Samsung 990 Pro or WD Black SN 850x?

nickj

nickj

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I can't decide which to get, can someone give me some input, this is my first PC I'm putting together, using it for gaming.
 
Go for the wd 850x. They're both overkill, but the wd's have proven reliability. Personally, I'd save some cash and get a slower drive if it's just for games. The load time differences are literally tenths of a second. If you're not video editing or shuttling huge files back and forth all day, these speed levels are useless.
 
They both have 600/1200/2400 TBW endurance rating on the 1/2/4TB models so they should be reliable. Samsung specs say the 990 Pro should support AES 245-bit TCG/OPAL and IEEE1667 which theoretically would allow you to do Bitlocker hardware encryption, but I've read conflicting things on if people can actually enable this. The SN850X does not support this but I feel like most people don't run this on their general desktop / gaming rigs anyway so is a moot point. Both will be fast enough and I doubt you'll see a difference in real world usage.

Samsung has a worse track record with 980 Pros dying (later fixed in a firmware update but if you didn't update then you were screwed). Even some other models were reported to have issues from Samsung. WD had some slowdown issues when running on chipset lanes of X570 motherboards, but it was fixed in a firmware update and didn't result in the drive crapping out like Samsung did.

I'm happy with my SN850Xs and would buy them again over the 990 Pros any day (they typically seem a little cheaper too?)
 
Neither would be a bad choice. These days storage is a minor consideration for client workloads to me.
Buy a reputable brand from someone who makes NAND.
TLC and not QLC.
DRAM not DRAMless.
Price per GB.
Have some kind of drive utility software for easy firmware upgrades and health monitoring.

If a SSD checks those boxes, I'd buy it and recommend it to others.

I haven't felt a seat of the pants difference in SSD performance in a long time. My nine year old SATA 850 Pro drive will subjectively load applications and boot VMs just as fast as NVME drives I've used. A few seconds difference on a workload that gets run a few times a week is barely worthy of concern. If I'm buying one for myself I'll spend a week agonizing over it but doesn't mean it's worth doing ;) Last SSD I bought was a Solidigm P44 Pro and I can't tell the difference between that and a WD SN750 or 850 Pro without benchmarks. If anyone wonders how a PCIe 4 SSD works in a PCIe 3 board, here you go.

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I only recently went with the 990 in 4TB size due to it being single sided and being a better match for ultrabook duty.
Both as mentioned are great drives!
 
Also the SK Hynix P41 / Solidigm P44 twins are just as good, though they don't seem to go on sale as often as the other two and only go up to 2 TB.
 
cpufrost said:
I only recently went with the 990 in 4TB size due to it being single sided and being a better match for ultrabook duty.
Both as mentioned are great drives!
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Good point and probably the only reason to go with the Sammy if the 4tb is single sided? Instead of the SN850x because the SN850x 4tb drive is double sided.
 
I've got both in my latest build. IMO, you can't go wrong with either choice. Buy whichever is cheapest.
 
I too had just asked myself this question. I was leaning WD, but Phison based drives are right up there. So I think I'm going to go Inland (Microcenter) Perf Plus. It's their top of the line Gen 4 drive w/ DRAM. Within 10% of 850 and 990 Pro and cheaper.
 
Well, having used the 850x's extensively, highly recommend them to anyone who asks this same question....

To wit, last year alone, I purchased over $7k of them ($2.5k in mid-late December alone) in 2TB & 4TB sizes for use in client builds (and almost that much in 750x's in '22), and I have had ZERO complaints about their performance or reliability.

Bear in mind that the majority of these clients are advanced-level CAD/imaging/database folks who tend to work the crap out of their machines for ~70-80hrs per week, week after week after week.....

Within 10% of 850 and 990 Pro and cheaper
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"Cheap is as cheap does" - Forest....Forest Gump (well sorta :))
 
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dogDAbone said:
Well, having used the 850x's extensively, highly recommend them to anyone who asks this same question....

