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DATO ARES Dark Sword 2TB M.2 2280 PCIe Gen4x4 (Up to 7200/6000 MB/s) $165.60 Delivered @ DATOTEK via Amazon AU

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DATO ARES Dark Sword 2TB M.2 2280 PCIe Gen4x4 (Up to 7200/6000 MB/s) $165.60 Delivered @ DATOTEK via Amazon AUAffiliate
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Bertus on 02/12/2024 - 11:31 amazon.com.au (290 clicks)
Last edited 06/12/2024 - 16:19 by 2 other users
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  • MULTI-PURPOSES: Designed for gamers, professionals and creators, providing reliable support for your PS5, PC gaming experiences and creative works
  • FULLY EQUIPPED: NVMe (PCIe Gen4x4) High Speed technology and heatsink, with read/write speed up to 7200/6850 MB/s (1TB: 7200/6000 MB/s)
  • THERMAL CONTROL: Robust aluminum heatsink implemented to ensure maximum heat dissipation and prevent performance drops due to overheating
  • 5 YEAR WARRANTY: Deeply valuing your user experience and having faith in our quality, we offer a limited 5 year warranty for our Dark Sword SSD series
  • COMPATIBILITY: If you're not sure if it's compatible with your device, please slide in a message for compatibility consultation
Price History at C CamelCamelCamel.
This is part of Black Friday / Cyber Monday deals for 2024
Computing 2TB Computer Component Cyber Monday M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD

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closed Comments

  • Celeriestix on 02/12/2024 - 11:45
    +2

    I gotta say, as a consumer, I have no idea whatsoever on what is a good SSD. I've heard of DRAM, HMB, but I have no idea what those actually mean or how they translate into performance. And supposedly listed speeds aren't accurate. I don't see how I can responsibly take a chance on no name NVME drives.

    • freefall101 on 02/12/2024 - 12:00
      +5

      The best bet is to rely on reviews and larger names, I wouldn't bother taking a risk on these drives since I can't find a review for them. A good guide is well upvoted deals on here too.

      There are some bargains in the rough with these no-name brands, but it's best to avoid that lottery and just pay a bit extra for peace of mind.

    • Dan24 on 02/12/2024 - 12:03
      +2

      Looks like a Taiwan based manufacturer that does stuff for HP. Could not find a review for this model in my 5 min of google-fu
      https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.techpowerup.com/303423/memo…

    • paul11 on 02/12/2024 - 12:39

      @Celeriestix Did you missed SLC, TLC, QLC :)

    • Elusivity on 02/12/2024 - 12:51
      +10

      Here's a not too technical explainer https://sabrent.com/blogs/storage/dram-hmb

      Alternatively you can look at it like this, modern ssds have a lot of slots (Cells for 1-5 bits and Banks comprised of multiple cells) to save data in, the ssd controller needs to understand metadata about what slots are free, filled, or partially filled and what files specific slots pertain to and in which order it should read those slots. The faster the controller can get this metadata the faster the ssd will respond to your requests, like load this video file, or save this document, or run this game and load all of the files required to do so.

      There are three ways an ssd it can keep track of this meta data:

      • the fastest option but more costly option is with dram on the ssds itself (plain ddr3,4 or 5 ram like you'd have in your pc)

      • the second fastest option is to use HMB, Host Memory Buffer, which means it will carve out some portion ram of the system (your pc, mac for usb ssds, ps5, etc) it's plugged into and use that to manage the meta data. Generally HMB will use a low amount like 64mb or so and keep the meta data compressed to make best use of the space. This carved out amount is not normally enough to address all of the meta data the ssd needs so it will save the remainder on the ssd and shuffle it in and out of the HMB as it needs.

      • the slowest option and generally only on very cheap and old ssds nowadays is to only use the tiny amounts of memory on the controller itself (few hundred kb) to shuffle meta data in and out. This tanks the performance of the drive because it will need to do this shuffle around of data to basically perform any reads or writes. This is known to cause whole system stutters (everything just looks like it's stopped working) while the controller is waiting for the data and the system is waiting for the ssd.

