# Keep my 850 evo as boot drive or upgrade?



## WatEagle (Feb 9, 2021)

Hi all, in the recent times I started wondering to buy a nvme ssd to change my Samsung 850 evo m2, connected via a m2 to sata converter.
The main reason is to have faster boot times and load stuff like davinci more quickly

Is it the right time to upgrade or should I just stick with it?
Also do you have any suggestions about a good nvme that doesn't cost a fortune? I was aiming for a 970 evo plus or something similar but prices are high.....


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## DeathtoGnomes (Feb 9, 2021)

No. connecting an NVME drive to Sata means you are still being limited to Sata speeds.


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## Jetster (Feb 9, 2021)

Its a little faster but not that noticeable. If you can go to a larger drive it would be a good upgrade but otherwise no


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## WatEagle (Feb 9, 2021)

DeathtoGnomes said:


> No. connecting an NVME drive to Sata means you are still being limited to Sata speeds.


but i have the slot







Jetster said:


> Its a little faster but not that noticeable. If you can go to a larger drive it would be a good upgrade but otherwise no


to me comparing that with a medicore nvme that I have on my laptop (wd sn530) is noticeably faster, at least in booting tims. it's like 3 seconds vs 15


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## Jetster (Feb 9, 2021)

WatEagle said:


> but i have the slot
> View attachment 187644
> 
> 
> to me comparing that with a medicore nvme that I have on my laptop (wd sn530) is noticeably faster, at least in booting tims. it's like 3 seconds vs 15


It's another reason then. I've upgraded quite a few and its maybe a few seconds faster if that. The board and software is a bigger factor on boot times
But if you want to then just do it


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## P4-630 (Feb 9, 2021)

I was on windows 8.1 on a samsung 850 pro 512GB before and then bought a NVMe PCIe drive and installed windows 10 on it, glad that I did.


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## Vya Domus (Feb 9, 2021)

NVME drives wont really get you faster boot times, buy one if you actually need the higher read/write speeds.


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## WatEagle (Feb 9, 2021)

ok so any suggestions on which one to take?


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## ThrashZone (Feb 9, 2021)

Hi,
Evo is a good data drive pro is a good os drive seeing read and write speeds are more equal.
I do have a evo plus is okay ended up getting one after returning 3 adata 8200 pro that none of them came close to advertising read/ write spec's
970 evo plus along with all sammy ssd's exceeded spec's


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## WatEagle (Feb 9, 2021)

ThrashZone said:


> Hi,
> Evo is a good data drive pro is a good os drive seeing read and write speeds are more equal.
> I do have a evo plus is okay ended up getting one after returning 3 adata 8200 pro that none of them came close to advertising read/ write spec's
> 970 evo plus along with all sammy ssd's exceeded spec's


sabrent is also popular and wd black is about the same price of the 970 evo plus. Opinions about these two?


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## ThrashZone (Feb 9, 2021)

Hi,
Gigabyte has some interesting ones seeing they are pci-e 4 compatible 
Had to look back and find my 970 evo plus CDM test they do run warm


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## RJARRRPCGP (Feb 9, 2021)

WatEagle said:


> but i have the slot
> View attachment 187644
> 
> 
> to me comparing that with a medicore nvme that I have on my laptop (wd sn530) is noticeably faster, at least in booting tims. it's like 3 seconds vs 15


B450 Tomahawks are confirmed to have NVMe support. I would go for NVMe!
You likely have to move that standoff on the left, which is for the M.2 screw! Installing NVMe SSDs are tricky, because of the M.2 screw!



WatEagle said:


> sabrent is also popular and wd black is about the same price of the 970 evo plus. Opinions about these two?


I recommend the 970 Evo Plus.


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## WatEagle (Feb 9, 2021)

ThrashZone said:


> Hi,
> Gigabyte has some interesting ones seeing they are pci-e 4 compatible
> Had to look back and find my 970 evo plus CDM test they do run warm
> View attachment 187658


that's only 6 times faster.... BIG JUMP


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## ThrashZone (Feb 9, 2021)

WatEagle said:


> that's only 6 times faster.... BIG JUMP


Hi,
Yeah 
When testing use hwinfo too it shows read/ write also and is good to confirm that CDM or what ever is also showing the same read/ write speeds after a test as it does
You'd be surprise how inconsistent ssd test software are 
Don't bother with "as ssd" it's a total waste of time using it.

Here's a current run I only really care about main read/ write QDM along with other testing software as I said is wonky at best lol
Notice the C partition is only 130gb's too 500gb 970 evo plus


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## Jetster (Feb 9, 2021)

Samsung 970 EVO 1 Tb






Intel 665p Series M.2 1 Tb


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## WatEagle (Feb 19, 2021)

So quick update, a friend of mine has a discount on samung's website so i'm gonna pick the 970 evo plus 500gb.

then the most annoying part... should I just clone my current windows installation from one ssd to another or just reinstall it?


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## Jetster (Feb 19, 2021)

WatEagle said:


> So quick update, a friend of mine has a discount on samung's website so i'm gonna pick the 970 evo plus 500gb.
> 
> then the most annoying part... should I just clone my current windows installation from one ssd to another or just reinstall it?


