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Hi,
I am building a new PC, and though I didnt really think about it initially, when I was choosing a new motherboard, I decided that I want to make sure it has a M.2 port in case I need it in future.
Now I am thinking is it actually worth upgrading my 128GB "Crucial RealSSD C300" to a M.2 SSD?
Space is not an issue, and even when I do get a new one, I dont really care too much about space, since I have yet to use even 60GB as my Windows drive for the past 3 years.
Going from HDD to SSD was a big difference. What I want to know is, will going to M.2 be noticeable as well? Or its just a minor upgrade?
If it is a minor upgrade, then I would probably just delay it until something better comes along.

Another question is, can M.2 drives be used as a boot device?
And also, should I be aware of any speed specifications when getting one? Or do they only come in one speed/bandwidth so far?

I can answer one of your questions yes, you can boot from an M.2 drive

Switching to a PCIe SSD isn't likely to give you anything like the jump between a rotational drive and an SSD. That jump in how your system feels was caused primarily by the reduced access times and latency of an ssd where as going to a PCIe SSD will mostly just provide extra bandwidth and that's never a bad thing but for the average desktop user we're already at "fast enough" so there's not going to be a wow factor like the initial switch to SSDs. As for why I've been saying PCIe rather than M.2 when your question was about M.2, the M.2 standard provides both a SATA 3.0 link and PCIe so for the cheaper M.2 drives out there they just use the M.2 slot to provide a smaller form factor for the exact same drive with the exact same interface as you could buy in a 2.5" size.

Essentially, no shipping SSDs really take advantage of M.2 such to the point that upgrading from any modern SSD would make a noticeable difference in general system performance. You're good with what you've got .

Cool. Thanks for the info guys.
That's one thing I don't need to worry about.

There's a lot of options in the M.2 form factor, both physical and electrical. M.2 supports up to 4x PCIe, but not all motherboards implement all four lanes, and not all drives will support that either. Booting is also BIOS dependent. So you have to do your homework.

I'm not sure anyone posting here noticed what model SSD you have. The Crucial C300 (while ahead of its time at launch) isn't a speed demon by today's standards. I cant quantitatively (or qualitatively) tell you what the difference would be but an M.2 SSD ought to be appreciably faster than your current C300 (if only on paper). That said it's a little early to adopt M.2. Selection is limited and prices are a bit high yet. If/when you do upgrade I wouldn't buy anything less than 240/256GB. You may not need the space NOW but you very well might in the future.

There's nothing inherently "better" about the M.2 SSDs, it is primarily just for the smaller form factor. Since you are not space constrained you can usually save money (and depending on SSD model) get higher performance from a regular SSD than buying an M.2 model.

The only other benefit of M.2 drives is NVM Express support... but very few currently shipping SSDs support this.

DPete27 wrote:

I'm not sure anyone posting here noticed what model SSD you have. The Crucial C300 (while ahead of its time at launch) isn't a speed demon by today's standards. I cant quantitatively (or qualitatively) tell you what the difference would be but an M.2 SSD ought to be appreciably faster than your current C300 (if only on paper). That said it's a little early to adopt M.2. Selection is limited and prices are a bit high yet. If/when you do upgrade I wouldn't buy anything less than 240/256GB. You may not need the space NOW but you very well might in the future.

I did see that, but I don't think the majority of users will notice the difference between a C300 and any modern SSD on a system. If his SSD works fine for him then there's no reason to upgrade it yet.

My question was based on the fact that sata only has a total of 6gbps bandwidth, while M.2 has 10gbps.
Is there any drives that actually benefit for this extra bandwidth? I know Sony Vaio reviews made a big deal about their SSD.

And this is what a few of the posts are trying to tell you. The M.2 interface does not automatically mean 10Gbps. It supports different modes and for now, most M.2 SSDs are basically just running good old SATA. You can stop dreaming for the time being.

rahulahl wrote:

My question was based on the fact that sata only has a total of 6gbps bandwidth, while M.2 has 10gbps.
Is there any drives that actually benefit for this extra bandwidth? I know Sony Vaio reviews made a big deal about their SSD.

Heh whoops, I forgot that it had the 10Gbps rating under PCie, so my earlier comment is a bit wrong. As Flying Fox points out, that's assuming it was hooked up to PCIe lanes and not the SATA controller hub. Before Z97 a lot of M.2 slots didn't offer full bandwidth or simply added it onto the SATA controller to check the feature box. (It also loses NVMe capability if not connected to the PCIe bus is my understanding). Because of how Intel reworked the Z97 chipset I believe most Z97 boards with M.2 slots should offer both PCie/SATA functionality though...

I only know of one M.2 drive that can attain that level of performance, that'd be the Samsung XP941. It doesn't offer NVMe support though and Anandtech said something about it not properly implementing TRIM support too.