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  • r3loaded - Saturday, May 28, 2016 - link

    Nothing wrong with a PCIe add-in card, but a 2.5 inch drive with a U.2 connector would have been even more versatile.
  • LordanSS - Saturday, May 28, 2016 - link

    I agree. As far as desktops are concerned, the thermal throttling on the M.2 SSDs is quite annoying.
  • MadAd - Sunday, May 29, 2016 - link

    My thoughts entirely, as drives get smaller M2 or PCIe appears to be more limiting than convenient.

    For the size of the pcie chassis they could get a small mechanical drive in too!
  • Alexvrb - Sunday, May 29, 2016 - link

    I couldn't agree more, r3loaded. That's what I want... a 2.5" drive with a faster-than-SATA interface. I don't even care if the cable is thick, I don't think this is an unreasonable idea. Between the chassis contact and the intake fans it can dissipate heat quite well in the 2.5" bays, as well.
  • plopke - Saturday, May 28, 2016 - link

    And again A GIGANTIC PCIe slotted drive and no indication whatsoever to go U.2. But this time aimed at the enthusiastic gaming setups,... AAAAAAAAARRRGHH

    Am I missing somethign here, is U.2 expensive to implement ?

    The chicken and the egg continues here. Although most motherboard companies will sell you a M.2/U.2 adapter but then again not cheap (20-30dollar).
  • dgingeri - Saturday, May 28, 2016 - link

    U.2 was more aimed at server level stuff, from what I've seen. They've been on Dell's servers (R930, R730, R630) for over a year now. With the heavy cable and connector, I didn't think it would make mainstream.
  • plopke - Saturday, May 28, 2016 - link

    Looking at the cables , they dont look more of a hazzle as the current sata cables.
    http://images.anandtech.com/doci/9090/disk1_575px....

    it might not happen over night but one day SSD will replace all those enthusiastic HDD raids next to the OS install SSD. In these situations M.2 does not scale on desktop. I have no problem with M.2 , I am just surprised all these companies their offer for the enthusiastic/extreme builders is a full blown PCIe Slot which scales even less. U.2 have a round cable instead of the more flat SATA cables but in the end the entire setup would be the same as setting up SATA drives.
  • plopke - Saturday, May 28, 2016 - link

    PS guess it will be interesting to see what happens to all these connectors when Optane/3dXpoint reaches consumer markets. But that might be a while :P
  • extide - Wednesday, June 1, 2016 - link

    In servers that connector is used for SAS, 4 channels of 6 or 12Gbit SAS. In desktop PC's it is used for 4 lanes of PCIe. TOTALLY different.
  • stephenbrooks - Monday, May 30, 2016 - link

    I quite like the idea of PCIe storage. I mean I've got the PCIe slots anyway because I have to use one for a graphics card, and some are always spare, so why not use them for drives?
  • Magichands8 - Saturday, May 28, 2016 - link

    I too just don't understand the obsession with M.2. I guess it's interesting for certain mobile applications but for a desktop I just don't get the point.
  • ViRGE - Saturday, May 28, 2016 - link

    1) Compared to inserting a small card, running cables sucks. (Especially U.2)
    2) The M.2 form factor offers enough bandwidth and capacity for most consumer uses.
  • LordanSS - Saturday, May 28, 2016 - link

    I suppose you're right at the "peak bandwidth" on the desktop, but time and again M.2 solutions have proven to suffer from serious thermal throttling.

    And to fix that, you'd need to install heatsinks, which would negate most of the advantages of the small and thin form factor. Or reduce substantially performance, which would also negate the benefits of M.2.

    Hence, in the end, I truly believe U.2 would be a better fit on computers, desktops specially.
  • ViRGE - Saturday, May 28, 2016 - link

    "I suppose you're right at the "peak bandwidth" on the desktop, but time and again M.2 solutions have proven to suffer from serious thermal throttling."

    True, but that's if you slam it with a massive amount of writes. Even workstation loads aren't normally write-heavy enough to make throttling a real issue. And if it is, then you can go U.2.
  • zodiacfml - Sunday, May 29, 2016 - link

    I don't know with your obsession with throttling. The latest drives are so fast that no client device will throttle such drives. It is only during testing and review that it will throttle.

