Lexar EQ790 NVMe SATA SSD and Mechanical Hard Drive Storage Benchmark Comparison Shows Why SSD Is Essential for Modern PC Performance in 2026
This recent storage benchmark report conducted by Dawid Does Tech Stuff give us a clear view on how storage is defining modern computer experience. To begin the 2026 benchmarking tests, Dawid use one same PC build to test 4 kinds of storage including a high speed Lexar EQ790 NVMe, a traditional SATA SSD, a 7200 RPM mechanical desktop hard drive and 5400 RPM mechanical laptop hard drive. The benchmark results show that despite of SSD has mature, mechanical hard drives will result in critical delay for current softwares.
The Lexar EQ790 NVMe drive established the baseline for peak performance during the 2026 evaluation. Using this hardware the Windows installation process concluded in 16 minutes 40 seconds with a cold boot time of 26.6 seconds. Basic application tasks such as launching the Firefox browser occurred in 1.4 seconds while the game No Mans Sky loaded in 33 seconds. According to the reporter the system felt instantaneous during daily tasks with zero perceptible delay in application switching or file management.
Surprisingly the SATA SSD actually perform comparably with the NVMe drives with the older interface standard, it took 19min 38 sec for windows installation and 19.5 sec for cold boot. The loading time of No Mans Sky game is identical at 33 sec and the only difference is that the jump from SATA to NVMe does not bring any advantage to a regular user.
Transitioning to the mechanical hard drives directly lead to a complete breakdown of modern PC performance. For the 7200 RPM hard drive, it took 26 min to install windows, and the cold boot took 1 minute 15 sec. Opening Firefox takes 10 seconds and game loading time of No Mans Sky takes 47 seconds. Worse part is the installation of NVIDIA driver which take close to 1 hour. The report further indicates that the whole system would hang and lag even during simple background operations.
The 5400 RPM laptop hard drive achieved the lowest performance at 2 minutes 40 sec for windows to achieve the desktop, and Firefox browser loading time takes 22 seconds. Essential system driver installation even lasts for hours and made it useless for most of the work. Game performance also drops drastically and No Mans Sky takes 1 min 48 sec to load and with visual stutter. In general, this Dawid Does Tech Stuff's benchmark tests showed us the current importance of storage and how much SSD drives has changed modern computer performances.
