PCI-E SSDs

[Gman]

A couple magazines and sites have been including these as their boot drives in their builds, PC Gamer, anandtech, and a couple others recently.

Most seem to pick the Plextor M6e Series PCIe M.2, which is a 256gb SSD. 

Has anyone used these, or have an opinion if they are worth it, price not being on object (they seem to around double the cost of what an average 250ish sized SSD costs)?  The stats they are throwing down seem to show a significant on paper increase in reads and writes, but what's the real world deal, if it's for primarily a gaming machine that isn't building videos or rendering and all that jazz.

[2bighorn]

A couple magazines and sites have been including these as their boot drives in their builds, PC Gamer, anandtech, and a couple others recently.

Most seem to pick the Plextor M6e Series PCIe M.2, which is a 256gb SSD. 

Has anyone used these, or have an opinion if they are worth it, price not being on object (they seem to around double the cost of what an average 250ish sized SSD costs)?  The stats they are throwing down seem to show a significant on paper increase in reads and writes, but what's the real world deal, if it's for primarily a gaming machine that isn't building videos or rendering and all that jazz.

It has less overhead, lower latency, direct lane to CPU, etc, compared to SATA SSD, but unless you do a lot of sequential read/writes or you need larger queue depth like on workstations and servers (that's what it is optimized for) you won't really notice the difference.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

A couple magazines and sites have been including these as their boot drives in their builds, PC Gamer, anandtech, and a couple others recently.

Most seem to pick the Plextor M6e Series PCIe M.2, which is a 256gb SSD. 

Has anyone used these, or have an opinion if they are worth it, price not being on object (they seem to around double the cost of what an average 250ish sized SSD costs)?  The stats they are throwing down seem to show a significant on paper increase in reads and writes, but what's the real world deal, if it's for primarily a gaming machine that isn't building videos or rendering and all that jazz.

I own two PCI-E SSD:s. I'd say that in regular use it's hard to tell the difference between a SATA6 SSD and a PCI-E one. Both are pretty much so fast that you don't notice much delays. But once you get used to them, using a machine with spinner hdd:s is like moving in molasses. Annoying and slow.

My first PCI-E SSD (OCZ Revodrive 3) was a disappointment mainly because I went cheap and bought a 120Gb model. It is simply too small. It is blazing fast but simply too small to hold even the whole steam library. My second one (Intel 910 800Gb) doesn't share that problem.

[Gman]

Ok, figured I would see how folks using them thought they worked before putting them into my new build.  I think I'm going to go with SSDs in Raid 0 instead.  I have the same problem w/Steam folder Ripley, mine is close to 600mb now, and I can't fit it on a single 500gb SSD drive, and the SteamFolder program has been a little buggy, which lets you put single programs from Steam on certain drives, so I'm going back to all of Steam on one drive (or Raid array in this new system).

[Chalenge]

Hehe, Steam library is over 850GB currently and growing. . .

[Gman]

I thought mine was bad.  I was considering deleting some stuff, but I still play various stuff JUST often enough to make it a PITA to have to download it again, even at 13mb/sec, some stuff is pretty big now, and the d/l rates will fall down to 2 or 3mb/sec sometimes for me with Steam, regardless of what server or VPN I try with it.

Yep, going to have to get at least 1 gb in SSD either through RAID 0 or a single drive.  I think getting 2 is almost the same price, and will offer more speed what with the stripping and all.

[Pudgie]

I own two PCI-E SSD:s. I'd say that in regular use it's hard to tell the difference between a SATA6 SSD and a PCI-E one. Both are pretty much so fast that you don't notice much delays. But once you get used to them, using a machine with spinner hdd:s is like moving in molasses. Annoying and slow.

My first PCI-E SSD (OCZ Revodrive 3) was a disappointment mainly because I went cheap and bought a 120Gb model. It is simply too small. It is blazing fast but simply too small to hold even the whole steam library. My second one (Intel 910 800Gb) doesn't share that problem.

Tell me if I got this right..............

A PCI-E SSD has it's own onboard PCI-E bus controller & when put in the PCI-E slot communicates directly w/ CPU & system mem over the PCI-E lane(s) bypassing the mobo chipset & it's controller. Correct?

If this is so then my interest is perked up a little as I can see some potential.....but it would depend on just how good/fast the PCI-E SSD's onboard bus controller is........correct as well? Can be a little expensive but par the course....................... ..

I'd like to know.........................

