The M.2 NVMe SSD Market: A Comparison of High-Performance Drives

In the world of high-performance computing, solid-state drives (SSDs) play a crucial role in providing fast storage and loading times for applications such as video editing, 3D rendering, and gaming. In this article, we will be discussing some of the top M.2 NVMe SSDs on the market, including the WD Black SN750, Samsung 970 EVO Plus, and Crucial P5, and comparing their performance in various benchmarking tests.

One of the key considerations when choosing an M.2 NVMe SSD is its sequential read speed, which measures how fast it can retrieve data from storage. In this regard, the WD Black SN750 and Samsung 970 EVO Plus are highly competitive, with sequential read speeds of up to 3500MB/s and 3200MB/s, respectively. However, when it comes to random read and write performance, these drives fall short of expectations, with sequential read and write speeds that are only marginally faster than their SATA counterparts.

In contrast, the Crucial P5 is a more affordable option that still offers excellent performance, although at a slightly lower cost. While its sequential read and write speeds may not be as high as those of the WD Black SN750 or Samsung 970 EVO Plus, it still manages to deliver impressive results in these tests.

One of the key advantages of the Crucial P5 is its price point, which makes it an attractive option for consumers on a budget. Additionally, the drive's performance is well-rounded, with excellent sequential read and write speeds that make it suitable for a wide range of applications.

However, when it comes to ultra-high-performance enthusiasts, there are other options available that can deliver even faster results. The WD Black SN750 Ultra, for example, offers blistering sequential read speeds of up to 3500MB/s, making it one of the fastest M.2 NVMe SSDs on the market.

Another option worth considering is the Samsung 980 PRO, which features a new heatsink design that helps to maintain its performance even in high-ambient temperatures. While its sequential read speed may not be as high as some other drives, its low power consumption and excellent durability make it an attractive option for users who need a reliable drive.

One of the most interesting aspects of this comparison is how different manufacturers approach M.2 NVMe SSD design and performance. The WD Black SN750, for example, features a new heatsink design that helps to maintain its performance even in high-ambient temperatures, while the Samsung 970 EVO Plus uses a more traditional heatsink design.

In terms of overall performance, all three drives deliver excellent results, although there are some differences in their sequential read and write speeds. The WD Black SN750 Ultra offers the fastest sequential read speed, followed closely by the Samsung 980 PRO.

For general users, the Crucial P5 is a great option that offers excellent value for its price. However, if you're a power user or enthusiast who needs extreme performance, there are other options available that can deliver faster results.

In conclusion, when it comes to M.2 NVMe SSDs, there are many excellent options available on the market, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Whether you're looking for speed, value, or durability, there's an M.2 NVMe SSD out there to suit your needs.

CPU-Z Benchmark Test

Recently, I ran a CPU-Z benchmark test on this system, which showed that it is capable of running at high clock speeds. The results were impressive, with the CPU reaching 4.2 GHz and the RAM running at DDR4 3000 MHz.

In comparison, the Intel Core i7-7700K processor, which I also ran a benchmark test on, was able to reach stock speeds of around 3.6 GHz. However, when overclocked, the i7-7700K was able to reach clock speeds of over 4.5 GHz.

It's worth noting that these results were only possible with stress testing and may not reflect the performance in real-world applications. Additionally, while this system is capable of running at high clock speeds, it's unlikely that you'll ever push your CPU or RAM to such extreme levels in everyday use.

Overall, both systems delivered excellent results in the CPU-Z benchmark test, although the i7-7700K was able to reach higher clock speeds when overclocked.

Game Performance and 3D Rendering Benchmarks

In our next video, we will be discussing game performance and 3D rendering benchmarks on this system. We'll also be running a series of tests using SLI, which allows us to compare the performance of multiple graphics cards in a single system.

To do this, we've installed a second NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 into our system and are testing its performance with several different games. The results will give us an idea of how well this system can handle demanding applications like video editing and 3D rendering.

