Why so few PCI-E M.2 NVMe SSDs? Where are the budget options? Where's the sweet spot?

[VirtualLarry]

Just curious.

I've owned (M.2 PCI-E SSDs):
2x Samsung SM951 128GB AHCI PCI-E SSDs (very fast, MLC)
1x Intel 600p 256GB NVMe SSD (3D TLC, not the fastest, roughly similar to a SATA 850 EVO, I think, in most things. Had some "pauses".)
2x Adata SXG SU8000 128GB NVMe SSD (3D MLC, same controller as the Intel 600p, also lackluster performance. Have had some reliability issues too in my DeskMini.)
2x Plextor S8eG (?) 128GB NVMe SSD (TLC, don't think 3D, rather low write performance (*), have seen disk usage at 99% for long periods of time installing things. That was on a 3.80Ghz Ryzen 3 1200 rig with Windows 10.) These were only $75 shipped.

I really liked the SM951 drives, they had consistent performance (MLC), and great performance even at the smaller 128GB size, even though mine were the AHCI model.

Everything since then has been rather lack-luster as far as performance goes.

And the availability of the 600p is very spotty right now, in the smaller sizes. I though that they were discontinued, but was informed that there was just more OEM demand for them.

I think that the 600p should be the baseline for PCI-E NVMe performance. Anything slower is a waste of a PCI-E interface on the drive.


(*) Plextor M8Se(G) 128GB M.2 PCI-E NVMe SSD:




Second image is using 8GB test size, rather than 1GB, exposing the limits of the SLC cache, and going to the TLC NAND itself, I think.

 

[kirbyrj]

I've used the MyDigitalSSD BPX drive. Great price/performance.

 

[UsandThem]

I think it's because of NAND price right now.

You have the "budget" NVMe drive that kirbyrj linked to, and then you really have several drives usually within $20 of each other.

For example, you can buy the MyDigitalSSD BPX 480 GB for $187. The 960 EVO 500 GB is normally around $219, but can be had for $199 on sale. The Plextor, Patriot, Intel, etc models are usually in the same neighborhood in price, but they don't match the performance of the Samsung drives (or power usage for that matter). The Intel 600p intially dropped in price when reviews came out showing it was inferior to other NVMe drives, but the price has steadily increased and the 500 GB version is almost $200 now making it a poor "value" choice compared to the MyDigitalSSD BPX. Although, Intel has earned the reputation for reliability and warranty with OEM and corporate customers, so there is value in that for some.

Heck, Samsung recently rolled back the price on the 850 EVO (seemed to coincide with the release of the Crucial BX300). The 500 GB version is now pretty much $139.99 across most retailers right now, and even all these years later, the recently released BX300 and Intel 545s lineup are still behind the 850 EVO.

I think as long as Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron control virtually all the NAND production, there isn't a whole lot of room to release new models that are more expensive than Samsung's NVMe models, yet aren't as fast.

Just how I see it......

 

[VirtualLarry]

I guess, possibly, I was hoping for price-parity between SATA and PCI-E drives, due to newer NVMe PCI-E SSD controllers being used (DRAMless?), but possibly those controllers haven't actually had a chance to roll out in actual products yet.

I'm looking for a valid reason, to buy PCI-E SSDs, at the low end, over just using older SATA SSDs that I have stockpiled, that I paid less for, but perform nearly the same.

 

[Johnny Lucky]

Hiya Larry!

I don't know if you remember but I maintain a consumer ssd database with basic information about the drives and links to technical reviews. The reviews are divided into English language reviews and reviews in other languages.

http://www.johnnylucky.org/data-storage/ssd-database.html

The very first section at the top of the page consists of PCIe 3.0 x 4 and M.2 3.0 x 4 NVME ssd's.

The list is incomplete. It is a consumer ssd database so there are no enterprise drives listed. In addition, I usually only list ssd's for which technical reviews have been published. I do not list enterprise ssd's. I don't list OEM drives either because they do not have consumer warranties.

If you go to a company web site and look at their consumer ssd offerings you might see more models. The vast majority of those other models were never the subject of technical reviews. The reviews simply do not exist. ADATA is a perfect example of a company with ssd's that were never reviewed.

I check over 100 web sites around the world that publish reviews. I check them almost daily. The number of reviews that are published are diminishing. There are fewer reviews this year than say 5 years ago. Lately I've been seeing some activity in Russia and other Slavic countries. In fact, the Russian reviews are for models that do not match what is available in other parts of the world. Two days ago I noticed reviews of several PNY models that do not match anything available in North America or Western Europe. I don't know yet if it is a simple name change of an existing model or a brand new model.

In the meantime, SK Hynix is offering an M.2 SATA 3 NVME model and a SATA 3 NVME model. I wound up adding two new ssd categories to the database. So far I haven't seen or read anything else from other manufacturers.

In all probability in a little over a year you will be excited by the prospects of purchasing PCIe 4.0 x 8 ssd's.

