NVME or 2.5" SATA for my P870KM1-G

Hello everyone!

I was wondering what you'd recommend as an SSD form factor for mass storage on gaming laptop like my P870KM1-G, mainly because prices are fairly decent for either form factor at this point, but my main worry is heat as the slots are just under the keyboard.

I have a 256GB SM961 that, obviously since it's an NVME drive, can run hot under sustained loads, which is why I just use it for my OS and everything else goes on my 2.5" 1TB 850 EVO. And since I'd like to used a new SSD for mass storage and transfers, I imagine that keeping the heat somewhere that gets decent airflow (i.e. at the bottom where the fans are) is probably a good idea.

But since there are 3 slots there, I imagine that using at least one for mass storage should be fine, so I wanted to see if others who have Sager/Clevo laptops that have the NVME drives under the keyboard use them often and it was just fine, or if they opt for larger drives in the 2.5" bays for mass storage instead and keep smaller NVME drives for OS stuff and short bursts of load.

Also, if you're wondering what I'm looking at specifically, it's either a 2TB Sabrent Rocket or a 2.5" 2TB Crucial MX500.

Thanks in advance for the advice!

 

I've had several P870 and the M.2 drives never get hot and shed no heat onto the keyboard. Unlike many laptops, NVMe and SATA M.2 SSDs run nice and cool in that chassis. That said, if you can get some large capacity 2.5 inch SATA SSDs extra cheap, might as well do that, too. Fill up all the bays and max out the storage capabilities of that amazing monsterbook.

The Seagate 2TB USB laptop portable drives have ordinary HDDs in them and you can buy them for less than the identical drive sold as an internal 2.5 inch HDD. So, if you're looking to put a spinner or two in the chassis for file storage, grab one or two of those and pop open the case and save yourself about $20 USD per drive.

 

Great! Thank you so much!

 

Oh, just saw the edit. I was indeed thinking about those Seagate drives, but I thought if I was gonna bring an external drive anyway (which I was planning on to replace my aging Toshiba 1TB one), I might as well get a 4TB and just keep it external. I will keep an eye out for those Seagates though, as I've always wanted to try to shuck one and use that for internal mass storage as well.

Also, there's a decent deal for a 2TB MX500 on Amazon UK for ~$240 right now, so I thought I should jump on that and then keep an eye out for a price drop on the 2TB Sabrent Rocket, as I missed a 3rd party seller's ~$240 back in December.

Thanks for the heads up and the advice too!

EDIT: Turns out I missed the endurance rating on the 860 EVO, which is almost double that of the MX500. Guess I'll wait for that to drop again and get that instead.

 

Sure, glad to help.

If you want a really affordable NVMe drive, look at the Intel 600. It's not as fast compared to other NVMe, but much faster than SATA SSD. I have multiple Samsung NVMe, a Corsair Force NVMe, a Crucial SATA M.2, an Intel 600 NVMe and a generic NVMe from Eluktronics and I find it absolutely impossible to tell any difference between the Crucial SATA M.2 and any of the NVMe SSDs when using my desktop and laptop. The real-world experience is the same across the board. The only way I can tell the difference between the M.2 drives (including the Crucial SATA M.2) is to run a benchmark on them. So, don't get too overly hung up on the numbers. Unless you are frequently moving large files around you will be wasting calories being concerned about it. I am at the point it just doesn't matter as long as the product has a good warranty.

 

That’s actually 100% fair. I guess I’ll just keep them all on my watchlist and keep an eye out for the best price. I’m looking more at endurance since I’d like to buy one that lasts me through the P870KM1 and possibly one more machine down the line. But it’s mostly numbers at some point as you said.

Thanks!

 

A few thoughts regarding drives:

You got those 2.5" slots and they are perfect for mass storage and you should be able to get 4 TB of regular Seagate hard drives (shucked) for about 110$ or less - can't beat that with SSD''s !
The downside is that they produce noise so if you sit directly in front of your unit it can be annoying depending on your sensibilities, they are also SMR technology which may or may not be an issue. There are Samsung spinpoint drives in conventional technology (CMR) that go up to 2 TB and I have shucked two of those and put them into my P870 for a software RAID 0 with 3.5TB (2 x 1.75TB) for roughly double the read and write speed as I could not stand how slow these were without a RAID 0. As they are backed up regularly I also do not care that risk of failure is higher than for a single drive, in any case one should always have a backup. As I do not like their noise I often I disconnect them via the little utiliy hotswap when I do not need them and they will be back with my next reboot, so far no issues with that although it would be nicer to switch them on and off in a more elegant way and I would not recommend this if one was traveling without an external backup drive.

As far as TBW goes the Micron 5210 has a TBW of 2,802PB in the 1.92 TB version and costs a lot less than the Samsung 860 Evo so you may want to look into that one, no idea about its other qualities though.

And Mr. Fox is right - I would find it very hard to find a difference even between NVME drives and M2 drives in regular use. Just be very careful when you need sustained write capability as that would for example rule out the Intel 600 that really stinks at sustained writes last I looked.

If you want to keep drives for one more machine you should also keep in mind that it may be very hard to find a next generation machine that still has two 2.5" slots. You can already go up to 4TB with m2 drives so unless you need an 8TB SSD the m2 form factor will be an alternative.