      Most midrange ssd controllers use HMB nowadays. Drives the the Lexar NM790 or any WD Blue and some Blacks use midrange controllers and they still have amazing performance in spite of HMB.

      Listed speeds are also done through a bit of gaming the system.

      There are 5 main ways to populate those slots (cells) to save data in:

      SLC, Single Level Cells - the very oldest ssds and some newer specialised data centre ssds use SLC, so it's storing only a 1 or a 0 as different electrical values (1bit or single bit) in any cell. They read and write extremely fast and the cells can be written to an extremely large amount of times (60-100k each cell)

      MLC, Multi Level Cell - these are a little bit of a short sighted misnomer, as they save 2bits or multiple bits in a single cell. Nowadays this is generally reserved for general data centre drives and are again for extremely high performance drives. To achieve this double density they have to store 4 electrical values per cell, each of which would equate to a zero for each bit 00, a zero in the first and one in the second 01, one in the first and zero in the second 10, and finally one bit in both 11. This doubles the capacity of the drive. You can write to each cell 10-30k times (these are averages and newer tech might have increased these numbers).

      TLC, Triple Level Cell - This is where most mainstream drives are today, you store 3 bits per cell (8 values per cell) and they're pretty performant. You'll add another 33% capacity over MLC. 1-3k write cycles.

      QLC, Quad Level Cell, You store 4 bits per cell and they're starting to get slow, like hdd speeds slow (16 values per cell). You get another 25% capacity over TLC and you're hitting 1k write cycles. Data Centres use this for archival storage, and you can at home too, although longevity vs hdds can be debatable.

      PLC, Penta Level Cell. You store 5 bits per cell and slow, even sub hdd speeds slow (32 values per cell). You get another 20% capacity over QLC and you're hitting low to mid hundreds of write cycles. I haven't come across any drives or usb stick os flash cards with this level, but they are coming and won't be amazing for many generations to come.

      Now you get all of that, I can answer your question…. most modern drives will usually write data in a Pseudo-SLC way when you first start transferring data to it, up until the point that the drive itself is configured as a max (some stop at a low amount e.g. 40GB, others lets you use all the way up to 1/3 of the whole drive).

      Then if you keep copying data the drive will:

      • start to write at the TLC or QLC native speed which will be slower, Say 7GB/s write speed for Pseudo-SLC, and maybe 1.4GB/s for TLC, or 300MB/s for QLC

      • and once all of the remaining (or close to all) cells are full it'll start to convert the Pseudo-SLC written cells into the native TLC or QLC cells, so they'll see cell A has 1 bit of info written, it will write cell A's data into cell B along with 2 more bits, then erase cell A to be used for Cell C's 1 bit + 2 new, etc, etc. This usually happens at a bank level, so it would be hundreds of kb to mb of data rewritten along with new data. That will slow the drive down a lot more due to the constant shuffling back and forth. So say down to 700MB/s for TLC or 100MB/s for QLC.

      Hope this helps! Sorry I get carried away when I explain things cause I go into depth…

      • Celeriestix on 02/12/2024 - 13:09
        +1

        Holy hell bro you're a living legend. You must be an amazing teacher thank you.

        • Elusivity on 02/12/2024 - 13:28

          You're welcome!

          Haha I generally get told I give way too much info, but I hope you and others get something out of it, even if this comment does get buried cause no one is gonna look at this deal.

          There's more to it, but the best way to look at the ssd market is figure out what company's nand flash it is, if it's tlc or qlc, if it got a dram cache and what controller it is.

          Aside from WD and Samsung which make their own nand flash and controller (and ram in Samsung's case) most other brands will use a third party controller and nand. If you see good reviews for drives with x nand type and y controller and a different brand uses the same kit it should be pretty similar in performance, and potentially cheaper. Techpowerup.com's ssd reviews are good for sussing that stuff out.

          I originally opened this post because I wanted to see if the poster or a commenter had shared these details. Sadly no one has and searching about I can't find it either. While I was almost tempted to contact the manufacturer here and ask https://ttverse.taiwantrade.com/products/detail.html?product… I decided it wasn't worth it, especially for the life of this specific deal.

    • KingJesusThe69th on 02/12/2024 - 13:27
      +2

      Chances are, if you have no clue what any of this means, then the performance difference will be neglible/unnoticeable to you.