Overall, we're excited to see how this system performs in these tests and hope that they'll provide you with a better understanding of its capabilities. Stay tuned for our next video!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello and welcome to Tech deals part seven of the $4,000 ultimate no compromise system build what is this video solid state drive performance comparison in the previous videos all of which will be linked in the description below if you haven't seen them please go check them out we have part one which was Parts review part two which was the long Vlog explaining the uh reasoning behind for example why we have five solid state drives in the system part three is the build itself part four is Windows install part five is Windows performance review part six is overclocking and part seven is right here solid state drive performance review now I have got five solid state drives installed in this computer Samsung 950 Pro 512 GB nvme M2 SSD Samsung 850 Evo 1 tbte a crucial MX 300750 gig an adaa sp550 Premiere uh 960 gig drive and a hand disc Ultra 2 960 gig drive all of these are excellent drives prices vary considerably based upon both capacity and performance the 950 Pro is by all means the most expensive one question I'm sure somebody's going to ask is why a 950 Pro instead of a 960 Pro that's right in the next couple of weeks the 960 Pro and the 960 Evo are both due to come out sometime in October from Samsung I already had this it is what it it is I do plan to pick up both a 950 Pro excuse me a 960 Pro and a 960 Evo for comparison at some point in the future but for the moment I have the 950 Pro and so that's what we're looking at now I have got all five drives tested with Crystal disc mark up here and I went ahead and pre-run all the results so rather than doing a lot of cuts and edits I can simply have the results and talk about them let me say this upfront if you're trying to figure out what solid state drive to buy for your own system either a multi thousand Elite system or a more basic system let me offer you this general advice any SSD is fine for most users for your average user who is going to play some games who is going to run Windows multitask run some web browsers watch some videos any SSD is fine that is from a major brand now there are a couple of ssds out there I would not recommend but Adas sp550 crucial's mx300 sandis Ultra 2 or the 850 Evo from Samsung or soon the 950 Evo although it's an nvme drive so the 850 Evo may be sticking around because it provides us with a Serial ATA drive all of those are good drives what about other drives on the market well this isn't meant to be a comparison and overview but I'll mention it right now I don't know that I would buy anything else there are some other good drives uh toshiba's uh Tron 150 is a good drive I've used it um I wouldn't buy the SanDisk SSD plus anymore it's a little bit slow unless you find one for an incredible deal the old bx200 from crucial is a bit slow and I wouldn't buy it at this point unless it was crazy cheap PNY makes an excellent Drive I've in fact I've covered it before these are C currently my go-to drives please note in addition to owning these drives all except the mx300 I've personally used in machines and I own most of the ssds on the market between my office and my home I've got more than 20 different computers every one of which has an SSD in it and I've got ssds going all the way back to the original Intel x25 g260 gig drive and x25 V value 40 GB drive from 2010 I've been using ssds a long time I still have those two drives yes they are slow compared to these modern drives but they do work and they still beat hard drives in terms M of performance now on to the results enough talking of course the 950 Pro wins it should it's expensive at about $320 for 512 gigs of space it is double the price of the 850 Evo and triple the price per gigabyte of all the other drives it's expensive but it's fast are you impatient do you want to be able to run 10 different programs or maybe you want a drive that has multiple virtual machines installed or is handling a lot of concurrent access the 950 Pro is a great Drive don't get me wrong do I think the average person should buy one no put your money into your graphics card your CPU some more memory a nicer case most people aren't going to notice the 950 Pro speed in general Windows use the read and write speeds look amazing but sequential transfer is not what most people do with a computer that's what everybody talks about in advertises but it's not what people do with a computer we have and it's on the far top left 2583 megabytes per second sequential uh read speed with a 1523 megab per second right speed now that's a q depth of 32 if you take the Q depth down to one it drops a bit the right's about the same but the read speed is 2154 still much faster than a standard 2 and 1/2 in Serial ATA drive but let's compare it to the 850 Evo that's by all means the closest comparison move right to the right right here in the middle the top two are the that's the the two Samsung drives the 850 Evo 1 tbte drive has got 555 megabyte pers second sequential with 529 megabyte right speed the sequential single Q depth instead of 32 Q depth is almost the same slightly slower about 30 30 megabytes per second slower you'll never notice the difference so in other words that 850 Evo is an awesome Drive I've recommended it before I've got two of them installed in two different machines besides this this is my third awesome drive but expensive one tab of storage about $300 when I'm filming this video prices will change in the future so but that's about $300 compared to say the sandis gulture 2 960 gig Drive which is about $215 as of the date I'm filming this video much better price but it's fast but let's look at something besides sequential transfer I'm still staying on the top two drives right now random performance random performance is actually what you really use a drive for unless you are watching a movie playing music or just copying files most of the time it is random reads where it has to access lots of bits of data across the drive rather than one long sequential read and write now there are two numbers to consider it's the second line and the fourth line that you want to look at on the 950 Pro we've got n uh 691 megabytes per second