If its a good install with no issues go ahead and clone it with the Samsung Data Migration software. You can always clean install later. You do not need a new license to clean install


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## WatEagle (Feb 19, 2021)

Jetster said:


> If its a good install with no issues go ahead and clone it with the Samsung Data Migration software. You can always clean install later. You do not need a new license to clean install


Really good news, this one is one of the cleanest installation I've ever done


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## Jetster (Feb 19, 2021)

Samsung Data Migration software is easy to use and I've never had a bad clone with it
And I was a die hard clean install guy for years


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## WatEagle (Feb 19, 2021)

Jetster said:


> Samsung Data Migration software is easy to use and I've never had a bad clone with it
> And I was a die hard clean install guy for years


Probably i'm  gonna go with it


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## TheLostSwede (Feb 19, 2021)

Do check and see which size of whatever drive you're getting gives the best performance, as smaller size SSDs tend to be slower, sometimes significantly so.


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## WatEagle (Feb 19, 2021)

TheLostSwede said:


> Do check and see which size of whatever drive you're getting gives the best performance, as smaller size SSDs tend to be slower, sometimes significantly so.


just a regular 2280
Should I also buy a heatsink for it or am I just good to go as it arrives?


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## Jetster (Feb 19, 2021)

WatEagle said:


> just a regular 2280
> Should I also buy a heatsink for it or am I just good to go as it arrives?


You don't need one


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## TheLostSwede (Feb 19, 2021)

WatEagle said:


> just a regular 2280
> Should I also buy a heatsink for it or am I just good to go as it arrives?


Not the physical size, the amount of flash. 
Each SSD or at least controller generation there's a certain size where you get the optimal performance.
Once you go below that, performance drops significantly and once you go above it, it drops a little bit.


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## jboydgolfer (Feb 19, 2021)

WatEagle said:


> to have faster boot times and load stuff like davinci more quickly


over traditional SSD, boot times wont be that much different. nVme SSD's are good , but they have a place. IMO if the only deciding factor for going nVme is speed increase, id suggest to just buy a Sata SSD, like an 860, or whatever the modern model is. in my PC now, i have an 850 Evo & a 970 Evo, they arent really much different, outside of bench tests ofc.


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## Chrispy_ (Feb 19, 2021)

I swap between machines with NVMe and SATA boot drives all the time.
Yes, NVMe is measurably faster but we're talking such small real-world margins that I wouldn't go to the bother of swapping out a perfectly-working SATA drive.

From power button to desktop, NVMe maybe shaves 2-3 seconds off a 20-second process that I perform twice a day at most. If you can justify the hassle for 5 seconds a day, then sure - go for it.
Just think about it though, the 15 seconds you spent reading my post is 15-seconds of your life that you'll never get back, and that's five times more than you'll save each boot with an NVMe drive.

Games and applications barely care about the difference in speeds between NVMe and SATA at the moment. Unless you are doing a specific workload that you know is being slowed down SATA's bandwitdth hampering, large multi-gigabyte sequential transfers, then there's almost no point.


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## ThrashZone (Feb 19, 2021)

Hi,
Yeah I've gone mostly back to 2.5" ssd's 
Only one machine I use m.2 just for win-10 and not sure why either lol 

I started using linux so last thing I want is linux grub sludge on m.2 or dealing with grub switching to windows so I'm back to using my easy swap evo dual ssd tray to remove and insert which ever os i want to use.

easy swap dual ssd bay


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## WatEagle (Feb 20, 2021)

Yeah in my case I want to do this "upgrade" also because I can put on of my 850 evo into my old laptop with an HDD. It's a bit of a turn around but it should work, with a bit of benefits also.
I'm perfectly aware that this wouldn't be a change with day and night differences, but still a bit of an improvement


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## Chrispy_ (Feb 21, 2021)

WatEagle said:


> Yeah in my case I want to do this "upgrade" also because I can put on of my 850 evo into my old laptop with an HDD. It's a bit of a turn around but it should work, with a bit of benefits also.
> I'm perfectly aware that this wouldn't be a change with day and night differences, but still a bit of an improvement


Makes sense, especially if the old laptop doesn't have an NMVe slot.


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## WatEagle (Mar 4, 2021)

So it arrived a week ago and I cloned windows without any problem. It's faster in benchmarks but loading windows is almost the same ad the 850 evo
is it normal or do I have to change something in bios?
I also installed NVMe driver as suggested the cloning software


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## P4-630 (Mar 4, 2021)

WatEagle said:


> is it normal


Yes it is.


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## Chrispy_ (Mar 4, 2021)

WatEagle said:


> So it arrived a week ago and I cloned windows without any problem. It's faster in benchmarks but loading windows is almost the same ad the 850 evo
> is it normal or do I have to change something in bios?


That's what I was telling you earlier, there's no difference in speed between a SATA SSD and an NVMe SSD for 99% of typical consumer workloads.

The fact that you see no difference is normal. The difference is measurable, but insignificant - like a reduction in boot time from 15 seconds to 13.5 seconds, for example.

