Building a computer – will NVMe M.2 improve performance?

Last updated on 06 Sep 2022 📧 Subscribe

I’m working on building a computer for the first time in many years so I’m not up to date on the tech. I have never used M.2 before and I’m just working on learning about it.

I’m planning to use a 1 Tb M.2 for my main storage.
My board has another M.2 slot.

My questions are….
Does it make any sense to bother with trying to set up an M.2 cache if my main drive is already M.2?
Does it make any sense to bother with setting up a second M.2 to serve as an OS drive?

1 Tb is plenty of storage for me so I would only use the second M.2 if there is some other benefit to doing so.

Yes, in fact, many new Apple laptops come with NVMe cache as the main storage where the operating system lives. Having an OS on NVME M.2 improves loading speeds several times.

The average hard drive speed is around 200MB/s.

Having 2.5″ SSD will give you around 500MB/s speed,

But having NVMe SSD will increase speed performance up to 3000MB/s and more (new models are even faster).

This will cut your Windows or other operating-system booting time to few seconds. Mine loads in 5 seconds where most of the time is spent on bios check not OS loading itself.

People used to hibernate their computers to speed up the booting times, but this is a much faster option.

 

Here is a comparison with market leaders in SSD:

 

Price/TB Price Capacity MTBF read/write IOPS Watt Endurance url
£295.31 £567 1.92TB 1.5m hours MTBF 530/500 60-98K 3.2 1.3
Synology Enterprise SATA SSD SAT5200-1920G 2.5″ SATA SSD 1.92TB
£311.46 £299 960GB 1.5m hours MTBF 530/500 67-98K 3.2 1.3
Synology Enterprise SATA SSD SAT5200-960G 2.5″ SATA SSD 960GB
£364.58 £175 480GB 1.5m hours MTBF 530/500 55-95K 3.2 1.3
Synology Enterprise SATA SSD SAT5200-480G 2.5″ SATA SSD 480GB
Price/TB Price Capacity MTBF read/write IOPS Watt Endurance url
£130 £65 500GB 2M hours MTTF 560/530 85-95K <3.35 0.38
Western Digital WD Red SA500 SSD WDS500G1R0A 2.5″ SATA 6Gb/s 500GB SSD
£145.5 £291 2TB 2M hours MTTF 560/530 85-95K <3.80 0.36
Western Digital WD Red SA500 SSD WDS200T1R0A 2.5″ SATA 6Gb/s 2TB SSD
£147 £147 1TB 2M hours MTTF 560/530 85-95K <3.75 0.33
Western Digital WD Red SA500 SSD WDS100T1R0A 2.5″ SATA 6Gb/s 1TB SSD
£147.25 £589 4TB 2M hours MTTF 560/530 82-95K <3.80 0.34
Western Digital WD Red SA500 SSD WDS400T1R0A 2.5″ SATA 6Gb/s 4TB SSD
Price/TB Price Capacity MTBF read/write IOPS Watt Endurance url
£181.77 £349 1.92TB 2M hours MTBF 560/535 45-90K 3.4 1
Seagate Ironwolf 110 SSD ZA1920NM10011 2.5″ SATA 6Gb/s 1.92TB SSD
£189.84 £729 3.84TB 2M hours MTBF 560/535 45-85K 3.5 1
Seagate Ironwolf 110 SSD ZA3840NM10011 2.5″ SATA 6Gb/s 3.84TB SSD
£217.71 £209 960GB 2M hours MTBF 560/535 55-90K 3.2 1
Seagate Ironwolf 110 SSD ZA960NM10011 2.5″ SATA 6Gb/s 960GB SSD
£254.17 £122 480GB 2M hours MTBF 560/535 40-75K 2.7 1
Seagate Ironwolf 110 SSD ZA480NM10011 2.5″ SATA 6Gb/s 480GB SSD
£325 £78 240GB 2M hours MTBF 560/345 30-55K 2.3 1
Seagate Ironwolf 110 SSD ZA240NM10011 2.5″ SATA 6Gb/s 240GB SSD
Price/TB Price Capacity MTBF read/write IOPS Watt Endurance url
£125 £250 2TB 1.5m hours MTBF <550/<520 <90-98K 3 0.33
Samsung SSD 860 EVO MZ-76E2T0B/EU 2.5″ SATA 6Gb/s 2TB SSD
£125 £500 4TB 1.5m hours MTBF <550/<520 <90-98K 3 0.33
Samsung SSD 860 EVO MZ-76E4T0B/EU 2.5″ SATA 6Gb/s 4TB SSD
£130 £130 1TB 1.5m hours MTBF <550/<520 <90-98K 3 0.33
Samsung SSD 860 EVO MZ-76E1T0B/EU 2.5″ SATA 6Gb/s 1TB SSD
£136 £68 500GB 1.5m hours MTBF <550/<520 <90-98K 2.5 0.33
Samsung SSD 860 EVO MZ-76E500B/EU 2.5″ SATA 6Gb/s 500GB SSD
£220 £55 250GB 1.5m hours MTBF <550/<520 <90-98K 2.2 0.33
Samsung SSD 860 EVO MZ-76E250B/EU 2.5″ SATA 6Gb/s 250GB SSD
Price/TB Price Capacity MTBF read/write IOPS Watt Endurance url
£199.75 £799 4TB 1.5m hours MTBF <560/<530 <90-100K 4.5 0.66
Samsung SSD 860 Pro MZ-76P4T0B/EU 2.5″ SATA 6Gb/s 4TB SSD
£205.5 £411 2TB 1.5m hours MTBF <560/<530 <90-100K 4.5 0.66
Samsung SSD 860 Pro MZ-76P2T0B/EU 2.5″ SATA 6Gb/s 2TB SSD
£234 £234 1TB 1.5m hours MTBF <560/<530 <90-100K 4.5 0.66
Samsung SSD 860 Pro MZ-76P1T0B/EU 2.5″ SATA 6Gb/s 1TB SSD
£269.53 £138 512GB 1.5m hours MTBF <560/<530 <90-100K 4 0.64
Samsung SSD 860 Pro MZ-76P512B/EU 2.5″ SATA 6Gb/s 512GB SSD
£300.78 £77 256GB 1.5m hours MTBF <560/<530 <90-100K 3.3 0.64
Samsung SSD 860 Pro MZ-76P256B/EU 2.5″ SATA 6Gb/s 256GB SSD

 

 


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