PCI-E or SATA III SSD?

[whm1974]

The firm factor of the SATA isn't very important IMO, as they don't put out anywhere the amount of heat a NVMe drive does. Not to mention if this user buys a case and puts the 2.5" drive behind the motherboard tray, which would be way too hot.

Well I was thinking a 2.5"/3.5" drive bay which should be cooler.

 

[UsandThem]

Well I was thinking a 2.5"/3.5" drive bay which should be cooler.

If the case they decide on has that. Some of the cases over the last several years have done away with that option all together.

 

[skaertus]

Did you mean the Crucial Mx300? That's a rather old (and discontinued drive here). Can you not get SSDs like the Crucial MX500 (or even the BX500) where you live? Other good SATA SSDs along with I mentioned above are the Sandisk and Western Digital 3D NAND, Crucial BX500, and the Intel 545S.

By the way, the Corsair and the Kingston drives you listed are NVMe drives (and not very good ones at that).

The last two are PCIe 3.0 x 2 NVMe (Phison E8 controller) and the first one is SATA.

The Corsair is using the Phison Reference design with Toshiba NAND packages and the A1000 is using Kingston branded NAND packages (not sure if Kingston uses the Phison reference design for PCB or not).

Which in that case a person would be better of getting a good SATA SSD instead of such poor NVMe drives. I can assume that they use TLC or QLC NAND?

Thanks a lot for the input. It is really helpful.

These are the most affordable NVMe SSD drives that I could find, and which are still much more expensive than SATA III SSD drives. I will give an overview of my findings (the U.S. dollar listed below is considering the exchange rate as of now):

• WD Black M.2 2280 500 GB (3400 MB/s read 2500 MB/s write): USD 300
• Kingston KC1000H M.2 2280 480 GB (2700 MB/s read 1600 MB/s write): USD 350
• Kingston A1000 M.2 2280 480 GB (1500 MB/s read 1000 MB/s write): USD 210
• Corsair Neutron NX500 400 GB (3000 MB/s read 2400 Mb/s write): USD 460
• Corsair Force Series MP300 480 GB M.2: USD 210
• Corsair MP500 M.2 480 GB: USD 390
• Crucial M300 M2. 525 GB: USD 240

And these are the SATA III SSDs:

• Kingston UV500 M.2 2280 480 GB (520 MB/s read 500 MB/s write): USD 118
• Kingston SSDNOW UV400 480 GB (550 MB/s read 500 MB/write): USD 107
• SanDisk Plus 480 GB: USD 100
• Patriot Burst SATA III 480 GB: USD 120
• Corsair Force LE200 SATA III 480 GB: USD 182
• Crucial 480 GB: USD 100
• Galax Gamer L Series 480 GB (562 MB/s read 524 MB/s write): USD 125

I got these from the most affordable reputable stores. There are other models, but they are far more expensive. A Crucial MX500 500 GB drive is available, but it costs USD 320.

There are some stores in the U.S. that I can order from, but the Brazilian government will charge a tax of approximately 100% over tax plus shipping, which will result in the SSD becoming nearly as expensive as it is in Brazilian stores.

So, which options should I consider? I could go for a cheaper SATA III SSD, for approximately USD 100, and I could pay up to USD 200 for a faster SSD, but I am a little bit out of budget if I have to consider SSDs for more than USD 300... is it really worth it?

 

[UsandThem]

Wow, I guess out of that list it would have to be the Galax. I'm not sure what the model is of the Crucial listed in the SATA list, but the rest of those drives are pretty well dogs.

With your heat concerns, you shouldn't even consider a NVMe drive.

 

[whm1974]

Wow, I guess out of that list it would have to be the Galax. I'm not sure what the model is of the Crucial listed in the SATA list, but the rest of those drives are pretty well dogs.

With your heat concerns, you shouldn't even consider a NVMe drive.

Yeah for the OP it sounds like the Crucial 480 and the Galax are his best bets to get.

Boy are we that live the US are spoiled when to comes to computer hardware prices. $320 for a MX500? We can buy a Micron 1100 2TB SATA SSD for less then that here in the USA....

