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UnfriendlyFire
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2.5" SATA (Crucial M500) SSD vs M.2 (SanDisk Ultra Plus) SSD

Sun Aug 03, 2014 2:01 pm

I plan on buying an Asus Zenbook UX303LN. It has a 256GB M.2 SSD plugged into a M.2-to-SATA card, and I suspect Asus probably had a surplus of M.2 SSDs. The laptop does have a spare M.2 port, but it requires a half-size card, and those are significantly more expensive than the full size M.2 or 2.5" SATA SSDs.

This is a picture from a review website:
Image

Based on the label, it looks like it's a Sandisk x110 265GB M.2.

The spare 2.5" SATA drive I have is a Crucial M500 240GB.

I intend on reformatting the laptop and installing a fresh OS, but I can't decide if I should leave the M.2 SSD and the M.2-to-SATA circuit board in the laptop, or replace it with the 2.5" SATA SSD.
Last edited by UnfriendlyFire on Sun Aug 03, 2014 7:44 pm, edited 3 times in total.
 
JohnC
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Re: 2.5" SATA vs mSATA SSD + mSATA-to-SATA circuit board

Sun Aug 03, 2014 2:29 pm

If your SATA drive fits properly and if it is faster (test both) - just use it instead of mSATA stuff.
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UnfriendlyFire
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Re: 2.5" SATA vs mSATA SSD + mSATA-to-SATA circuit board

Sun Aug 03, 2014 2:55 pm

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/807?vs=748

According to Anandtech, the Sandisk outperforms the Crucial in most of the categories.

And according to Hexus, the x110 SSD is an OEM rebrand of SanDisk Ultra Plus SSD. The 2.5" Sandisk SSD is actually really small and the PCB only takes up about a 1/3 of the case's space: http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/storage/5 ... ssd-256gb/

Still trying to find additional reviews.

EDIT: Tom's Hardware 's experiment claims that the M500 240GB consumes more power than the (x110) Ultra Plus 256GB at idle and average power consumption. Max power consumption reverses the trend: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/cru ... 51-12.html

I guess I'll stick with the x110. Not sure how much power the mSATA-to-SATA circuit board will consume though.
 
JohnC
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Re: 2.5" SATA vs mSATA SSD + mSATA-to-SATA circuit board

Sun Aug 03, 2014 6:17 pm

UnfriendlyFire wrote:
Not sure how much power the mSATA-to-SATA circuit board will consume though.

It's really irrelevant - the only significant sources of power consumption are the display, CPU and GPU (so concentrate on optimizing power profiles for these). Even if that circuit board consumes extra 500mW I highly doubt the extra 1-2 minutes of battery life will really matter to anyone.
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