2TB NVME QLC SSD for gaming?

euskalzabe

euskalzabe

[H]ard|Gawd
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I currently use a SATA 2TB SSD that I’m going to move to my secondary gaming pc, and was thinking it’d make sense to get an NVME this time around since prices aren’t too different. I’ll be “stuck” on pcie3 for a couple years so theres no point in waiting for pcie4 ssd. anything around 3500mbps read / 3000mbps write will do just fine, and get me part of the way to next gen games that hopefully will load much faster thanks to console innovations translating well to pc hardware.

I’m wondering if a QLC drive would be good enough as a gaming drive? I’ve only used MLC and TLC drives before and I’ve read that QLC can really take a hit. I don’t hammer these drives, no massive file Transfers except the 1st time when I copy all my steam library. I figured QLC would be fine as read speed is what matters more, but figured I’d ask how those of you with QLC drives feel about your experience?
 
Yeah, should be fine. It'll be plenty fast and if your not constantly hammering it with data it should last plenty long.
 
Have a look at this



As for a QLC drive good enough for games? You won't even be able to tell the difference.
 
CraptacularOne said:
As for a QLC drive good enough for games? You won't even be able to tell the difference.
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Well, yes and no. I'm perfectly happy with all my SATA SSDs for all the games I've bought until now. No game is designed to take advantage of speeds higher than SATA.

Thing is, new consoles are debuting with NVME drives offering insane 5-8gpbs read speeds and there's been so much covered about how this is enabling instant game loading, asset loading on the fly, etc. Nvidia's Ampere is supposed to use NVCache which will use high-speed NVME drives as another type of "memory" to load assets from, provided it's fast enough. Basically, next-gen games are being engineered to take advantage of these speeds, unlike until now, where HDD was the baseline and its slow speeds dictated how levels were designed (loading hallways, elevator rides, etc). Taking this into account, and expecting this performance to at least partially translate to PCs, is what's motivating my search for a new NVME 2TB drive for my game library. As long as the speeds are high, within the PCIe3 constrains, it seems like TLC or QLC won't matter for me, since the only writing I'd do is the actual games being installed and then any occasional small Word/Excel files I'm working on regularly.

I'm certainly a bit ahead of the curve, and not planning on buying right now because a) SSDs have gone up in price and b) no games can take advantage of this fast loading yet. Still, I'm envisioning what I'll need with an eye to purchase this 2nd half of 2020.
 
euskalzabe said:
Well, yes and no. I'm perfectly happy with all my SATA SSDs for all the games I've bought until now. No game is designed to take advantage of speeds higher than SATA.

Thing is, new consoles are debuting with NVME drives offering insane 5-8gpbs read speeds and there's been so much covered about how this is enabling instant game loading, asset loading on the fly, etc. Nvidia's Ampere is supposed to use NVCache which will use high-speed NVME drives as another type of "memory" to load assets from, provided it's fast enough. Basically, next-gen games are being engineered to take advantage of these speeds, unlike until now, where HDD was the baseline and its slow speeds dictated how levels were designed (loading hallways, elevator rides, etc). Taking this into account, and expecting this performance to at least partially translate to PCs, is what's motivating my search for a new NVME 2TB drive for my game library. As long as the speeds are high, within the PCIe3 constrains, it seems like TLC or QLC won't matter for me, since the only writing I'd do is the actual games being installed and then any occasional small Word/Excel files I'm working on regularly.

I'm certainly a bit ahead of the curve, and not planning on buying right now because a) SSDs have gone up in price and b) no games can take advantage of this fast loading yet. Still, I'm envisioning what I'll need with an eye to purchase this 2nd half of 2020.
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It's not just data throughput it's also dedicated decompression hardware in specifically the PS5 that will help it in loading and swapping data.
Coincidentally another LTT video covers this here:


Even worrying about this stuff at this point in time is a bit silly though. As even if the PS5 does indeed come with a revolutionary SSD implementation it won't really do anything in the grand scheme of things since it's "only" going to be on the PS5 for the foreseeable future, the next XBOX will just have a traditional NVME SSD and not the decompression hardware and PCs will not have this either (at least not for a while or if at all) So what this basically means is that
A) All your current hardware will be fine as it will be in the new XBOX for gaming and
B) it will only be used to push possible boundaries on PS5 exclusive games if it is used in this way at all since no other hardware has access to it anyway
C) as I just eluded to games will need to be specifically written to take advantage of such capabilities
 
CraptacularOne said:
Even worrying about this stuff at this point in time is a bit silly though. As even if the PS5 does indeed come with a revolutionary SSD implementation it won't really do anything in the grand scheme of things since it's "only" going to be on the PS5 for the foreseeable future, the next XBOX will just have a traditional NVME SSD and not the decompression hardware and PCs will not have this either (at least not for a while or if at all).
Click to expand...