To wit, last year alone, I purchased over $8k of them ($3k in mid-late December alone) in 2TB & 4TB sizes for use in client builds (and almost that much in 750x's in '22), and I have had ZERO complaints about their performance or reliability.

Bear in mind that the majority of these clients are advanced-level CAD/imaging/database folks who tend to work the crap out of their machines for ~70-80hrs per week, week after week after week.....



"Cheap is as cheap does" - Forest....Forest Gump (well sorta :))
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I've had a "Pioneer" Phison based Gen3 drive for over two years now in my main rig, no issues. I've also had a Samsung 980 (non Pro) in my Framework 13 11th gen intel for two years now, also no issues. When I was pricing my 7800x3d at Microcenter, 990 Pros were $10 bucks off if bundled with a processor, so I ended up with a 4TB 990 Pro.
 
I own both of them and there is no discernible difference. The 850 runs cooler. The Samsung has magician software which makes data migration an absolute treat. If I was in the market, I'd buy the one on sale at the time.
 
dogDAbone said:
Care to elaborate why not ?

I bought a large # of them direct from WD late last year nottaproblemo...fast & free shipping too :)
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I purchased one directly from WD. Went on sale further, contacted customer service to see if I could get a price adjustment. They said to repurchase at the lower price and send back the first order as they offer free returns. I did that, then they claimed I sent back a Samsung drive and refused to give a refund. After many calls with CS I did a charge back as that was the only way to get a refund.

If they screw up on their end you'll be out of luck. I will purchase from newegg/Best Buy/B&H next time.

The drive I kept works nicely, but haven't made it my boot drive yet. Want to be sure it works well because I assume if I have to send it in for warranty they will loose/damage it and deny warranty claim.
 
Flogger23m said:
I purchased one directly from WD. Went on sale further, contacted customer service to see if I could get a price adjustment. They said to repurchase at the lower price and send back the first order as they offer free returns. I did that, then they claimed I sent back a Samsung drive and refused to give a refund. After many calls with CS I did a charge back as that was the only way to get a refund.

If they screw up on their end you'll be out of luck. I will purchase from newegg/Best Buy/B&H next time.

The drive I kept works nicely, but haven't made it my boot drive yet. Want to be sure it works well because I assume if I have to send it in for warranty they will loose/damage it and deny warranty claim.
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Yep, that would cause me to go somewhere else for sure, but fortunately, I have not had any issues whatsoever with them, and I got all of them at rock bottom prices in December 23. They are all working perfectly, so I haven't needed to call CS for anything either :D

However, I simply refuse to buy anything from not-new-Egg or BustBuy, as I have had way too many (similar) issues with them, and they are on my permanent sh^t list..
 
The 990 Pro now with it's upgraded firmware is the faster drive and is stable as hell. 1,550,000 million random read IOPS. My games load fast as heck.

Get whatever you want but the WD is NOT faster than the 990 Pro.
 
jarablue said:
The 990 Pro now with it's upgraded firmware is the faster drive and is stable as hell. 1,550,000 million random read IOPS. My games load fast as heck.

Get whatever you want but the WD is NOT faster than the 990 Pro.
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Does it need a heatsink ?
 
jarablue said:
Get whatever you want but the WD is NOT faster than the 990 Pro
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Perhaps it's not faster than the 990P, but the 850X is at least as fast....within in a few MB/s anyways. And seeins how both are gen 4 drives rated for 7450/6900MB/s, I doubt that most average users could tell the difference anyways....

Hell, even on my slightly dated 11G mini-me box, I still get 7100/6400MB/s from my 850X's, so I happy with that !
ng4ever said:
Does it need a heatsink ?
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Regardless of which drive you use, this will largely depend on the location where it is installed, and the amount of airflow it gets.....the only thing I use is a thin graphene strip, along with the machine's internal fan/duct system, which keeps my drives at a cool 47-55C, even when running complex database calculations and/or image manipulations all day long :D
 
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