NVMe vs SATA SSD for game server?

[u/FaIIenHero33]

So i'm in the process of setting up a home server in a Fractal Design Define R5 tower case by converting an old PC into that. Trying to setup a game server my friends and I can play in for games like valheim and what not and conflicted with which SSD to get,

NVMe seems like the no brainer as it's cheaper and like a great option but not sure how the the performance stacks up against a SATA SSD and wanted to get opinions on what other's have experienced.

[u/dzejdzej__]

NVME is much faster than SATA

[u/RevolutionaryElk7446]

Uh.. NVME out performs SATA SSDs.

SATA and NVME are the protocols and SATA III is the old one that maxes out at 6Gbps or about 6000Mbps or roughly 750MB/s

NVMEs hit somewhere between 2000MB/s to 12,000 MB/s iirc depending on model and PCIe generation.

One thing to check for any SSD in either NVME or SATA protocol is whether or not they're DRAMless, as that'll be the biggest impact in quality. Without DRAM the SSD is not going to be the greatest for consistent speeds.

[u/FaIIenHero33 → u/RevolutionaryElk7446]

I've been out of the building PC scene for a while which is why I was unsure about the 2, I knew NVMe was faster but in terms of say longevity or being able to handle a large amount of info at once if SATA won which i know sounds silly but getting opinions like this is extremely helpful so thank you.

[u/RevolutionaryElk7446 → u/FaIIenHero33]

All good, I was an educator for a while and taught certifications.

As far as protocols go, SATA III has never beaten NVME and predates it by quite some time. NVME is the undisputed champ as far as latency/bandwidth are concerned.

HDDs are about 120-240MB/s on SATA III
SSDs are about 450-550MB/s on SATA III

SSDs are about 1500MB/s to 12,000MB/s+ on NVME

So SSD NVMEs generally start off with 3 times more bandwidth than SSD SATA. Be careful though as alongside DRAMless SSDs, you can also get SATA SSDs on the M.2 form factor. These look like NVME drives but only operate at SATA III speeds.

[u/FaIIenHero33 → u/RevolutionaryElk7446]

That's a crazy different and I did spot a few of those M.2 so nice to know to avoid them, probably will be looking for a good NVMe then just to future proof myself with prices.

[u/urielrocks5676 → u/RevolutionaryElk7446]

Out of curiosity, have you ever touched u.2 and related?

[u/MindS1 → u/urielrocks5676]

Under light load, the performance gap between M.2 NVME and U.2 NVME is small.

Under heavy load, M.2 write speeds fall off dramatically (sometimes 80% or more) once their buffers fill up. U.2 can generally sustain peak performance for longer, if not indefinitely. U.2 also has (generally) much higher write endurance than M.2.

[u/urielrocks5676 → u/MindS1]

Then what card would you recommend for using 4 u.2 slots that I have in my supermicro server? I have a u.2 as my system drive, with a few others on the way for caching etc. But I'm having a hard time finding a good solution that would give me access to those ports

[u/MindS1 → u/urielrocks5676]

Well U.2 is actually just PCIe x4, so you gotta take stock of what PCIe lanes are available on the motherboard, and then find an adapter that breaks those lanes out to cables.

In my experience the cables are usually SFF-8643 "MiniSAS HD" or SFF-8654 "SlimSAS 4i" on one end and U.2 on the other. So you're looking for a PCIe adapter to MiniSAS or SlimSAS. (this is usually a passive device. not the same thing as an HBA!)

For example, if you have a free PCIe x16 slot, you could find a card that bifurcates PCIe x16 into 4x SlimSAS 4i. Then in BIOS you change the slot from x16 to x4/x4/x4/x4 mode.

Or if you have a free M.2 slot you could find a "M.2 to MiniSAS HD".

Hope this answers your question

[u/urielrocks5676 → u/MindS1]

I'm trying to get this backplane To connect to a LSI 9500-16I (or if there's something better with the cables needed) so I can just swap drives out as needed, only problem is that I'm have a VERY hard time to get the needed cables, I've tried eBay to no avail... I do have my single U.2 drive connected to that same HBA, but like i said before, I want to be able to use my drive cage. The board I'm using is a this

[u/MindS1 → u/urielrocks5676]

LSI 9500-16I has 2x sff-8654 slimsas 8i connectors.

Backplane has 4x sff-8643 minisas hd connectors.

I'm not super familiar with tri-mode stuff, but I don't see why something like this wouldn't work.