 

[Chalenge]

This is what Gman was writing about originally:

http://www.amazon.com/Plextor-256GB-Internal-Solid-PX-G256M6e/dp/B00KIMIETO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1427170268&sr=8-1&keywords=Plextor+M6e+Series+PCIe+M.2

This is what Ripley responded with:

http://www.amazon.com/OCZ-Solutions-RevoDrive-PCI-Express-warranty/dp/B0058RECUE/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1427171633&sr=8-3&keywords=OCZ+Revodrive+3

On the Z97 board I tested the M.2 variety of SSD forced the ASMedia SATA controller offline, which blocked a potential of 12TB of storage. I consider that to be very bad.

If you have a PCI-Express slot open then Ripley's method is superior for the obvious reasons, except dollar-for-dollar it will be about twice as much per GB.

Yes, Pudgie, you can do the same with a PCI-Express SATA controller and a platter drive, except it will not be as fast obviously. On my server I never filled out any controller more than half of the available capacity, because adding a new controller maintained the system snappiness. I still prefer enterprise level NAS-type platter drives.

[Pudgie]

Thanks, Chalenge!

Appreciate the info......................... ...........

Got me a little researching to do........................... ............................. ..

I'll let cha know what I cook up here........................

 

[Pudgie]

Looking at this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820785002

Essentially a single PCI-E-based SSD RAID0 card (like having 2 SATA SSD's in RAID0 on a single PCI-E card).

Price isn't too bad & it matches my Asus RIVG ROG X79 mobo.................

Looks good to me. Can be ran off legacy BIOS or new UEFI BIOS via a switch on the back of the card.

Watched the product video on Newegg......from what I can understand this looks like a good platform for the OS & apps to be run off of.

Thoughts?

  

[Pudgie]

Also looking at this one:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820249054

and this one:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA3X518W4232

The Plextor is consumer grade but the Calvary is enterprise grade & doesn't come w/ a heat sink on the NAND & shield......

I like the Plextor one as well as I like the Asus......................

Sigh................  decisions..............

in progress..................... ..

 

[MrRiplEy[H]]

If you're looking for a fast boot drive and/or game storage I would go with a Samsung 850 or Intel SATA drives instead. I only got the Intel PCI-E card because I got it dirt cheap (450 euros for 800gigs pci-e and 240gigs sata combo).

[Pudgie]

If you're looking for a fast boot drive and/or game storage I would go with a Samsung 850 or Intel SATA drives instead. I only got the Intel PCI-E card because I got it dirt cheap (450 euros for 800gigs pci-e and 240gigs sata combo).

Thanks for the post Ripley.

I already have a 500Gb & a 120Gb Samsung 850 EVO SSD on my SSD wish list at Newegg....planning to use the 500Gb 1 for OS & programs & the 120Gb 1 for sacrificial page file duty when I get around to doing an OS reinstall as I want to do it on fresh SSD's......if I choose to go this way.

What I have been doing is reading up on the advantages\disadvantages of PCI-E SSD's over SATA III based SSD's since Gman started this thread & researching the different PCI-E SSD's out there & posting them here for comment to help me to arrive at a direction....I currently have 2 OCZ Vertex4 SATA III 256Gb SSD's in my box that I have been using as noted my intended use w/ the 850's since I've installed them over 2 1/2 yrs ago w/o issues (10-6-12 to be exact) & the tests that I've done on both of them over this time frame using AS SSD Benchmark software shows that neither drive is showing signs of slowing down to date....but I'm interested in the aspects of going to a PCI-E SSD at the moment................

The price of a PCI-E SSD isn't a major concern of mine, OTOH the performance of 1 is..................

This info is what I'm seeking for so if you could give me some perspective on how your Intel PCI-E SSD performs\performed....good or bad.....I would appreciate it.

 

 

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Thanks for the post Ripley.

I already have a 500Gb & a 120Gb Samsung 850 EVO SSD on my SSD wish list at Newegg....planning to use the 500Gb 1 for OS & programs & the 120Gb 1 for sacrificial page file duty when I get around to doing an OS reinstall as I want to do it on fresh SSD's......if I choose to go this way.

What I have been doing is reading up on the advantages\disadvantages of PCI-E SSD's over SATA III based SSD's since Gman started this thread & researching the different PCI-E SSD's out there & posting them here for comment to help me to arrive at a direction....I currently have 2 OCZ Vertex4 SATA III 256Gb SSD's in my box that I have been using as noted my intended use w/ the 850's since I've installed them over 2 1/2 yrs ago w/o issues (10-6-12 to be exact) & the tests that I've done on both of them over this time frame using AS SSD Benchmark software shows that neither drive is showing signs of slowing down to date....but I'm interested in the aspects of going to a PCI-E SSD at the moment................

