NVMe drive with HDD-like write performance - Great choice for Dell laptops

[UsandThem]

So I finally received my new Dell G5 (5590) laptop, and proceeded to do all the various Windows 10 and Dell driver updates. It seemed to take longer than it should have, but I really didn't see how long it took, so I figured it must have just been a lot of large, time-consuming updates doing it for the first time.

After that first day, I proceeded to install programs like Norton Security and Libre Office, and I transferred over the files from my old laptop on a USB drive. Once again, it just seemed to be unusually slow installing the programs, or running the initial virus scan (which is very quick because there's not many files). At this point, I downloaded Crystal Disk Info to make sure the drive that was installed was correct (128GB NVMe), and the utility confirmed it was indeed the correct drive.

So I begin using the laptop today, and the new Windows 10 update pops up to install, and since I already installed it earlier on my desktop, I decided to do it since the update wasn't that large and it didn't take very long at all earlier. Once again, it seemed like the update was taking way too long (I think it was about 45 minutes or so), I knew something wasn't right. Since Crystal Disk Info said the drive is in good health when I ran it before, I downloaded Crystal Disk Mark and ran it. The results? Sequential read of 1100 MB/s and sequential write of..........109 MB/s.

So I searched for the model of the drive, and saw that it was a Kioxia (Toshiba spin-off) KBG30ZMS128G which is a dram-less, Gen 3 x2 NVMe drive. I ended up pulling it out and installing a spare 500GB Samsung 850 EVO SSD, reinstalling Windows 10 and the various updates in the price, and despite it being a SATA SSD, it is around 5x faster (at least in write operations). I cannot believe that Dell uses such crappy, useless NVMe drives in their "gaming" laptop series. A person would likely be better off using a HDD because at least they would have more storage space. The devil is always in the details.....

 

[Meghan54]

Seems it's always been this way one way or another, sad to say.

For instance.....I owned a computer repair shop for about 15 years (from the mid-1990's thru early 2010's). I saw this over and over. Worked on many HP and Compaq computers sourced from both HP/Compaq, Best Buy and WalMart. The boxes from HP/Compaq and BB typically had "nice" components inside....Asus motherboards, WD/Seagate hard drives, memory from various major brands, etc.

The Wally World models, on the other hand (and they'd be the same exact model numbers that were found on the HP/Compaq sourced computers, albeit with a wm suffix), would have GEM motherboards, some Chinese clone hard drives from names I'd never seen before (and have rarely seen again outside the cheapest crap out there), memory/power supplies/etc. the same---Chinese cloned crap.

Now, I'm really not surprised that WM computers were cheaply built internally since they were hitting a much lower price point than the comparable HP/Compaq/BB models, but I would have thought Dell wouldn't succumb to that. Guess margins are just too slim these days to resist the temptation to cut corners that will typically be unseen by most users.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

So I searched for the model of the drive, and saw that it was a Kioxia (Toshiba spin-off) KBG30ZMS128G which is a dram-less, Gen 3 x2 NVMe drive. I ended up pulling it out and installing a spare 500GB Samsung 850 EVO SSD, reinstalling Windows 10 and the various updates in the price, and despite it being a SATA SSD, it is around 5x faster (at least in write operations). I cannot believe that Dell uses such crappy, useless NVMe drives in their "gaming" laptop series. A person would likely be better off using a HDD because at least they would have more storage space. The devil is always in the details.....

At least it wasn't a 5400RPM SMR HDD. Seen that too.

But -any- SSD will be a better experience then a HDD. Most especially the 5400RPM variety.

 

[arandomguy]

It still has the read advantage and more importantly latency/4k advantage over HDDs.

I'm not really sure there is much that can be done in this type of scenario. The main issue isn't the lack of lanes, dramless or even the weaker controller. At that small of a size there just isn't enough NAND dies given current sizes to achieve enough parallelization. Even the Samsung 970 EVO if we extrapolate down to a hypothetical 128GB class drive would be down to 150mb/s writes for the TLC portion just due to the lack of parallelization.

What will get worse as we move forward is the silent QLC substitution.

 

[UsandThem]

It still has the read advantage and more importantly latency/4k advantage over HDDs.

I'm not really sure there is much that can be done in this type of scenario. The main issue isn't the lack of lanes, dramless or even the weaker controller. At that small of a size there just isn't enough NAND dies given current sizes to achieve enough parallelization. Even the Samsung 970 EVO if we extrapolate down to a hypothetical 128GB class drive would be down to 150mb/s writes for the TLC portion just due to the lack of parallelization.

What will get worse as we move forward is the silent QLC substitution.

I know there are benefits (like the increased read speeds), but while I knew the write speeds of this drive would be low because of its small size (which is many manufacturers don't offer NVMe drives in this size anymore), I was surprised on just how bad it ended up being.

