QLC nvme - when will the madness end?

So my 128gb ssd bof drive is getting pretty full. I was first attracted to NVME with the amazing speed. However, I see that many are QLC. I thought TLC was pushing it! I will most likely get a Transcend MLC since reliability is important.

Honestly, other than cable management, is their any real world advantage to having 3000 GB/s read/write speeds if NVME instead if 500 GB for sata?? What the hell are you even transferring too - another NVME??

Any thoughts on one of the last affordable MLC drives made by transcend or are some of the newer TLC drives just as reliable and faster?

It makes bootup, virus/malware scans and windows updates fast as hell.

Regular poking around on the desktop makes no difference. Game loads are faster though.

Nightfire said:

Honestly, other than cable management, is their any real world advantage to having 3000 GB/s read/write speeds if NVME instead if 500 GB for sata?? What the hell are you even transferring too - another NVME??

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You seem to be confusing m.2 (a form-factor) with NVMe (a storage access protocol). There are plenty of m.2 SATA SSDs out there (e.g., Samsung 860, Crucial MX500) that can be installed direct to the mainboard (assuming it also supports SATA on m.2) without any cabling. And real-world, there's no advantage for NVMe over SATA.

Are you sure the Transcend is a dual-level (2 bits per cell) unit? Some manufacturers (e.g., Samsung) have caught on that the "Multi" in MLC can mean something besides two, and have been using terms such as "3-bit MLC" instead of the traditional "TLC". Also, 3-bit/TLC SSDs are perfectly fine in a desktop system. I'd be more wary of using a 4-bit/QLC SSD for a system drive at this point, however.

(edit:typos/grammar)

BlueLineSwinger said:

You seem to be confusing m.2 (a form-factor) with NVMe (a storage access protocol). There are plenty of m.2 SATA SSDs or there (e.g., Samsung 860, Crucial MX500) that can be installed direct to the mainboard (assuming it also supports SATA on m.2) without any cabling. And real-world, there's no advantage for NVMe over SATA.

Are you sure the Transcend is a dual-level (2 bits per cell) unit? A some manufacturers (e.g., Samsung) have caught on that the "Multi" in MLC can mean something besides two, and have been using terms such as "3-bit MLC" instead of the traditional "TLC". Also, 3-bit/TLC SSDs are perfectly fine in a desktop system. I'd be more to use a 4-bit/QLC SSD for a system drive at this point, however.

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Great info, thanks I guess it would have been better to name it DLC I instead of MLC so there would be no confusion.

TLC drives are fine. QLC drives are fine too, but they currently aren't any cheaper than TLC drives and are slower so I would avoid them.

NVME vs Sata doesn't make a difference in regular usage. I got an NVME drive myself, at the time a 500GB was $100 and Sata was around $70 and I decided it was only $30 so why not. It made no noticeable difference to my very old OCZ Sata drive. If I were to do it again I would save the money and get M.2 Sata.

For storage I just got a 1TB Sata drive (in the M.2 form factor) for around $110. NVME would have been around $150.

My advice is to get a TLC SATA based SSD of 1TB. M.2 or just regular 2.5 inch. If you get a M.2 make sure your board supports SATA M.2.