Thanks for that video, I must have skipped it. Time has become meaningless these days and sometimes I forget what I've checked on YouTube :)

You're right, Xbox will "only" have a regular NVME drive - and nothing special at that, 2.4GB/s speeds that are easily matched by many PC drives today - but despite lacking specific hardware, it'll also use compression that'll push it to 4.8GB/s (see here). I don't expect PS5 SSD performance on PCs for a long time - mainly because even if developers switch to expect SSDs as the baseline, there will be wide variety of hardware in the wild. That said, Xbox's SSD is much more attainable for "any" PC gamer, so I expect that 2.4gbps to become a more common expectation on PC and games written with next gen consoles in mind to maintain this expectation on PC. As you said, it's probably too early to think about this now... I just rest easy that when the time comes to buy one of these drives, and realistically expecting some games to begin to take advantage of faster storage within the next 12 months, TLC or QLC should not be something for me to worry about given my intended use scenario.
 
euskalzabe said:
Thanks for that video, I must have skipped it. Time has become meaningless these days and sometimes I forget what I've checked on YouTube :)

You're right, Xbox will "only" have a regular NVME drive - and nothing special at that, 2.4GB/s speeds that are easily matched by many PC drives today - but despite lacking specific hardware, it'll also use compression that'll push it to 4.8GB/s (see here). I don't expect PS5 SSD performance on PCs for a long time - mainly because even if developers switch to expect SSDs as the baseline, there will be wide variety of hardware in the wild. That said, Xbox's SSD is much more attainable for "any" PC gamer, so I expect that 2.4gbps to become a more common expectation on PC. As you said, it's probably too early to think about this now... I just rest easy that when the time comes to buy one of these drives, and realistically expecting some games to begin to take advantage of faster storage within the next 12 months, TLC or QLC should not be something for me to worry about given my intended use scenario.
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[/QUOTE]
Consoles always use some sort of compression be it hardware or software. They have to since consoles are "frozen in time". The 16GB memory they are shipping with now may be more than sufficient today but a typical console's lifespan is about 6 - 7 years. They have to stick with what they have for their lifetime. Unlike PCs where if you need more VRAM or system RAM for whatever task you want to do, you just either pop in more RAM or a different video card.

Long story short: Don't really worry about trying to spec your PC to beat next gen consoles. I'm sure you won't have the same PC in 6 - 7 years so who really cares at this point? Your system in 6 - 7 years will mop the floor with what your PC and any console launches with today.
 
CraptacularOne said:
Long story short: Don't really worry about trying to spec your PC to beat next gen consoles. I'm sure you won't have the same PC in 6 - 7 years so who really cares at this point? Your system in 6 - 7 years will mop the floor with what your PC and any console launches with today.
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Not a bad point my friend! I guess I'm really in no rush at all. Hey, I just saved myself $250! :D Now I just await to find out which GPU I'll end up buying: Ampere or RDNA2.
 
euskalzabe said:
Not a bad point my friend! I guess I'm really in no rush at all. Hey, I just saved myself $250! :D Now I just await to find out which GPU I'll end up buying: Ampere or RDNA2.
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I want to save $250 too! I just spent hours trying to figure all this out, ssd reliability, deceitful advertising, and cost is scaring me off. I’m about to just stay with 5400 like always. Can someone give me a clear storage roadmap for a gamer just bought a z490?

I like to have access to my 12tb external hdd for random games. I don’t need it, I could dl it fresh from 1gig line in a few mins. So am I looking at a $250 2tb nvme ssd for win10 and favorite games? The old ssds are priced about the same with little difference in gaming. I don’t know what to buy.
 
Archiebunker74 said:
I don’t know what to buy.
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This is what I ended up doing this week.

Because we have no idea how consoles' NVME drives will impact PC gaming, it's pointless to try to get ahead. Also, most SSD prices are crap right now. Because of the pandemic I spend most of my time at home, and I was getting tired of gaming on my regular PC, so I've been going back to my old, which is now a living-room-gaming-pc connected to a TV, to at least change rooms every once in a while. That PC was using a 10 year old HDD - a big no no as you can imagine, once I started using it on the regular it became painful.

So I ended up buying a 1TB Silicon Power P34A60 drive, excellently priced at $95 (you'd think then the 2TB would be 190, but no, it's 240, and I don't like gifting my money away... I thought about buying SATA for cheaper, but right now they cost the same or a bit more than NVME so it'd be stupid to buy that). I just installed the P34A60 on my regular PC yesterday as a Steam drive, and moved my older 2TB SATA to the living room gaming PC, where I can hold more games as backup but don't need them on my regular PC all the time.

Now everything's SSD based again, and I'm happy in the here and now, not worrying about what the landscape will be in 12 months. That's quite a lot of peace of mind for $95. I'm sure I've wasted more money than that in stupider things :)

Hopefully this gives you a bit of clarity on what you could do.
 
Well I just wasted enough money for both us and made a ridiculous choice cause I'd put to much time and effort studying and just friggin bought something. XPG SX8200 pro 2tb. Asx200pnp-2tt-c. The sob will prob die in a month and then I can claim I should have stuck with my 5400 hdd and then yell at the neighbor kids to get off my grass cause my over hyper, over priced ssd just broke.
 
Archiebunker74 said:
Well I just wasted enough money for both us and made a ridiculous choice cause I'd put to much time and effort studying and just friggin bought something. XPG SX8200 pro 2tb. Asx200pnp-2tt-c. The sob will prob die in a month and then I can claim I should have stuck with my 5400 hdd and then yell at the neighbor kids to get off my grass cause my over hyper, over priced ssd just broke.
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My 256GB SX8200 has been running as my OS drive for almost 3 years and has had 40TB written to it. I think you'll be fine.
 
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