HOT ! Various 1TB NVMe with coveted E12 Controller $135 aprox retail

Status
Not open for further replies.
I have a free Samsung 970 evo plus and wondering how much slower it is compared to these drives?

Need to install the drive today as it's still unopened.. but planned on selling it and just buying another one of these drives but the wifes likes not spending money if not needed.
Long time user opinions are valued too ;)


;)
 
I have a free Samsung 970 evo plus and wondering how much slower it is compared to these drives?

Need to install the drive today as it's still unopened.. but planned on selling it and just buying another one of these drives but the wifes likes not spending money if not needed.
Feel like you have an easy $100 on your hands if you sell that and get one of these.
 
I have a free Samsung 970 evo plus and wondering how much slower it is compared to these drives?

There's a couple of differences with regard to hardware. First, the Samsung drives are always single-sided, utilizing two NAND packages. The E12 drives like this one are single-sided up to and including 480/500/512GB with some exceptions (e.g. Silicon power P34A80). At 1TB and up this drive is double-sided with four NAND packages. This has some consequences, with single-sided drives being preferable in mobile/SFF machines and generally being more efficient and easier to cool. At 2TB the single-sided drives have to use denser NAND (512Gb vs. 256Gb) due to only having two packages (16DP x 2 = 32 dies).

This is less of a problem with the EVO Plus (vs. regular EVO) because the EVO Plus utilizes 96-layer NAND. The E12 drives (so far) rely on 64-layer NAND which is a bit less performant. Not an issue with lesser workloads either way. The 970 EVO Plus uses the same controller as the 970 EVO/Pro which is an upclocked version of the Polaris (960 EVO/Pro), although all SSD controllers are basically ARM Cortex-R with some differences like ECC. This is a penta-core controller vs. the (newer) quad-core Phison E12/E16, both of which can handle heavier workloads quite well. The E12 is more efficient (power usage) under these loads generally. Both have the same amount of DRAM (typical 1GB:1TB ratio).

From a design perspective the 970 EVO Plus has static + dynamic SLC caches (6 & 42GB, respectively, at this capacity) while the E12 drives have just a dynamic (30GB). This mostly influences write performance consistency especially at edge cases (e.g. fuller drive). Generally speaking I consider the E12 drives to be "budget 970 EVO" as they have a somewhat similar performance profile as compared to the SM2262/EN drives. However, in real world terms, the E12 is often better than the 970 EVO, but the 970 EVO Plus (with its 96L NAND) tends to pull ahead across-the-board. It's a faster drive thanks to the NAND. Worth noting is that the E12/E16 controllers (and SM2262/EN) support 96L NAND just fine and do quite well with it.

But since your question specifically asks about the Inland Premium vs. 970 EVO Plus: the Plus is going to be the faster drive. In every day terms I don't think you'd notice a difference. If you can actually use the sequential performance the EVO Plus will be faster. If you're doing heavy workloads, the Plus will be faster. The Plus to me is the real 970 Pro alternative/replacement drive and it's priced accordingly. I just don't think most people need that extra bump in performance.
 
There's a couple of differences with regard to hardware. First, the Samsung drives are always single-sided, utilizing two NAND packages. The E12 drives like this one are single-sided up to and including 480/500/512GB with some exceptions (e.g. Silicon power P34A80). At 1TB and up this drive is double-sided with four NAND packages. This has some consequences, with single-sided drives being preferable in mobile/SFF machines and generally being more efficient and easier to cool. At 2TB the single-sided drives have to use denser NAND (512Gb vs. 256Gb) due to only having two packages (16DP x 2 = 32 dies).

This is less of a problem with the EVO Plus (vs. regular EVO) because the EVO Plus utilizes 96-layer NAND. The E12 drives (so far) rely on 64-layer NAND which is a bit less performant. Not an issue with lesser workloads either way. The 970 EVO Plus uses the same controller as the 970 EVO/Pro which is an upclocked version of the Polaris (960 EVO/Pro), although all SSD controllers are basically ARM Cortex-R with some differences like ECC. This is a penta-core controller vs. the (newer) quad-core Phison E12/E16, both of which can handle heavier workloads quite well. The E12 is more efficient (power usage) under these loads generally. Both have the same amount of DRAM (typical 1GB:1TB ratio).

From a design perspective the 970 EVO Plus has static + dynamic SLC caches (6 & 42GB, respectively, at this capacity) while the E12 drives have just a dynamic (30GB). This mostly influences write performance consistency especially at edge cases (e.g. fuller drive). Generally speaking I consider the E12 drives to be "budget 970 EVO" as they have a somewhat similar performance profile as compared to the SM2262/EN drives. However, in real world terms, the E12 is often better than the 970 EVO, but the 970 EVO Plus (with its 96L NAND) tends to pull ahead across-the-board. It's a faster drive thanks to the NAND. Worth noting is that the E12/E16 controllers (and SM2262/EN) support 96L NAND just fine and do quite well with it.

