I agree that NVMe is better - numerically, far better. But for standard file access experience, the big difference is between SSD and any form of rotational storage.

The change between, say, a 95% reduction in latency and a 98% reduction is hard to notice; for games you might be talking a second more vs. 20 seconds with a HDD.

This is likely to become more of an issue with DirectStorage, and host-based cache may also make a difference, but overall I think the prices are justified for the experience you get. And at the end of the day, SATA lanes take up less bandwidth so you can fit more of them in, increasing total capacity.

On my own mini-ITX build there are two SATA drive slots on the back and this would go perfectly in them. They're also a great option for replacing that old HDD that's even slower because it's filled to the brim or is starting to show errors, now that they're widely available in equivalent capacities.

Quote from: NikoB on May 16, 2023, 21:18:22

Quote from: davidm on May 15, 2023, 23:44:00These things should be blowout prices cheap. They up to ten times slower than even mid range NVME drives, with this much capacity that's a big deal. And they're obsolete tech. You're much better off getting a 4TB NVME drive, and putting it in a USB enclosure.

Only illiterate stupid townsfolk believe in these fairy tales. Most cheap and mid-range pci-e's outside of the SLC cache drop in write speeds of up to 500MB/s. Best case scenario. And there are plenty of models that write slower than the MX500. =)

NVMe is still faster, take the crucual p5, it does 2000 on slc that drops to 1000 after, but that is still over 2x SATA. You also have benefit of faster latency and slc cache frees up as drive trims

Crucial p3 plus was going for 250 and this is 209. The p3 plus is clearly a better deal unless your goal is using it as a storage drive inside a NAS where network speed is your real bottleneck

Quote from: davidm on May 15, 2023, 23:44:00These things should be blowout prices cheap. They up to ten times slower than even mid range NVME drives, with this much capacity that's a big deal. And they're obsolete tech. You're much better off getting a 4TB NVME drive, and putting it in a USB enclosure.

Only illiterate stupid townsfolk believe in these fairy tales. Most cheap and mid-range pci-e's outside of the SLC cache drop in write speeds of up to 500MB/s. Best case scenario. And there are plenty of models that write slower than the MX500. =)

If you've run out of M2 slots on your motherboard you can buy a M2 PCIE card as well.

These things should be blowout prices cheap. They up to ten times slower than even mid range NVME drives, with this much capacity that's a big deal. And they're obsolete tech. You're much better off getting a 4TB NVME drive, and putting it in a USB enclosure.