Choosing the Right SSD for a Skylake-U System
by Ganesh T S on May 9, 2016 8:00 AM ESTMiscellaneous Aspects and Concluding Remarks
Intel's Skylake platform attempts to scale a wide variety of computing form factors, and its members span a wide TDP range - from 4.5W up to 91W. The low power Y- and U- series CPUs come with plenty of knobs in order to enable Intel's customers to create the right characteristics for a product to achieve the desired performance level. In designing the Intel NUC, one of these parameters (namely, the speed at which the on-die platform controller hub and the CPU communicate) was left at the default low-power setting. This prevented PCIe 3.0 x4 SSDs from achieving optimal performance. Fortunately, Intel has a BIOS fix in the pipeline that enables the get NUC6i5SYK to full performance with the latest generation of high-performance PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe SSDs.
Intel provided us with advanced access to the development BIOS, and we were able to verify that the fix works as intended. We also took this opportunity to evaluate different M.2 SSDs in order to determine the right fit for a particular build. The results were as expected, but presented a wealth of data for the average PC builder to consider.
PCs that are going to be used for business / office activities or basic personal computing tasks have very little to gain by going in for the higher-priced PCIe cards. A SATA SSD is more than good enough for these purposes, as shown by the SYSmark 2014 scores. For other scenarios, such as those involving heavy multimedia editing and frequent transfers of large-sized files, the PCIe SSDs can definitely provide tangible benefits. Keeping that in mind, let us take a look at the conditions under which one might choose the different SSDs evaluated in this article.
Mushkin Atlas Vital 250GB
This is the budget choice, coming in at just $90 for 250GB of storage. The SandForce controller has been around for a long time now, and it can be considered to be stable and proven in the field. Mushkin also promises MLC flash in the SSD. For a majority of the use-cases for Skylake-U systems, this SATA 6Gbps M.2 SSD balances price and performance perfectly.
Kingston HyperX Predator 480GB
In terms of price per GB, it is quite close to the Samsung SSDs discussed below. In terms of performance and features (PCIe 2.0 / AHCI), it does come second to them too. The power consumption is also a bit on the higher side, making it unsuitable for users looking to upgrade their notebooks. The SSD also makes extensive use of the 1GB DRAM cache, due to which we recommend ensuring uninterrupted power supply to the system in which it is used.
However, the Kingston SSD impresses us with one major feature - the endurance claims coupled with the warranty. Kingston has a 3-year warranty, but, it also says that the 480GB version can withstand 1.7 drive writes per day (DWPD). This works out to more than 891TB of writes, compared to the 75 - 400TB of the Samsung drives discussed in this article.
We have no hesitation in recommending the $300 HyperX Predator M.2 480GB SSD for Skylake-U desktops with heavy write workloads (common in multimedia editing and other similar scenarios). It strikes the best balance of endurance and performance for such use-cases.
Samsung SM951 256GB
Most consumers should opt for the more recent SSD 950 PRO, unless the SM951 is available for a much lower price per GB. Both of them have similar performance in Skylake-U systems with the higher OPI link rates, as they both use the same controller and interface / protocol (PCIe 3.0 x4 / NVMe). However, the warranty aspect is a bit worrisome, since the SM951 is an OEM model. The pricing from third-party sellers is also a bit on the higher side, with the 256GB model that we evaluated coming in at $200. In addition, it uses lower endurance flash memory compared to the 950 PRO. All in all, given a choice between the SM951 and the 950 PRO, it would make sense to go with the latter.
Samsung SSD 950 PRO 512GB
We saved the best for the last. This is undoubtedly the top performer, has the best warranty (five years), and uses the latest MLC V-NAND flash technology (promising higher endurance compared to the planar NAND used in the SM951). The power profile is also excellent (better than both the SM951 and the Kingston HyperX Predator). To top it all, the price per GB is very competitive, with the 512GB version coming in at $318. Pretty much the only downside is the lower endurance rating (400TBW) compared to the Kingston HyperX Predator.
Coming to the business end of the review, it is heartening to see Intel respond in a quick and positive manner to user complaints regarding the performance of PCIe 3.0 x4 SSDs in the Skylake NUC. The available tweak will also enable Skylake-U system manufacturers such as GIGABYTE (with its latest BRIX lineup) and Zotac (which has regularly put out mini-PCs based on the U-series CPUs) to optimize system performance. We also managed to check out four different SSDs for usage in Skylake-U systems in general (and the NUC6i5SYK in particular). All the four SSDs considered in the article are good choices for Skylake-U systems, though the ideal fit would depend on the budget as well as the intended use-case.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
40 Comments
View All Comments
AnnonymousCoward - Monday, May 9, 2016 - link
When will AnandTech realize that synthetic hard drive benchmarks are utterly pointless?http://techreport.com/review/29221/samsung-950-pro...
It's not like you'd round up several graphics cards that produce the same fps, and only run synthetic tests on them to try to show which is fastest. That would be foolish. And that's what's being done with SSDs.
