An enterprise storage system is a vital part of an IT infrastructure. In picking SSDs (solid-state drives), hard drives, enterprise storage components, and consumer drives, you have several options to choose from; you have to figure out all of your requirements and needs. Recently, flash-based solid-state drives like Intel DC p3520 1.2 TB have been making it to the main computer market due to the fast-blazing speeds it delivers.
Besides being attentive to affordability, the designers have put effort into enhancing the fundamental communication interface for ideal usage of the memory’s quicker speed ability, and that’s how NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory express) technology came into the storage scene. Nowadays, Intel DC p3520 1.2 TB is widely used in a number of speed-sensitive setups instead of traditional SATA and SAS protocols.
There are currently two major types of storage systems: SATA (serial advanced technology attachment) and NVMe. In this article, we will compare both and convince you why you should choose NVMe over SATA. Following are the details.
What is an NVMe SSD?
NVMe is the modern industry-standard interface software for PCIe solid-state drives. Basically, it is an optimized controller interface made to address the requirements of Client systems, Enterprise, and Data Center, that use (PCIe) based SSDs. In other words, it is a technological representation of the bus; the SSD is used to connect with the system and not just the latest type of memory. Intel DC p3520 1.2 TB NVMe comes in 2 form factors, namely, PCIe expansion card or M.2, but with both, it directly attaches electronically to the motherboard through the PCIe instead of SATA connection.
Hard disk drives are still in use because they offer huge storage capacity and at an economical price. On the other hand, flash memory has been employed only in devices like mobile phones and tablets, but now it is rapidly coming to the prime computer market due to blazing-fast speeds as well as reasonably cheaper than before.
As far as the performance is concerned, it supports up to 64K commands per queue. Its interface is made to provide NVM independence and high scalability to allow next-generation technologies to provide 4KB I/O in a simple 10μs or less. It is around one-thousandth of the latency we get in a 7200 RPM SATA drive.
What is a SATA SSD?
SATA was replaced with the older PATA at the time of its launch in 2003. Currently, it is required in the market and is used for linking a Solid-State Drive to the system. SATA supports the IDE, which was built primarily for the sluggish and older spinning disk drives. These days, when we consider the device for storage space, hard drives have a benefit over solid-state drives as they do not cost a lot per Gb and save data for a more extended period of time.
Why Should You Choose NVMe over SATA?
It’s a great idea to invest in a fast solid-state drive if you want to upgrade or build a computer as no other hardware component impacts the speed of the system, but SSD does. Such storage devices are not the latest on the market, and many users are well aware of their benefits. Though, in recent times, there is a modern type of SSDs that are taking over called NVMe SSDs. Following are the reasons why you should choose NVMe Intel DC p3520 1.2 TB over SATA.
- Built-in Encryption and Security
Most of the user SATA solid-state drives do not provide built-in encryption until or unless you select the expensive high-end choices. As opposed to this, all NVMe drives made by Kingston are self-encrypting by using robust AES-XTS 256-bit Encryption. Also, they provide integration with Opal TCG 2.0 security management solutions from WinMagic, and McAfee, Symantec. All of these features are not only useful to business users but also to home users interested in having the most acceptable security for their information.
- Higher Speeds
The interface of NVMe is quicker compared to SATA, as well as enabling significant speed enhancements. As an example, let us compare 2 entry-level solid-state drives: Kingston A2000 NVMe PCIe SSD and Kingston A400 SATA SSD. We gave a closer look at the 250 GB and 240 GB variants separately. The NVMe model has a speed of 2000 MB/s which is 4 times higher compared to the SATA model, which has a sequential read speed of 500 MB/s. Talking about writing speed, the NVMe variant has 1100 MB/s of writing speed, while the writing speed of the SATA variant is 350 MB/s, which is about three times slower. When selecting higher-end versions of NVMe drives, the speed differences can go six-fold.
- Increased Mobility
Usually, NVMe SSDs have the M.2 form factor, which looks like a gum stick. Several latest motherboards have a minimum of two or sometimes more than two M.2 slots, enabling you to run your solid-state drives in RAID. Moreover, Intel DC p3520 1.2 TB NVMe SSDs are compact in size than usual SATA ones and have a weight 4 times less (10 g instead of 40g) which makes them an outstanding option for mini-PCs, laptops, and ultrabooks.
- Power Efficiency
At standby mode, NVMe drives consume a small amount of power, worthy of business-grade devices. For example, take a look at the A2000 NVMe PCIe SSD from Kingston. At the idle position, it just consumes 0.0032W, whereas on average, it requires 0.08W of power. Now let us differentiate it with the A400 Kingston SATA solid-state drive, which requires 0.279 W on average and 0.195 W at idle. Moreover, NVMe solid-state drives provide an extreme reduction in power consumption, making them ideal for mobile devices and ultrabooks. Also, this lower energy consumption translates into an additional benefit: less heat generated.
Final Verdict
If you are looking for an innovative solution, you can consider NVMe as a future-proofing investment. NVMe will provide you with the best possible performance if you want to be able to scale and need higher infrastructure density quickly. Importantly. We have given some of the most important reasons why you should go for NVMe over SATA. We hope that you enjoyed this review.