But since your question specifically asks about the Inland Premium vs. 970 EVO Plus: the Plus is going to be the faster drive. In every day terms I don't think you'd notice a difference. If you can actually use the sequential performance the EVO Plus will be faster. If you're doing heavy workloads, the Plus will be faster. The Plus to me is the real 970 Pro alternative/replacement drive and it's priced accordingly. I just don't think most people need that extra bump in performance.

Thanks for all that info! Yeah it's just gona be a game drive so I guess I wont notice the speed difference of the 2 so go with the cheaper inland. ;)
 
Thanks for all that info! Yeah it's just gona be a game drive so I guess I wont notice the speed difference of the 2 so go with the cheaper inland. ;)

If you were able to notice a difference using either as a game drive, you'd have a defective part on your hands ;)
 
Thanks for all that info! Yeah it's just gona be a game drive so I guess I wont notice the speed difference of the 2 so go with the cheaper inland. ;)

Should have roughly the same load times, yeah. You generally won't see much gain there even when comparing a SATA SSD, although some games do see a boost with NVMe for me (e.g. Unity engine games). But even then it's 15% at the maximum. (and that has nothing to do with sequentials - I compared it to a 3xSATA SSD RAID-0/stripe as well; it's the boost to random read performance)
 
How hot does this thing get? I had a Mushkin https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07CYJ4GS3/ drive die a couple months back in my laptop from overheating. I read these sticks can get pretty warm. Really tempted, because I think the other drive in the laptop might be starting to go too...starting to get random disk usage spikes. (it's not an SSD, just a regular HDD). So I'm really looking to replace the NVMe drive now, but don't want to lose another drive after only a few months.
 
As an Amazon Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
How hot does this thing get? I had a Mushkin https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07CYJ4GS3/ drive die a couple months back in my laptop from overheating. I read these sticks can get pretty warm. Really tempted, because I think the other drive in the laptop might be starting to go too...starting to get random disk usage spikes. (it's not an SSD, just a regular HDD). So I'm really looking to replace the NVMe drive now, but don't want to lose another drive after only a few months.

Check out the drive health using HD Sentinel or a similar tool. You might want to stop using it until it's replaced. (I've had so many clients who thought, something's wrong, I need to think about replacing that soon, but they always wait too long, and by the time you've started to notice real slowdowns from drive errors, it's usually too late to get a clean copy!)
 
As an Amazon Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
Check out the drive health using HD Sentinel or a similar tool. You might want to stop using it until it's replaced. (I've had so many clients who thought, something's wrong, I need to think about replacing that soon, but they always wait too long, and by the time you've started to notice real slowdowns from drive errors, it's usually too late to get a clean copy!)
Well thankfully (or unfortunately depending on how you look at it) everything I needed to rescue I had to attempt to do so when my OS drive crashed and I was forced to install the OS on this drive. I couldn't remember if it would require a full format of the drive first (I'd only done an install on a clean disk in the first place), so I partitioned off a section of the drive, but backed up the important information first just to be safe. Also, the disk itself isn't running slowly, yet. I'm just getting odd disk usage spikes. Which my research is telling me could be indicative of a drive getting ready to fail. If that does happen before I'm able to replace one (or both) of the drives I can always reinstall the old, tiny, NVMe SSD the computer came with. I just don't want to have to take all of the screws out more times than I have to. Less risk of stripping them out.
 
How hot does this thing get? I had a Mushkin https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07CYJ4GS3/ drive die a couple months back in my laptop from overheating. I read these sticks can get pretty warm. Really tempted, because I think the other drive in the laptop might be starting to go too...starting to get random disk usage spikes. (it's not an SSD, just a regular HDD). So I'm really looking to replace the NVMe drive now, but don't want to lose another drive after only a few months.

You had a Mushkin Pilot overheat? Then you definitely don't want one of these. The Pilot uses the SM2262 which generally runs cooler than competing controllers. I've never had mine (I have 3) get even within 10C of throttling (70C) let alone a critical temperature (80C+). If you're set on NVMe for that laptop I would suggest a single-sided, "budget NVMe" (check my guides/spreadsheet) at the maximum. But honestly if you're having that many drive issues then something is wrong.
 
