One of the main aspects that the units of storage internal SSD that make use of PCIe to connect to the motherboard is in the speed they offer, unlike traditional drives that connect via SATA, they are capable of allowing the user to have speeds that can exceed 10,000 MB/s. The creation of these units can be quite complicated, and even more so if we take into account that depending on the variant, the performance will be better or worse, even when we talk about SSDs that only have 1 TB difference between them.
M.2 SSD capacity can influence performance
If you have ever thought that depending on the capacity of a storage unit the PC can do better or worse, you are right, since the fact that a unit is 1 TB or 2-4 TB has a lot of influence when We are talking about the M.2 SSD models. This applies to a wide variety of components of this type from different manufacturers, mainly due to the fact that units that have a greater capacity can also have higher speeds, something that does not happen in versions that only incorporate 1 TB of storage.
Obviously it is easier to understand with examples, so we are going to make a comparison of the same storage units from two different brands with the 1 TB, 2 TB and 4 TB versions so that you can see the difference between them. :
| Corsair MP600 PRO NH | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1TB | 2TB | 4TB | |
| Sequential reading | 7,000 MB/s | 7,000 MB/s | 7,000 MB/s |
| sequential writing | 5,700 MB/s | 5,700 MB/s | 6,500 MB/s |
| Random reading | 870K IOPS | 1.0M IOPS | 1.0M IOPS |
| Random writing | 1.1M IOPS | 1.2M IOPS | 1.2M IOPS |
| TBW | 700 | 1400 | 3000 |
| Price | €120 | €207 | €470 |
As you can see in the case of Corsair, the 1 TB unit is the worst of the three in the comparison, since it has a much lower random write/read than the other two, along with the lowest resistance (TBW), being The only good thing about it is that it turns out to be the cheapest of the three. The 4 TB one, on the other hand, we can see how in addition to offering a greater amount of TBW, it also has a much higher sequential writing speed, since there is practically 800 MB/s difference, although it obviously costs €350 more.
Now let’s see what happens with what is currently the fastest M.2 drive on the market, since it uses PCIe 5.0 instead of PCIe 4.0 like Corsair’s:
| Crucial T705 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1TB | 2TB | 4TB | |
| Sequential reading | 13600MB/s | 14500MB/s | 14100MB/s |
| sequential writing | 10200MB/s | 12700MB/s | 12600MB/s |
| Random reading | 1.4M | 1.55M | 1.5M |
| Random writing | 1.75M | 1.8M | 1.8M |
| TBW | 600 | 1200 | 2400 |
| Price | €237 | €390 | €795 |
Here we can see that the difference is even bigger when we compare the 1 TB drive with the other two, mainly because not only does it have a lower write speed like the previous one, but the read speed, as well as the two random ones, are very below. If we compare it with the 2 TB and 4 TB, it has 900 MB/s and 800 MB/s less reading, while the writing that it loses is the most serious, since we are talking about more than 2000 MB/s in both cases . All this, without obviously taking into account that the resistance it has (TBW) is much lower in both cases, although the price is obviously the most striking, since it costs a quarter of the price of the 4 TB unit.
So what is better to choose for my PC?
As we have seen, 1 TB units are the most economical solution that we can find, but not the one that offers the highest performance in most cases, also having the problem that they have practically half the resistance in TBW that they offer. , for example, 2TB drives. If we are thinking of adding only 2 TB of storage to our PC, it is best to opt for a model that has this capacity instead of two 1 TB models, since in addition to being better, it offers us the ability to reduce the use of connectors. M.2, since they are quite limited.
In the case of wanting 4 TB, we can see that it would not be best to opt for a single 4 TB drive, since in addition to being more expensive, it also has worse performance (in the case of the Crucial model), so The best solution would be to opt for 2 units of 2 TB each.
This, as we can well imagine, applies to a large number of storage units, but we have not covered each and every one on the market, so in each case, you should check the speeds offered by each one. of the different capacity models of the SSD unit that you are going to buy, but in general, the 1 TB ones always tend to be worse in specifications, but better in price.
