Any experience with M2 Nvme SSD drives?

Ympker

I have the B450-TUF-Gaming mainboard ( https://www.asus.com/Motherboards-Components/Motherboards/TUF-Gaming/TUF-B450-PLUS-GAMING/ ).
It is my understanding that I can use M2 Nvme SSD drives with that mainboard.

I have never used them before, but from previous SSD experience would look towards Samsung (Evo) and/or Crucial.

I just found the Crucial P2 CT1000P2SSD8 1TB on Amazon for 93€. Maybe it will even go down a bit more on BF. Does anyone have any experience with this particular drive, or can recommend others?

It's going to be used mostly for gaming related stuff.

bikegremlin

I'm stupid, lazy and broke, so I'd go with the (probably the most expensive) Samsung.

From what I could gather, their NVMe drives are as reliable as their SSDs (had a lot of experience with those).

Life's too short to worry about crappy hardware. And it ends up being more costly in the long run.

vyas

The MoBo supports PCI express 3.0.
Do look up Adata and Seagate.
Kingston for LE compliance.
I use the latter two in addition to Crucial
Samsung is prem but if mobo does not support then you will get sub optimised performance

cybertech

this MB supports NVMe Gen 3x4 which mainstream now.

samsung 970 evo should suffice.

g4m3r

I've had a QLC crucial drive once, it's terrible.
If the SLC cache is full it's, in the base case, as fast as an HDD.
The brands don't really matter, there are just a hand full of chip manufactures and all of them are all right.
Just be sure to buy a SLC (damn expensive), MLC (expensive) or TLC (best price-performance ratio) drive with DDR cache.

I also had the TUF B450 and I sent it back after some days, but I don't remember the reason for it.

It is my understanding that I can use M2 Nvme SSD drives with that mainboard.

Sure, you can use a NVMe PCIe drive with it. But be sure to order one with a PCIe interface, there are still NVMe drives with a SATA3 interface out there.

elliotc

Crucial P2 is dram-less, I suggest a2000 for lowend nvme.

Advin

If you just play games, you won't see much of a difference with M.2 NVMe compared to standard SATA SSD's. The time it takes to boot your system and play games will be the exact same with a SATA SSD. So, if you already have SATA SSD's, just use them as there is most likely no need to upgrade to an M.2 NVMe. If you don't already have any SATA SSD's that you can use, then go ahead and order an M.2.

M.2 NVMe SSD's are fine, but there are things to watch out for. Particularly, avoid NVMe drives that are cheap and use crappy controllers (this also applies to regular SATA SSD's, don't order SATA SSD's with crappy controllers). Sometimes, NVMe drives that use crappy hardware can result in terrible performance (sometimes even worse than HDD iirc). Watch out for what controllers they are using. I would suggest going with the Samsung 970 Evo if that is an option in your country.

cochon

@elliotc said:
Crucial P2 is dram-less, I suggest a2000 for lowend nvme.

Don't forget the DRAM vs DRAM-less debate is way less important on NVMe. Nearly all modern DRAM-less NVMe implement HMB, they can call back over the PCI bus and use the hosts memory for the jobs that local DRAM would assist. Something not possible for SATA SSDs which do suffer badly.

And as for the slowness of QLC devices once their SLC cache fills (HDD performance), that only really manifests itself writing huge volumes quickly i.e. many 10s of GBs in one go. For most users that's a very rare event worthy of making a coffee, sure installing a 100GB game will take a while longer, once, but playing it will be no different. There is a performance hit, and it 'might' be worth paying extra to avoid, but IMHO the problems are overstated, cheapness is probably still the key metric for regular users.

g4m3r

@elliotc said:
And as for the slowness of QLC devices once their SLC cache fills (HDD performance), that only really manifests itself writing huge >volumes quickly i.e. many 10s of GBs in one go. For most users that's a very rare event worthy of making a coffee, sure installing a > 100GB game will take a while longer, once, but playing it will be no different. There is a performance hit, and it 'might' be worth paying extra to avoid, but IMHO the problems are overstated, cheapness is probably still the key metric for regular users.

This was what I thought too and it was the reason I bought the QLC crucial p2 drive. The SLC cache (of this drive) is part of the whole drive's storage, if you fill the drive with more than 80% of data you won't have any SLC cache. As far as I understood they only use QL cells but for performance (while possible) the QL cells are used like an MLC.

In my case the slowdown was damn huge, sometimes my OS (Windows) stuck for 10-20 seconds (10-20 seconds average response time) and the file transfer rate went down to 15-45MB.

bikegremlin

A guy who once saw a guy who once held a NVMe told me that heat is also a thing to consider.
Performance drops (along with longevity) with extra heat. Depending on the motherboard (where the port is placed), housing, and drive's heat-pipes (if they are mounted) you can have better, or not so good performance, regardless of the storage model used.

Haven't put that to the test, my comp is almost 10-years old and SSD is as far as it will go (for it to make any sense whatsoever).

havoc

Vaguely recall crucial recently being in the news for substituting inferior controller chips recently. Def for the WD SN550s...but not 100% sure on the Crucials....

@bikegremlin said:

A guy who once saw a guy who once held a NVMe told me that heat is also a thing to consider.

Yeah they don't like getting super hot. I personally think the effect is exaggerated but haven't tested it. Under normal use you won't really max them all the time anyway...and if you are really saturating 2000mbps+ routinely then maybe a mid tier consumer device isn't the way to go anyway

vyas

@cochon said:

installing a 100GB game will take a while longer

100 GB game ?

@bikegremlin nvme heats up. My laptop was running very hot under the Seagate NVMe till I replaced the adapter. Still does to an extent. If the ‘2 disk is used External then Also runs hot on usb enclosure. Aluminium casing helps.

