to.

Since SATA3 started showing up on motherboards in 2009, it makes it somewhat unlikely that his board is PCIe 3.0. There still might be SOME advantage to that though, IDK for sure on that, but again, probably not worth the investment for a small gain.
 

H4X0R46

Honorable
Sep 25, 2016
141
2
10,685
I just went and looked at my motherboard's manual, and sure enough, the PCIe slots ARE 2.0. Because that's just my luck. Well, hopefully I can get a new board sooner than later, I need a new CPU anyway. My AMD FX 8350 is working fine, but a Ryzen would be a lot nicer.
 

H4X0R46

Honorable
Sep 25, 2016
141
2
10,685
There are PCIE x4 sata 3 adapters also (not just PCIE x1). For those PCIE 2.0 bandwidth limitation would not be an issue.

e1567668-90c6-42c4-9e5a-ddceb52d43f5
Wait, so if this table is correct, a SATA 3 expansion card in my PCIe 2.0 slot would cap out at 500mb/s? If that's true, a SATA 3 expansion card would greatly increase the SSD speed?

Now I know those cards aren't cheap, so that's a gamble for me.
 
A x4 card, as mentioned by Skynet, would be a lot better, but yes, it seems it would give you a bit of a bump. I think you'd still have some limitations and wouldn't be able to reach a full 500MB/s, because again, those are THEORETICAL bandwidth specifications and I've never seen any system actually reach or sustain the theoretical speed for a given spec in real world usage. They just, don't. You might see an improvement, but it's not going to be THAT kind of improvement.

Even on a system with PCIe 3.0 and SATA3, with a Samsung 860 EVO, I don't see those speeds, even on sequential transfers from SSD to SSD. And in normal OS random usage it will be FAR less than that.
 
  • Like
Reactions: H4X0R46

H4X0R46

Honorable
Sep 25, 2016
141
2
10,685
A x4 card, as mentioned by Skynet, would be a lot better, but yes, it seems it would give you a bit of a bump. I think you'd still have some limitations and wouldn't be able to reach a full 500MB/s, because again, those are THEORETICAL bandwidth specifications and I've never seen any system actually reach or sustain the theoretical speed for a given spec in real world usage. They just, don't. You might see an improvement, but it's not going to be THAT kind of improvement.

Even on a system with PCIe 3.0 and SATA3, with a Samsung 860 EVO, I don't see those speeds, even on sequential transfers from SSD to SSD. And in normal OS random usage it will be FAR less than that.
That's good to keep in mind, I know disk benchmarks seem to show up to 500, but in real world use, I see your point. Now would you say it would be worth getting an expansion card for SATA 3? Or would the cost heavily outweigh the benefit? Chances are, I'll wait till my Evo gets here and do my own testing and planning, though since I'm waiting, that's where you beautiful people come in ;)
 
Looks like any of the REPUTABLE PCIe to SATA 3 adapters run about 40 bucks and up. More if you if want a quality x4 model.

I think it might make more sense to do this, which supports your CPU AND has native SATA 3 support. Plus, then you you stash your current board as a backup, just in case, if you wanted. I don't know that your platform is really even worth investing any money in, but if you feel it is, then this might be the better option.

https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16813157582
 

H4X0R46

Honorable
Sep 25, 2016
141
2
10,685
Looks like any of the REPUTABLE PCIe to SATA 3 adapters run about 40 bucks and up. More if you if want a quality x4 model.

I think it might make more sense to do this, which supports your CPU AND has native SATA 3 support. Plus, then you you stash your current board as a backup, just in case, if you wanted. I don't know that your platform is really even worth investing any money in, but if you feel it is, then this might be the better option.

https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16813157582
Yeah at this point, I'd want to get a new board and CPU, maybe switch this hold build to Intel, but the cost of that is more than I can afford. I see your point though. Oddly enough, I have a good graphics card in this PC, while everything else is quite dated. I'm almost sure my GPU is bottlenecked by the rest of this system. Hmm.... I might just save my money and try and get a new motherboard and CPU (and compatible RAM of course).

For what it's worth, what's a reputable brand for a decent PCIe to SATA 3 adapter? Can't say I've ever even so much as LOOKED into that possibility until now. I always had mechanical HDD up to this point so never needed to change anything.
 
None of them are completely good, like most things even the decent brands have both good and poor quality models. Some decent ones available from Startech, Silverstone, SIIG and probably, maybe, Rosewill. Personally, I'd put that money towards a newer platform if it were me. Seems like a waste on a platform that isn't going to get any better no matter what you do to it. My point was, better to spend 60 on a board that has native SATA3 than forty on an adapter that has addtional latency through the PCI bus and these 3rd party controllers, much like the old ASmedia secondary ones on motherboards, tend to have their own issues as well.
 
Solution