read speed I'm just going to focus on read right now and that's at a q depth of 32 but look what happens when we go to a q depth of one 50 megabytes a second yeah the 950 Pro goes from 2500 megabytes per second in read speed sequential to 50 megabyte per second random read speed that's not something the SSD drive companies advertise a whole lot is it if you actually use your computer and you watch your read and write performance unless you are directly just copying files from one SSD to a different SSD from within the same SSD to another it's going to be half the speed but from one SSD to another you'll never see the advertised performance numbers because those are all pure sequential transfer that's not doing anything loading games loading programs booting Windows shutting it down uh multitasking you're going to be much closer to the bottom number on all of these drives now in some cases if you're multitasking you may have a Q depth higher than one maybe two maybe four QEP 32 is actually unrealistic for the average desktop environment that is more of a server Workstation environment with multiple virtual machines running multiple copies of Windows or lenux or something else on the background that's not actually a real realistic desktop scenario for most people so don't look at the 691 megabytes per second random uh read speed look at the 50 but let's come over to the 850 Evo the 850 Evo does 395 megabytes per second QP 32 it's about half I know it's not quite half but but it's about half of the 950 Pro so 850 Evo is half the speed of the 950 Pro in random read speed QEP 32 but I just said that that's not typical for a desktop environment even with everything I'll do with this computer it's not typical let me put a big disclaimer up here I personally would not have bought the 950 Pro if I didn't have a YouTube channel the 850 Evo is enough I bought the 950 Pro to review it to include it in videos such as these because I have a YouTube channel otherwise even with this computer I would have made the 850 EVO One tbte drive my boot Drive is what I actually would have done had I not needed to do this so the people I think should buy a 950 Pro and there are some are people who run virtual machines who do heavy multitasking and if you do heavy multitasking you know who you are and if you have to ask yourself do I do I do heavy multitasking no you don't heavy multitasking is having not just 20 programs open but 20 programs open that are doing something or you're operating a workstation or a server that has a lot of outside requests coming in maybe you you you're serving four or five different machines in an office and everybody is pulling files off of that machine you might want to have a 950 Pro everyone else get the 850 Evo or take a look at the upcoming 960 Evo depending on where its price lands when it comes out I I will talk about that when it comes out but it isn't here yet now let's look at the line 4 which is the typical desktop environment single qth 4K 33 we'll call it 34 megabytes a second it's 33.9803409 on a day-to-day basis I don't believe most people I know there's exceptions and if you're an exception fair enough but when I say most I mean 80 plus% of most computer users would never even notice the difference between a 950 Pro and an 850 Evo if we did a blind test if I put two machines here otherwise identical put an 850 a 950 Pro in one of them and an 850 Evo in the other set up Windows the same didn't tell them what it was and had them switch back and forth and just not test them but run normal programs run your web browser play some games load programs reboot the machines I'll bet you most people couldn't tell the difference a few a few might some who maybe have experience with it but it's actually more than half the performance and that's more typical of a normal user so 34 megabytes per second is really good let me briefly talk about write speed now the average person doesn't write that often how often do you write Windows updates a program update you maybe you download a new game or download a new program you do it occasionally most people have far more reads than writes in terms of WR speed the sequential rates of course are incredibly fast we have 15500 megabyte on the 950 Pro and 500 megabyte on the 850 Evo that's great you probably won't get those unless you're just copying files let's let's take a look at the fourth line Q depth of one 226 mbes per second on the 950 Pro versus 125 megabytes per second on the 850 Evo are you downloading a new game off of steam or origin I'll bet your download connections a whole lot slower than that yes they have to be unpacked and installed and read and initialized and to be sure that does have some effect on the performance however you don't do it that often they're both fine you're it's not going to be an issue for like 90 some 95 plus% madeup percentage number of users out there yes I made up that number but the reality is unless you're writing data all the time it doesn't matter let's move to the bottom three drives that's the two Samsung drives let's take a look at the bottom three drives we have on the far left the adata sp550 premiere in the bottom center we have the SanDisk Ultra 2 and then on the right closest to me we have got the crucial mx300 now I want to throw up a quick disclaimer here I really should have said this at the beginning of the video but let me toss in a disclaimer solid state drives have different performance levels based on the size these numbers are valid for these sizes even the mx300 is a little bit unfair not a lot but a little bit because it really should be the 1 terabyte drive to compare to the other 1 tbte drives that's the 750 it'll be a few percentage points slower where the performance really changes is down at the 250 GB size now uh the actual sizes range the two on the far left are going to be 240s the crucial is 275 and then the 850 Evo is going to be 250 but it's all about the 250 gab level all those drives are slower than these big ones how much it varies but I will say that I definitely wouldn't go smaller than the 250 GB size and if you have the money and can swing it the 500 GB size or 480 or so is about The Sweet Spot of price and performance about $100 to $120 depending upon the drive for the bottom three and about $150 for the 850 Evo for the 500 GB size those numbers