M.2 SSD vs SATA SSD

[PhilGP]

My current PC is getting too old (2011 from PCS) so it's time to replace it.
But I have a few drives I want to take to the new PC.

90% of the time will be Lightroom/Photoshop, and then some office work.

Key parts of the spec I am looking at ...

Case CORSAIR 175R RGB MID TOWER GAMING CASE
I need a smallish case that will accommodate 2x2.5" + 2x3.5" drives

Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™ i5 Six Core Processor i5-10600 (3.3GHz) 12MB Cache
Motherboard ASUS® TUF GAMING B460-PLUS: ATX, LGA1200, USB 3.2, SATA 6GBs - RGB Ready
Memory (RAM) 32GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 2666MHz (2 x 16GB)
Graphics Card 6GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1660 SUPER - HDMI, DP - GeForce GTX VR Ready!

Power Supply CORSAIR 450W CV SERIES™ CV-450 POWER SUPPLY
To make sure the additional drives will be ok
Processor Cooling PCS FrostFlow 100 RGB Series High Performance CPU Cooler
The PC will go under a desk so lightintg is not important. I May switch to the Black cooler.

Now to the storage -
1st M.2 SSD Drive 512GB PCS PCIe M.2 SSD (2000 MB/R, 1100 MB/W)
OR the PCS 512GB SSD
So Windows 10 would be installed on this device. With a single partition.

I have never used M.2 SSD's before so a few questions...
- Can I have just one M.2 device and no other drive?
- Can I boot from the M.2 drive?
- Are they reliable?
- As they're SSD, do they have the same NAND memory? and areTBW figures comparable to SATA SSD's? Can I find figures?
I have a SandiskPro-240 at the moment. Installed for 2.5 years and down to 75% life so it should last another 7.5 years if used at the same rate (in theory)

Anything else I should know about M.2 SSD's ??



This is the spec of my old PC so the new one should be a 'bit' faster.
AMD Phenom II 964 (4 core)
8GB RAM
HD 6570 Graphics
240GB SSD and a variety of HDD's

 

[ubuysa]

To answer your questions:

- Yes, you can just have an M2 drive and no other drive if you want. My system only had an M2 for a while until I got round to installing the SSD from my old system;
- Yes you can boot from it and it is advisable as it will probably be the fastest drive in the system;
- Not sure M2s have been around long enough to know long-term...but, personally, I'd think they were more reliable given it's not a physical drive but a chip so less parts to go wrong.
- Absolutely no clue on NAND etc.

Given that M2 drives can be up to 4 times or more quicker than traditional SSDs, then going for one is a no-brainer to be honest.

As to the spec itself, given your uses, an AMD build would likely be a better proposition. If you let us know your budget, we can look into it

Almost all SSDs use NAND flash memory. NAND is the physical storage technology. M.2 is just a type of connector that connects to the PCIe bus. (SATA is a just type of connector as well). NVMe is a protocol, the mechanism by which data is moved to and from the SSD. Because of the high speeds offered by the NMVe protocol it's only available on SSDs using the M.2 connector (and thus the PCIe bus). Non-NVMe M.2 SSDs use the ACHI protocol, as do SATA connected SSDs (and all SATA HDDs as well).

 

[PhilGP]

To answer your questions:

- Yes, you can just have an M2 drive and no other drive if you want. My system only had an M2 for a while until I got round to installing the SSD from my old system;
- Yes you can boot from it and it is advisable as it will probably be the fastest drive in the system;
- Not sure M2s have been around long enough to know long-term...but, personally, I'd think they were more reliable given it's not a physical drive but a chip so less parts to go wrong.
- Absolutely no clue on NAND etc.

Given that M2 drives can be up to 4 times or more quicker than traditional SSDs, then going for one is a no-brainer to be honest.

As to the spec itself, given your uses, an AMD build would likely be a better proposition. If you let us know your budget, we can look into it

Thanks for the info.

Years ago AMD were about 1/3rd the price of a comparible speed Intel. But not any more.
I have tried a combination of AMD boards and processors and cant get below the £950 mark.

But if you can suggest an AMD that is similar spec to the i5-10600 (not K) at a lower price then I'll consider it.
I need a MD with 4 SATA free SATA ports after the M.2 ports are used (some of them disable a SATA port when used)
And able to access a minimum of 64GB ram (I want 32GB now but need to consider expanding later).
And I need support for a PCI 16x GPU

 

[PhilGP]

To answer your questions:

- Yes, you can just have an M2 drive and no other drive if you want. My system only had an M2 for a while until I got round to installing the SSD from my old system;
- Yes you can boot from it and it is advisable as it will probably be the fastest drive in the system;
- Not sure M2s have been around long enough to know long-term...but, personally, I'd think they were more reliable given it's not a physical drive but a chip so less parts to go wrong.
- Absolutely no clue on NAND etc.

Given that M2 drives can be up to 4 times or more quicker than traditional SSDs, then going for one is a no-brainer to be honest.

As to the spec itself, given your uses, an AMD build would likely be a better proposition. If you let us know your budget, we can look into it

I have gone back over all of the MB's available and compared spec's.
I may be switching to a Ryzen 5 3600 and Asus TUF B550 MB.