Unless your workload depends on large sequential throughput, a SATA SSD is not your system's bottleneck so replacing it for a faster NVMe SSD will change nothing of value.






Fastest SSD ever reviewed: 7.6 seconds to boot windows. Cheap MX500 SATA drive 9.3 seconds. Unless you reboot 50 times and day and sit there with a stopwatch, the difference is utterly meaningless.

If you want to check that your new SSD is performing properly, go and download Crystal Diskmark which should give you sequential speeds. 

SATA is about 550MB/S
NVMe 2x is about 1800MB/s
NVMe 4x is about 3500MB/s


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## WatEagle (Mar 4, 2021)

P4-630 said:


> Yes it is.


Correct me if i'm wrong but my laptop has a lower end nvme drive compared to the 970 evo plus but still has far better loading times, in the order of 5s maximum.
Has this thing to do with the other drives I have in the system?



Chrispy_ said:


> That's what I was telling you earlier, there's no difference in speed between a SATA SSD and an NVMe SSD for 99% of typical consumer workloads.
> 
> The fact that you see no difference is normal. The difference is measurable, but insignificant - like a reduction in boot time from 15 seconds to 13.5 seconds, for example.
> 
> Unless your workload depends on large sequential throughput, a SATA SSD is not your system's bottleneck so replacing it for a faster NVMe SSD will achieve absolutely nothing of value.


Yeah I was expecting a little difference, but in this case i have no difference, same boot time. That's a bit disappointing


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## dirtyferret (Mar 4, 2021)

WatEagle said:


> So it arrived a week ago and I cloned windows without any problem. It's faster in benchmarks but loading windows is almost the same ad the 850 evo
> is it normal or do I have to change something in bios?
> I also installed NVMe driver as suggested the cloning software


Unless I'm running a benchmark I can't tell the difference between windows/games/office on my NVMe or SATA SSD drives


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## WatEagle (Mar 4, 2021)

Chrispy_ said:


> NVMe 2x is about 1800MB/s
> NVMe 4x is about 3500MB/s


it's working perfectly speed wise
probably it's just me that thought a bigger difference than the reality


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## Chrispy_ (Mar 4, 2021)

FAste


WatEagle said:


> Correct me if i'm wrong but my laptop has a lower end nvme drive compared to the 970 evo plus but still has far better loading times, in the order of 5s maximum.
> Has this thing to do with the other drives I have in the system?
> 
> 
> Yeah I was expecting a little difference, but in this case i have no difference, same boot time. That's a bit disappointing


The chart I posted is boot times of a clean, minimal test image used by reviewers.

A real-world boot with startup applications and normal services running on a PC with an internet connection waiting on much more than the SSD. So even if the SSD loads what Windows asks for in 9s or 7s, it doesn't matter because initialising your network adapter and obtaining an IP address takes 14 seconds, for example.

Stop worrying about bootup time. There are far more important things you could be doing 



WatEagle said:


> probably it's just me that thought a bigger difference than the reality


Everyone here with experience in the matter said "you probably won't see any difference" (paraphrasing).

I'm not sure why after that you expected any improvement _at all !_

As I understood it, your justification was to shuffle the old SATA drive over to your laptop and use it as an opportunity to get a larger/more modern SSD for your desktop. Mission accomplished, don't overthink it


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## WatEagle (Mar 4, 2021)

Chrispy_ said:


> FAste
> 
> The chart I posted is boot times of a clean, minimal test image used by reviewers.
> 
> ...


yeah probably we can close this chapter, I admit I overthink about things


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## Chrispy_ (Mar 4, 2021)

WatEagle said:


> Correct me if i'm wrong but my laptop has a lower end nvme drive compared to the 970 evo plus but still has far better loading times, in the order of 5s maximum.
> Has this thing to do with the other drives I have in the system?



5S means your laptop isn't shutting down and starting up, it's probably just hibernating and resuming with fast startup. Here's where the settings to enable/disable that are:









						How to disable Windows 10 fast startup (and why you'd want to)
					

If Windows 10 fast startup is not something you want to be enabled, you can disable it with relative ease.




					www.windowscentral.com


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## Zareek (Mar 4, 2021)

WatEagle said:


> Correct me if i'm wrong but my laptop has a lower end nvme drive compared to the 970 evo plus but still has far better loading times, in the order of 5s maximum.
> Has this thing to do with the other drives I have in the system?
> 
> 
> Yeah I was expecting a little difference, but in this case i have no difference, same boot time. That's a bit disappointing


You mentioned a laptop that booted in 3 seconds before. That probably wasn't a true full Windows cold boot rather it was a fast boot or hybrid boot. A lot of laptops come with that Windows setting enabled. By default, it prevents a traditional shutdown. It's more of a hybrid between a traditional cold boot and hibernation. It is really fast paired with an SSD! It also has its own set of issues because you aren't really getting a true cold boot most of the time. Issues from your previous Windows login persist until a true cold boot happens again.

A small article on it from how to geek.


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## WatEagle (Mar 4, 2021)

That's interesting to know... Honestly I mainly take care of my desktop, my laptop is like the workhorse....
So that's explains why in activity manager there were stellar power on hours


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