Deleted member 110222
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I'm asking because they are pricey, but... If I did get one, how much an improvement am I looking at for my boot time?
Hardware & Technical m.2 SSD: Worth it for boot-up times?
I have used all the standard drive types...HDD, SSD, and m.2. My opinion...not much difference between a middle of the road SSD and m.2...not even remotely worth the price for the minimal performance gain.
M.2 has nearly double the bandwidth of some SSDs, but that isn't likely to contribute to boot-up time performance vs other SSD drives.
Now if you're comparing to standard HDD then almighty-yes, it's a night/day difference. But then just get a SSD 2.5".
M.2 is a specialist item, I got one on sale at MicroCenter. I wouldn't have paid extra just for the form factor unless I had a specific need for it (such as no cabling for aesthetics. )
They've got the cool factor though.
Now if you're comparing to standard HDD then almighty-yes, it's a night/day difference. But then just get a SSD 2.5".
M.2 is a specialist item, I got one on sale at MicroCenter. I wouldn't have paid extra just for the form factor unless I had a specific need for it (such as no cabling for aesthetics. )
They've got the cool factor though.
Hard to believe that a 500M/S SSD compared to a 3500M/s M.2 doesn't show much difference.
Guess I'll have to find out the hard way.
Deleted member 110222
D
Thank you guys. 
I noticed virtually no difference when I moved to SSD. Unlike other games I think Elite isn't bottlenecked by local IO and instead by the GPU and network connection. Like with all performance problems it's the bottleneck which matters.
SSD are already very fast for cheaper
The only speed I'm concerned with is download speed and these offer little help.
To be honest, the only reason I'd consider paying the premium for m2 is if I was doing a very small form factor build and wanted to save space.
The load times either for booting windows or loading elite won't be significantly better than a standard SSD.
Somebody above quoted a laptop booting in <10s with an m.2 drive, my rig boots from cold to a usable desktop in 11-12seconds, I have a middle of the road SSD certainly nothing special. I think unless your shifting about vast quantities of data you aren't going to notice the extra speeds.
The load times either for booting windows or loading elite won't be significantly better than a standard SSD.
Somebody above quoted a laptop booting in <10s with an m.2 drive, my rig boots from cold to a usable desktop in 11-12seconds, I have a middle of the road SSD certainly nothing special. I think unless your shifting about vast quantities of data you aren't going to notice the extra speeds.
I'm sure you will not see any visible difference, but if you have a rig with 1080, 6700K and VR, then why not, another £300 is not going to kill your wallet if it is already dead I ordered one when they were £275 on Amazon a month ago and I'm still waiting. Visible difference or not, I want to run a test and see 3500Mb/s then I will be satisfied
I ordered one when they were £275 on Amazon a month ago and I'm still waiting. Visible difference or not, I want to run a test and see 3500Mb/s then I will be satisfied I've ED installed on one and I didn't see any difference. Yes, mi computer now starts in 10s but neither the fps nor the initial game charging time have been improved.
I purchased an Intel 750 NVMe U.2 drive recently for a customers machine. It was only because they had an Exist DB running under Tomcat that is very very disk heavy (and Ram so I popped in 32GB as well).
It's made a huge difference to the running of this application and the customer is delighted with it. But nobody has mentioned how fast it boots or remarked on anything else.
Personally I'd stick with SSD.
It's made a huge difference to the running of this application and the customer is delighted with it. But nobody has mentioned how fast it boots or remarked on anything else.
Personally I'd stick with SSD.
I bought a "Samsung SM951" M.2 when I upgraded my gaming rig recently. My old rig was running a Samsung 850 EVO (non-M.2) previously and .. hand on heart .. I would be hard pressed to say that I actually saw a real improvement in boot times, or load times with the new M.2 drive that couldn't also be explained by the fresh install or new hardware factors. We all know a fresh install of windows will boot faster. The new motherboard, for example, has a fast boot mode which is likely just faster than the old one. So, the new rig is definitely faster to boot and everything is faster than it was, but not by such a huge margin that you necessarily need an M.2 perhaps.
That said, if you want one then the important thing to check with an M.2 is whether it's using SATA or PCIe (NVME), take a look at these benchmarks:
https://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/storage/samsung_sm951_512gb_m_2_review/2
Notice that the Samsung 850 EVO M.2 is on par with all the other "normal" SSD drives? This is because it's using SATA and not PCIe (NVME). In this case, there is no point paying extra for that M.2, unless you have no SATA ports left but you have an M.2 and you need another drive (seems very niche to me).
The current king of the hill, I believe, is the Samsung 960 M.2:
https://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/storage/samsung_nvme_960_m_2_evo_ssd_review/3
And a 512GB one can be had for £295.31 from QuietPC which is fairly reasonable:
https://www.quietpc.com/storage-m2
That said, if you want one then the important thing to check with an M.2 is whether it's using SATA or PCIe (NVME), take a look at these benchmarks:
https://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/storage/samsung_sm951_512gb_m_2_review/2
Notice that the Samsung 850 EVO M.2 is on par with all the other "normal" SSD drives? This is because it's using SATA and not PCIe (NVME). In this case, there is no point paying extra for that M.2, unless you have no SATA ports left but you have an M.2 and you need another drive (seems very niche to me).
The current king of the hill, I believe, is the Samsung 960 M.2:
https://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/storage/samsung_nvme_960_m_2_evo_ssd_review/3
And a 512GB one can be had for £295.31 from QuietPC which is fairly reasonable:
https://www.quietpc.com/storage-m2
Deleted member 110222
D
Thanks once more guys. I'll stick with SSD.
Agreed. I've been looking into a stonking new system, and the price premium of the m.2 factor is not worth any extra (if any at all) performance or size gain.
Maybe for a small form factor pc, def not at the moment for a mid tower pc.
cmdr_Sisko
Banned
there's a significant improvement going from sata to and NVME m.2... but make sure it is actually an M.2 NVME. a lot of manufacturers are putting a standard sata interface in an m.2 package, and that is just a form factor change. but going from a good sata drive to a good NVME m.2 Drive? huge difference, and well worth the money.