Take this review (from 2013) of a 120GB SATA SSD from MyDigitalDiscount, it had better write scores than my drive achieved.
http://www.thessdreview.com/our-reviews/mydigitalssd-bp4-120gb-ssd-review/3/

 

[ElFenix]

I know there are benefits (like the increased read speeds), but while I knew the write speeds of this drive would be low because of its small size (which is many manufacturers don't offer NVMe drives in this size anymore), I was surprised on just how bad it ended up being.

Take this review (from 2013) of a 120GB SATA SSD from MyDigitalDiscount, it had better write scores than my drive achieved.
http://www.thessdreview.com/our-reviews/mydigitalssd-bp4-120gb-ssd-review/3/

2013 drive with 128 MB capacity is RAIDing 16 chips. the tosh drive is using what, 1? maybe 2?

 

[UsandThem]

2013 drive with 128 MB capacity is RAIDing 16 chips. the tosh drive is using what, 1? maybe 2?

True.

I guess I was just surprised how slow the new drive was (and I didn't have high expectations going into it).

I don't store a ton of stuff on my laptop, so I figured the 128GB drive would be enough for the OS (I would install programs and such on the storage drive). With all the Windows updates and the space Dell takes up for their system recovery partition, the drive was only 50% full. I see why most companies quit making consumer drives smaller than 250GB (especially in NVMe). Below that size, they really just aren't worth it when it comes to performance.

 

[Golgatha]

It still has the read advantage and more importantly latency/4k advantage over HDDs.

I'm not really sure there is much that can be done in this type of scenario. The main issue isn't the lack of lanes, dramless or even the weaker controller. At that small of a size there just isn't enough NAND dies given current sizes to achieve enough parallelization. Even the Samsung 970 EVO if we extrapolate down to a hypothetical 128GB class drive would be down to 150mb/s writes for the TLC portion just due to the lack of parallelization.

What will get worse as we move forward is the silent QLC substitution.

Not sure this is really a huge issue, as the price/GB currently favors 500GB+ drives, which all should have enough parallel channels for good enough performance. As you noted, it will get worse as QLC is silently replacing TLC though.

 

[Shmee]

Tsk tsk. This is one reason why when I got my MSI laptop, I opted to get just a HDD and then replace it with my own SSDs and reinstall windows.

 

[UsandThem]

Tsk tsk. This is one reason why when I got my MSI laptop, I opted to get just a HDD and then replace it with my own SSDs and reinstall windows.

This laptop was from Dell Outlet, so I had no configuration options. If I had known it was a DRAM-less x2 drive, I would have pulled it out upon getting the laptop, and saved the time waiting for it to do all the various updates.

That said, it only had 3 power on hours total, and was basically in pristine condition. Whoever owned it before either cancelled the order, or didn't use it much at all.

 

[arandomguy]

You said you added a 2.5in drive, was there an existing one?

It's an OEM system, listing specs with a SSD (or better NVME/PCIe) is a selling point.

I'm guessing the SSD isn't a desktop sized 2280 m.2 but this one? https://www.anandtech.com/show/11688/toshiba-announces-bg3-lowpower-nvme-ssd-with-bics3-3d-nand

So space and power requirements were likely considerations as well. I'd also guess that it might be a contract issue from peak NAND, so it was a much bigger deal to squeeze NAND costs down to 128GB compared to today (due to the price crash over the last year or so).

For me the biggest advantage SSDs have is the latency and random (particularly read) performance. So in this case it does serve that function. I guess this is arguable but in general I don't feel most consumers benefit from high weighting in write performance. especially sustained write performance. Which is also why I'm somewhat of a contrarian (I find) in saying for instance the MX500 is higher performance for most than the 860 EVO.

2013 drive with 128 MB capacity is RAIDing 16 chips. the tosh drive is using what, 1? maybe 2?

I'd guess a single 4 x 256 gbit package, so 1 chip.

Not sure this is really a huge issue, as the price/GB currently favors 500GB+ drives, which all should have enough parallel channels for good enough performance. As you noted, it will get worse as QLC is silently replacing TLC though.

It does present an interesting issue in that it can mean newer drives even in the same line might be slower than the older ones.

Take the 850 EVO 500GB vs 860 EVO 500GB. Because Samsung moved from 256gbit to 512gbit dies the 860 EVO doesn't actually have enough drives to saturate the SATA 3 bus compared to the 850 EVO, so TLC write speed (after SLC cache is exhausted) is actually around 150 mb/s slower. It's also interesting that the majority of review samples for the 860 EVO were 1 TB or higher (few 500 GB reviews on major tech sites, Anandtech no 500 GB review).