 

( Note: Prices in the UK can get weird sometimes, so for simplicity's sake I'm converting to USD for context)

Thanks for the advice! I just looked into the Micron 5210 and was surprised I didn't hear of it before! If I try to find it brand new here in the UK, the price are only a touch less than the 860 Evo actually, but I did manage to find a 3.84TB one on CeX (a good used electronics store here) for about ~$330 (basically the same as a brand new 2TB EVO right now), as opposed to a minimum price of ~$520 brand new. I think I'll get that and see if it's still good via CrystalDiskInfo and CrystalDiskMark.

As for the other HDDs, I'll be looking into those at some point. I already have a 1TB 850 EVO and don't intend on replacing it soon. But I just might end up giving it to a family member (still considering that) and free up that slot, so we'll see.

As for next-gen machines, if they don't have 2.5" slots, I'll just get an external housing and use these drives as portable ones.

And your configuration sounds nice! What hotswap utility are you using to disconnect those drives? I've never tried hotswapping before, especially not in a laptop.

 

The drives will also experience heat from the GPUs in the 2.5" bays,

 

Oh I know that, but there's at least some airflow there from the fans plus the heat pipes for the GPU and CPU.

I thought that the lack of active cooling under the keyboard might be an issue, but it shouldn't be from what Mr. Fox said.

EDIT: Actually, is there air intake through the keyboard as well? I always thought it was intake from the bottom and the front, then air flows throughout the chassis, then out the back.

 

It draws air from around there too yes, there are holes in the PCB.

 

Ah, so then it should be fine. I didn't know that. Thanks!

 

Great find on the Micron, that is a very nice price!
I'd say that with a 4 TB SSD you are pretty much set and when you are not gaming the advantage is that your machine will be nearly silent wth proper fan settings and no mechanical drives.
You should be able to fit one 2.5" drive when you get a good successor for the P870 but a second one might be difficult as there is a trend to slim bezels and the 18+ inch laptops are basically dead so the chassis are getting smaller.

Thanks, I use a P870DM-G in my living room but only with an i5-6600k and the GTX 980m. For my current needs a bit overpowered but I love how it is completely modular and in record time I could upgrade all of its SSD, HDD and RAM slots and I could even upgrade it to a 9900k and the RTX 2080 - couldn't do that with my MSI GT72s.

This is the utility for disconnecting drives:
http://mt-naka.com/hotswap/index_enu.htm
It works most of the time and has been a help for me in a variety of situations.

 

Right on with the large laptop thing. But if cooling gets better for high end components, I'm all for it.

Also, I'm the same with the P870KM1, though my reasons also include the ability to take it when moving from one country to another. Far cheaper than shipping a whole setup.

Thanks for the advice and I'll keep that utility in mind!

 

Yep, that would be much better: Keep the size and go for something like an upcoming RTX 3080TI and some 10+ core top of the line overclockable CPU, doubt that this will be possible with a smaller chassis.

I have been taking my MSI GT72s and two add on monitors abroad so I know exactly what you mean. I have gotten a few looks pulling a large gaming machine or desktop replacement out of my bag at airports but once I am at my destination I am very happy that I did not choose the thin and light route!

 

You cant see them under the keyboard as it forces the air to travel through the whole compartment.

 

Hey guys,

hoping to get some help here.
Iam struggling getting Windows installed on my new purchased WD Black NVME SSD. Bios doesnt recognize it, only Windows does.
I chose it during windows installation and tried to install the os on it, but unless its no recognized by bios, I cant boot from it :/
The ssd has been placed in slot 3 and 2 afterwards, but that did not help either.
AHCI Mode ist enabled.
Are further steps necessary no get nvme drive recognized by bios?
Intel SATA M.2 SSD is bootable.

Device is a P870KM1-G with coffeelake modded bios by dsanke

 

AHCI mode is or isn't enabled? Your typo could be either.

 

Ahci ist enabled.

 

Is or Is Not?

 

Sorry damn German autocorrection.

It is enabled.

Another problem Iam facing is the the gpu ist left with 8 PCIe lanes, I just recognized it via HWinfo

 

I have no idea how to help with the BIOS bit, but the 8 PCIe lanes for the GTX 1080 is normal. I have the same thing from HWInfo: "PCIe v3.0 x16 (8.0 GT/s) @ x8 (8.0 GT/s)" and that is confirmed by GPU-Z.

Also, x8 vs x16 presents no appreciable difference in gaming performance as seen in Gamers Nexus's article on the GTX 1080 in both modes. That's done to allow you to use more PCIe lanes for NVMe drives IIRC. I know that's a thing on desktop motherboards, though maybe less so nowadays.

EDIT: Since I went to search for it, apparently Gamers Nexus had to go to the Titan V to find limitations with PCIe x8 on GPUs as seen in this video.

 

Also, could you try and post a screenshot of your BIOS with the devices listed?

 

Thanks for this interesting information!

Regarding the BIOS settings Iam a bit overstrained which are the right settings to show.
Strange thing is that the submenu offboard nvme controller configuration shows the right nvme drive but it says that there is no controller..