T14 WWAN NVMe SSD

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tlmiller
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T14 WWAN NVMe SSD

Post by tlmiller »

So, for absolutely no reason whatsoever, I bought a m.2 2242 NVMe drive for the T14 AMD. Has a 1TB primary NVMe drive that is nearly empty, but bought it anyway. So now has 1.5 TB of NVMe SSD in a laptop. The 2242 is in the WWAN slot, and performance is, as to be expected, horrible for NVMe. It's a DRAMLESS drive (there are no drives in 2242 NVMe that have dram cache that I'm aware of), I don't actually KNOW if it supports HMB, and it's connected to a pcie 3.0x2 bus, limiting it to a THEORETICAL ~2Gbps transfer speed. Ultimately, it was cheap (bought from AliExpress), and that was the primary motivation since I know I'll never be putting a WWAN card in (my phone is 5g, why put a 4g modem in here?). One neat thing I found is that the slot actually has a built in heatsink of sorts. There's a plastic cover much like MANY laptops nowadays, but it actually has a heatsink on the underside of the cover, so while it's not bolted to the ssd to keep good contact, the pressure from the backplate applies at least SOME pressure. Given the low performance characteristics of this slot, I found the fact that they'd include a heatsink design built into the board to be kinda neat.

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[tim@paladin ~]$ inxi -Dmv2
System:    Host: paladin Kernel: 5.10.0-3-amd64 x86_64 bits: 64 Desktop: KDE Plasma 5.20.5 
           Distro: Debian GNU/Linux bullseye/sid 
Machine:   Type: Laptop System: LENOVO product: 20UDCTO1WW v: ThinkPad T14 Gen 1 
           serial: <superuser required> 
           Mobo: LENOVO model: 20UDCTO1WW serial: <superuser required> UEFI: LENOVO 
           v: R1BET61W(1.30 ) date: 12/21/2020 
Battery:   ID-1: BAT0 charge: 50.5 Wh condition: 51.5/50.5 Wh (102%) 
Memory:    RAM: total: 30.66 GiB used: 2.26 GiB (7.4%) 
           RAM Report: permissions: Unable to run dmidecode. Root privileges required. 
CPU:       Info: 8-Core AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 4750U with Radeon Graphics [MT MCP] speed: 1404 MHz 
           min/max: 1400/1700 MHz 
Graphics:  Device-1: AMD Renoir driver: amdgpu v: kernel 
           Device-2: IMC Networks Integrated Camera type: USB driver: uvcvideo 
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.10 driver: loaded: amdgpu,ati 
           unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,vesa resolution: 1920x1200~60Hz 
           OpenGL: renderer: AMD RENOIR (DRM 3.40.0 5.10.0-3-amd64 LLVM 11.0.1) 
           v: 4.6 Mesa 20.3.4 
Network:   Device-1: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet driver: r8169 
           Device-2: Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX200 driver: iwlwifi 
           Device-3: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet driver: r8169 
           Device-4: Cypress K38231_03 type: USB driver: ax88179_178a 
Drives:    Local Storage: total: 1.4 TiB used: 15.52 GiB (1.1%) 
           ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: A-Data model: SX8200PNP size: 953.87 GiB 
           ID-2: /dev/nvme1n1 model: NE-512 size: 476.94 GiB 
Info:      Processes: 310 Uptime: 13m Shell: Bash inxi: 3.3.01
wove
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Re: T14 WWAN NVMe SSD

Post by wove »

The T14 seems like one hell of a machine. The X220 and X240 both can use the wwan slot for storage. The 220 uses an m.2 SSD, while the 240 uses an m.2 NVme, which is a bit of bummer since I can not use the drive from the 220 with the 240. That is a lot of storage. My storage needs tend to be smaller. A 160GB drive is sort of my sweet spot, but they do not make that size any more, so I buy 240GB drives.

