NVME vs SATA SSD: What's The Difference and Which Should You Choose?

Most gamers still don't know the difference between NVME and SATA SSDs, and it's costing them serious performance. 

What if I told you that the wrong storage choice is holding your whole setup back?

Check out our complete Gaming PC playlist on YouTube.

What Is a SATA SSD?

A SATA SSD provides increased speeds and decreased latency to access your data compared to a traditional hard drive that you plug into your computer.

This is a popular, easy option to add storage quickly to any desktop or laptop or gaming PC.

A SATA SSD is usually a 2.5 in SSD that will go in your drive cages where your hard drives would also go.

These were carried over when hard drives were the standard and SSDs were new and they had to use the same connector.

What Is NVME?

NVME stands for nonvolatile memory express, which is a new standard for SSDs which use M.2 connectors to connect to your PC.

NVME SSDs are a lot faster than SATA SSDs because they can use a different form of communication to talk to your CPU and the rest of your computer.

An NVME SSD was designed because SATA SSDs were limited by the SATA connection itself.

How Do SATA SSDs and NVME SSDs Compare?

Speed

A SATA SSD is capped at 6 GBs per second, which is usually about 540 megabytes per second. You'll see most SATA SSDs reach the speed pretty easily, but they can't exceed the speed because of the limits of the connector itself.

An NVME SSD has much higher ceilings where Gen 3 SSDs will top out around 3 GB per second.

Gen 4 SSDs will top out about 7 GB per second, and the latest Gen 5 SSDs will go all the way up to 14 GB per second, which is crazy fast and definitely a lot more than anyone needs, but it's still awesome to see on SSDs nowadays.

You want to be careful when choosing a really fast NVME SSD because without a good heat sink, they can overheat and slow down inadvertently or get damaged, but usually this is not an issue when you choose the right NVME SSD.

Cost

Comparing the cost of NVME SSDs to SATA SSDs, we see that their prices have converged a lot in recent years.

This is because Gen 3 NVME SSDs and SATA SSDs are very similar in their parts list, but have just slightly different form factors. So, manufacturers can make them for about the same price.

What we see is the Gen 4 and Gen 5 SSDs costing a bit more because they have faster controllers to enable faster read and write speeds.

Generally, the price differences come from the more capacity each drive has. So, a 1 TB NVME or SATA SSD is relatively cheap and affordable, but as you get up to 2, 4, and 8 TB, the prices start scaling dramatically.

Capacity

Generally, you'll see a lot of SATA SSDs and NVME SSDs offer the same capacities where most common are 1, 2, 4, and sometimes 8 TB.

Where you'll see SATA differ is sometimes they'll go up to much larger capacities depending on their use cases where it's especially common in data centers where they might go up to 100 terabytes or more.

Gaming and Real World Performance

When should you use NVME versus a SATA SSD?

Generally, you'll want to always use an NVME SSD where you can when you have extra M.2 ports on your motherboard or if you don't have one at all and you want to upgrade to a new SSD when your computer's capable of it.

A lot of new gaming PCs and laptops will have NVME and M.2 SSDs be the standard nowadays because they are faster, smaller, and generally better.

Where you want to use a SATA SSD is in older computers that can't handle M.2, or if you've already used all of your M.2 and NVME slots.

Can You Use Both NVME and SATA SSDs?

Yes, generally you can. Most modern computers, desktops, and laptops will have M.2 ports and SATA ports that you can use, but how many of each you have is dependent on your motherboard or on your computer.

Oftentimes, you'll see one or two NVME/M.2 ports on your desktop.

Desktops will also have up to four to eight SATA ports on them to expand for SSDs or hard drives.

And on laptops, you'll generally see one M.2 port. Sometimes only an M.2 port or an M.2 port and a SATA port depending on how large the laptop is.

Which One Should You Choose?

In general, you want to choose the one that will best fit your system and the one that you can availably put in your system.

If you have extra M.2 NVME ports, you want to buy an NVME SSD.

Also, you generally want to put Windows or your operating system on your NVME SSD as this will provide the lowest latency and fastest throughput possible to increase system performance and reduce overall lag.

Ready to upgrade your storage without the guesswork? At Apex Gaming PCs, we can can customize a high-performance system configured with the perfect SSD combo for your gaming needs.