Let's talk about sex, baby, let's talk about.. nah, M.2

I really appreciate how you asked a question and then gave all the reasons why your proposed solution is not actually viable for 99% of the population. Saved me from replying.

...oh, wait.
 
I don't think it's been made entirely clear yet in this thread yet, but M.2 SSDs can be either AHCI or NVME. The NVME ones are a fair bit more expensive and much faster but I think you need Windows 8.1 or 10 and a fairly modern (Intel) chipset to boot from them. AHCI M.2 drives are much more common and cheaper and compatible.
 
sebbbi said:
Samsung 950 Pro is awesome. However don't buy the 256 GB version, as the 512 GB is up to 2x faster.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9702/samsung-950-pro-ssd-review-256gb-512gb/4
Click to expand...

Yep, the bigger the drive the faster they are because the controller has more chips to access from what I have read.

Samsung is also coming out with the OEM 961? at 1 TB that is supposed to be cheaper than the 950 PRO and faster as well. The problem is making sure your BIOS will support it, especially if you want to use it as a boot drive.
 
I assume buying new motherboard+cpu in early 2017 this won't be an issue, with Windows 10?
 
Malo said:
I assume buying new motherboard+cpu in early 2017 this won't be an issue, with Windows 10?
Click to expand...

I'm guessing it depends on the particular motherboard manufacturer and how often they release revisions/updated bios. I imagine it would be less of a problem for enthusiast boards.

W10 is supposed to be the bee's knees, especially if you aren't going to use an optical drive as it makes installing straight from USB a snap.

Probably let you know this week or next, when I finalize my purchasing decisions and place the order.
 
Malo said:
I assume buying new motherboard+cpu in early 2017 this won't be an issue, with Windows 10?
Click to expand...

So, it's done. Went off with only one minor bump in the road. The system automatically recognized and booted off the USB thumbstick I made from the W10 installer, W10 recognized the M.2 950 Pro as the storage device and installed windows. I didn't need to do anything in BIOS. I didn't have to change any settings, change any settings back and forth, pull out the thumbdrive and reboot the system... none of that.

It just worked. Now, this might be motherboard specific and others might come with old firmware that doesn't allow it and makes you jump through hoops, but my Gigabyte GA-z170-MX didn't.

I will say that the only bump in the road is that this motherboard also comes with the one feature I was trying to avoid (HA! It proved to be 1 of 2 only "issues") and that's a Killer NIC. This means that the W10 install does not have the drivers for that NIC so the system works but there's no internet to download the other drivers that I need because I didn't put an optical drive in this so I couldn't use the software that was supplied with the hardware. Luckily, I've got other computers and was able to download those drivers and move them via USB thumbstick.

Works fantastic. Just got it up Thursday and haven't had too much time to play or benchmark, but I'm typing on it right now!

Oh, the other thing is that the RM series Corsair PSU's come with a connection in the back for "C link" it looks rather important and you get cables for it.... but those cables don't connect to anything on your motherboard. Apparently, you need a digital/analog bridge and cable to then plug it into a USB header. Except, that isn't included and the only company that makes this is Corsair. If you haven't built a PC in over a decade, like myself, and never dealt with modular PSU's before, it's quite nerve racking that you can't figure out how to plug something in. Apparently Corsair includes the entire PSU-Motherboard cable set if you buy the RM1000. Anything under that, they only provide half of the cables you need while also giving you a bunch of outdated cables that you wouldn't need unless you were building a system with hardware from the 1990s.

I was kinda ticked off about that, because I had everything ready to go on Wednesday, but was stumped by this "C Link" PSU cable and it took me the next day to read reviews and watch videos that finally explained that 1) I don't need it and 2) I wasn't crazy, I was actually missing the parts to install it.

Anyway, a total success First time boot, first time windows install, no need to play around in BIOS at all to get everything to work (I had to go into BIOS to turn off the red LEDs that come on, but that's not an operational issue), and the entire system goes from cold start to windows desktop in under 30 seconds.

Yes, under 30 second from when I push the power on button until windows is ready to go. It takes that long for my monitor to heat up and display a signal. Actually, it takes my monitor longer than that.

Here's a link to pictures of the build if you're interested. BTW - I was SHOCKED at how small the 950 Pro is, that's why I included that particular photo.

Cheers! If you have any questions, just ask.

http://imgur.com/gallery/CSBmq
 
For M2 NVME drives you'll always have cheap PCI-Express adapters.

Though for me the ideal board should have something like 4 M.2 slots and another 4-6 SATA3.
 
That's great in speed increase and price decrease! I'm interested as to why there isn't a further speed increase with the size increase though, as there was from the 256 to 512 950 PRO's.

I thought all SSD's benefited from increasing the number of chips, but those 960 numbers show no difference in read or write from 512 to 2 TB?

I think the X series chipset allows for 4 M2, doesn't it?
 
digitalwanderer said:
Yeah, I'm working on a budget laptop for my daughter's graduation. The one I was looking at had a 1TB hdd and an M2 port that was accessible, so figured adding a $26 128GB zippy-fast OS drive would make it a lot betterer.
Click to expand...
Yep a 128Gb for an OS drive is perfectly fine as long as you ensure all data is going on the HDD. You can even enforce that by pointing all the standard documents, picture, downloads etc folders to a version on the HDD. As long as you're not installing a ton of productivity apps then you'll be fine.
 
digitalwanderer said:
Malo knows me. LOL

Yeah, I'm working on a budget laptop for my daughter's graduation. The one I was looking at had a 1TB hdd and an M2 port that was accessible, so figured adding a $26 128GB zippy-fast OS drive would make it a lot betterer. ;)
Click to expand...

You're probably overpaying for NVME, see if you can find a similar 250GB-range model in SATA/AHCI M.2 for $30. Depending on how many programs you want to install 128GB will be too small, very soon. Also the user directory will be on C: by default.

Also please verify the laptop's M.2 slot is compatible with your chosen technology (NVME or SATA). Not all slots support both techs.

Going SSD-only is also great for noise elimination. A completely silent laptop is great, imho. If she's not gonna download media onto the 1tb hdd, or otherwise have a use for it, you can save money by just replacing it with a 250GB SATA model, but that's very dependent on her usage patterns.

A quick perusal of amazon shows 250GB 2.5" SATA drives at around $35, good luck!
 
Stupid remark but damn, why some m2 drives manufacturers don't put the little screw in the box. It's a pretty small one, kind of non standard, I had to find my motherboard box in my garage to find it...

I have a Corsair MP510, 1920MB, I love it. Great "all around" nvme drive. The Phison E12 controler is doing a nice, nice work, and It is flashed with the latest 12.2 firmware, which is nice too.
 
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