See screenshot. Basically 1TB NVMe memory for about $300.

Well... that would definitely be a good deal... If you're reading this fr33k... If you can get it for $1 I'll give you 100% profit on it and buy it from you. You don't see offers for 100% profit margins often....

Thats pretty solid. It doesn't make much of a speed difference unless you're doing some really I/0 heavy tasks though, for many people a standard SSD with a bigger size makes more sense.

PCIe Solid State drives.... So they take a card slot?

Hmmm interesting. If it works, why not?

Warning! Do not run out of PCI express lanes!!! I just remembered that you have two graphics cards so you might be too low on PCI-e lanes. Also, do you have physical slots to put those in?

I don't see any reason to go for a PCIe SSD if you're expecting regular workstation usage. SATAs are cheaper and fast enough for most people.

Now if you're building a server, that's a different discussion.

LOL I just noticed I put 1 GB on there... wow... that's not much...

Obviously should have been 1TB.

And no I'm not buying it. But I was very curious when I got the email with that offer because I couldn't recall seeing that much (1 TB) for less than $300 before and always like to stay on top of what's good pricing and what isn't. But $269.99 for 1TB of NVMe memory sounds like a pretty good deal and thought I'd see if others agreed. Or I guess I should say NVMe SSD drive. But it works like memory... as in the data stays there. I recently got a laptop with it and it takes literally 2 seconds to "boot up." I had never seen anything like it. I power down at night, then in the morning hit the power button on my laptop and reach up on top of my desk and hit the power button on my monitor and by the time the monitor comes on the system is up and waiting. It's amazing. I've been using computers since the 1980's and have never seen anything like it.

I get the same thing (2-3s boot times) with a regular SATA SSD. My monitor sometimes takes longer to start since it shows a power on logo for a couple of seconds.

Sometimes I have to wonder if somehow I forgot to shut down my computer and it's just resuming from sleep - it's that fast. Welcome to the 21st century :P.

P.S.: And yes, I know what you mean. I also remember the days when copying stuff on a 1.44MB floppy disk took minutes :).

I've got a 160gb NVMe drive. Its fantastically fast.

Boot from cold in 5 seconds, noticeable decrease of loading speeds

I've had SSD's in several computers and this is nowhere near SSD load speed. It's instantaneous. (or maybe 1 or 2 seconds. how would i know? by the time the monitor comes up the system is waiting)
In fact... it's been several computers ago that I didn't have an SSD.

Ok, fair enough, but there are SSDs and SSDs - and you also have to remember that while external storage performance has been *the* limiting factor in terms of boot times for many years now, there are also other factors involved. CPU performance in particular is also important here.

With an i7 and a Samsung SATA SSD I get similar fantastic boot times. It's not a fisherman's tale/I am not exaggerating at all and have no reason to be dishonest or subjective about this. I've had a lot of slow computers throughout the years and have, with a similar level of honesty, whined and whined about their poor performance.

NVMes, while also available for high-performance desktop applications, are, in essence, server technology. Don't let the marketing gimmicks fool you - a high-performance SATA SSD will usually be enough and cheaper on a desktop or laptop.

Are NVMes faster? Yes, by a long shot. Will you benefit from the extra bandwidth on a desktop/laptop? Maybe it will shave a couple of seconds off your boot time compared to a regular SSD and speed up large data transfers, but that's it. It's up to you to say if the extra cost is worth it ;).

RAID those suckers!

Got an NVMe in the laptop as the boot drive - it was maybe a $30 upgrade, so why not? Can't directly compare to 'standard' SSD since it's my first solid state drive. Definitely quick, though. Boot time is short, as is wake-up from sleep. Actually, the wake-up time is more important for my needs.

I think the reason it's quicker than SSD's is it (and I might be wrong about this I believe I read it somewhere) acts like memory... I can't recall the terminology (sorry) but you know how when something is in memory it's THERE. Right now. But if you load another program.... then THAT is in memory. Well, with the NVMe's, it "keeps" the data there just like it's memory... even when powered down. So when you power back up, the reason it's so much faster is that it doesn't "reload" it or "re-read" it... it's THERE.

Sorry if I'm not being clear and really really sorry if I'm wrong about that but my old unreliable memory seems to insist that's what I read somewhere some time back. All I do know is that I've never seen anything like it. When I moved from HDD's (even good ones) to SSD's I noticed a definite increase in performance regarding boot up time and most especially (it seemed to me) load up times in games and apps for software (that's where I noticed it the most.. more so than boot up times but obviously YMMV). But when I first powered this thing on.... whoa... well as I said I've been using computers since the 1980's (DOS) and I've never ever seen anything like it in terms of boot up. I've also seen another improvement in load times but that's not near as noticeable (to me anyway) as the difference in boot up time. It's just amazing. I LITERALLY turn the power on, move my arm up and hit the power on the monitor, and the monitor takes a second or two (as a screen first pops up with ASUS all over it) but then it goes to the desktop where the desktop is WAITING. No spinning of the cursor (as if it's doing more). No nothing. It's waiting for ME. LOL my whole life I turn on a computer and I have to wait for IT. lol

ADDED: Here is what's in my laptop (see screenshot showing my disk drives). The second one isn't bad either... it's a hybrid SSD/7200RPMHDD that's 2TB. This laptop is amazing... it has a 1080 in it too. LOL (DISCLOSURE: I don't deserve ANY of this stuff I get... for some unknown and bizarre reason my family "spoils" me. I had gotten and still have the parts for a new desktop but my health has been such I just can't get it built myself and I haven't had the heart to ask my nephew because his work has gotten out of hand and he's working 60 and 70 hours a week. So the parts are still sitting there... and then one day I come back a Doc appointment and the FED EX guy was pulling out of the driveway. He was just about to take back a package needing a signature so I signed for it... and as soon as I saw the box I knew what it was... a new laptop. lol)

Nice hardware you got there :P.

Well, I "only" have a "poor man's" 850 EVO (which is SATA, not PCIe/NVMe mind you) and I'm still blown away. Like I said before, your CPU will also matter a lot with regards to booting time, especially when paired with an NVMe.

I have a friend that had upgraded to the same SSD model I have, but had an i3, and his boot times were still in the 6-7s range - of course, still an improvement over classic HDDs, but nowhere near mine.

NVMes will of course blow away even regular SSDs in high-bandwidth or massively I/O intensive applications, but again you will typically see those on a server, not a desktop/laptop. The OS boot time is one of those few exceptions where you're seeing a noticeable difference between the two.

To throw in some numbers, the SATA SSDs can benefit from a bandwidth of up to 6.0 Gbit/s, whereas PCIe/NVMes can get up to 31.5 Gbit/s, so NVMes can be, at least in terms of max theoretical peaks, 5+ times faster than regular SSDs. Expect those babies to get hot doing it, but not to worry, most come with inbuilt thermal protection so they won't fry (yes, you can read it as "throttling" :).

As for how they act, yes, you could say it's akin to persistent RAM memory (especially the ones which use some form of caching), but in essence even NVMes are still mostly based on flash memory, which is the low-cost, run of the mill electronic memory in wide use these days - the high performance I/O hardware controllers they are built around is where the real magic happens and the reason for their price range.