 

[UsandThem]

Yeah for the OP it sounds like the Crucial 480 and the Galax are his best bets to get.

Boy are we that live the US are spoiled when to comes to computer hardware prices. $320 for a MX500? We can buy a Micron 1100 2TB SATA SSD for less then that here in the USA....

Yeah, it's nuts how expensive some components are in different regions. I wonder what a SSD goes for in a place like Venezuela with their inflation problems?

 

[whm1974]

Yeah, it's nuts how expensive some components are in different regions. I wonder what a SSD goes for in a place like Venezuela with their inflation problems?

More then what I paid for my two m500 Crucial 1TB SDDs back in June 2013($650 each )?

 

[Insert_Nickname]

I have misgivings about NVMe (in PCIe form or M.2) because of the lack of options for accessing that storage aside from having to open up a computer to do it.

With PCIe it's more forgivable (one would have to have an enclosure capable of housing a PCIe card), but with M.2 NVMe I would have thought it must be possible to be able to access such a drive through say a USB enclosure, even though it inevitably means significantly lower performance.

(Sorry for the slightly OT reply)

Luckily, USB-to-M.2 PCIe NVMe adaptors have begun to become available. So it shouldn't be too much of an issue going forward.

USB-to-M.2 SATA adaptors are pretty common. Some even have a slightly outsize "USB Flashdrive"-esque design.

f.x.
https://www.raidsonic.de/products/e...cases_m2_m_sata/index_en.php?we_objectID=4186

 

[skaertus]

Wow, I guess out of that list it would have to be the Galax. I'm not sure what the model is of the Crucial listed in the SATA list, but the rest of those drives are pretty well dogs.

With your heat concerns, you shouldn't even consider a NVMe drive.

Thanks. But are all those SSD drives really that bad? I had no idea, I thought that there was not so much difference between them.

At first I was thinking of buying one of the Kingston drives, as they seem to be best-sellers in the store that delivers the computer already built (which would be very convenient). But it appears that they are not good...

Does an NVMe drive heat so much more than a SATA III one, to the point that it should not even be considered if I have heat concerns?

Yeah for the OP it sounds like the Crucial 480 and the Galax are his best bets to get.

Boy are we that live the US are spoiled when to comes to computer hardware prices. $320 for a MX500? We can buy a Micron 1100 2TB SATA SSD for less then that here in the USA....

It surprises me that all those SSD drives should not be even considered. I thought that there would be little difference between them.

Prices here are ridiculous. The government charges so much taxes that our electronics are absurdly expensive. A Core i7-8700 with a GTX 1070 graphics card, 16 GB RAM, a 480 GB SSD, and a 2 TB HDD, would cost about USD 2,000 in one of the cheapest stores in the country, and depending on the store, prices for the same computer could go well higher than USD 3,000.

Yeah, it's nuts how expensive some components are in different regions. I wonder what a SSD goes for in a place like Venezuela with their inflation problems?

Electronics in Brazil used to be the most expensive in the world (rivaling with Turkey perhaps). The inflation in Venezuela made some prices really explode, with an iPhone costing almost USD 100,000 in 2017. I am not sure how things are right now, as this situation may well be temporary. In Brazil, the most expensive iPhone XS would cost "only"' some USD 2,800, and it has been like this forever, as the government will not lower taxes.

 

[UsandThem]

Thanks. But are all those SSD drives really that bad? I had no idea, I thought that there was not so much difference between them.

At first I was thinking of buying one of the Kingston drives, as they seem to be best-sellers in the store that delivers the computer already built (which would be very convenient). But it appears that they are not good...

Does an NVMe drive heat so much more than a SATA III one, to the point that it should not even be considered if I have heat concerns?

With what you described in your other thread, you don't want a NVMe drive. It will idle too high, put out heat, and throttle.

As far as the SSDs being bad, most of them are low performance and not ones I would buy. However, the price difference between your choices and drives like the 860 EVO and MX500 is next to nothing in the U.S., so it only makes sense to go with the much faster drives.

The Galax won't win any speed records, but it is a decent performer.