# M.2 pcie ssd vs sata iii ssd



## Hired Goon (May 29, 2018)

Any opinions on this?

Obviously the M.2 is a faster protocol, but is there any real life benefit in the context of audio?


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## W Ackerman (May 29, 2018)

I posted these results a while back:

Loading Virharmonic Violin 96kHZ 18GB UVI Soundbank:

Crucial 2TB SATA SSD: 42 seconds
Samsung 950 PRO 512GB PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD: 31 seconds


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## chimuelo (May 29, 2018)

It’s really good for loading Omnisphere Multis.
Now that Spectrasonics will have 4 Soundsources/Samples as a Patch these will become even more useful.
I’m using NVMe M.2 @ PCI-e 2X Speeds since I use Z97s still.
Make sure your Chipset and M.2 are on the same rates of transfer.


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## DAW PLUS (Jun 1, 2018)

While PCIe SSDs are much "faster" than SATA SSDs, you will not reach the actual potential of these drives for 2 reasons:
-most libraries are still loaded serially, which is a software design issue. 
-the cue depth of sample loading is very shallow, which means that the full speed of the SSD, which is reached at the use of higher cue depths, cannot be used.
This means that for example a SATA/PCIe SSD comparison which offers a 200% read speed increase actually only shows a 25% increase when actually loading the same sample libraries.

Especially if you use VEP for templates and only load it once in the morning, there is no need for ultra fast SSDs. IMO SATA SSDs offer the best price/performance comparison.
If you only use a handful of libraries and do everything from within the DAW, i.e. loading librries again with each project, a PCIe based SSD might be the best, if not the cheapest option.


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