If you were building a new PC, would you rather have a 500GB sata SSD or a 256GB M.2 3x4??  

 

They are much faster, but briefly looking you pay about $40 more to get an M.2 half the size.

 

What to do???......

Both; use a smaller SSD for the operating system and commonly used programmes, then place everything else (music, photos, movies, larger games etc) on a conventional 7200 rpm SATA HDD. You won't notice/require the increased SSD speed in some circumstances, for example I wouldn't bother placing FSX on an SSD because it only reduces loading time, you don't get any performance improvements after the initial load.

 

Ultimately it's dependent on how much boot and loading times matter to you. A 7200 rpm drive still works out quite a bit cheaper and is adequate for most stuff. Of course, if you money is no object then SSD is the way to go, but I'd rather spend that money on the processor and graphics card.

I think you didn't read the question.  

 

I will have both an SSD and a 7200rpm drive.

 

My question is:

 

Should I get a 500gb sata drive or a 256gb M.2 3x4 for my SSD?

Sorry I misunderstood the question. But my original answer is still relevant, how much does speed matter to you? Not sure you're going to notice the M2's extra speed, additional space is probably more useful so get the SATA SSD. If you get an M2 you'll probably hit a bottleneck elsewhere.

I think, if I understand what i read correctly the speed goes from 6g/s to 32g/s.  Quite possible I don't understand it well though.

 

Thus far I am leaning toward the extra space, unless someone chimes in and tells me the M.2 is WAY faster in use.  

You are right to consider not just performance on paper, but real world performance in everyday use.

 

I would say read the reviews and also customers reviews. The only person that can tell you how fast they are in everyday use is somebody with first hand experience.

 

I considered M.2 and even the Intel 750 U.2, but ended up with a 1TB Samsung evo.

SSD have come on a lot recently. But worth considering for reliability and fast. Three years ago I got some SSD it was unreliable swapped it for 4x2TB WDs on an Intel RAID 10. Back then the striped pair blew the SSD away, don't know what it was, and may have been slow due to a fault of some kind. The RAID 10 adds another pair in backup, so I only get 4Tb total, around 3.7 in use.

I would go with the 500 SSD as real world performance you wont notice a huge difference. You can always add an M.2 drive later as prices fall and you need additional space.

 

Another thing to consider if this is NOT a skylake build you will loose 2 additional SATA ports to power the M.2 drive. AS I did with my Devils Canyon Build.

 

Skylake does not have this issue as it has more PCI lanes.

I would like to asked a question, i too am looking to get a new HDD, is it ok for me to put both windows and P3D on a single 500 or 1TB ssd?

If it's big enough for all your stuff yes. The days of splitting sim and OS are gone in my view. All on one drive I say.