Storage Solutions Cheap secondary SSD buying advice
- Thread starter Skyh3ck
- Start date
Do you have a budget and capacity requirement? as for where to buy from, look up pcpricetracker.in
Every company has good products and bad products. Don't trust the company name. That said, Silicon power has been more widely reviewed than the others you mentioned. Look up reviews for the ssds you are looking to buy. You're specifically looking for failure rates and TBW which is terabytes written before the ssd will fail.
Crucial mx500 and Samsung 870 evo have a good reputation in the 2.5" ssd space and 5 years of warranty. They have dram, TLC nand and are both fast and reliable. The crucial bx 500 does not have dram, it has QLC nand (means far less endurance and performance will drop off a cliff for sustained writes) and a 3 year warranty instead of 5years. If you are going to store data to it once in a while and not do much overwriting, the BX series makes sense for the money saved. Its all about your use case.
This typically applies to companies not oem manufacturers/brands. All the Indian ssd brands are basically selling Chinese oem ssd with just their brand logo. As for silicon power, though more reputable it too doesn't make its own ssd. Crucial on the other hand is part of crucial-micron group & micron is one of the 3 major manufacturers of nand flash used in ssd (other two are samsung & sk hynix) in the world.
Yup, exactly.
Hence the need to check reviews to see which company's which model controller and nand have silicon power used in this ssd vs that ssd.
Safe bets are crucial mx 500, samsung 870 evo in 2.5" category.
crucial p3 plus and samsung 970 evo in gen 3 nvme 2280. Silicon power actually had the p34a80 in this category and they were so cheap for the quality of semiconductor used.
crucial p5 plus and samsung 980 pro, 990 pro in gen 4 nvme 2280. (though those two samsung models did have issues at a point. seems to be resolved now.)
oh and samsung 980 is shit. samsung 980 pro is very good. How they have such a similar name is beyond me.
No typical user review can tell that as that requires very specialized software tools. As for professional reviews, those are always old for sata ssd so no guarantee that what the professional review found is still being used in the ssd model currently.
eTernity2021
Disciple
Crucial p3 plus is gen4 and better than 970 evo coz it hits 4.9 GB in sequential read, whereas 970 evo hits 3.4 GB, but i appreciate your rest of the info
My bad. I meant the p3, not the p3 plus. You're right
To amend my statement:
crucial p3 and samsung 970 evo in gen 3 nvme 2280. Silicon power actually had the p34a80 in this category and they were so cheap for the quality of semiconductor used.
crucial p5 plus and samsung 980 pro, 990 pro in gen 4 nvme 2280. (though those two samsung models did have issues at a point. seems to be resolved now.)
There is also the crucial p3 plus which is also gen 4 but not as fast as the p5 plus. Good value for money though.
970 evo plus is a better dram TLC NVMe ssd than P3 plus which is a dramless QLC NVMe ssd. Once the cache on P3 Plus is filled the write speeds drop to even slower than hdd speeds at around 100MB/s though typical users doing typical stuff with at least 30% of the drive space empty shouldn't face this issue.
@karanwk
Depending on the use case, both are right. 970 evo is far better in sustained reads and writes like copying data even though on paper it has lower sequential read write speed compared to the p3 plus. When filling up, it won't drop its speeds like the p3 plus will.
However the p3 plus makes sense as a burst usecase drive like a cheaper alternative to the p5 plus but still holds well in burst loads like certain cad and productivity software. You could put 4 of them on a riser card and use it as a scratch disk for complicated projects on premiere.
To each their preference, right?
eTernity2021
Disciple
Agreed, but to my surprise, its not working that way, i dont know what magic they have done, i have left 100GB for OverProvisioning, i dont c much of difference in performance practically between p3 plus 4TB and 980 pro 1TB, in my config, they both perform exceptionally well and equal, so i rate P3 PLUS 4TB higher except its TBW is only 800, But the price bracket is fantastic in comparison, so P3 PLUS is a GEM which is overseen, so grab while u get it in online sales time!!
That is pro level usage & someone going for such usage already would have got the budget to get proper dram TLC drives. My point was that if getting P3 Plus & 970 evo plus for similar price or max around 1k difference then better to get 970 evo plus except when it is going to be used in laptop/itx because for that case p3 plus is better as 970 evo plus runs hot.
