NVME vs SATA SSD Real World Performance
I have been using a mixture of PCs. Some are SATA SSD based, some are NVME, some are PCIe 3.0, some are PCIe 4.0, some are QLC DRAMless and some are the TLC with DRAM.
Does it make a difference?
Yes it does.
My main PC is this:
- AMD Ryzen 5 3600 (6/12 Thread) CPU
- 32GB RAM
- Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 Super 4GB GPU
- Kingston A400 240GB SATA SSD in Hotswap Bay
- Windows 11 Pro
I use cheap SATA SSD based drives to swap out copies of Windows 11 clones. I want fresh copies to do my stuff. I have a few Kingston A400 240GB SATA SSDs to swap and clone from. I think this SSD is QLC and DRAMless.
2 weeks ago, family came to visit and I used my secondary PC which consisted of:
- AMD Ryzen 5 1600 (6/12 Thread) CPU
- 16GB RAM
- AMD Radeon RX 570 4GB GPU
- WD SN750 500GB PCIe3.0 NVME SSD
- Windows 10 Pro
I had a better experience using that daily. I used this for almost 2 weeks and remembered how fast daily tasks was on it using a TLC DRAM NVME at PCIe 3.0 speeds. I used to use PCIe 3.0 NVMEs before on my main PC before switching to SATA SSDs.
I built my dad a PC using:
- AMD Ryzen 5 3600 (6/12 Thread) CPU
- 16GB RAM
- Nvidia GeForce GTX 1030 2GB GPU
- WD SN850 500GB PCIe 4.0 NVME SSD
- Windows 11 Pro
This thing is fast. Boot up and even YouTubing seems faster on it.
I want to buy a front bay hotswap NVME PCIe or one that sticks in the PCIe back slots in the future. It is costly but I think I crave the speeds now after seeing the difference.