 

[kirbyrj]

The reason I bought the BPX drive when I did was because it was $60 cheaper than the 960 evo and actually in stock. When you can get the 960 evo for $199, it makes little sense to get the BPX over it. The reality is, not much is going to out perform the 960 evo at $199.

 

[coercitiv]

Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron control virtually all the NAND production

And Toshiba: just bought a Plextor NVME drive with Toshiba 15nm MLC NAND.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Second image is using 8GB test size, rather than 1GB, exposing the limits of the SLC cache, and going to the TLC NAND itself, I think.

On the whole, though, I guess that these Plextor M8Se(G) 128GB M.2 NVMe SSDs with the heatsink aren't too bad for $75 ea. shipped. I mean, at that size, I would prefer that they be $50-60, and eliminate the M.2 PCI-E price premium.

Edit: Installed Malwarebytes, and did a scan... in only 30 seconds! These PCI-E drives ARE fast, even the TLC ones, apparently. My previous best was around 47 sec.

I think some of that time (a few seconds) was checking for updates, too.

That's the thing that initially even got me into SSDs at all - the speed of virus / Malwarebytes scans. I was happy with an HDD for most other desktop things, at the time, but the difference in times for scans was very tangible, and objectively measurable. Something to consider, if you're still on the fence about SSDs.

Ok, I am on a state-of-the-art Ryzen 3 1200 rig, overclocked to 3.80Ghz, with a true quad-core. Sure that probably helps out my scan speed too. Plus, the Malwarebytes 3.x.x.x engine is supposed to be faster than the 2.x.x one.

 

[kirbyrj]

Looks like that's using a Marvell controller. Other than the Samsung, the best one I've seen is the Phison E7.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I see essentially "new pull" M.2 PCI-E SSDs on ebay, 256GB, for $80 and up. Those new Toshiba OEM XG3 models look like up-and-comers. $83 for a 256GB. That's not horrible pricing, have to get one some time to test.

 

[Smoblikat]

Just curious.

I've owned (M.2 PCI-E SSDs):
2x Samsung SM951 128GB AHCI PCI-E SSDs (very fast, MLC)
1x Intel 600p 256GB NVMe SSD (3D TLC, not the fastest, roughly similar to a SATA 850 EVO, I think, in most things. Had some "pauses".)
2x Adata SXG SU8000 128GB NVMe SSD (3D MLC, same controller as the Intel 600p, also lackluster performance. Have had some reliability issues too in my DeskMini.)
2x Plextor S8eG (?) 128GB NVMe SSD (TLC, don't think 3D, rather low write performance, have seen disk usage at 99% for long periods of time installing things. That was on a 3.80Ghz Ryzen 3 1200 rig with Windows 10.) These were only $75 shipped.

I really liked the SM951 drives, they had consistent performance (MLC), and great performance even at the smaller 128GB size, even though mine were the AHCI model.

Everything since then has been rather lack-luster as far as performance goes.

And the availability of the 600p is very spotty right now, in the smaller sizes. I though that they were discontinued, but was informed that there was just more OEM demand for them.

I think that the 600p should be the baseline for PCI-E NVMe performance. Anything slower is a waste of a PCI-E interface on the drive.

I have a samsung PM951 512gb NVMe model, and in benchmarks it pulls over 1.7gb/s read, and IIRC over 1gb/s writes. On paper, it should be about 3 times faster than any of my SATA SSD's, but ive tested OS load times, game load times, program access times and everything in between. If you did a blind test and told people to use a system with the NVMe drive and one with the SATA drive, they wouldnt ever be able to tell the difference unless they ran benchmarks. This is compared to Samsung 850 pro 256gb, a couple crucial MX300's (525gb and 1050gb), and various other 128 - 256 SSD's ive amassed over the years.

 

[XavierMace]

I get this twitch whenever I see threads about performance but no hard data on the performance just "feelings". While the second screenshot in your later post does show a massive performance reduction, that's still way above spindle speeds which makes me question complaints about "pausing" and other issues and thinking you may be barking up the wrong tree.

That said, you're buying the lower end of the product chain (both model and size) and then complaining it's slower than the higher end. I feel like this conversation has come up before. The Plextor M8Pe is the MLC brother to your M8Se and has been under $100 on sale for the 128Gb. You're finally crossing that critical line with your CPU's, cross that line with SSD's! I've got 3 of those Plextors, quite happy with them. On the low end, there's simply little reason for more products. As Smoblikat mentioned in a blind test, most users aren't going to notice the difference between a PCIe and SATA SSD. A good example would be the latest run Dell Latitudes we're ordering at work. Finally switched to M.2 SSD's by default on them, however only two of the eight offerings Dell has are PCIe, the rest SATA.

 

[kirbyrj]

I see essentially "new pull" M.2 PCI-E SSDs on ebay, 256GB, for $80 and up. Those new Toshiba OEM XG3 models look like up-and-comers. $83 for a 256GB. That's not horrible pricing, have to get one some time to test.

That's really not a bad price. I'm interested to see how they perform when you get one to test.

