abarbarian Posted June 9, 2023 Share Posted June 9, 2023 (edited) I upgraded from a 256GB nvme to a 1 TB nvme a while ago. I did have the 256 GB one in an external enclosure which was fine but not all pc's I plugged it into would use its fast speed. So as I have a spare PCIE slot on my mobo I decide to use add-on card with the 256GB with the intention of using it for playing around with alternative os's rather than going VM or running from a usb. Bought a add-on card for £11 and everything worked just fine. Whilst shopping for the card I noticed that nvme/ssd prices have plummeted. I saw several 128GB ssd's for £7 and good quality 1TB nvme's for around the £50 mark. This made me decide to buy another 1 TB nvme. Now my set up uses gen 3 PCIe but I was seeing gen 4 PCIe cards for a similar £50'ish price. As my rig is getting on in years I will have to rebuild at some point and I doubt that I will be able to afford a gen 5 PCIe set up anytime in the next few years or before their price drops to one I can afford. I thought that my next build would probably be a gen 4 PCIe set up as by the time I need it the prices would have dropped to rock bottom. With this in mind I did some research and found this excellent nvme at a ridiculously cheap price of £ 53 inc vat and shipping. https://www.xcase.co.uk/products/adata-1tb-xpg-gammix-s70-blade-m-2-nvme-ssd-m-2-2280-pcie-4-0-3d-nand-rw-74005500-mbs-740k740k-iops-ps5-compatible-no-heatsink?_pos=3&_sid=7c2080f3b&_ss=r It gets rave reviews https://www.cdrlabs.com/reviews/adata-xpg-gammix-s70-blade-1tb-pcie-m2-solid-state-drive/all-pages.html However in this review I noticed https://www.thessdreview.com/our-reviews/nvme/xpg-gammix-s70-blade-review/2/ Quote When this SSD first arrived, its original firmware resulted in lower than expected overall performance with very low read and write 4K results, low as in 4MB/s read and 22MB/s write. We confirmed this through several benchmarks and got in touch with ADATA who corrected this issue with new firmware, identified here as 3.2.F.2A. The old firmware was 3.2.F.P7. Our performance now has jumped to 85MB/s read and 227MB/s write for Q1T1 random 4K data transfer in our Test Bench. Would you believe we did higher in our laptop? On investigating firmware updates for a linux set up I found very little information. There were some worrying posts regarding update issues for the nvme. Also I came across some posts regarding difficulty with the drive on linux. Not wanting to buy a drive that I could not update the firmware on I looked at other options. I had almost pressed the button to buy one of these which cost a tad more than I originaly was going to spend but it was up there as one of the fastest for gaming. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Corsair-Sequential-High-Density-Heatspreader-Form-Factor/dp/B09F5Z6BJ6/ref=sr_1_6?keywords=corsair+nvme&qid=1686308131&s=computers&sr=1-6 Interestingly I saw a 480 GB PCIe 4 Corsair for a mere £24 inc shipping on amazon which is cheaper than chips. Back on the hunt before I pressed the button I did one last information search and came across these reviews, https://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/10134/sk-hynix-platinum-p41-1tb-ssd-performance-champ/index.html#Final-Thoughts https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/sk_hynix_platinum_p41_2tb_m_2_nvme_ssd_review,17.html The results for the 1 TB version were simply astonishing and although once again the cost was higher than my original budget I bought this, https://www.amazon.co.uk/SK-Platinum-Internal-Compact-Factor/dp/B09QX6SL2Y?th=1 It is the 1 TB version and should be arriving tomorrow. I know reviews do not always show how things will work in real life and I know that for the moment I will only run the nvme at gen 3 speeds but the test results were astonishing especially in regard to gaming. Theoretically the card should run at the maximum speed of my 4 x PCIe slot which should result in improved gaming. Time will tell. I only decided to make a partial upgrade as I have a Chase debit card. They have been promoting them over here since last year and I decided to get one. One of the features of the card is the "round up" feature. You pay for an item say £1.87 and the card rounds the purchase up to £2, £1.87 to the seller and the other £0.13 into a Chase account that gives 5% interest. Might not seem a lot but over the last 9 months I have in the background amassed a whooping £ 98 without even noticing. Hence the splurge. I still can not get over the Kingston 128 GB ssd for £7 . I mean over here that is the price of two cups of coffee in a cafe, cheap as chips as we say. Edited June 9, 2023 by abarbarian 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted June 9, 2023 Share Posted June 9, 2023 I have NVME drives in a couple of my newer machines that run Windows, but I cannot say that I see much practical difference in performance to SATA3 SSDs that I have in older hardware. Honestly I have no real apples to apples comparison. Older machines run lighter weight OSs and I saw a dramatic difference when *any* solid state device replaced a mechanical drive. My train sims tend to load fast off the NVME but I still have to wait for Steam to load and then for the sim to contact a server in Australia for verification. I'm sure such latency would kill any difference between SATA and NVME. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted June 10, 2023 Author Share Posted June 10, 2023 15 hours ago, raymac46 said: I cannot say that I see much practical difference in performance to SATA3 SSDs that I have in older hardware. In the main I agree that there is not a great deal of difference. Boot up on a nvme for me is definitely faster and working with pictures seems faster too. The main benefit for me is in games. They load up faster and game play is smoother. If you die a lot as I do in FPS games then that faster load time is most welcome. Overall programs seem to start almost instantly. With the price of nvme/ssd's at an all time low now is the time to dive in. For the price of half a dozen cafe coffee's which give you several hours of enjoyment you could have years of more enjoyable computing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted June 10, 2023 Author Share Posted June 10, 2023 glotrends PCIe M.2 Adapter with 0.12 Inch Thick Heatsink for M.2 SSD, NVMe PCIe 4.0 | 3.0 M.2 Adapter Card, PCIe GEN4 Full Speed, Supports PCIe x4 x8 x16 Slot, Desktop PC Installation (PA09-HS) This is the PCIe card I am going to use for the P41. At the moment I am using it with my 256GB Samsung. It came with silicone bands which I have used to attach the supplied heatsink. I decided not to use the metal clips that also came with it. The profile bracket has holes in it to allow for decent air flow which is a nice feature. All in all a nice piece of kit. How long it will last only time will tell. I could not find the one I bought several years ago which is still working just fine. Quote Included Accessories: 12cm Regular Profile Bracket, 8cm Low Profile Bracket, Installation kits (Thermal Pad, M.2 Screw, SSD Standoff and Screw Driver, 2 x Rubber bands, 2 x Metal clips) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted June 10, 2023 Author Share Posted June 10, 2023 (edited) Installed the drive and formatted it with just one partition for now. It is several GB's smaller than my other 1TB as this shot shows. Found a program to do some tests on it called KDiskMark which is available on Arch through the extra repo. This is specifically for nvme drives. https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/kdiskmark/ Benchmark-storage-drives-in-linux-with-kdiskmark https://github.com/JonMagon/KDiskMark Quote KDiskMark is an HDD and SSD benchmark tool with a very friendly graphical user interface. KDiskMark with its presets and powerful GUI calls Flexible I/O Tester and handles the output to provide an easy to view and interpret comprehensive benchmark result. The application is written in C++ with Qt and doesn't have any KDE dependencies. Here are some results for both of my 1TB nvme's. The older A-Data and the newer P14. An some 32 GB test results The P14 posts much faster results in RND4K-Q32T1 section and the RND4K-IOPS SECTION. Similar results in the SEQ1M-Q8T1 section. Much Lower results in the RND4K-FUNNYSYMBOLS read section, almost half as low, but the write results for that section are the same. Of course the drive is only operating at PCIe 3 speeds but to me it looks as though it is somewhat faster than my A-Data though not in all areas. Will it result in slightly or measurably faster gaming ? I'll find out when I transfer my Arch over to it. Though I may do a fresh install of Arch and just use it for gaming and use the A-Data with Arch for daily use. That is it for now as I am of to hunt down Salamandra in the Witcher Enhanced. Which by the way runs very well on linux. Edited June 10, 2023 by abarbarian Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunrat Posted June 11, 2023 Share Posted June 11, 2023 That KDiskMark is a nice utility, basically appears to be a Linux clone of CrystalDiskMark for Win. Good that it has a variety of install options - Appimage, rpm, deb, source, or some repos. I downloaded the .deb file and installed it. Ran perfectly. I won't show the results as they are mere SATA drives in my system rather than nVME. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted June 11, 2023 Author Share Posted June 11, 2023 6 hours ago, sunrat said: That KDiskMark is a nice utility, basically appears to be a Linux clone of CrystalDiskMark for Win. Good that it has a variety of install options - Appimage, rpm, deb, source, or some repos. I downloaded the .deb file and installed it. Ran perfectly. I won't show the results as they are mere SATA drives in my system rather than nVME. It is indeed a fine program it must be well respected as it is included in the Arch Extra repo and not in the AUR so the Arch devs must think it is a good program. I prefer to think of it not as a clone but you are correct it is very similar to CrystalDiskMark which is a fine program. I would prefer to keep this thread focused on the P14 rather than have it meander of into the wilderness. When I get back from my short holiday I think that I will start a new thread based on KDioskMark as it will be interesting to see how different ssd/nvmes perform in real time. I have done a few quick tests on some different drives with some peculiar results already. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunrat Posted June 11, 2023 Share Posted June 11, 2023 13 hours ago, abarbarian said: I would prefer to keep this thread focused on the P14 rather than have it meander of into the wilderness. When I get back from my short holiday I think that I will start a new thread based on KDioskMark as it will be interesting to see how different ssd/nvmes perform in real time. Yeah, we would never want a topic to go off-track here at SNLF. I did consider starting a new KDiskMark topic but got distracted. Good idea! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted June 12, 2023 Share Posted June 12, 2023 On 6/11/2023 at 5:46 AM, abarbarian said: I would prefer to keep this thread focused on the P14 rather than have it meander of into the wilderness. Meh... whiz on you, matey! I'm meander if I wanna'. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted June 13, 2023 Author Share Posted June 13, 2023 On 6/12/2023 at 12:45 AM, sunrat said: Yeah, we would never want a topic to go off-track here at SNLF. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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