    M.2 is forward looking, the interface has good physical dimensions for devices of today and probably within a decade but will eventually become too big as 2.5 inch drive form format is too big for SSDs.
  • joex4444 - Sunday, May 29, 2016 - link

    The possibility of a desktop with no data cables is pretty neat from a cable management perspective. I've used RAID cards with SFF-8088 on them to break out into an 8 bay tower separate from the desktop and run all the storage from that leaving no drives inside the desktop itself.
  • saratoga4 - Saturday, May 28, 2016 - link

    Not much point in having mobile and desktop SSDs use incompatible formats. It's cheaper if the same parts can be used for both.
  • Chaitanya - Saturday, May 28, 2016 - link

    Only Samsungs 950 Pro thermally throttles under heavy loads. Rest of the M.2 drives work just fine in that form factor. So just stop bitching about thermal throttling of M.2 drives, and stop proving exception to be the rule. Also plextor is smart in providing some sort of heatsink for m.2 drive.
  • Impulses - Monday, May 30, 2016 - link

    Even the 950's throttling isn't a serious issue... But I still have my reservations about M.2 as a serious enthusiast/desktop interface in the long run. I think it's fine now, hell I've been running an SM951... What about when we want multiple M.2 drives tho? What about people that want multiple M.2 drives AND GPUs? Mobo design will get needlessly complex just to avoid a cable.

    M.2/U.2 could easily coexist as far as I can tell, so it's curious that only Intel has put much weight behind U.2.
  • Chaitanya - Saturday, May 28, 2016 - link

    Only Samsungs 950 Pro thermally throttles under heavy loads. Rest of the M.2 drives work just fine in that form factor. So just stop bitching about thermal throttling of M.2 drives, so just stop proving exception to be the rule. Also plextor is smart in providing some sort of heatsink for m.2 drive.
  • Flunk - Sunday, May 29, 2016 - link

    That's also only really under unrealistic loads.
  • Chaitanya - Saturday, May 28, 2016 - link

    Only Samsungs 950 Pro thermally throttles under heavy loads. Rest of the M.2 drives work just fine in that form factor. So just stop bitching about thermal throttling of M.2 drives, so just stop proving exception to be the rule. Also plextor is smart in providing some sort of heatsink for m.2 drive.
  • doggface - Sunday, May 29, 2016 - link

    Great to see more NVMe drives. Shame there is no 2TB sata drive though.

    Still waiting for that next price drop. Once 500GB sata drops to the 250GB level and 2TB drops to 1TB level, watch them fly out the door.

    Cmon 3d nand from Toshiba and Intel/Micron.
  • bill44 - Sunday, May 29, 2016 - link

    Type-C Gen-1 should be banned. 90% of new type-c products use it, delaying/postponing proper Gen-2 products. Where can I find pure gen2 hubs?
  • eek2121 - Sunday, May 29, 2016 - link

    ???
  • bloodinmyveins - Sunday, May 29, 2016 - link

    using not usin
  • etamin - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link

    any reason why MTBF is used rather than an endurance rating?
  • bronan - Wednesday, August 10, 2016 - link

    My motherboard has 2 slots for m2 drives with each his own pcie x4 lanes
    The problem is that spot where the slots are made on almost any motherboard.
    YES exactly under de videocard .... guess what that means for the ssds and the gpu itself'
    The latter is cooled so heavy it does ample heat up more, but the ssd can hit the throttling when (AND ONLY WHEN) its doing lots of writes. So to be honest i rarely see the throthling
    However when being at work fpr at least 2 hours and doing my work i noticed them slowdown a bit.
    Do i care not really they are lightning fast so compared to a normal ssd its still insane fast,
    Especially if you put them in raid0 which is absolute overkill. I can not really think of anything in the world that need that speeds its constant being throttled because the cpu can not handle the data fast enough.
  • docbones - Tuesday, August 23, 2016 - link

    Anybody know who has the 1tb m.2 with shield available to order? Found some EU places that do not ship to the US, and Newegg is OOS.

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