Hello hello, Firstly thanks all for the advice in my other thread. I will respond in due course, I am absorbing the info! Just wanted to check something. If I can afford an NVMe M2 drive that suits my capacity needs is it best to use that? Or is it best to have an NVMe boot drive and a separate SSD for storage? I have minimal storage needs, certainly no more than half a TB. Thanks!
You're basically asking 'SSD or SSD'? NVMe SSDs are faster [as the data goes over PCIe rather than SATA], but they cost more than the equivalent capacity SATA. M2 format SATA SSDs tend to cost a smidge more than their 2.5" versions [though iirc the difference i pretty negligble now] but it's viewed as worth it in the eyes of most due to not having to faff on with cables. Whether you actually need/will notice the speed difference between NVMe and SATA is a matter of much debate iirc.
Given the theme of your other thread was decidedly mid range, get an SSD, you can always upgrade at a later date if you wish. The real world benefits of NVMe are only realised in very specific use cases.
Negligible difference in performance between sata ssd and nvme in OS and as a game drive type usage, if you thrash the drive loads then nvme tends to have less cpu overhead, if you work with a lot of multi gb files nvme is better. No cabling required for NVMe which is nice too.
Grab an NVMe and be done. Don’t spend half now and the other half later. I have an NVMe boot drive and two additional SATA drives for storage. Can’t notice much difference as the others say. There is one, but not huge. Some of us just like having the latest kit when it hits the market.
Go with the M.2 something like the ADATA 240 or Intel 760p 256gb, and don't forget to do a disk cleanup after you've install windows and done all the updates you can get anywhere between 5GB to 29GB back
M.2 SATA is the same as 2.5" SSD SATA except in terms of space and cable management. NVMe is coming down in price with recently releases, including the Intel 660p. NVMe is much faster, I don't know if you will find the difference noticable in the applications you will run on it. Personally, I would get an Intel 660p 1tb unless I found something a 2.5" that was much cheaper.
I've found that Exapunks loads *way* quicker on my laptop than my desktop, but how much of that is due to the difference betwix SATA and NVMe and how much is down to the CPU I don't know.
I have an NVMe drive (Samsung 960 Evo) and a SATA SSD (850 Evo) in my system, and I've tried installing games on both drives to see if there was a noticeable speed difference. There wasn't.
I used to recommend SATA as the price difference was big enough, and if your workload would benefit from NVMe you would know it. Now that prices are so close I see no reason to not go with NVMe.