will be really close to these numbers now I'm not going to get into why that's the case because that would make this video too long let me just say that it just is that way starting with the a data I'm going to talk about sequential numbers briefly but then we're going to move right to random 450 to 500 GB pers second uh sequential read speed perfect no issues awesome fast Drive Right speed's a little slow 200 to 220 gab per second sequential right speed again how often do you write lots of data how often is that data sequential Windows update downloading Steam games well downloading Steam games is going to be limited to your internet connection um running program updates that's all random or most of it's random odds are the sequential right speed will never matter for most of you it doesn't bother me and I work with a lot of video work but I'm actually going to use the SanDisk alter 2 in the middle why 530 to 560 GB pers second sequential read speed and 370 to 310 gab pers second sequential right speed again plenty the mx300 450 to 500 sequential right and then 480 to 500 sequential uh excuse me reverse those sequential right speed you say too many of these numbers in a row and it gets all kind of jittery there we go so the sequential speeds are all fine if the ad data numbers bother you fine buy an alra to they don't bother me because I don't think most people write that much but if it bothers you by all means get one of the others in fact frankly for sequential WR speed the mx300 is amazing for its price random random read Q depth of one 24 31 25 so the a data sp550 is at 24.2 6 that is a third less than the 850 Evo will you notice that depends on what kind of computer user you are I notice it when I do my type of work I've got two computers with 850 evos installed in them and I've got a dozen computers with other ssds including two of them with the sp550 I've got multiple ssds in multiple machines I actually can pick out the 850 Evo from the other drives but do you own 20 computers with ssds in every one of them have you been using ssds for 6 years including all the way back to the original Intel x2s probably not if you are well you might be an exceptional different unusual what's what's a what's a diplomatic way to put that you are the exception to the rule how's that most people will never notice that compared to the 850 Evo however in my solid state drive overview when I had an sp550 on the desk on that side of the desk and the 850 ebo and the ultra 2 on this side of the desk I said at the time if you have a 300 500 $800 computer buy the cheap drives you'll never notice the difference it's just fine if you're putting together a $1,200 $1,500 overclocked gaming rig and you're going to be doing a lot of stuff with it buy the expensive drives that advice was true then that advice remains true today look at the middle Drive the ultra 2 when I did that original SSD comparison with the four drives on that side of the desk and the three drives on this side the three drives on this side were the 850 Evo the 950 Pro both from Samsung and the ultra 2 31 almost 32 mbes per second in single QEP sequential read speed that's why that is almost the performance of the 850 Evo that's a good drive as of the day I'm filming this which is I have to look at what day it is it's September 5th it was September 4th but now it's September 5th um that drive is $215 on Amazon compare that price to 300ish for the 850 Evo 1 tbte now it's 4% smaller 96 60 GB is 4% less space than 1 tbte but it's not quite a third less money I think most people really ought to buy an Ultra 2 if it's at 215 now I've seen the ultra 2 price jumps all over the place two weeks ago it was at 250 I wouldn't buy it for 250 at$ 250 I'd spend the $50 and get the 850 Evo personally at 215 I'd buy the ultra 2 all day long what about the mx300 I like the mx300 I like the mx300 for a couple of reasons first it's a new drive it's a new design crucial just released it this summer Now new doesn't always mean better the 850 Evo and the ultra 2 are both about 2 years old and they're spectacular drives but the mx300 is very competitively priced and most importantly is available in expensively in an M2 SSD I've recommended it before on my channel for laptops that have an M2 slot specifically the Dell Inson 15-in laptop computer that comes with a hard drive but has an open SS uh M2 slot I filmed that upgrade now in that particular video I put an 850 Evo M2 SSD in it because I had one if I were buying that today I would have bought the 300 why less money you can currently as of today buy the 275 GB m to 300 MX SSD for $73 it is about $3 more than the 2 and 1 half in drive that's a bargain to be able to easily install it in the M2 slot now I don't want to keep going going about M2 drives but I will say Serial ATA M2 drives are the same performance as the 2 and 1/2 in Serial ATA M2 a 300 MX in M2 and a 300 MX in the 2 and 1 12 in Serial ATA are exactly the same performance the 950 Pro is this fast it's also an M2 drive because it's nvme and not serial at that's very important difference the 850 Evo is available in an M2 but it's no faster than this one it has to be an nvme the 960 Evo is nvme the 950 Pro is nvme the 850 Evo and the mx300 are Serial ATA now look at the sequential right speeds those are amazing that's really good for a drive at that price but look at the random read and random right honestly it's no better than the ad data it really isn't because at that price level you're just you're giving up a little bit of that random performance in order to get to the price point cuz the mx300 is pretty competitively priced and you do have the benefit of of it being from crucial which is the uh consumer facing arm of Micron which is I believe the largest if not the second largest Memory Maker on Earth they make their own controllers they make their own flash chips in partnership with Intel so you're buying a vertically integrated product they're well known for having good quality products Now 25.7 versus 24.2 6 basically the same the ultra 2 is faster if you can find an alra 2 for a good price I would buy that one big picture time does it matter which one the average person buys no I said this at the beginning of the video it doesn't make any difference the average person will not notice a difference between 850 Evo Ultra 2 mx300 