Storage Solutions What’s the lowest price a good 1tb nvme ssd went for?

Ssreek

What’s the lowest price a good 1tb nvme ssd went for?
This is for a laptop, to have additional drive for games mostly. Already have a good seperate ssd for OS.

guest_999

Ssreek said:
What’s the lowest price a good 1tb nvme ssd went for?
This is for a laptop, to have additional drive for games mostly. Already have a good seperate ssd for OS.

WD Blue SN570 1TB available for around 6k on amazon currently & is quite good as OS drive as well as secondary drive.

n1r0

Ssreek said:
What’s the lowest price a good 1tb nvme ssd went for?
This is for a laptop, to have additional drive for games mostly. Already have a good seperate ssd for OS.

The cheapest one is the best one in this case. Games don't really benefit from astronomical read speeds, nor do they need the extra endurance of DRAM drives. Cheap QLC DRAM-less drives are perfect for games. Get anything from a reputed brand with 3 years or more warranty

Slayer69

n1r0 said:
The cheapest one is the best one in this case. Games don't really benefit from astronomical read speeds, nor do they need the extra endurance of DRAM drives. Cheap QLC DRAM-less drives are perfect for games. Get anything from a reputed brand with 3 years or more warranty

So Crucial P3 is better than WD Blue as it offers longer warranty and is priced 500 cheaper than WD

The_King

Slayer69 said:
So Crucial P3 is better than WD Blue as it offers longer warranty and is priced 500 cheaper than WD

The P3 is QLC drive the SN570 is TLC.

Perosnally rather spend 500 more for TLC drive than QLC.

n1r0 · Saturday at 9:45 AM

Slayer69 said:
So Crucial P3 is better than WD Blue as it offers longer warranty and is priced 500 cheaper than WD

The_King said:
The P3 is QLC drive the SN570 is TLC.

Perosnally rather spend 500 more for TLC drive than QLC.

Like I said, you're never gonna practically see a difference when it comes to games. You won't even run into SLC cache issues since your internet speed will be the bottleneck there.

TLC vs QLC write cycles don't matter for games, once you install a game, it will stay until you finish it or get bored of it.

You spending 500 more for TLC and losing 2 years of warranty seems like a bad choice to me. This is a game drive right? Just download all the games again if it does fail. You have 5 year warranty anyway.

But for boot drives I would always suggest TLC drives with DRAM

Edit: If 500 was worth it for TLC, then why not add another 700 to get KIOXIA 1TB EXCERIA with DRAM (from Toshiba) as well? See, this is a slippery slope. There's always a better drive out there for just a little more. Get one that serves your specific purpose

The_King

n1r0 said:
Like I said, you're never gonna practically see a difference when it comes to games. You won't even run into SLC cache issues since your internet speed will be the bottleneck there.

TLC vs QLC write cycles don't matter for games, once you install a game, it will stay until you finish it or get bored of it.

You spending 500 more for TLC and losing 2 years of warranty seems like a bad choice to me. This is a game drive right? Just download all the games again if it does fail. You have 5 year warranty anyway.

But for boot drives I would always suggest TLC drives with DRAM

Not sure what you mean by warranty less on the TLC?

I see 5 years on the TLC and 3 years on the QLC on Amazon.

Slayer69

The_King said:
No sure what you mean by warranty less on the TLC?

I see 5 years on the TLC and 3 years on the QLC on Amazon.

My bad
SN570 has 5 years compared to 3 years for P3

Any reason as to why 2TB SSDs are more than double of 1TB SSDs?

The_King

Slayer69 said:
My bad
SN570 has 5 years compared to 3 years for P3

Any reason as to why 2TB SSDs are more than double of 1TB SSDs?