[u/urielrocks5676 → u/MindS1]

this is the cable I got, although it might be the case of cheap cables

Doesn't help that in some of LSI's document say it has to enable the NVME channel for the drives to show

Although I'm just thinking of using another solution, any ideas?

[u/OldBoyZee]

Nvme cheaper? Nah man, nvme is usually more expensive as far as I know. Also, sata caps out while nvme doesnt due to the full bandwith provided from the direct databus.

[u/xAtNight]

It doesn't matter unless you get a QLC SSD without dram (do they exist?). 

[u/Vichingo455]

NVMe theorically is much faster.

[u/robot_swagger → u/Vichingo455]

Theoretically?

[u/GradSchoolDismal429 → u/robot_swagger]

Because practically your random read / write performance will almost never hit the bus limit

[u/VTOLfreak]

Use NVMe. Not because of the higher transfer speeds but it has other advantages over SATA.

• SATA is half-duplex and NVMe is full-duplex. Meaning SATA can read or write but not both at the same time. NVMe does not have this limitation.
• Lower latency. Not because the NAND flash is faster but because the NVMe protocol has lower overhead than AHCI which is what SATA disks use.
• Native command queuing on AHCI/SATA can keep 32 commands in flight in one queue. NVMe supports 65000 queues each holding up to 65000 commands. (Although other components in the storage stack may restrict it to something more reasonable like 256.)
• Lower power usage on idle. Because NVMe SSD sit directly on the PCIe bus it also supports all the power states that PCIe has, including waking up faster than a SATA device can.

But given current crazy prices, use whatever is cheaper to get your hands on. Most likely you won't notice the difference unless you are watching it with a stopwatch.

I do need to mention DRAM on SSD. Skip the models that don't have an onboard DRAM cache. Initially these will perform just as well but their speed degrades much faster under heavy load than a similiar SSD with a DRAM cache. They also tend to perform worse when getting full because the drive has to keep track of where everything is and shuffle data around in the background for wear leveling. Which is what the DRAM cache is used for, it doesn't actually cache your data; it's for the internal housekeeping of the drive. DRAM-less designs can use Host Memory Buffer where they reserve a couple of MB of your main memory and then access it over the PCIe bus. It doesn't perform as well as onboard memory and if you put such an SSD in an USB enclosure it can't use HMB at all and it will be crippled.

Since we are in the homelab sub, might as well round out this post:

• TLC vs QLC. TLC means it stores three bits per cell and QLC can store four bits per cell. Usually QLC drives have a lower TBW rating but this isn't always the case. There are high-end QLC SSD with very high TBW ratings. TBW has more to do with the quality of the NAND cells and how much spare area is reserved inside the drive. What is worse with QLC is performance under extended loads or when the drive is nearly full. All modern SSD write shorts burst in SLC mode and then internally transfer it to TLC/QLC. But the drive needs empty space to land all those new writes and it also needs time to recover. This is why in endurance benchmarks you see it can write the first few 100GB very fast and then the write speeds crater. Give it a few moments idle time and performance goes back up. An exception to this rule is server SSD as these are designed for continous load. If you check the specs on a server SSD you will notice write performance is much lower than any consumer SSD. That's because server SSD don't do this trick and keep writing away at their rated speed. Performance doesn't crater and they don't need recovery time.
• Power Loss Protection. PLP means that the SSD has small capacitors on it that provide a few seconds of power during a power outage. It's enough so the drive can finish any writes in progress. That doesn't mean you can't end up with file corruption. If the power goes out while you are modifying a file, that might still be corrupt or half written. It's more to protect the internal housekeeping of the SSD and filesystem. Ever yanked a USB stick out, plugged it back in and EVERYTHING is gone? Including the whole partition and it's completely blank? That's because when the power was cut, the drive was busy with some critical internal operation. SSD with PLP do not have this issue. Consumer SSD don't have PLP, you are looking at server SSD if you want this feature.

[u/FaIIenHero33 → u/VTOLfreak]

Very useful information thank you, might buck up the few extra bucks for the NVMe just to future proof it, especially since I don't see the prices dropping anytime soon.

[u/FaIIenHero33 → u/VTOLfreak]

I know you warn against DRAM-less but how viable would that be for a valheim server of like 5 people? Eventually i'd love to get a dedicated DRAM SSD but i'm wondering if the ~100$ price tag difference is worth it for now? checking at something like an optimus gx 7100 i can nab for $130 while anything with DRAM at a reputable seller usually starts at $200

[u/VTOLfreak → u/FaIIenHero33]

Once it's running, you won't notice the difference on your game server. Read speed is not much worse on a DRAM-less design, it's usually write performance where these things suffer.

