Go-To SSD These Days

OrangeWolf

Gawd
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Jan 6, 2011
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What's the go-to SSD these days?

I'm going to re-use my 4TB storage drive from my current computer, but I'm going to keep my old SSD in a box with my old MoBo/CPU in case I want to revamp those into a media machine or something later. Also means if I ever decide I want a Win7 machine I've got my old SSD/Mobo/CPU ready with no issues.

Going to run a Ryzen 1600X build with this X370 motherboard.

Should I get an M.2 drive? I've never used one of those but seems to be all the rage.

Last time I looked everyone was getting a Samsung 850 Pro - which is what my old 256gb drive was. I like it a lot. Tempted to take it out of the old machine and stick it in my laptop.

Anyway - looking for 500GB probably, but if there's a good deal on a larger one I'd consider it. Just not sure which ones are considered the "best" these days. I'll boot from the drive and put some important programs on it, but I do not intend to put games on it (games are secondary for me, I'm fine running those off a storage drive).
 
Samsung 850 Pro is rock solid reliable and you can't "feel" a difference vs like 960.

I will say all of my OCZ Vertex drives are still alive and kicking. I have a Vertex 1, 2, and 3. In fact my fastest boot drive still has been my Vertex 1 for some reason. It loads Win 7 so fast the boot animation can't even finish.
 
Samsung 960 EVO 500GB NVMe ... read is 3300MB/s Write is insane too. It's literally 5 and 6 times faster than ANY .... Sata6 SSD

$200 - $250 ... price various depending on the location and day.

Got mine for $213 several months ago.
 
Follow the above advice regarding Samsung.

I did, however, get that $50 Adata Xpg 128gb m.2 nvme SSD for the OS on my yet to be determined next build.

Kind of a compromise between a 960 Evo and 850 Evo...
Or I'll use it for a mining rig. Can't decide.
 
The new Crucial MX500 is the one to get, but currently only comes in 1 TB. Otherwise any Samsung or Crucial, whichever is the cheapest with the longest warranty.

M.2 if you want to avoid cables. Standard SSD is more versitile (less dependant on practical MBO slot implementation, can be easily moved between more computers, laptops, external cases...).

NVMe is 99% useless if you don't already know you need it.
 
Samsung 960 EVO 500GB NVMe ... read is 3300MB/s Write is insane too. It's literally 5 and 6 times faster than ANY .... Sata6 SSD

$200 - $250 ... price various depending on the location and day.

Got mine for $213 several months ago.


And insanely you cant tell it apart from a 550MBps SATA SSD. :p

As others have said the only benefit of NVMe is no cables.
 
My go-to are 960 EVO for M.2 and Samsung 850 EVO for old style.

Looks like the new Crucial MX500 might take the latter crown.
 
Pretty much Samsung across the board for both M.2 NVMe and SATA. I am now using an Intel Optane 900p as my primary boot drive and it is ridiculously responsive compared to the 960 EVO I had been using, but it comes at a pretty steep price so it is hard to recommend unless you take value out of the equation.
 
Is there a better option for (1) 500 GB, (2) <$250, and (3) M.2 drive than...
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147399&ignorebbr=1
((Samsung 850 EVO M.2))

Or... would I see a significant performance increase if I went with ~250GB instead? The $250 budget would stretch into a much nicer drive in that case I'm sure.

My current drive that I plan to reuse is a Samsung 850 Pro (the older style, bought ~2 years ago). I'd like something that would at least edge it out in performance.
 
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Is there a better option for (1) 500 GB, (2) <$250, and (3) M.2 drive than...
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147399&ignorebbr=1
((Samsung 850 EVO M.2))

Or... would I see a significant performance increase if I went with ~250GB instead? The $250 budget would stretch into a much nicer drive in that case I'm sure.

My current drive that I plan to reuse is a Samsung 850 Pro (the older style, bought ~2 years ago). I'd like something that would at least edge it out in performance.

That is probably one of the better deals for m.2 sata based drives. $150 is the average for 500gb drives lately, m.2 or 2.5''. Sale prices are down to $139 or so. Remember that smaller sized ssd's usually are not as fast as larger drives. As others have said, I doubt you're going to see a huge speed difference spending more for a pro drive or nvme based m.2 drive.
 
Looks like 2 TB options are still out of this world, and since I dont want 5 drives in my system anymore, thats what Ill be waiting on. Havent seen a decent priced one yet. Theyre more expensive per GB than smaller ones.

Current Rig has too many HDDs and Id love a huge 2-4TB SSD at a solid price point. I have a 1TB SSD (Games only), 128GB SSD for OS and a 250GB SSD for other games. I have a 1TB HDD for photos and music and a bonus 750GB HDD for basically more of the above. I feel like I could easily consolidate 4 of those drives onto a single 2TB.
 
Pretty much Samsung across the board for both M.2 NVMe and SATA. I am now using an Intel Optane 900p as my primary boot drive and it is ridiculously responsive compared to the 960 EVO I had been using, but it comes at a pretty steep price so it is hard to recommend unless you take value out of the equation.