Amazon does not always have the best prices.
2TB Rs12K

https://www.theitdepot.com/details-Western+Digital+Blue+SN570+2TB+NVMe+Internal+Solid+State+Drive+(WDS200T3B0C)_C93P36826.html

Western Digital Blue SN570 2TB M.2 NVMe Internal SSD (WDS200T3B0C)

mdcomputers.in

guest_999

n1r0 said:
Like I said, you're never gonna practically see a difference when it comes to games. You won't even run into SLC cache issues since your internet speed will be the bottleneck there.

TLC vs QLC write cycles don't matter for games, once you install a game, it will stay until you finish it or get bored of it.

You spending 500 more for TLC and losing 2 years of warranty seems like a bad choice to me. This is a game drive right? Just download all the games again if it does fail. You have 5 year warranty anyway.

But for boot drives I would always suggest TLC drives with DRAM

Edit: If 500 was worth it for TLC, then why not add another 700 to get KIOXIA 1TB EXCERIA with DRAM (from Toshiba) as well? See, this is a slippery slope. There's always a better drive out there for just a little more. Get one that serves your specific purpose

Have you ever updated a 100GB installed game or moved steam library because in those situations the dramless/qlc ssd perform worse than even hdd as per various online comments?
@The_King @Slayer69

enthusiast29

guest_999 said:
Have you ever updated a 100GB installed game or moved steam library because in those situations the dramless/qlc ssd perform worse than even hdd as per various online comments?
@The_King @Slayer69

Been there, done that and still doing it. I have games on HDDs and SSDs (with and without DRAM cache). Yes it's slower and definitely noticeable in comparison to an SSD with DRAM cache but the HDD is far slower.
If someone doesn't have a budget to go for a good TLC drive with DRAM cache then there's absolutely nothing wrong going with QLC drives.

I have an 870 QVO 2TB drive for games and I don't regret buying it at all. I also have 970 Evo+ 1TB for the same purpose, I notice practically 0 difference when using them for games (including installing/updating/loading).
The only time I notice a difference is when benchmarking or sequential reading/writing (a single large file) and that is something I do very rarely. All other tasks generally are random R/W scenarios.

n1r0

guest_999 said:
Have you ever updated a 100GB installed game or moved steam library because in those situations the dramless/qlc ssd perform worse than even hdd as per various online comments?

Your question has been addressed in the first paragraph itself.

You will notice the speed drop only if your internet speed is above 500MB/s (4Gbps). For anything at ~80MB/s (640Mbps) or below, you can't tell the difference.

Don't look at the max possible nos. Look at the minimum practical numbers, where it is not one big file but numerous small files that are being written while installing/updating.

Also, HDD speed is highest when the data is physically stored near the edge. As you start filling it and approach the centre, the speed tapers off. Even the slowest SSD will be faster than HDD in most cases.

The advantage of QLC as game drives is that you get more GB at the same price compared to TLC. Since you're not installing/updating on a daily basis, that "compromise" is worth it. If you have money to burn, by all means go for an enterprise SLC drive. But don't expect to see a difference in loading times.

guest_999

n1r0 said:
Don't look at the max possible nos. Look at the minimum practical numbers, where it is not one big file but numerous small files that are being written while installing/updating.

I am looking at min possible practical numbers meaning queue depth of 1 for sequential as well as random read write operations. On my BX500 480gb drive which is 90%+ filled, extraction of a 25gb zip file is slower/similar to a typical 5400 rpm 4TB hdd.

n1r0 said:
The advantage of QLC as game drives is that you get more GB at the same price compared to TLC. Since you're not installing/updating on a daily basis, that "compromise" is worth it. If you have money to burn, by all means go for an enterprise SLC drive. But don't expect to see a difference in loading times.

I never said anything about game loading times. People have commented facing issues while updating some large game/windows/moving steam library(from hdd to ssd or smaller ssd to larger capacity ssd) when data is being written to a dramless QLC ssd & I just want ppl to know that in those "specific" situations they might face hdd level speeds.

n1r0

guest_999 said:
I never said anything about game loading times.

