Need a 512GB 2.5 drive for game installs. Recommendations?

[Stiletto]

I'd also be open to weirdo 640GB or other slightly larger sizes. I don't feel a 1TB would be necessary unless there's minimal cost difference. Always been a Sandisk fan but I'm wondering if anyone would recommend other brands.

 

[Meeho]

Crucial MX/BX

 

[Starfalcon]

Samsung has been good to me so far, although I did manage to avoid the 840 EVO fiasco.

 

[Keljian]

Samsung evo for me.

 

[Denpepe]

I bought a 2TB 860 QVO a while back for game installs, copying my old 500Gb drive to it went pretty fast, might be lower write speeds then the EVO drives but that's irrelevant to a games drive imo.

 

[x509]

AVOID Mushkin. I had one of the SSDs fail on me just after the warranty was up. Friend told me that Mushkin was a crap brand and why did I ever buy one.

 

[sinisterDei]

Throwing in a recommendation for Samsung. I probably would stick with the EVO line rather than drop to the QVO, but they're basically the SSD gold standard at this point.

 

[mda]

WDs, Crucials and Samsungs tend to get SSD sales from me depending on what I need, mostly for perceived reliability reasons. Haven't had the chance to try Intels yet but I wouldn't mind getting those as well.

 

[Abula]

Samsung would be my top pick, but i had good experiences with Crucial and Intel.

 

[bigddybn]

For game installs? The cheapest thing you can find will work just fine. Even the super cheap silicon power drives that Amazon sells work great.

 

[iroc409]

Samsung and Crucial have been my primary as well, but I have a few SanDisk (now WD?) drives that have been around for quite some time and completely reliable (so far). I have a gaming rig I just upgraded/built with a Sabrent NVMe Rocket and it's working fine so far.

Most name brands will be just fine.

 

[Kardonxt]

For game installs? The cheapest thing you can find will work just fine. Even the super cheap silicon power drives that Amazon sells work great.

I use sort by cheapest amazon prime SSDs like this frequently for upgrading old machines and they all have been great.

The ~$99 1tb nvme E12 controller drives have also been solid for me if you are looking for something higher end. (Although the old hot deals thread suggests prices may have gone up.)

 

[pitingres]

AVOID Mushkin. I had one of the SSDs fail on me just after the warranty was up. Friend told me that Mushkin was a crap brand and why did I ever buy one.

"Crap brand" is massively overstating the case. You can find DOA stories for every brand, including Samsung. Mushkin might be marginally worse than some but you'd need some serious historical data to prove or disprove it.

FWIW, I ran a pair of Mushkin Reactors, one 480 GB and one 1 TB, for almost 4 years before selling the machines they were in. AFAIK they are still running fine, and the 1 TB was over the TBW guarantee when I sold it. I wouldn't hesitate to use Mushkin again for the right use case and price.

 

[compcons]

I have a pair of mushkin 60 GB drives that have been running since forever and have had Samsung's, Intels, etc fail. Since it's just games, a failure isn't the end of the world (though you may want to backup saves if it's not cloud based). I have Seagate, we, sandisk, kodak (yes Kodak) and haven't had any significant issues. Boot drives, cache drives, and the like deserve to be Samsung or Intel drives.

I second the recommendation on cheap for games. Microcenter sells their inland 500 GB SSD for around $50. There are probably better cost per GB drives at Amazon though.