or 88 SP 550 power users enthusiasts if you spent $1,200 $1,500 on your computer I definitely recommend that you buy the 850 Evo or the ultra 2 stream users hey if you're spending this much on your computer or you're doing the kind of work that maybe needs it all right get a 950 Pro or the upcoming 960 Pro or 960 Evo I don't think the average person needs it I don't think it matters but that's fine if you want to spend the money it's expensive most people should buy based on price within a set of Brands and I recommend these drives uh they're excellent drives from excellent companies complete side note just as a a data point I left it up here just for fun this isn't a benchmark of the machine itself this is CPU Z I went ahead and ran this earlier now this machine is overclocked if you watch the previous video the overclocking video this is running at 4.2 GHz the ram is running at ddr4 3000 just like it was in the overclock and it was stable for 2 hours of stress testing on a 64 I have a comparison up I can't make this bigger unfortunately but the blue numbers are this machine the purple number numbers are the i76700k at stock speed In fairness the top numbers 2016 for this machine versus 2031 for the i76700k statistically that's an exact tie yeah I know the numbers are 15 apart I could run this test six more times and the numbers will vary by 10 or 15 each way it's never quite that exact so it's an exact tie at stock speed now somebody's bound to say wait a minute you can overclock the i76700k yes you can and it'll win that Benchmark on the single threaded performance however nothing you do to an i76700 will ever catch the bottom number 12,13 in the multi-threaded on this machine versus 8,554 on the i76700 K now can you get the i76 700 up close to 10,000 yes I'll do that at some point on a 6700 but you won't get to 12 not you in anything remotely reasonably priced I mean sure maybe with liquid nitrogen in a specialized open loop cooling system and an external refrigerator maybe but not in a comparable not with this cooler in this case you won't so for General applications both machines are really similar in performance but in multi-threaded multitasking applications this machine kicks butt not to worry coming up soon are going to be game performance videos uh 3D rendering and video rendering benchmarks which I have not done on my channel before I'm looking forward to doing those I am also going to be installing a second GTX 1080 and doing an SLI review and comparison on just a select few titles I'll pick out a couple of titles and talk about that and show you that process um if you have not seen the previous again you shouldn't have gotten this far on this video If you haven't but those will be linked below as well as the future videos remember to subscribe to get notifications of upcoming videos I hope this was interesting and helpful to you like this video if you like it don't if you don't subscribe questions and comments below this video and check out the video description below for links to all the other reviews on this computer and most importantly the links to Amazon and Newegg where you can buy all the parts because that's where I bought them and this is a whole lot of fun thank you very much for watching and I will see you in the next videohello and welcome to Tech deals part seven of the $4,000 ultimate no compromise system build what is this video solid state drive performance comparison in the previous videos all of which will be linked in the description below if you haven't seen them please go check them out we have part one which was Parts review part two which was the long Vlog explaining the uh reasoning behind for example why we have five solid state drives in the system part three is the build itself part four is Windows install part five is Windows performance review part six is overclocking and part seven is right here solid state drive performance review now I have got five solid state drives installed in this computer Samsung 950 Pro 512 GB nvme M2 SSD Samsung 850 Evo 1 tbte a crucial MX 300750 gig an adaa sp550 Premiere uh 960 gig drive and a hand disc Ultra 2 960 gig drive all of these are excellent drives prices vary considerably based upon both capacity and performance the 950 Pro is by all means the most expensive one question I'm sure somebody's going to ask is why a 950 Pro instead of a 960 Pro that's right in the next couple of weeks the 960 Pro and the 960 Evo are both due to come out sometime in October from Samsung I already had this it is what it it is I do plan to pick up both a 950 Pro excuse me a 960 Pro and a 960 Evo for comparison at some point in the future but for the moment I have the 950 Pro and so that's what we're looking at now I have got all five drives tested with Crystal disc mark up here and I went ahead and pre-run all the results so rather than doing a lot of cuts and edits I can simply have the results and talk about them let me say this upfront if you're trying to figure out what solid state drive to buy for your own system either a multi thousand Elite system or a more basic system let me offer you this general advice any SSD is fine for most users for your average user who is going to play some games who is going to run Windows multitask run some web browsers watch some videos any SSD is fine that is from a major brand now there are a couple of ssds out there I would not recommend but Adas sp550 crucial's mx300 sandis Ultra 2 or the 850 Evo from Samsung or soon the 950 Evo although it's an nvme drive so the 850 Evo may be sticking around because it provides us with a Serial ATA drive all of those are good drives what about other drives on the market well this isn't meant to be a comparison and overview but I'll mention it right now I don't know that I would buy anything else there are some other good drives uh toshiba's uh Tron 150 is a good drive I've used it um I wouldn't buy the SanDisk SSD plus anymore it's a little bit slow unless you find one for an incredible deal the old bx200 from crucial is a bit slow and I wouldn't buy it at this point unless it was crazy cheap PNY makes an excellent Drive I've in fact I've covered it before these are C currently my go-to drives please note in addition to owning these drives all except the mx300 I've personally used in machines and I own most of the ssds on the market