As an Amazon Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
I wasn't running heat measuring software, but I was able to pull some semi-vital info off the drive by setting it on a clay icepack. I wasn't even thinking about heat being a problem until it crashed and disappeared from the BIOS, and I started doing research. It could be that I just got a bad card. I'm really not sure. The drive that came with the laptop was only 128GB, which was OK for JUST the OS, but very little else. I upgraded to the 500, because I figured it would give me some breathing room (and it wasn't significantly more expensive than the 256, so for twice the space it was worth it, it was on sale). I'm thinking it's just bad luck with the drive problems. The HDD is 18 months old, so if it's also a lemon...unless there's a fault on the motherboard. Something that's literally killing drives. Although for the first 9 months or so that I used the smaller SSD I didn't have any issues with it. It's still functional. Just very small. So I was always playing a space management game with applications. (also sorry for the off-topic)
 
I just game on my home PC but so far the drive has been fine stuffed on the backside of my ITX mobo with no heatsink or airflow.
 
I heard a rather tasty tidbit .... Microcenter is going to be carrying a 2TB E12 drive and it's expected to cost around $169 or so. The guy said it's a "rumor" for now.

Just bought a 660p for a laptop, lower intensity load, but I'd grab one of these for my desktop- it's just enough space.
 
I heard a rather tasty tidbit .... Microcenter is going to be carrying a 2TB E12 drive and it's expected to cost around $169 or so. The guy said it's a "rumor" for now.
I am actually highly interested in those 2TB models. So i am avoiding the urge to buy the 1TB in hopes the 2TBs come soon
 
Back to $119.99 :(

The price hasn't changed at my local MC, still $97.

How hot does this thing get? I had a Mushkin https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07CYJ4GS3/ drive die a couple months back in my laptop from overheating. I read these sticks can get pretty warm. Really tempted, because I think the other drive in the laptop might be starting to go too...starting to get random disk usage spikes. (it's not an SSD, just a regular HDD). So I'm really looking to replace the NVMe drive now, but don't want to lose another drive after only a few months.

You don't want this drive, or any Phison E12. Do yourself a huge favor and go for the Intel 660p. You want a single sided drive because it will be cooler and more power efficient, both keys for your use case. The 660p is a QLC drive which has further power savings, and quite good 4k performance. If I were shopping for an NVME for my laptop that's the one I'd want.
 
As an Amazon Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
What kind of source was that?

The same guy that told me about these drives 2 or 3 weeks before the store had them. He said that ( this ) drive was a rumor as well.

Who knows but ... it's not like they couldn't do this if they wanted. A 1.9TB E12 drive is already on the market and has been for many months.

The logic supports the rumor however. These 1TB NVMe Premium drives can't possibly be the last drive ever from Inland!? So if not, then what's next?

As these drives continue to age and drop in price what can Microcenter add to this "Premium" lineup that will continue to make money for the company? Surely the margins are shrinking. Healthier margins with larger 2TB and higher priced NVMe 2TB Premium drives?

What do you guys think? What's next? I do know there are LED / Micro LED NVMe drivers about to hit the market and or have hit the market. Maybe an RGB LED NVMe Premium drive is next.
 
The same guy that told me about these drives 2 or 3 weeks before the store had them. He said that ( this ) drive was a rumor as well.

Who knows but ... it's not like they couldn't do this if they wanted. A 1.9TB E12 drive is already on the market and has been for many months.

The logic supports the rumor however. These 1TB NVMe Premium drives can't possibly be the last drive ever from Inland!? So if not, then what's next?

As these drives continue to age and drop in price what can Microcenter add to this "Premium" lineup that will continue to make money for the company? Surely the margins are shrinking. Healthier margins with larger 2TB and higher priced NVMe 2TB Premium drives?

What do you guys think? What's next? I do know there are LED / Micro LED NVMe drivers about to hit the market and or have hit the market. Maybe an RGB LED NVMe Premium drive is next.
Whats next are PCI-e 4.0 NVME, double the speed again.
Phison announced up to 6.5GB/s next year, the first appearing in quarter 1.
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/phison-says-ssds-will-hit-65gbs-speeds-next-year/
On the face of it this will only help large file transfers.
I would like to see them tackle 4K byte transfers faster, with less heat and less CPU use.
Oh and handle 512 byte sector emulation instead of just 4K.
One can wish.
 
unknown.png
 
time for a thread title change... I used to have 97 problems, now I have 119 :p edit scratch that, the price is back at 97.99
 
The price hasn't changed at my local MC, still $97.



You don't want this drive, or any Phison E12. Do yourself a huge favor and go for the Intel 660p. You want a single sided drive because it will be cooler and more power efficient, both keys for your use case. The 660p is a QLC drive which has further power savings, and quite good 4k performance. If I were shopping for an NVME for my laptop that's the one I'd want.

yeah until the drive gets half full and the performance tanks...
 
