Bought and Installed M2.sata When The Dell Takes M2/NVMe

grang on 14/05/2020 - 13:20

Idiot stamp.

Recently ran out of space on the Dell Inspirion 5680 Ozbargain deal from 2018. the 256 GB SSD was too full, as was the game drive, so we upped the spinning 1TB game drive to 8TB spinning drive and I had to learn about M.2 slots.

I searched and replaced the old SSD drive with B&M key with Samsung 860 1TB M2.sata 1TB drive with B&M key on the recent 20% sale - $236

Today I was working on a laptop that I needed to install the os directly onto the SSD via USB, and I saw it only had the M key in the slot, yet it was a B&M key 500GB drive. Revisiting my limited education on M2 ports, I learnt that an M only key is a good indicator of NVMe capability (and of course B&M)

Opened up the Dell, and yes, it is only an M key port. Arrggghh. slow learner. So I could have gotten an NVMe drive.

I assume it isn't worth the hassle of swapping for a 1TB (say) 970 NVME drive and flogging the 1TB 960 Drive? Most games run off the Seagate Baracuda 8TB.
I still have all the packaging for Samsung 860 if I was to flog it on gumtree.

Thx

Computing

Comments

  • grang on 14/05/2020 - 13:26

    here is the article that confirms. I am not the only one who seems confused, but bottom line is this Dell supports NVMe
    https://www.dell.com/community/Inspiron-Desktops/Inspiron-56…

  • macmanluke on 14/05/2020 - 13:44
    +4

    wont notice the difference in the real world

  • Skramit on 14/05/2020 - 13:44
    +3

    So I could have gotten an NVMe drive.

    No.

    No noticable difference booting windows or loading games between nVME and SATA M.2

    The only possible reason to swap for an NVME is if you do large file copies from one nVME to another to take advantage of the ~3000MB/S read/write.

    Stick with yoour SATA, its more than good enough for you usage.

    Also, dont run games off the 8TB. That's just asking for pain as it's very SLOWWWWWWWWWWW…

  • smashman42 on 14/05/2020 - 13:46
    +1

    Returning it to the seller in exchange for a NVMe drive isn't possible?

    You can throw them into 2.5" adaptors to run them like a normal SATA SSD if you have another PC that could use it

    Edit: wait, this is a slot that goes both ways? Just use the SATA drive then, unless you do super heavy IO workloads you'd never notice the difference between NVMe and SATA, especially with it only being a x2 port not the full x4

  • jugsy on 14/05/2020 - 13:48
    +1

    You can use userbenchmark to see the differences
    https://ssd.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Samsung-860-Evo-500GB-…
    (havent selected the drives yet, just start typing in each box)

    I doubt it will be worthwhile

  • grang on 14/05/2020 - 13:58

    Thanks heaps.
    That is great to read. No I don't copy large files between drives. Mostly to my gigabit Nas, so no harm there. The 860 m2.sata seemed to be a top performer in m2.sata config already.

    I have put the old 256gb SSD in a USB 3 enclosure (needed enclosure to clone the boot drive to new samsunf). That "thundrive/stick" is super fast.

    Re 8tb spinner vs 1tb SSD for games. Yes, good point.

    Will selectively/temporarily move active major games to SSD. I have a few TB in steam and epic and VR games, so all won't fit.

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