 

[Jon1812]

Yeah, I'm curious as well.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I get this twitch whenever I see threads about performance but no hard data on the performance just "feelings". While the second screenshot in your later post does show a massive performance reduction, that's still way above spindle speeds which makes me question complaints about "pausing" and other issues and thinking you may be barking up the wrong tree.

I haven't seen / felt any "pausing" with this Plextor TLC-based drive, though as noted, I saw nearly 100% drive-busy time for an extended period, which concerned me a little bit. I guess that's normal, even with a higher-end SSD, on a fresh Windows 10 install, before it has finished doing whatever it does on install? As noted in the second screenshot, with the 8GB test, write speeds hit a walll at ~156MB/sec, once you exceed the SLC write-cache.

That said, you're buying the lower end of the product chain (both model and size) and then complaining it's slower than the higher end. I feel like this conversation has come up before. The Plextor M8Pe is the MLC brother to your M8Se and has been under $100 on sale for the 128Gb. You're finally crossing that critical line with your CPU's, cross that line with SSD's! I've got 3 of those Plextors, quite happy with them.

I wish I had had the secret-decoder-ring for Plextor's arguably-confusing model numbers. I could have gotten either, at the time, it was not clear on Newegg's ebay listings, that I remember seeing, that one was MLC, and one was TLC. They were roughly the same price. If I had known, I would have gone for the MLC, pretty-much every time. I thought that they just had different-colored heatsinks.

Edit: Don't get me wrong, even with the TLC, these are FAST drives, the Malwarebytes scan proves that, but my perception of the drive being slightly sluggish, might have been clouded by the drive's load upon initial Windows 10 installation.

Now, web browsing with Firefox 57a1 Nightly 64-bit for Windows, it's the fastest system I have, pretty-much. Which, is fairly subtle, most of my systems are quite speedy. It's really splitting hairs, web browsing with a Haswell IPC or better, quad-core CPU, and with a half-decent SATA or a decent PCI-E SSD. It also helps, I recently re-upgrading to gigabit FIOS, now that they offered me a valued customer discount to bring the price down to something more in line with my budget. (But still pricey, all things considered. Still more than that Plextor M.2 PCI-E NVMe SSD cost, every month.)

 

[XavierMace]

There's other considerations too with NVMe drives. Who's NVMe driver are you using? Is the OS installed in UEFI mode? Windows 10 on all of them or older versions on some? And so on.

 

[kirbyrj]

Well although anecdotal, I noticed a slightly slower performance going from my BPX back to an 850 Evo. Yes, still much faster than a spinner but it just seemed slightly laggy on the Evo.

 

[XavierMace]

The problem is human perception is not terribly reliable and too easily influenced by expectations. I'd swear my car makes odd noises but every car guy I know who's listened to it and rode in it says they hear nothing odd. Ask anybody working an IT Help Desk how many calls they get for "my computer is slow" but they see nothing abnormal with it. As Benjamin Franklin wrote, a watched pot never boils.

 

[jkauff]

The reason I bought the BPX drive when I did was because it was $60 cheaper than the 960 evo and actually in stock. When you can get the 960 evo for $199, it makes little sense to get the BPX over it. The reality is, not much is going to out perform the 960 evo at $199.

^ This. I bought a BPX drive for the same reason, and had constant overheating problems with it. I replaced it with a 960 EVO and couldn't be happier with it. The newest Samsung driver works better than the stock Win 10 driver, and it stays nice and cool under the heaviest loads.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

This is all very nice and helpful. If you wanted to even triple the speed of an SATA SSD, a lot of these less-expensive NVME drives would be the ticket. I suppose the justification for my 960 Pro and EVO purchases was informed by the limited number of PCIE slots I have and the limited number of SATA ports. For what I planned to do and what has been successful in those plans, I was better off getting Samsung high-end units.

 

[UsandThem]

Also, I was reading a few older articles on Tom's Hardware, and read the one about the Intel 545s. In it, they state that Intel plans to release a M.2 version of that drive, and also is expected to release the followup to the 600p drive with 64-layer TLC and a new controller as the 610p.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-ssd-545s,5098.html

 

[Micrornd]

There's other considerations too with NVMe drives. Who's NVMe driver are you using? Is the OS installed in UEFI mode? Windows 10 on all of them or older versions on some? And so on.

What difference will installing the OS in UEFI mode make? (honest question, not flame bait )

 

[Johnny Lucky]

Here you go - 17 PCIe ssd's reviewed and compared:

https://us.hardware.info/reviews/7505/17-pci-express-ssds-round-up-the-fastest-ssds

The article is also available in several other languages.

EDIT - Just went through the article. It is a little disappointing since it mostly features the Samsung 9XX models. Some of the new PCIe ssd's are missing.

 

[Linflas]

Might want to keep an eye on Microcenter. They were selling the Samsung 960 Pro 512Gb for $249.00 a couple weeks ago, currently $285.00 there now.

 

[XavierMace]

What difference will installing the OS in UEFI mode make? (honest question, not flame bait )

My 4K randoms doubled when converting from MBR to GPT.