Some reading : https://www.maketecheasier.com/does-nvme-ssd-need-heatsink

cochon

@vyas said:
@cochon said:

installing a 100GB game will take a while longer

100 GB game ?

Sure, Grand Theft Auto 5 is about that size, and it's from 2013.

Not really my thing, but Epic Games gave it away free earlier in the year, hence how I know. I'd assume modern games are bigger still.

codelock

Buying ssd in 2021 is a huge risk all manufacturers including samsung done the bait and switch,but , try searching on LTT forum and reddit

codelock

@vyas said:
@cochon said:

installing a 100GB game will take a while longer

100 GB game ?

@bikegremlin nvme heats up. My laptop was running very hot under the Seagate NVMe till I replaced the adapter. Still does to an extent. If the ‘2 disk is used External then Also runs hot on usb enclosure. Aluminium casing helps.

Some reading : https://www.maketecheasier.com/does-nvme-ssd-need-heatsink

Ssd with dram produce more heat /consume more power but , if it's desktop I don't think you will run into any problems

vyas

@cochon said:

@vyas said:
@cochon said:

installing a 100GB game will take a while longer

100 GB game ?

Sure, Grand Theft Auto 5 is about that size, and it's from 2013.

Not really my thing, but Epic Games gave it away free earlier in the year, hence how I know. I'd assume modern games are bigger still.

Last game I played was Age of Empires in 2013. So I am hopelessly outdated

g4m3r

@vyas said:
100 GB game ?

AoE 4 with 4k & HDR is ~220GB small.

Ympker

Thank you all for the feedback! It is much appreciated I will look through it tomorrow, though. It's been a long day.

Mr_Tom

I've got a cheap micron one that I picked up second hand - works fine for my spare desktop (via pci-e adapter) for what it cost. Otherwise I've used samsung ones and no issues.

usr123

@havoc said:
Vaguely recall crucial recently being in the news for substituting inferior controller chips recently. Def for the WD SN550s...but not 100% sure on the Crucials....

@bikegremlin said:

A guy who once saw a guy who once held a NVMe told me that heat is also a thing to consider.

Yeah they don't like getting super hot. I personally think the effect is exaggerated but haven't tested it. Under normal use you won't really max them all the time anyway...and if you are really saturating 2000mbps+ routinely then maybe a mid tier consumer device isn't the way to go anyway

ADATA is the brand to watch out for when it comes to switching components after sending to mass production. They switched components in the SX8200 more than a year ago before the whole supply chain issues started. Crucial and Samsung were both caught recently switching components, although ADATA and Crucial didn't change the packaging, but Samsung did to identify the different hardware.

Crucial claimed that the specs they posted for the drive were based on TLC speeds even though they didn't start production using TLC components and only recently switched components, that still met their original specs.

Samsung changed the controller in the 970 Evo Plus and the old model number is MZVLB1T0HBLR and the new part number is MZVL21T0HBLU. They switched out the Phoenix controller for the new Elpis controller, which is the same one used on the 980 Pro.

cochon

@g4m3r said:
This was what I thought too and it was the reason I bought the QLC crucial p2 drive.

In my case the slowdown was damn huge

Ah, I stand corrected, I also have one of the Crucial P2's which seemed to be the model most criticised, and yet it works fine for me, even doing large transfers, hence my scepticism about reported issues. BUT a bit of research turns up that the early models actually used TLC memory, they later switched to QLC, and others seem to have similar experiences to you due to the switch. Looks like I dodged a bullet.

vyas

@g4m3r said:

@vyas said:
100 GB game ?

AoE 4 with 4k & HDR is ~220GB small.

I never ventured beyond AOE2. Single CD :-)

saibal

@vyas said: I never ventured beyond AOE2.

That was the best AoE . MS has released a remastered AoE2 though.

usr123

@saibal said:

@vyas said: I never ventured beyond AOE2.

That was the best AoE . MS has released a remastered AoE2 though.

That was the last one I played. Is the remastered version still good?

saibal

@usr123 said: That was the last one I played. Is the remastered version still good?

Same here. My last Windows machine back in the noughties wasn't powerful enough to play AoE3 and thus AoE2 was the last of AoE for me . The original AoE2 still runs flawlessly on Wine though. Haven't played the remastered one yet.

Edit: Looks like there is a new AoE out now - AoE4.

Ympker

@saibal said:

@usr123 said: That was the last one I played. Is the remastered version still good?

Same here. My last Windows machine back in the noughties wasn't powerful enough to play AoE3 and thus AoE2 was the last of AoE for me . The original AoE2 still runs flawlessly on Wine though. Haven't played the remastered one yet.

Edit: Looks like there is a new AoE out now - AoE4.

Yeah, AoE 4 is very new, still. For me, AoE2 has been the last AoE, too. Maybe I'll try AoE 4, though

TeYroX

@usr123 said:
ADATA is the brand to watch out for when it comes to switching components after sending to mass production. They switched components in the SX8200 more than a year ago before the whole supply chain issues started. Crucial and Samsung were both caught recently switching components, although ADATA and Crucial didn't change the packaging, but Samsung did to identify the different hardware.

Yes they did it. However 1TB drives still have best controller. I'm using sx8200 pro 1tb and works as intended.

sureiam

whatever you get make sure to get a heatsink they get silly hot and can fail as a result

Daniel

I've got a 2TB Samsung 980 Pro in my PC and it's very fast, but the Samsung Evos are good too.

@sureiam said:
whatever you get make sure to get a heatsink they get silly hot and can fail as a result

A lot of newer motherboards come with a heatsink. I've got an "ASUS ROG Strix B550-F Gaming" and it came with a heatsink for both m.2 sockets.