mSATA in P170EM?

Hi guys,

Seeing as how replacing the PC is now still a few years away and having the option to spend a little cash (my machine is still kicking ass, now with its GTX 1060), I recently decided to get an mSATA for my P170EM .

But I'm confused on what version of mSATAto get, I see 80mm and 50mm mSATAs. mSATA with 2-sliced connectors and 3-sliced connectors, mSATAs with 2 screws and one screw. I think what I need is a 50mm one, but I'm not sure :S

I'm planning on getting a 500gb mSATA. If I'm correct about the 50mm factor, I have 3 possible options:

Samsung 850 EVO
MyDigitalSSD Super Boot 2
MyDigitalSSD 480GB (512GB) Bullet Proof 4 Eco

Could someone give me some pointers about the differences between them?

Thanks!

 

mSATA have only one standard dimension. Maybe you think about m.2, which can have few different lengths.

 

I'd stick to the 850 evo personally.

 

When you search for mSATA in Amazon it shows you that all of these are mSATAs. Also online comparations show that there are 2 versions, but yes, they do say M.2 - Thanks for the clarification!

PS: :S You also have half-mSATAs apparently.

 

Could you please elaborate why?

 

Reliability and performance compared to others.

 

Well all Samsung Evo SSDs use TLC, which is not as good as MLC or SLC (best but very expensive).

I'd suggest to take one thats equipped with MLC if you want to use is for longer.

 

It's usually not the wear leveling of the type of nand that kills a drive

 

Maybe, but reading or especially writing really (really) big files shows another difference as TLC is also a little slower than MLC. After a few GBs TLC drives tend to slow down a bit.

BUT that doesn't mean they are bad, it's just why for example the Samsung Pro SSDs are more expensive (MLC).

Usually Crucual SSDs are (or used to be) cheaper than Samsung while still using MLC and maintaining a somewhat equal quality.
This might not be the case for every SSD but if you can find a Crucual mSATA SSD with MLC in the same price range then this would be my choice.

(I'm just writing this because the only failing SSD I ever saw was a Samsung Evo one of a friend and back then he was quite upset)

 

Meh, found an EVO mSATA 1TB for 250$ new on EBay. Couldn't resist the "cheap" price (Usually 350).

Crucial's mSATAs were actually way more expensive than EVO's.

 

Ok, was some time ago when I bought mine, back then they were almost equally expensive

250 really is a good deal^^

 

On the larger drives the TLC can saturate the SATA bus on sequential.

 

Late to the party but I'm surprised no one's brought this up already... as far as I am aware, the mSATA / m.2 connector on the P170EM is also only rated for SATA II not III so will be a bit pointless as far as solid state goes. The main drive bays are SATA III hence my sticking to a SSD+HDD combo in standard 2.5" format.

 

300MB/sec is not pointless, you will still see most of the benefit thanks to the small file speeds which never saturate that.

 

I really wonder why they didn't make it SATA III ready though?! I doubt that it makes any difference cost-wise.

 

The chipset supported 2 SATA III ports max. 2.5" drives were more common than M.2.