+1

Running a 900p as a boot disk and 2x 960 Pros in MS RAID for storage. Best of both worlds. Definite improvement in responsiveness after moving to the Intel drive vs the 960s.
 
At this point, nearly all mainstream drives exceed real world consumer needs. There are only a few actual flash manufacturers as well as controller chipset manufacturers. So outside of the few big boys, most everyone else is simply repackaging a tried and tested solution.

I have only had 1 SSD go bad on me so far and that was an early OCZ, which had the worst reputation of all manufacturers (the company now is completely different and should be judged separately). But the other 10-12 other SSD's I have in operation all work flawlessly.

Samsungs and Intels are nice, but don't feel bad settling for a Sandisk or even something older like a Samsung 850. What I have taken to doing on my gaming system is putting 2 SSD's together using the Windows Storage Spaces and then as the library grows just using Storage Spaces to add another drive. It's effectively a JBOD setup, and it can grow as your needs grow (as you can catch random drives on sale). You have to start with at least 2 drives to use Storage Spaces.
 
i'd also add mushkin enhanced reactor to the list as a good cheap alternative if cost is an issue.. have had zero issues with mine other than finding out 500GB wasn't enough hard drive space after all, lol.

and god damnit i didn't know windows storage spaces was a thing, fml.
 
What is the advantage of using storage spaces compared to just having another assigned drive ( drive F: for example)? Is storage spaces more than just something to use for a NAS?
 
I got an NVME Samsung 960 Pro and waiting for Intel 900p series to come down in price (whenever) so I can use it for VROC RAID or just as an OS drive as it is the only SSD that makes a difference in day to day desktop use vs the 960 Pro.
 
960 Samsung m.2 for m.2 (best choice) samsung 850 if you can only do sata
 
I went with SM951 - it's oem version of 950 pro. Speed is great - around 2300-2500 read and 1500 write. And it was much cheaper than 950PRO
 
OEM drives are cheaper but bear no warranty with Samsung. So if it goes bad you have to go chase wild gooses...(or geese)
 
Crucial has been the king until M.2 came out and Samsung took the crown. Still anything Samsung or Crucial should be fine.
 
Follow the above advice regarding Samsung.

I did, however, get that $50 Adata Xpg 128gb m.2 nvme SSD for the OS on my yet to be determined next build.

Kind of a compromise between a 960 Evo and 850 Evo...
Or I'll use it for a mining rig. Can't decide.

Just an update for anyone who cares:
This was the XPG SX6000. 128gb.

Whoa- it's freaking fast.
On a new installation of Windows 10 it boots in 6 seconds. Takes longer for the monitor to turn on.

Amazing- its in my miner rig. I feel like I'm wasting it... But it was so cheap and less cords to manage
 
Crucial has been the king until M.2 came out and Samsung took the crown. Still anything Samsung or Crucial should be fine.
I dunno about that... the Samsung 830 Pros and 840 Pros were pretty hard to beat, esp in write longevity... I still have 830s running daily.
 
I still like the older Plextor and Crucial SSD's with Marvell controllers and MLC NAND. The Sandforce models play tricks with your data and something about the Samsung models rubs me the wrong way. I've never had an issue with Marvell. The only speed difference is in benchmarks.
 
I got a Crucial MX500 500GB in for a customer this week.

It's okay, nothing to write home about performance wise. Not sure why its getting all the applause at the moment.
 
Been Pretty opposite here what I thought was go to, stuff from OCZ etc some of them old drives are still rad. And same with like PNY stuff, all Toshiba. One of those 120gb Drives did die on me though....
A lot of people hold the Samsung stuff quite Highly, I don't know had no experience with them, always been a little Pricey.
 
I got a Crucial MX500 500GB in for a customer this week.

It's okay, nothing to write home about performance wise. Not sure why its getting all the applause at the moment.
Crucial reliability, good low QD 4k performance and competitive price.
 
I got a Crucial MX500 500GB in for a customer this week.

It's okay, nothing to write home about performance wise. Not sure why its getting all the applause at the moment.

Well they're price competitive and have a great track record reliability wise. Most people don't use their machine in a way that would show the difference between any of the recent SSDs so that makes Crucial drives a good choice. Generally I tell people to just go for the best deal they can find on any recent Samsung/Intel/Crucial drive and not to worry about benchmark results. In my area I've often found Crucial to be the go to brand.
 
I got a Crucial MX500 500GB in for a customer this week.

It's okay, nothing to write home about performance wise. Not sure why its getting all the applause at the moment.
It’s cheap compared to Samsung EVOs (-20% I think) and it’s mixed read/write client performance is as good or better.
 
It’s whichever drive that has a deal at themomenr. Cableless m.2 are nice to have
 
I've been running 2 m.2 mx300 525GB drives in Raid 0 on my z170 board for a year an a half. great performance and reliability so far. So yeah, another nod for Crucial drives. I've also got a Samsung 850 500GB that's been great too.
 
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