I'm really happy with what I'm seeing from Microcenter in the past decade. They are REALLY trying to be competitive with online retail. If I need to buy a new processor/mobo and both are carried at Microcenter locally, it's almost always cheaper then online (at least in the parts choices I've been making) and I can pick it up that day. Over the past few years their inland drives are really starting to make a splash now too, as we've seen with this thread.

It's good to see a local place not buckle under online competition. I grew up in Los Angeles and really used to love going to Fry's. I live in Texas now (thank God) and even though Fry's is here too, it sucks now. It's been nearly a decade since I've been in a Fry's for a good special that I was excited about.
 
yeah until the drive gets half full and the performance tanks...

Performance won't tank with the drive half full unless you are dropping 75GB of data on the 660p at one time. Then it will need time to fold up the data and free up some SLC cache.
For most use cases, performance will remain good until the drive is nearly full.

But it is your money, you do you. If you'd rather have much shorter battery life and a mobile lap warmer, then go ahead and put an E12 drive in a laptop.
 
Performance won't tank with the drive half full unless you are dropping 75GB of data on the 660p at one time. Then it will need time to fold up the data and free up some SLC cache.
For most use cases, performance will remain good until the drive is nearly full.

But it is your money, you do you. If you'd rather have much shorter battery life and a mobile lap warmer, then go ahead and put an E12 drive in a laptop.


lol desktops do not run on batteries did you just assume what i am computing with?
 
lol desktops do not run on batteries did you just assume what i am computing with?

For a desktop I'd probably go with the Phison E12 drive, although it is not a no-brainer because the 4k performance of the 660p is pretty impressive. Both are good drives in their own way. However, my reply was to someone asking about an NVME for a laptop.
 
For a desktop I'd probably go with the Phison E12 drive, although it is not a no-brainer because the 4k performance of the 660p is pretty impressive. Both are good drives in their own way. However, my reply was to someone asking about an NVME for a laptop.

Got the 2TB 660p in my ultrabook... third install of Windows going on, looks like on this laptop (an ASUS) transfers are a no-go due to security, and I say that to say that I've pretty much reamed this drive with bulk transfers and it's both still kicking and not overheating. I think it's cooler under load than the Sandisk SATA SSD that the 660p replaced.
 
Is there any word on a 2 TB version other than the sort of vagueish rumors earlier in this thread?
 
Whats next are PCI-e 4.0 NVME, double the speed again.
Phison announced up to 6.5GB/s next year, the first appearing in quarter 1.
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/phison-says-ssds-will-hit-65gbs-speeds-next-year/
On the face of it this will only help large file transfers.
I would like to see them tackle 4K byte transfers faster, with less heat and less CPU use.
Oh and handle 512 byte sector emulation instead of just 4K.
One can wish.


I'm not convinced there is much value in Gen4 x4 m.2 drives. We are already so far into diminishing returns territory with Gen3 X4 that it is silly.

Where Gen4 sounds more interesting to me is to be able to use 2 lanes instead of 4, so you can stretch the lanes further.
 
Is there any word on a 2 TB version other than the sort of vagueish rumors earlier in this thread?

You don't have to wait, there is a 1.9TB E12 drive on the market now for around $350 or maybe less by now. Do a search.

I'm sure we are about to see in the coming weeks / months possibly larger E12 drives. There are massive profits on these NVMe drives as they use literally $35 dollars in parts and factored into that cost is labor, lights, replacement, etc. I saw the cost of these chips somewhere, they aren't much. General rule of thumb for wholesale, retail pricing is that if they have a $99 shelf price, then they've paid $49 or less wholesale per unit. The factories making these drives profit from quantity. While $15 or $20 profit per drive may not sound like much for the factory, multiply that by 250,000 drives a month. All of a sudden you're talking big numbers.

Where do I get my numbers from? I don't. They are just random possible monthly production numbers. But I am fairly certain I'm in the "ballpark" of what kinda profits the manufactures make per unit. I've read these numbers can be anywhere from 8$ to as high as $20 or $25 per unit.

The next step in the evolution of all of this is a larger E12 drive. It's not if one is coming, but when.

It will probably happen slower than you want but faster than you think.
 
Last edited:
OK so Phison E16 drives are about to drop like a big fast nuke bomb soon. I think Gigabyte is dropping theirs on the market when Ryzen 2 releases on the 7th. So that means PCIe 4.0 drives pushing 5GB/s are about to be available.

This also means that hopefully Inland Professional gets a 2tb phison e16 based drive soon enough as well. But like all shit youll have to pay the "new tech" tax for the first few months.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top