The price of a PCI-E SSD isn't a major concern of mine, OTOH the performance of 1 is..................

This info is what I'm seeking for so if you could give me some perspective on how your Intel PCI-E SSD performs\performed....good or bad.....I would appreciate it.

 

If price is no issue then go ahead with the PCI-E card, of course. My practical use has shown that I can't see much difference if any between a SATA6 SSD and a PCI-E SSD. In benchmarks the PCI-E model is much faster but for my casual use (loading the odd game or app now and then) they both perform with almost instant speed. Situation would be different it it was server use and hundreds of thousands of requests per minute.

[Pudgie]

If price is no issue then go ahead with the PCI-E card, of course. My practical use has shown that I can't see much difference if any between a SATA6 SSD and a PCI-E SSD. In benchmarks the PCI-E model is much faster but for my casual use (loading the odd game or app now and then) they both perform with almost instant speed. Situation would be different it it was server use and hundreds of thousands of requests per minute.

Appreciate the response!

In my research on these PCI-E SSD's I have found 2 of these that have perked my interest as 1 of the main uses that is touted for their existence is gaming along w/ video encoding\editing & CAD work or any use where the read\write speeds are paramount as they are essentially RAID0 SSD solutions put on a PCI-E PCB platform w/ onboard PCI-E bus controller so that the SSD will look to the OS as a single SSD but performance along the line of a hardware-based SSD RAID0 using multiple flash NAND controllers sectioning out the NAND into "separate" SSD's w/ onboard dedicated RAID controller to manage them across the PCI-E lane(s) that support all of the optimization\protection goodies that a single SATA SSD can........in short an easier method of running RAID0 SSD's w/o the limitations of the SATA bus & chipset holding the "RAID" array back from it's full potential & enjoy full OS protection/optimization of a SATA SSD. Also they are supposed to be capable of being paired in a RAID0 to RAID0 configuration or "RAID the RAID"..............

Here they are:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820785002
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231819

The Asus 1 uses 2 120Gb "SSD's" in RAID0 across 2 physical PCI-E lanes & the GSkill 1 uses 4 120Gb "SSD's" in RAID0 across 8 physical PCI-E lanes. Both these are consumer grade products & have a decent warranty on them. Price isn't for the faint-hearted............

Here is another PCI-E SSD that uses the M.2 vers of it's SSD that Gman inquired about on a PCI-E PCB adapter supposed to be optimized over the original one, thus the BK badging & also listed as consumer grade but not in RAID0 & uses 2 physical PCI-E lanes:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820249054

You can get this 1 in 256Gb & 128Gb capacities as well. Pricing is a lot more reasonable if you stay below 512Gb.......

All are PCI-E rev 2.0 spec.......

What I'm curious about is using 1 of these on my Asus RIVG X79 mobo as this mobo has 40 PCI-E 3.x lanes available (12 extra lanes than the mainstream offerings) & a PCI-E SSD could provide some extra disk performance thruput down those extra lanes that I'm not gonna use (not going to SLI\Crossfire graphics cards.....) & by by-passing the SATA bus along w/ it's X79 chipset may actually "see" some of this performance right now......not so much in faster boot times or in faster loading times but in faster reads/writes across the PCI-E lanes themselves as opposed to the SATA bus as the PCI-E lanes are in direct connection w/ the CPU, system mem, graphics card, LAN, etc & run MUCH faster w/ greater bandwidth capacity than the X79\SATA III bus currently has. This is what has perked my interest & is begging for me to test this out. Of course you will need to run apps that can actually bear this out..............who says that I ain't gonna do that? 

Yes I can agree that on a more practical level all this is overkill for most uses but modern games will start taking more & more advantage of this kind of hardware now & in the future, including AH some day so why not?

All the reading that I have read is pointing to the SATA bus going the way of the PCI bus & the PCI-E bus will be the predominate communication subsystem in use due to it's compatibility w/ all computer hardware devices & it's massive speed & bandwidth capability......

Who knows I might branch out into CAD work & be flying AH at the same time when I retire....................... ...

One thing will be for sure.....I probably won't be able to afford this kind of stuff if\when retirement comes along so I better get in on it now.................