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Planning a Computer Hardware Upgrade—Thoughts on NVMe E1.L SSDs?

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caroljames972022:
Hi everyone,

I’m planning a major hardware upgrade for my PC and wanted to get some opinions on storage options. I’ve been looking into NVMe E1.L SSDs as a potential upgrade for my system, but I’m not entirely sure if they’re the right fit for my use case.

Here’s what I’m working with:

Current Setup: Mid-tier gaming/workstation PC with a Ryzen 7 5800X, 32GB DDR4, and a GTX 1080 (planning to upgrade to an RTX 4070 soon).

Use Case: Gaming, video editing, and some light virtualization.

Why E1.L? I’ve heard they offer great performance and efficiency, but I’m not sure if they’re overkill for my needs or if there are compatibility issues with consumer motherboards.

Questions:

Has anyone here used NVMe E1.L SSDs https://serverorbit.com/solid-state-drives-ssd/nvme-e1-l-ssd in a consumer-grade PC? If so, how was the performance and compatibility?

Are there any specific advantages or drawbacks to using E1.L SSDs over standard M.2 NVMe drives for gaming and productivity?

Would I need any special adapters or cooling solutions to use an E1.L SSD in a typical ATX case?

Are there better alternatives for my use case, or is the E1.L a solid choice for future-proofing?

I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences, especially if you’ve experimented with E1.L SSDs or similar high-performance storage solutions. Thanks in advance!

velociraptor:
For context, I worked as an enterprise systems admin for many years. I still keep my eye on the server and network sides because I am an enterprise application admin now, and the app I manage uses a huge amount of storage (log aggregation and search) and system and network performance. I am also a hobby computer builder.

I think this article from Serve the Home gives a lot more information about newer enterprise drive form factors. The comments are particularly illuminating: https://www.servethehome.com/e1-and-e3-edsff-to-take-over-from-m-2-and-2-5-in-ssds-kioxia/ Based on the article and the comments, this seems another situation with competing standards, so as to tie enterprise purchasers into a single vendor platform.

First and foremost, the photo in your link is incorrect. If you search for "Dell 85HT8 SSD" and look at pictures of the actual item such as at harddiskdirect.com, you'll see the actual formfactor of these drives.

You would need to purchase a server that can accommodate these drives, as they are not going to work with current gen consumer motherboards. Servers are notoriously noisy, in many cases loud enough to cause hearing damage after extended exposure, so you'd also need a way to mitigate that.

These are also TLC NAND which has lower endurance, so purchasing used drives is a bit of a crapshoot, IMO, and not really "future proofing" given their price and the additional cost of a server.

A number of popular gaming motherboards support PCIE slot bifurcation, allowing you to use PCIE carrier boards to add as many as 4 additional NVME drives in one PCIE slot, making this specialized enterprise storage irrelevant for home use, IMO. When higher capacity NVME drives come down in price, this will be the direction I go to upgrade my home fileserver.

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