      For 97% of people

      I would recommended a NVME drive that is TLC and supports HMB (meaning no DRAM). If it supports DRAM, that's even better (but it's absolutely not necessary for the typical consumer, only really necessary if using it on a PS5). Make sure the drive is at least PCIE Gen 4.

      Check reviews on the specific model that you find, but obviously try stick to reptuable brands such as Western Digital, Samsung, Kingston, Lexar, Crucial, etc…

      Just a quick rundown if interested on WTF means what:

      NAND TYPE

      • TLC > QLC
      • Basically, avoid QLC if possible. Other types exist, but are largely irrelevant to the consumer

      DRAM

      • With DRAM > HMB (basically no DRAM)
      • DRAM = Good. But if you have to ask what it means, you don't need it. Only prioritise a DRAM drive if you are using it in a PS5.
      • Otherwise if it supports HMB, it's good enough.

      WRITE CAPACITY

      • Effectively the lifespan of the drive, as in what's the max amount of data you can write to it.
      • If purchasing from a reptuable brand, you realistically won't need to worry aboutt this.

      PCIE GEN 5, 4, 3

      • Determines the maximum potential bandwidth of the SSD. Think of it as USB 2.0 vs USB 3.0. The higher the generation, the more bandwidth it can theoretically transfer. HOWEVER, the drive does not always use the maximum bandwidth of the interface, so THIS DOES NOT EQUATE TO THE SPEED OF THE DRIVE.
      • Wouldn't worry about it at all, just get a PCIE Gen 4 SSD.

      Ofc, these general and simplified recommendations will change over time. But as of right now, just ensure the drive is TLC and either HMB or DRAM & from a reptuable company.

  • Webtwisters on 02/12/2024 - 13:58

    What about https://www.amazon.com.au/gp/product/B0BDTC589G/ref=ppx_yo_d… for $160 with lots of good reviews on Amazon

    • imtheonewhoknocks on 02/12/2024 - 14:31

      Half the speed even though it's Gen4, you generally pay more for higher write/read speeds.

      • Webtwisters on 02/12/2024 - 14:40

        Thanks - Fair point as I was looking for an external drive in an enclosure.

        • Occas on 02/12/2024 - 16:19

          It’s also not as simple as “max sequential read/write speeds = the only thing to care about”.

          There are many videos benchmarking game load times, and there can be very little difference between the latest 10k SSDs and SATA SSDs

          If you’re doing big writes to the drive, how much cache does it have? You’ll only get that top speed for a certain amount of data (until the cache fills up) and then it will drop. How far it drops will then depend on the drive. More expensive drives will slow down less. Cheap drives can slow to a crawl.

          You’ll need to understand how you want to use it. If it’s smaller copies and reading stuff off it like documents or videos etc then I’d be very surprised if you noticed much of a difference between a ~500MB/s SATA SSD and a 10kMB/s NVMe gen 5 drive.

          And let’s not forget a gen 4/5 drive will likely be way faster than the maximum speed of a standard enclosure, unless you get a TB4/USB4 enclosure and have that port available on your computer!

        • ToyInTheAttic2 on 02/12/2024 - 16:29

          I've just ordered this for $129 to try in a USB enclosure.
          https://www.centrecom.com.au/team-2tb-mp33-m2-pcie-nvme-gen3…
          Half the speed again but more than what I need from a cheap SSD.

    • imtheonewhoknocks on 02/12/2024 - 18:12

      If you're after an m.2 for an enclosure, then something like ToyInTheAttic posted above me will suit your use case fine. Higher speed m.2's are more for installation in computers and PS5s, where they take full advantage of the top speeds.

      An enclosure will only give you speeds you're connected with, USB-C 3.2 will offer the fastest speed as it's much higher than regular USB 2.0 or 3.0, but your device will need to have the ports that support that speed.

      If the enclosure is for a PC, you might be better off looking into an m.2 PCI adaptor card instead, which should take full advantage of Gen4 speeds if your motherboard supports PCI 4.0 or most motherboard manufacturers from the last 4-5yrs should support m.2 drives as well.

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