Solid-state drives (SSDs) are a core component of any modern PC, whether it’s a traditional SATA SSD or a more modern NVMe drive. Knowing the difference between these two types of SSD is important, too, as they can have a dramatic effect on your system’s cost, size, and performance.
All SSDs are faster than traditional hard drives, but there are some big differences between NVMe SSDs and SATA SSDs that are well worth considering. Our servers comes with NVMe.
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What Is NVMe?
NVMe, or “Non-Volatile Memory Express”, is an interface specification that allows storage modules to interface with your computer.
In layman’s terms, it’s basically a thing that tells your computer how to read what’s on the storage.
In slightly more technical terms, NVMe is a method of interfacing with storage that supersedes the previous AHCI (Advanced Host Controller Interface) specification.
NVMe was designed from the ground up to accommodate modern SSDs as opposed to AHCI, which was made to accommodate the old platter drives (HDDs) of ye olden days
What Is an SSD?
SSD, or “Solid State Drive”, is a type of storage medium that you can use on your computer.
In layman’s terms, it’s basically the place where you actually store your stuff.
In slightly more technical terms, SSDs are a type of storage similar to HDDs (Hard Disk Drives), but instead of storing data in physical platters, it stores data in flash storage modules as bits of 1s and 0s.
What’s the Difference Between NVMe and SSD?
“NVMe” and “SSD” can’t be directly compared as the two are two completely different things. It’s like comparing a street sign to a car.
NVMe is a type of modern interface specification that many SSDs nowadays use to achieve higher speeds. Whereas an SSD is simply a storage device (Solid State Drive) you store data on.
But the question is still viable when comparing Laptops or PCs with the one listing a regular (SATA) SSD and the other listing an NVMe (PCIe) SSD. It makes sense why we’d want to know if the NVMe or “regular” SSD is superior.
There are many different potential specifications that an SSD can use, but we don’t have to bother with all that here.
The main point is that all NVMe SSD drives are SSDs, but not all SSDs are NVMe drives.
But the problem with that is that the SATA interface is inherently limited to transfer speeds of around 600MB/s. And SSDs can be significantly faster than that.
So more modern SSDs instead opt to use the PCIe (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express) interface instead.
PCIe 3.0 can support transfer speeds of up to 1GB/s on a single lane, and PCIe 4.0 doubles that—and PCIe 5.0 doubles that, though there aren’t any PCIe 5.0 supporting SSDs currently.
And if that wasn’t enough. Consider the fact PCIe SSDs can use four PCIe lanes to transfer data. So, basically, a PCIe interface using SSD can be significantly faster than SATA SSD.
But, that doesn’t matter if the interface specification can’t keep up with that speed.
The previous interface before NVMe, AHCI, was really not made for SSDs and wouldn’t have been able to handle the throughput that SSDs were capable of.
So the industry decided to create NVMe, something that was made from the ground up to support SSDs and allow them to achieve the crazy speeds they’re achieving now.
There is no way to accurately compare NVMe and SSD technology, as they are different and often complement each other. NVMe SSDs provide some of the fastest data transfer speeds available, but that doesn’t mean they are necessarily the right choice for your needs. Many factors come into play when choosing a data storage solution. To help with the process, we’ve compared some of the most popular options available by four critical factors: Price, technical specifications, storage capacity and speed.
- Price: Until recently, SATA SSDs were comparably cheaper than NVMe SSDs, making them an attractive choice for budget-minded users. However, the price of NVMe SSDs has been dropping for the past few years as the technology becomes more widely available, making price less and less of a differentiator. Today, the popular Samsung brand of SSDs—in both NVMe and SATA variety and with comparable storage—ranges in price from between USD 64 and 130 on Amazon.
- Technical specifications: Many older devices don’t support the newer, faster NVMe technology, making a SATA SSD the necessary choice. Before purchasing an SSD, users should also make sure their system has enough PCIe connections to support the number of devices they wish to connect. Many motherboards only have two or three slots, which will limit the number of devices they can connect.
- Storage capacity: NVMe and SATA SSDs usually come in either 1TB or 2TB options. Users looking for more capacity can upgrade to the 4TB and 8TB models, but at a higher price point. At the time of writing, 4TB NVMe and SATA SSDs cost between USD 200 and 300 on Amazon, while 8TB SSDs were going for closer to USD 400.
- Speed: NVMe SSDs’ key differentiator is speed and performance. NVMe technology uses a PCIe interface that enables it to connect directly to a CPU, reducing latency and improving responsiveness. But some users simply don’t need that level of speed, in which case a SATA SSD could be a slightly cheaper option. While quite not as fast, SATA SSDs still transfer data much faster than their older HDD counterparts. Depending on your needs, the speeds of a SATA SSD might be sufficient.
SSD and NVMe use cases
At the enterprise level, the speed and performance of NVMe technology are difficult to ignore. While some enterprises still use SATA SSDs, they are more common among consumers looking to upgrade the speed and performance of a laptop or PC they’re using for gaming or to run basic office applications. Here are some of the most common use cases for SSDs.
- High-performance/high-speed computing: NVMe SSDs’ ability to handle parallel processing makes it an ideal solution for many of today’s most demanding and complex compute environments. Many high-demand applications, such as high-frequency financial trading apps and AI and ML deployments, rely on NVMe SSDs for speedy access to large volumes of data.
- Compute-intensive applications: Apps that feature real-time customer interactions often rely on NVMe technology to run their workloads. Examples of these apps include e-commerce, personal finance and many cloud-native applications.
- Data centers: NVMe SSDs help data centers everywhere expand their storage capabilities and achieve lightning-fast transfer speeds. While SATA SSDs are still in use at the enterprise level, according to a recent report from Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), nearly three-quarters of businesses have either already switched to NVMe SSD storage or are planning to in the next year.
- Video editing: Many video editors use NVMe and SATA SSDs to expand their storage and still get the high processing speeds they need. One example is the slim, small, highly portable NVMe M.2 SSD that is an ideal solution for lightweight computers like laptops, notebooks and ultrabooks.
- Gaming: Serious gamers everywhere depend on the fast load times that both NVMe and SATA SSDs provide. Both kinds of SSDs can deliver a smooth, fast gaming experience at comparable prices, as well as improve the speed and performance of day-to-day applications for any PC build.