 

[VirtualLarry]

Hmm, sounds like my HP 14" Slim Ryzen 3 3200U versus my Lenovo S145 Celeron 4205U laptop.

The HP came with a Samsung SATA M.2, that performs well in CDM (500+MB/sec, both read and write). The Lenovo, not so much, it has some cheap Chinese RAMXCEL spin-off company no-name SSD, that doesn't perform nearly as well.

(Both purchased in a similar time-frame at Walmart.)

 

[Golgatha]

Which is also why I'm somewhat of a contrarian (I find) in saying for instance the MX500 is higher performance for most than the 860 EVO.

Couple of things here. One, the MX500 is still an excellent performing drive, and pretty much my go to if I need another SSD. I also like that it uses a tried and true Marvell controller, which may not be the absolute fastest out there, but it's proven, at least to me, to be very reliable. Two, anymore I pretty much just look at random R/W performance in reviews, as sustained throughput is high enough for me on any modern SSD; to me, random R/W is the differentiation between drives.

I also like the Sandisk Ultra II drives in my signature below. Both because they use a Marvell controller and the nCache 2.0 tech makes them very snappy for most tasks. The 960GB model has 40GB of SLC cache, which will cover most use cases when it comes to launching and running a game from my RAID array.

In short, I'm still rocking 2013-2014 era SSDs in all my personal computers, and modern SSDs don't really offer any benefits (in my opinion) over this technology unfortunately.

 

[arandomguy]

Couple of things here. One, the MX500 is still an excellent performing drive, and pretty much my go to if I need another SSD. I also like that it uses a tried and true Marvell controller, which may not be the absolute fastest out there, but it's proven, at least to me, to be very reliable. Two, anymore I pretty much just look at random R/W performance in reviews, as sustained throughput is high enough for me on any modern SSD; to me, random R/W is the differentiation between drives.

MX500 uses the Silicon Motion 2258. I think the MX300 was the last Crucial drive to use Marvell.

The SM 2258 and SM 2262/en (on the NVME side) when paired with Micron 64L TLC seems to win the burst random read metric among TLC drives at QD1. I think only Optane drives currently bench higher than NVMEs using that combo (eg. HP ex950), which are on another order of magnitude in performance in this area.

I agree with the importance in random performance, especially burst. Although I guess the counter argument to this is that the impact difference measurably might be small. For example with game load time tests, such as the FFV benchmark, they track closely with random reads but the actual load time difference is still fairly small from slow to fast - https://www.tweaktown.com/articles/8661/best-ssd-gaming-over-120-ssds-tested/index2.html

Although Optane drives do somewhat break away due to the order of magnitude higher performance in that area, much like SSDs in general vs HDDs.

 

[Golgatha]

MX500 uses the Silicon Motion 2258. I think the MX300 was the last Crucial drive to use Marvell.

The SM 2258 and SM 2262/en (on the NVME side) when paired with Micron 64L TLC seems to win the burst random read metric among TLC drives at QD1. I think only Optane drives currently bench higher than NVMEs using that combo (eg. HP ex950), which are on another order of magnitude in performance in this area.

I agree with the importance in random performance, especially burst. Although I guess the counter argument to this is that the impact difference measurably might be small. For example with game load time tests, such as the FFV benchmark, they track closely with random reads but the actual load time difference is still fairly small from slow to fast - https://www.tweaktown.com/articles/8661/best-ssd-gaming-over-120-ssds-tested/index2.html

Although Optane drives do somewhat break away due to the order of magnitude higher performance in that area, much like SSDs in general vs HDDs.

Sorry, was thinking of the Crucial M500 series, of which I have many drives. Your link makes sense, and thinking about it, I shouldn't expect load times to be much different. However, I have noticed in actual use that especially open world games, which often load on the fly, play much, much more smoothly.

As a side note, I needed something budget friendly for a gaming PC for my kids. The Intel Optane acceleration isn't bad for making a 2TB spinner, which is a dedicated games install drive, feel snappy. Got a 16GB Optane for like $12 on eBay, so not much cost for what benefits it provides.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yeah, Crucial M500 are outstandingly-reliable workhorses.

 

[UsandThem]

You said you added a 2.5in drive, was there an existing one?

It came with a 2.5" spinner, which I removed when it came (I generally re-purpose these as external backup drives for family).

I'm guessing the SSD isn't a desktop sized 2280 m.2 but this one? https://www.anandtech.com/show/11688/toshiba-announces-bg3-lowpower-nvme-ssd-with-bics3-3d-nand

Yeah, it was a small M.2 2230 size just like your link showed. The laptop can also support several other sizes, up to 2280 (which is the most common size for performance drives like the Samsung 970 EVO, WD Black SN750, etc.).