WHY YOU NEED AN NVMe SSD
For PC enthusiasts chasing the ultimate in performance, the latest Samsung NVMe SSDs are incredible. But are they worth the price tag?
SSDs go next-gen
Solid-state storage drives have been on the market for a long time now, but their performance (while excellent) may have been constrained by the need to support older hardware and storage interfaces. But in the last 18 months, we’ve finally reached the tipping point — and next-gen NVMe SSDs are now taking off. But is it really worth the upgrade to one? To backtrack for a minute, even early SSDs had no trouble maxing out the bandwidth available to SATA connections, a standard that was really designed for use with slower mechanical drives. Even moving on to new interfaces such as PCIe, the fastest SSDs were hamstrung by the AHCI command protocol, which, while fine for slower speeds, wasn’t efficient enough for the kind of cuttingedge performance we’re now seeing. So a new protocol, NVMHCI, was developed to handle SSDs, which combined with a PCIe interface, gives us NVMe. The result is a system that was designed to specifically handle the parallel, low-latency nature of SSDs. That’s important, because not only does it give amazing performance, but it’s ready for fast drives in the future.
NVMe benefits
NVMe SSDs have incredible performance, but how will that extra performance actually help in the real world? While the difference may not be as noticeable as upgrading from a mechanical hard disk to an SSD, super-fast NVMe drives give super fast boot
times and an all-round responsive experience across your apps. It’s worth noting, of course, that an NVMe drive needs a compatible motherboard — though most new models are NVMe ready. Even so, the rest of the PC needs to be suitably outfitted to handle the extra performance. For a machine with a slower CPU or GPU, data access times won’t actually be the slow point and even the fastest NVMe SSD won’t remove the bottleneck.
A sleek form factor
Users chasing performance goals will probably be familiar with running an array of SATA SSDs, or using PCIe interface drives or M.2 expansion cards. In comparison, NVMe drives almost all use the M.2 form factor and can be mounted directly to the motherboard, giving high speeds without taking up extra space. This makes it easy to build a custom mini gaming PC, a low-profile media PC, or even get sensational gaming or media performance from a compatible laptop. Many boards have dual M.2 slots, allowing for future upgrades, or NVMe SSDs running in RAID.
Gaming in a flash
Having an ultra-fast SSD does help improve gaming performance, but unless your PC has some weird bottlenecks, actual frame rates will only see a small boost. Importantly, though, load times can be reduced. One frustration for gamers can be running out of space on their primary drive — but with SSDs such as the Samsung 960 Pro available in up to 2TB capacities, it’s possible to have a huge library of games.
Pro and media users
For those who deal with large media files, such as 4K video editing, the low latency and high read and write speeds of NVMe SSDs can really help boost performance. Software will load fast, open files quickly and generally feel a lot snappier. Exporting or copying large media files will also be quick, and the protocol overhead of NVMe is designed to reduce the load on your CPU, letting it get through
The Samsung 960 Evo is designed to be fast yet affordable, with excellent bang for buck.
other tasks faster. The Samsung 960 Pro also has excellent endurance, so it’s ideal for users who read and write a lot of data.
SSD choice
Here in Australia, there’s a large range of NVMe SSDs available, but for anyone who’s after exceptional performance, Samsung’s 960 Pro is the undisputed Samsung king, with sustained read speeds of up to 3,500MB/s. The drive is available in 512GB, 1TB and a massive 2TB capacity. It’s also backed by a 5-year limited warranty, with a large 1,200 TBW rating. For those after something fast, but at a slightly friendlier price, the Samsung 960 Evo tops out at 3,200MB/s, is available in 250GB, 500GB and 1TB capacities. Of course, that’s not to say other NVMe SSDs don’t have value — but if you’re after the ultimate in NVMe solid state performance, Samsung’s 960 series drives are highly recommended.