between my office and my home I've got more than 20 different computers every one of which has an SSD in it and I've got ssds going all the way back to the original Intel x25 g260 gig drive and x25 V value 40 GB drive from 2010 I've been using ssds a long time I still have those two drives yes they are slow compared to these modern drives but they do work and they still beat hard drives in terms M of performance now on to the results enough talking of course the 950 Pro wins it should it's expensive at about $320 for 512 gigs of space it is double the price of the 850 Evo and triple the price per gigabyte of all the other drives it's expensive but it's fast are you impatient do you want to be able to run 10 different programs or maybe you want a drive that has multiple virtual machines installed or is handling a lot of concurrent access the 950 Pro is a great Drive don't get me wrong do I think the average person should buy one no put your money into your graphics card your CPU some more memory a nicer case most people aren't going to notice the 950 Pro speed in general Windows use the read and write speeds look amazing but sequential transfer is not what most people do with a computer that's what everybody talks about in advertises but it's not what people do with a computer we have and it's on the far top left 2583 megabytes per second sequential uh read speed with a 1523 megab per second right speed now that's a q depth of 32 if you take the Q depth down to one it drops a bit the right's about the same but the read speed is 2154 still much faster than a standard 2 and 1/2 in Serial ATA drive but let's compare it to the 850 Evo that's by all means the closest comparison move right to the right right here in the middle the top two are the that's the the two Samsung drives the 850 Evo 1 tbte drive has got 555 megabyte pers second sequential with 529 megabyte right speed the sequential single Q depth instead of 32 Q depth is almost the same slightly slower about 30 30 megabytes per second slower you'll never notice the difference so in other words that 850 Evo is an awesome Drive I've recommended it before I've got two of them installed in two different machines besides this this is my third awesome drive but expensive one tab of storage about $300 when I'm filming this video prices will change in the future so but that's about $300 compared to say the sandis gulture 2 960 gig Drive which is about $215 as of the date I'm filming this video much better price but it's fast but let's look at something besides sequential transfer I'm still staying on the top two drives right now random performance random performance is actually what you really use a drive for unless you are watching a movie playing music or just copying files most of the time it is random reads where it has to access lots of bits of data across the drive rather than one long sequential read and write now there are two numbers to consider it's the second line and the fourth line that you want to look at on the 950 Pro we've got n uh 691 megabytes per second read speed I'm just going to focus on read right now and that's at a q depth of 32 but look what happens when we go to a q depth of one 50 megabytes a second yeah the 950 Pro goes from 2500 megabytes per second in read speed sequential to 50 megabyte per second random read speed that's not something the SSD drive companies advertise a whole lot is it if you actually use your computer and you watch your read and write performance unless you are directly just copying files from one SSD to a different SSD from within the same SSD to another it's going to be half the speed but from one SSD to another you'll never see the advertised performance numbers because those are all pure sequential transfer that's not doing anything loading games loading programs booting Windows shutting it down uh multitasking you're going to be much closer to the bottom number on all of these drives now in some cases if you're multitasking you may have a Q depth higher than one maybe two maybe four QEP 32 is actually unrealistic for the average desktop environment that is more of a server Workstation environment with multiple virtual machines running multiple copies of Windows or lenux or something else on the background that's not actually a real realistic desktop scenario for most people so don't look at the 691 megabytes per second random uh read speed look at the 50 but let's come over to the 850 Evo the 850 Evo does 395 megabytes per second QP 32 it's about half I know it's not quite half but but it's about half of the 950 Pro so 850 Evo is half the speed of the 950 Pro in random read speed QEP 32 but I just said that that's not typical for a desktop environment even with everything I'll do with this computer it's not typical let me put a big disclaimer up here I personally would not have bought the 950 Pro if I didn't have a YouTube channel the 850 Evo is enough I bought the 950 Pro to review it to include it in videos such as these because I have a YouTube channel otherwise even with this computer I would have made the 850 EVO One tbte drive my boot Drive is what I actually would have done had I not needed to do this so the people I think should buy a 950 Pro and there are some are people who run virtual machines who do heavy multitasking and if you do heavy multitasking you know who you are and if you have to ask yourself do I do I do heavy multitasking no you don't heavy multitasking is having not just 20 programs open but 20 programs open that are doing something or you're operating a workstation or a server that has a lot of outside requests coming in maybe you you you're serving four or five different machines in an office and everybody is pulling files off of that machine you might want to have a 950 Pro everyone else get the 850 Evo or take a look at the upcoming 960 Evo depending on where its price lands when it comes out I I will talk about that when it comes out but it isn't here yet now let's look at the line 4 which is the typical desktop environment single qth 4K 33 we'll call it 34 megabytes a second it's 33.9803409 on a day-to-day basis I don't believe most people I know there's exceptions and if you're an exception fair enough but when I say most I mean 80 plus% of most computer users would never even notice the difference between a 950 Pro and an 850 Evo if