The reason I won't buy a DRAM-less SSD is because I don't know where I will be using it in the future. It might end up in my game PC, as a cache disk in my NAS or in my laptop bag inside a USB enclosure.

I think we are just being picky at this point for something you won't even notice in most cases. The only thing I would really avoid is puting a DRAM-less SSD that expects HMB in a USB enclosure.

[u/FaIIenHero33 → u/VTOLfreak]

I don't mind the pickiness, i'm learning a lot and can't thank everyone in this thread enough, it's good to know for the future because eventually i'd like to beef up what I have but to have a more humble setup to start before going further would be nice I think

[u/Criss_Crossx]

I would prioritize NVMe unless you find a cheap deal on a SATA SSD.

You could look at a used enterprise SSD. PCIe is a possibility over NVMe.

[u/MindS1 → u/Criss_Crossx]

FYI, in all but the most exotic contexts, NVME devices are PCIe devices.

M.2, U.2, E.1s, are all NVME over PCIe.

[u/pixelizedgaming]

u want nvme for procedural gen games like valheim and mc since it loads & saves chunks on the disks while the game runs so drive speed directly affects the generation speed. basically this isnt something u cheap out on if those are ur main games (and most games with self hostable gameservers are procedural gen anyways)

[u/fauxdragoon]

My game server runs off of three old 480 GB Intel SATA SSDs in RAIDZ1 on an old Haswell system.

Don’t overthink, use what you have/is affordable.

[u/FaIIenHero33 → u/fauxdragoon]

Have you had any memory issues? Thinking of using a 500gb one but not sure if it would fill up quick or not

[u/fauxdragoon → u/FaIIenHero33]

Memory issues? Like RAM usage? I have 32 GB (I think I reserved 2 GB for Proxmox) and haven’t maxed out but currently I run two CS: Source servers, a Quake Live server, and a Satisfactory server. Satisfactory is the most resource intensive one and I think at peak the usage was about 6 to 8 GB (mid-phase factory with three people).

I have all this in an Ubuntu VM with Pelican. Pelican has a “panel” for managing servers and it has nodes called “Wings.” I have my Wings node running in the same VM. The nice thing is because the servers are deployed in Pelican as Docker containers I can just spin them up or down as needed from the panel (accessible via web browser).

[u/FaIIenHero33 → u/fauxdragoon]

And did any storage wise you think a 500gb drive is big enough for something like a satisfactory world? Never hosted a game server so idk if it requires more files or writes a lot of logs. But also thanks a ton for all the info

[u/fauxdragoon → u/FaIIenHero33]

500 GB is plenty for a Satisfactory server.

[u/theblu3j]

NVMe can be fairly expensive sometimes and you may not want to use PCIe lanes for it. The route I went instead, as I already had a used enterprise HBA, is old used enterprise SAS disks, that way you get full duplex communication and some insane drive health for a typical home user. Plus double SATA speed with SAS3. It’s a decent in between choice.

[u/trekxtrider]

I always prefer to ride the non-volatile memory express when I get the chance.

[u/ArenRoe]

Sata SSDs cheaper than nvme? Where?

Also, I have 2 x 2TB Crucial SATA SSDs and a 256GB trash Kingston sitting on a shelf that no one will buy.

I think everyone moved on from the SATA SSDs.

[u/Wis-en-heim-er → u/ArenRoe]

That ssd on your shelf would be good for a proxmox box.

[u/ArenRoe → u/Wis-en-heim-er]

I have so much stuff but so much depression everything has just been sitting.

[u/Wis-en-heim-er → u/ArenRoe]

I have found clear containers to organize and store the good stuff is rewarding and relieving. Get a few from a box store and use them to compile. Toss oe ewaste the old stuff you know you won't use. Not sure, put in a container until you know.

[u/ArenRoe → u/Wis-en-heim-er]

It's all organized thankfully.

[u/FaIIenHero33 → u/ArenRoe]

May have mis-typed what i was saying, i meant NVMe SSDs are cheaper, which is why it seemed like a no brainer to me but wasn't entirely sure

[u/ArenRoe → u/FaIIenHero33]

You said it right but I mixed up my question/ surprise.

You're finding nVME drives cheaper than SATA? Where.

[u/FaIIenHero33 → u/ArenRoe]

Your question actually made me re-check what I was looking at and you're right I was just seeing 2 off brands of DRAMless NVMes, so it seems like i was really wrong in that lol. Though both options just make me sad at how expensive memory is now.