M.2 NVMe vs SATA

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brewmonkey

New Member
Feb 26, 2020
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Main concern is heat/power in a home server that sees pretty light VM/utility duty. Will a SATA drive run significantly cooler than NVMe in the M.2 slots? Are there some drives in one or both that are known for playing especially nice on the heat/power front? Performance is not much of a concern - just trying to enjoy freeing up some SATA ports for more storage (FreeNAS).
 

BlueLineSwinger

Active Member
Mar 11, 2013
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NVMe controllers are pretty mature now and don't suck near as much power or produce near as much heat as they used to. I wouldn't worry about it.
 

WhosTheBosch

Member
Dec 20, 2016
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I recently bought the Samsung 970 Evo Plus M.2 NVME but found it wasn't as performant in ZFS as I wanted. So I researched and got the Intel P4510 U.2 then purchased a U.2 > PCIE card. In regards to your question, I found out that the U.2 and 2.5" drives can usually handle higher speeds and performance due to, I think, the higher power they use. You also have to look at the surface area of the device for heat dissipation. In a well ventilated case, I don't think it will make a difference between what you're looking at.
 

BlueLineSwinger

Active Member
Mar 11, 2013
176
66
28
I recently bought the Samsung 970 Evo Plus M.2 NVME but found it wasn't as performant in ZFS as I wanted. So I researched and got the Intel P4510 U.2 then purchased a U.2 > PCIE card. In regards to your question, I found out that the U.2 and 2.5" drives can usually handle higher speeds and performance due to, I think, the higher power they use. You also have to look at the surface area of the device for heat dissipation. In a well ventilated case, I don't think it will make a difference between what you're looking at.
From what I've seen, SSDs often have more cache in the 2.5" form-factor relative to the otherwise-identical m.2 make/model. There's simply more room for more chips. This is probably why the specs for the former come out a little higher. As a side-effect of supporting more cache, the 2.5" version may draw a bit more power.

Regardless, form-factor aside, those are two very different SSDs.
 

brewmonkey

New Member
Feb 26, 2020
13
1
3
NVMe controllers are pretty mature now and don't suck near as much power or produce near as much heat as they used to. I wouldn't worry about it.
I recently bought the Samsung 970 Evo Plus M.2 NVME but found it wasn't as performant in ZFS as I wanted. So I researched and got the Intel P4510 U.2 then purchased a U.2 > PCIE card. In regards to your question, I found out that the U.2 and 2.5" drives can usually handle higher speeds and performance due to, I think, the higher power they use. You also have to look at the surface area of the device for heat dissipation. In a well ventilated case, I don't think it will make a difference between what you're looking at.
I put a couple WD Blue NVMe drives in the M.2 slots and they've been running nice and cool. Thanks for the replies/insights!