I have always thought it would be very cool to have some new uber fast state of the art machine to play with. For me it would be simply for bragging rights, since I am sure I do nothing that would push such a beast beyond idle. I do however envy you with such a fine laptop.
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tlmiller
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Re: T14 WWAN NVMe SSD

Post by tlmiller »

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[tim@paladin ~]$ df -h
df: /run/user/1000/doc: Operation not permitted
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev             16G     0   16G   0% /dev
tmpfs           3.1G  2.0M  3.1G   1% /run
/dev/nvme0n1p2  938G   14G  880G   2% /
tmpfs            16G  147M   16G   1% /dev/shm
tmpfs           5.0M     0  5.0M   0% /run/lock
/dev/nvme1n1p1  469G  2.2G  443G   1% /home
/dev/nvme0n1p1  197M  5.3M  192M   3% /boot/efi
tmpfs           3.1G   76K  3.1G   1% /run/user/1000
Oh, my storage needs are most definitely NOT that great. I buy 1TB drives mostly due to the performance affect of modern drives. Because the nand has gotten so high density, the 1TB size is the place where performance plateau's now. 128GB performance is often QUITE a bit lower, 256 is still not that great, and even 512's anymore have lower performance than 1TB.
The 512GB was purchased due to necessity of the slot. It must be 2242 in length, must be NVME, yet must have M-key (which normally means SATA, NOT pci-e). There are 1TB 2242 drives made, but none that I could find (and I looked) that are NVMe with an M-key. Sata M-key, NVMe E-key. But not NVMe M-key. So this was the largest I could find NVMe M-keys in, and this particular drive, due to being KingSpec (a Chinese 3rd party distributor), was cheaper than the more common WD SN520's that are in this format by a SIGNIFICANT amount (although sadly, the SN520 crushes this drive in performance).
Ultimately, it was mostly a "lets see how this works" thing, wasn't purchased for a need, and purchased the cheapest possible solution because honestly, it's only mounted as my /home drive, and performance isn't THAT important. And hey, it's still faster than SATA.
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crosscourt
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Re: T14 WWAN NVMe SSD

Post by crosscourt »

Ive been very happy with my WD Blue 512gb M.2 2280 SSD as the speed is excellent. For my purposes including some light gaming with the E7470 its been spot on and the price was affordable.
Next time around though Ill move the tech needle forward a lot more.

How much did the drive cost you?
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tlmiller
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Re: T14 WWAN NVMe SSD

Post by tlmiller »

After shipping AND taxes, it was just shy of $60
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crosscourt
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Re: T14 WWAN NVMe SSD

Post by crosscourt »

$60 for a 1tb drive? Who did you buy from? I went with a 512gb drive because a 1tb drive was closer to $100 and I didnt want to spend that much for something I really didnt need.
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tlmiller
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Re: T14 WWAN NVMe SSD

Post by tlmiller »

No, the 2242 is a 512GB. But it's a bit of a specialized 512GB since it's 2242 length and m-key. So they're more expensive than a basic NVMe 512 GB drive.

Most of my 1TB drives I've gotten <$100. Usually not much. I think the LEAST I've paid for a 1TB was $89 after shipping and taxes. Most were in the $95-100 range, with if I remember correctly 1 just topping $100 and 1 being a little bit over (like $110 after shipping/taxes).
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crosscourt
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Re: T14 WWAN NVMe SSD

Post by crosscourt »

1tb was definitely in the close to $100 range and the generic NVMe drives are about the same price as the SATA drives. My Ryzen system supports NVMe so I might give it a try down the road when prices drop as 2tb is too rich for me right now.
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tlmiller
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Re: T14 WWAN NVMe SSD

Post by tlmiller »

crosscourt wrote: Tue Mar 09, 2021 5:38 pm 1tb was definitely in the close to $100 range and the generic NVMe drives are about the same price as the SATA drives. My Ryzen system supports NVMe so I might give it a try down the road when prices drop as 2tb is too rich for me right now.
Yeah, if QLC ever becomes the "default" that most drives are made from, I'll have to move to 2TB as QLC plateau's there (although I can't complain about my Rocket Q 1TB performance, write performance is lower than most of my TLC drives, but read performance is very comparable). Until then, I'll continue to stick to 1TB since to be honest, I only NEED 64GB. :D
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crosscourt
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Re: T14 WWAN NVMe SSD

Post by crosscourt »

I can get away with 256gb but with win 10 512gb is the better choice.
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