Performance difference will only be visible when drives are almost 90% full or when doing intensive read write tasks at the same time for long duration. I already got P3 4TB for 15k in sale & P3 & P3 plus have same hardware with the only difference being the connector which is pcie 3.0 in P3 & pcie 4.0 in P3 Plus.
subheader2226
Recruit
To help filter down the noise, follow this flowchart, use this comparison sheet and check prices and availability from pcpricetracker
I will not recommend buying SSDs from Amazon as they stock comingled inventory.
Source
I will not recommend buying SSDs from Amazon as they stock comingled inventory.
Source
Last edited:
eTernity2021
Disciple
Thats a great deal of info, so thanks @subheader2226 , But the Relative experience from my end stands tall, coz the discussion is about, P3 Plus and 970 EVO, does their performance match with qlc and tlc in the hardwares, In theory, TLC is better than QLC, the discussion pointed out the drawbacks of QLC ssds tend to go down in the speed,
but in REALITY, for a 1 TB NVMe/SSD drive, i keep 31 GB ASIDE at the last partition for overprovisioning, that is more than enough for the DRIVE to take care of the competitive speed as spoken in theory as a DRAWBACK, Over provisioning comes to the fore as a solution, P3 Plus in particular, Onboard DRAM cache only makes a huge difference in SATA drives. The P3 Plus and many other NVMe drives use Host Memory Buffer tech to use a small bit of system RAM as DRAM cache. The difference is completely negligible - the drive controller and NAND are the main performance differentiators once you involve HMB tech.
Having said that, as i have referred to the flowchart posted by @subheader2226 , it clearly states DRAM-less is not anymore an issue and is negligible with the speed of the systems these days, its just 100 milli seconds thats a fraction of second, Also, u will lose only 1-2 Seconds or few milliseconds for booting time in comparison, is not much of a difference, once booted, Gaming is abreeze and smooth.. so having used 970 EVO PLUS in Gen 3 mode and P3 PLUS in gen 4 mode, i found P3 PLUS is the winner against 970 EVO, its the limitation factor for 970 evo, but 3 years Back 970 evo plus was the greatest NVMe on the planet coz 980 pro had some firmware issues losing customer credits , but for 980 pro being GEN 4 can beat marginally P3 PLUS, thats my inference...
On price comparison i bought 980 pro 1TB and 970 evo plus 1TB together on a festival sales time, for the combined same price i bought a 4TB P3 PLUS, i gained additional 2TB of NVMe SSD and 80% Gen 4 speed as it hits almost 5GB sequential write speed, its a big gain for me..., and i have left 100GB out of 4TB for Overprovisioning, that creates the magic as a solution/trick to give competitive speed with High-end NVMes, in the flowchart, i will rate P3 PLUS between MID-RANGE and HIGH-RANGE NVMes, its misplaced at entry-level there, that's purely my experience to share in TE SOCIETY...
Disclaimer: Lately in security field, OverProvisioning Technology has brought a vulnerability issue to the shore...
Thanks for info, to learn that P3 and P3 PLUS are the same except their interface hardwares.... good tip BRO!!Performance difference will only be visible when drives are almost 90% full or when doing intensive read write tasks at the same time for long duration. I already got P3 4TB for 15k in sale & P3 & P3 plus have same hardware with the only difference being the connector which is pcie 3.0 in P3 & pcie 4.0 in P3 Plus.
Last edited:
It is rightly placed there. WD SN770 is also dramless but its post cache speeds are still 5 times more than P3 Plus & in typical tasks it even matches & sometimes even beat top tier NVMe ssd like samsung 980 pro. Any NVMe ssd should match at least SN770 performance to be placed in mid range tier.
WD Black SN770 1 TB Review - What Magic is This?
The competitively priced Western Digital WD Black SN770 achieves impressive performance results that match the more expensive Samsung 980 Pro, WD Black SN850, and Kingston KC3000. It seems WD has found a solution to overcome the limitations of DRAM-less designs—very impressive.
Hachune
Disciple
Just don't buy cheap Chinese branded and cheap Indian branded which are a rebrand of cheap Chinese ssds such as EVM, HIKVISION, Colorful, Consistent, PowerX, Zebronics etc. They often just die out of nowhere.
alap4m
Disciple
Secondary Drive? What's the purpose of an SSD as a Secondary Drive? Do you need an SSD for quick storage and retrieval?
Nearly EVERY SSD Brand you mentioned sources SSD in bulk and slaps their label on the same. As for warranty, it is only on paper. SSD failure is usually difficult to claim a warranty. SSDs fail abruptly. There's no erratic behavior or gradually declining performance.
Hachune
Disciple
Secondary drive can mean not used for windows or for constant usage such as game drives. Games still benefits a lot from fast transfer rate.