In that case, buy a big old HDD with even greater capacity, you will face none of the issues that plague QLC SSDs.

Moving steam library is a one time action. Just pause it and let the SSD idle and flush its cache.

I'm not disagreeing about the limitations, but the whole point of having games on SSD is to improve load times.

There are always limitations with every product. TLC w/ DRAM will also become slow when you're trying to backup/clone from one SSD to another. But no one talks about it because you're not constantly doing that.

970 Evo Plus 1TB = 12.5k [TLC w/ DRAM]
870 QVO = 7.4k [QLC w/o DRAM]

If that difference is not worth waiting a few minutes longer for edge cases, you are welcome to buy TLC w/ DRAM for 5k extra. Heck you can get 2x Crucial P3 1TB for less than the price of the Evo Plus. The choice is always yours, I am merely pointing out the options.

Also, I have used a DRAM-less SSD since 2017 as a game drive without updating troubles, so it might depend on the games themselves. For eg. MSFS updater SUCKS! Which might give the impression that it is the SSD's fault

Slayer69

n1r0 said:
In that case, buy a big old HDD with even greater capacity, you will face none of the issues that plague QLC SSDs.

Moving steam library is a one time action. Just pause it and let the SSD idle and flush its cache.

I'm not disagreeing about the limitations, but the whole point of having games on SSD is to improve load times.

There are always limitations with every product. TLC w/ DRAM will also become slow when you're trying to backup/clone from one SSD to another. But no one talks about it because you're not constantly doing that.

970 Evo Plus 1TB = 12.5k [TLC w/ DRAM]
870 QVO = 7.4k [QLC w/o DRAM]

If that difference is not worth waiting a few minutes longer for edge cases, you are welcome to buy TLC w/ DRAM for 5k extra. Heck you can get 2x Crucial P3 1TB for less than the price of the Evo Plus. The choice is always yours, I am merely pointing out the options.

Also, I have used a DRAM-less SSD since 2017 as a game drive without updating troubles, so it might depend on the games themselves. For eg. MSFS updater SUCKS! Which might give the impression that it is the SSD's fault

Crucial P3 1TB is not going below 5k

guest_999

n1r0 said:
In that case, buy a big old HDD with even greater capacity, you will face none of the issues that plague QLC SSDs.

Actually the typical 4/6TB hdd are 5400rpm SMR based which also drop down to 30-40MB/s once 70-80% filled so even lower than QLC ssd.

n1r0 said:
There are always limitations with every product. TLC w/ DRAM will also become slow when you're trying to backup/clone from one SSD to another. But no one talks about it because you're not constantly doing that.

970 Evo Plus 1TB = 12.5k [TLC w/ DRAM]
870 QVO = 7.4k [QLC w/o DRAM]

If that difference is not worth waiting a few minutes longer for edge cases, you are welcome to buy TLC w/ DRAM for 5k extra. Heck you can get 2x Crucial P3 1TB for less than the price of the Evo Plus. The choice is always yours, I am merely pointing out the options.

There are decent options available in dramless NVMe TLC category too. WD SN570 will give min 500MB/s speed even once cache is filled or free space on ssd drops below 10% & its 1TB model is available for 6k on amazon. This is what I use as benchmark in deciding any NVMe ssd price worth.

WD Blue SN570 M.2 NVMe SSD Review: Bleeding-Edge Bargain

BiCS5 rears its head

www.tomshardware.com

@Tracer_Bullet @solo_wing

n1r0 · 2023-02-27T07:08:12+0530

We're just going around in circles now lol

Slayer69 said:
Crucial P3 1TB is not going below 5k

Currently 5.7k on Amazon.

Let's say you have a budget of 12.5k. You could either get a Evo Plus 1TB or similar and call it a day.

OR

You could get a Evo Plus 500 GB for 4.9k as your boot drive AND you could get a QLC w/o DRAM SSD as your game drive for 5.7k. You still have 2k left.