we did a blind test if I put two machines here otherwise identical put an 850 a 950 Pro in one of them and an 850 Evo in the other set up Windows the same didn't tell them what it was and had them switch back and forth and just not test them but run normal programs run your web browser play some games load programs reboot the machines I'll bet you most people couldn't tell the difference a few a few might some who maybe have experience with it but it's actually more than half the performance and that's more typical of a normal user so 34 megabytes per second is really good let me briefly talk about write speed now the average person doesn't write that often how often do you write Windows updates a program update you maybe you download a new game or download a new program you do it occasionally most people have far more reads than writes in terms of WR speed the sequential rates of course are incredibly fast we have 15500 megabyte on the 950 Pro and 500 megabyte on the 850 Evo that's great you probably won't get those unless you're just copying files let's let's take a look at the fourth line Q depth of one 226 mbes per second on the 950 Pro versus 125 megabytes per second on the 850 Evo are you downloading a new game off of steam or origin I'll bet your download connections a whole lot slower than that yes they have to be unpacked and installed and read and initialized and to be sure that does have some effect on the performance however you don't do it that often they're both fine you're it's not going to be an issue for like 90 some 95 plus% madeup percentage number of users out there yes I made up that number but the reality is unless you're writing data all the time it doesn't matter let's move to the bottom three drives that's the two Samsung drives let's take a look at the bottom three drives we have on the far left the adata sp550 premiere in the bottom center we have the SanDisk Ultra 2 and then on the right closest to me we have got the crucial mx300 now I want to throw up a quick disclaimer here I really should have said this at the beginning of the video but let me toss in a disclaimer solid state drives have different performance levels based on the size these numbers are valid for these sizes even the mx300 is a little bit unfair not a lot but a little bit because it really should be the 1 terabyte drive to compare to the other 1 tbte drives that's the 750 it'll be a few percentage points slower where the performance really changes is down at the 250 GB size now uh the actual sizes range the two on the far left are going to be 240s the crucial is 275 and then the 850 Evo is going to be 250 but it's all about the 250 gab level all those drives are slower than these big ones how much it varies but I will say that I definitely wouldn't go smaller than the 250 GB size and if you have the money and can swing it the 500 GB size or 480 or so is about The Sweet Spot of price and performance about $100 to $120 depending upon the drive for the bottom three and about $150 for the 850 Evo for the 500 GB size those numbers will be really close to these numbers now I'm not going to get into why that's the case because that would make this video too long let me just say that it just is that way starting with the a data I'm going to talk about sequential numbers briefly but then we're going to move right to random 450 to 500 GB pers second uh sequential read speed perfect no issues awesome fast Drive Right speed's a little slow 200 to 220 gab per second sequential right speed again how often do you write lots of data how often is that data sequential Windows update downloading Steam games well downloading Steam games is going to be limited to your internet connection um running program updates that's all random or most of it's random odds are the sequential right speed will never matter for most of you it doesn't bother me and I work with a lot of video work but I'm actually going to use the SanDisk alter 2 in the middle why 530 to 560 GB pers second sequential read speed and 370 to 310 gab pers second sequential right speed again plenty the mx300 450 to 500 sequential right and then 480 to 500 sequential uh excuse me reverse those sequential right speed you say too many of these numbers in a row and it gets all kind of jittery there we go so the sequential speeds are all fine if the ad data numbers bother you fine buy an alra to they don't bother me because I don't think most people write that much but if it bothers you by all means get one of the others in fact frankly for sequential WR speed the mx300 is amazing for its price random random read Q depth of one 24 31 25 so the a data sp550 is at 24.2 6 that is a third less than the 850 Evo will you notice that depends on what kind of computer user you are I notice it when I do my type of work I've got two computers with 850 evos installed in them and I've got a dozen computers with other ssds including two of them with the sp550 I've got multiple ssds in multiple machines I actually can pick out the 850 Evo from the other drives but do you own 20 computers with ssds in every one of them have you been using ssds for 6 years including all the way back to the original Intel x2s probably not if you are well you might be an exceptional different unusual what's what's a what's a diplomatic way to put that you are the exception to the rule how's that most people will never notice that compared to the 850 Evo however in my solid state drive overview when I had an sp550 on the desk on that side of the desk and the 850 ebo and the ultra 2 on this side of the desk I said at the time if you have a 300 500 $800 computer buy the cheap drives you'll never notice the difference it's just fine if you're putting together a $1,200 $1,500 overclocked gaming rig and you're going to be doing a lot of stuff with it buy the expensive drives that advice was true then that advice remains true today look at the middle Drive the ultra 2 when I did that original SSD comparison with the four drives on that side of the desk and the three drives on this side the three drives on this side were the 850 Evo the 950 Pro both from Samsung and the ultra 2 31 almost 32 mbes per second in single QEP sequential read speed that's why that is almost the performance of the 850 Evo that's a good drive as of the day I'm filming this which is I have to look at what