You go as far to claim "those involving heavy multimedia editing and frequent transfers of large-sized files, the PCIe SSDs can definitely provide tangible benefits." How do you know?? If you look at the actual data (in the techreport site), load times of 500-800MB files were pretty much a wash across all the drives. You're misleading readers by only showing PCMark8 and claiming there are tangible benefits.
ganeshts - Monday, May 9, 2016 - link
Dude, did you even read the full article - particularly, the place where the graphs for the 'AnandTech DAS Suite' are displayed? Those graphs are the places where tangible benefit is shown for the PCIe SSDs.In fact, the only place where I have put in 'synthetic hard drive benchmarks' was the CrystalDiskMark comparisons when introducing the four SSDs. Again, that was prefaced with this text: "...it is useful to determine whether the SSDs are operating as per the manufacturer's claimed specifications. It can also help in finding out whether the SSD is connected via the most optimal interface. ..."
In fact, we set out with this article with the sole intention to use ONLY real-world, application-based benchmarks. Please read the article at least once before putting forward an accusation in its comments section.
AnnonymousCoward - Monday, May 9, 2016 - link
It really is a great article, it's well-written, and an interesting read. I'm only focusing on the lack of _real_ real-world benchmarks.You consider SYSmark, PCMark, and DAS to be real-world, but the problem is they aren't. First, I highly question the accuracy: in an actual load time situation, I seriuosly doubt the 950 Pro will be 5x faster than the Mushkin, as PCMark and DAS show. Secondly, these benchmark programs don't give a tangible understanding: seeing a load time difference in "seconds" is tangible, but seeing scores of a thousand is not.
It's really easy to prove this to yourself: use a stopwatch on anything with a load time. If the times are less than 3x of each other (more likely, within 10%) then it will be evident that PCMark and DAS are lying.
ganeshts - Tuesday, May 10, 2016 - link
SYSmark is real-world. Look at their whitepaper if you haven't had a chance to try it out. It actually runs the applications and keeps track of how much time it takes to complete tasks - and it actually shows there is little to no difference between a PCIe AHCI SSD operating at 2.0 x4 and a NVMe SSD operating at 3.0 x4.PCMark - I have linked the PDFs which show how much time it took to complete each workload (real-world trace). The SATA SSD takes around 2 seconds more than the NVMe SSD - and between AHCI and NVMe, it is 0.2 - 0.3s.
The DAS stuff is pretty much as real world as it can be. You have 250GB of data to transfer from one partition to another. The SATA SSD takes 4x the time of the PCIe NVMe SSD. The instantaneous bandwidth numbers are presented in the graph for you to see. Are you saying I am misrepresenting facts?
SYSmark and PCMark are _real_real-world benchmarks - as real-world as you can get if you want highly repeatable benches with reproducible scoring , not something a tech site cooks up on its own (like our DAS suite - which has its own reasons for existence - since we developed it, we can instrument it in ways not possible with third-party benchmarks).
Where does PCMark and DAS say they are representing load time situations? Did you take a look at the PDFs? The PDFs show how much difference is there for the real workload of manipulating images with Photoshop etc. The bandwidth numbers generated by PCMark - I clearly state it is artificial and assumes workload that is not CPU-bound. You should look at the Storage Score to get an idea of how much faster SSD X would be over SSD Y. The bandwidth numbers are only to indicate how the SSDs would perform in a storage-bound situation - Read the explanation preceding the graph.
The DAS suite doesn't talk about load time at all - it notes time taken to transfer a large amount of data from one partition to another. You can see your tangible 'seconds' in those graphs.
Stopwatch and stuff - at the risk of sounding like a broken watch - check the PDFs of the PCMark 8 storage bench results.
rossjudson - Tuesday, May 10, 2016 - link
I'm not sure why FIO isn't used for your benchmarking. Doesn't have the pretty graphs, but it's got scalability and rigor. You're not going to use Crystal to find out how well a PCIe SSD performs at 600K IOPS, or what happens when you're writing maximum sequential load to 4 of them in a single system."What can this hardware do?" and "How will this affect my workload?" are different questions, for sure. I think your application-level benchmarks are quite useful for answering the second. But perhaps not so much for the first.
Or maybe Crystal Diskmark is super-awesome, and FIO's not needed any more. ;)
AnnonymousCoward - Wednesday, May 11, 2016 - link
Your points look technically sound and you clearly have a far better understanding of those benchmark suites than me. The thing is, though, this is confusing. It's not obvious how to take 4 benchmark program results and know how actual computer usage precisely compares.AT got it right here: http://www.anandtech.com/print/1371/ Load times are easy to comprehend and apply to what we care about! And shockingly, RAID-0 won every suite but marginally lost in the simple use-case test.
I can tell you a lot of people have a misconception that RAID-0 SSDs or the 950 Pro load things >3% faster. [reference to the data: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-950-pr...] The misconception is propagated by reviews that show a bunch of graphs with big performance differences and an omission of simple use-cases. I guess users buying a NUC care about boot time, app load time, etc. Why not show the difference. That would certainly be more meaningful than any *Mark suite.
Agent Smith - Monday, May 9, 2016 - link
Not so quick to apologise eah?Experientia docet
Kvaern2 - Monday, May 9, 2016 - link
Much can be read in a username.MrSpadge - Monday, May 9, 2016 - link
"Please read the article at least once before putting forward an accusation in its comments section."Non, no! That's not how the internets are supposed to work ;)
MrSpadge - Monday, May 9, 2016 - link
(Oops, meant to reply to Ganesh's post)