I'm still from the world of spinny drives so looking for some advice - I know there's a few experienced PC builders on here.
My current bought PC came with a Samsung 980 Po 1TB but need something with more space.
Samsung, Lexmar, Kingston, Team Group, Western Dodgy, Crucial, Sandisk, Verbatim etc. Are they really all about the same, as online reviews are a lottery. I thought I'd buy a lottery ticket here too.
This is to run on with my Asus ROG Strix B450-F Gaming
I've had issues with Windows too… Lot of my files lost their app association a few days ago….
EG: Txt files usually open in Notepad had no file associated with them… also backup files from my NAS had no association
I'd be grabbing a Lexar 4TB from MWave before they potentially run out of stock. I think they're the best price per TB at the moment, and still pretty dang fast. https://www.mwave.com.au/product/lexar-nm790-4tb-heatsink-m2…
From this deal where the Metro one is out of stock now. https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/852867
This. If you want free shipping go with BPC
Mwave has free shipping at this price too 👍 But I ended up messaging Lawrence at Nebula PC because they're building my new Thorn Elite config now, and he added it on for $294. That gets it included under the system warranty too :-)
I'm guessing that they buy from one of these 4 and install it?
@JownehFixIT: Nice!
Ask and you shall receive!
Mine arrived in the post Today. Will install it tomorrow.
Are we talking performance-wise or reliability/longevity-wise?
There are only 5 main manufacturers of flash NAND used in RAM and SSDs, in order of market share: Samsung, Kioxia, Western Digital, SK Hynix and Micron (Crucial).
Obviously these 5 manufacturers do sell directly to the consumer market, whereas every other RAM/SSD brand that's not of one of those 5 is simply rebadging their NAND, pairing it with a storage controller (which could be from the NAND manufacturer or a variety of 3rd-party manufacturers), tweaking the firmware/low-level performance characteristics and then packaging it and upselling it to consumers to be able to compete with the big 5 who are huge semiconductor corporations and have an enormous advantage in economies of scale.
At this point in the lifecycle of SSDs, reliability has basically become a non-issue. The SSD market isn't like it was 10 years ago where the endurance ratings and performance (especially when close to disk capacity) varied massively between brands/models. With any SSD made within the last 8 years or so, the average consumer will simply never reach the rated TBW/DWPD before they dispose of the hardware.
The primary product differentiator now is performance and realistically, for 90% of use cases, the highest-end SSDs just don't make one lick of difference for anything other than very niche workloads and certainly do not translate into appreciable performance improvements for OS boot/load times, application start-times, gaming, etc.
Great info - Much appreciated. So I would take from that your better off buying from those that actually produce them - Samsung, Kioxia, Western Digital, SK Hynix and Micron
This is for OS, on a gaming/work PC.. I use for work, son uses for games. :)
I was just going to add: the most sensible criteria for purchasing SSDs are to ensure you don't purchase DRAM-less SSDs for those disks intended to be use as primary/boot drives that are doing all of the heavy lifting (as DRAM-less SSDs do have a noticeable performance difference from DRAM SSDs, especially for sustained reads/writes) and to make sure you're not purchasing PCIe 5.0/4.0 M.2 SSDs when your motherboard doesn't even support that interface and/or can't take full advantage of it.
Other than that, just go with the highest-spec model that's in budget and from one of the big 5 NAND manufacturers as they have an inherent advantage in QA/quality control given they're in charge of the entire fabrication process and make all of their components themselves. Again, not that it matters hugely but generally-speaking, Samsung, Kioxia, Western Digital, etc will have lower failure rates.
You can find out what NAND is actually used in any model of SSD you're thinking of buying by simply Googling for some in-depth reviews, which should contain the NAND and the storage controllers embedded in them. Some storage controllers can be notorious for their performance-reducing behaviour or stability issues, so Googling the storage controller model to see if there are any widespread issues with them is also a good idea.
As with any computing hardware, someone has to get the duds and you can have DOA SSDs from any brand/model, even the highest-end ones. Generally-speaking, warranty lengths of 5 years guarantee that the manufacturer trusts their product to last up to the rated MTBF/TBW whereas warranties of 3 years or less are basically an admission that their SSD is a budget-oriented product with lucky dip quality control but that's offset by the cheaper costs which probably mean you could replace a faulty cheaper SSD and still save some money over a higher-end one.
Isn't the Lexar linked above a DRAM-less drive? I'm not too concerned as it seems to be excellent otherwise for the money. Think I recall reading it lacked that DRAM, but still performed so well for storage, it shouldn't be an issue. Do please correct me if I'm wrong.
@JownehFixIT: Lexar the brand name was sold to a Chinese company in 2017, and since then some of their drives have started to use YMTC flash, which some people have had problems with. I do not believe the 4TB drive above used YMTC flash however, so should be ok.
@pinchies: Been trying to track down some specific examples of this Lexar NM790 4TB failing, but haven't been able to find any just yet. I did have a bit of a read of that article you linked, thank you. Fingers crossed those issues to not affect this drive, or I'll just make sure not to put any important data onto it.
Also the main manufacturer of peri peri chicken is NANDOS.
Missed one — YMTC, the chinese nand flash memory maker. Found in a lot of budget drives, and some people have had very bad experiences with some of those — myself included.
I've got a Crucial M2 that looks like it failed today (was like 3 months old) and has been causing me with some issues (like corrupted Windows) and I've just ordered a new Samsung.
I've always had Samsung SSDs and have served me well.
I am running an Asus ROG B660 as well. Not a gamer, just a primary work machine.