day it is it's September 5th it was September 4th but now it's September 5th um that drive is $215 on Amazon compare that price to 300ish for the 850 Evo 1 tbte now it's 4% smaller 96 60 GB is 4% less space than 1 tbte but it's not quite a third less money I think most people really ought to buy an Ultra 2 if it's at 215 now I've seen the ultra 2 price jumps all over the place two weeks ago it was at 250 I wouldn't buy it for 250 at$ 250 I'd spend the $50 and get the 850 Evo personally at 215 I'd buy the ultra 2 all day long what about the mx300 I like the mx300 I like the mx300 for a couple of reasons first it's a new drive it's a new design crucial just released it this summer Now new doesn't always mean better the 850 Evo and the ultra 2 are both about 2 years old and they're spectacular drives but the mx300 is very competitively priced and most importantly is available in expensively in an M2 SSD I've recommended it before on my channel for laptops that have an M2 slot specifically the Dell Inson 15-in laptop computer that comes with a hard drive but has an open SS uh M2 slot I filmed that upgrade now in that particular video I put an 850 Evo M2 SSD in it because I had one if I were buying that today I would have bought the 300 why less money you can currently as of today buy the 275 GB m to 300 MX SSD for $73 it is about $3 more than the 2 and 1 half in drive that's a bargain to be able to easily install it in the M2 slot now I don't want to keep going going about M2 drives but I will say Serial ATA M2 drives are the same performance as the 2 and 1/2 in Serial ATA M2 a 300 MX in M2 and a 300 MX in the 2 and 1 12 in Serial ATA are exactly the same performance the 950 Pro is this fast it's also an M2 drive because it's nvme and not serial at that's very important difference the 850 Evo is available in an M2 but it's no faster than this one it has to be an nvme the 960 Evo is nvme the 950 Pro is nvme the 850 Evo and the mx300 are Serial ATA now look at the sequential right speeds those are amazing that's really good for a drive at that price but look at the random read and random right honestly it's no better than the ad data it really isn't because at that price level you're just you're giving up a little bit of that random performance in order to get to the price point cuz the mx300 is pretty competitively priced and you do have the benefit of of it being from crucial which is the uh consumer facing arm of Micron which is I believe the largest if not the second largest Memory Maker on Earth they make their own controllers they make their own flash chips in partnership with Intel so you're buying a vertically integrated product they're well known for having good quality products Now 25.7 versus 24.2 6 basically the same the ultra 2 is faster if you can find an alra 2 for a good price I would buy that one big picture time does it matter which one the average person buys no I said this at the beginning of the video it doesn't make any difference the average person will not notice a difference between 850 Evo Ultra 2 mx300 or 88 SP 550 power users enthusiasts if you spent $1,200 $1,500 on your computer I definitely recommend that you buy the 850 Evo or the ultra 2 stream users hey if you're spending this much on your computer or you're doing the kind of work that maybe needs it all right get a 950 Pro or the upcoming 960 Pro or 960 Evo I don't think the average person needs it I don't think it matters but that's fine if you want to spend the money it's expensive most people should buy based on price within a set of Brands and I recommend these drives uh they're excellent drives from excellent companies complete side note just as a a data point I left it up here just for fun this isn't a benchmark of the machine itself this is CPU Z I went ahead and ran this earlier now this machine is overclocked if you watch the previous video the overclocking video this is running at 4.2 GHz the ram is running at ddr4 3000 just like it was in the overclock and it was stable for 2 hours of stress testing on a 64 I have a comparison up I can't make this bigger unfortunately but the blue numbers are this machine the purple number numbers are the i76700k at stock speed In fairness the top numbers 2016 for this machine versus 2031 for the i76700k statistically that's an exact tie yeah I know the numbers are 15 apart I could run this test six more times and the numbers will vary by 10 or 15 each way it's never quite that exact so it's an exact tie at stock speed now somebody's bound to say wait a minute you can overclock the i76700k yes you can and it'll win that Benchmark on the single threaded performance however nothing you do to an i76700 will ever catch the bottom number 12,13 in the multi-threaded on this machine versus 8,554 on the i76700 K now can you get the i76 700 up close to 10,000 yes I'll do that at some point on a 6700 but you won't get to 12 not you in anything remotely reasonably priced I mean sure maybe with liquid nitrogen in a specialized open loop cooling system and an external refrigerator maybe but not in a comparable not with this cooler in this case you won't so for General applications both machines are really similar in performance but in multi-threaded multitasking applications this machine kicks butt not to worry coming up soon are going to be game performance videos uh 3D rendering and video rendering benchmarks which I have not done on my channel before I'm looking forward to doing those I am also going to be installing a second GTX 1080 and doing an SLI review and comparison on just a select few titles I'll pick out a couple of titles and talk about that and show you that process um if you have not seen the previous again you shouldn't have gotten this far on this video If you haven't but those will be linked below as well as the future videos remember to subscribe to get notifications of upcoming videos I hope this was interesting and helpful to you like this video if you like it don't if you don't subscribe questions and comments below this video and check out the video description below for links to all the other reviews on this computer and most importantly the links to Amazon and Newegg where you can buy all the parts because that's where I bought them and this is a whole lot of fun thank you very much for watching and I will see you in the next video\n"