I'm kinda angry at youtube now for hiding this channel from me for so long. This is really useful stuff, especially when it comes to SSDs. All of the SSD benchmarking websites out there are such a nightmare to navigate. It's nice to get some solid answers.
AGREED! I just discovered this channel and i already bookmarked this video + the "Revisited 4070 Ti" one under "BEST GPU/SSD Comparison". This channel deservers waaaay more attention, youtube please...
Short answer: Yes, drives of the same model and specs are faster because they have more modules that split the load between them hence the higher speeds and if they have DRAM the higher capacities usually have more of it too.
@@BBWahoo Considering you have an 8TB enterprise drive in, I am guessing you have money. And, in that case, get an 512 GB intel optane SSD. While sequential write speed is not that great, what matter for OS, and game loading is latency and random read/write, and for that, optane makes normal SSDs fell like hard drives.
@@Just4Games2011 I had money, past tense 😭 You are correct in your assumption though, I am using a Micron 9200 enterprise drive, and also am using a 260gb intel optane 900p as L2 storage with PrimoCache. Honestly pretty swell, I cache all my SSD's, redundant sure, but I can certainly feel the difference, I wish I had better single core perf in my cpu for a smaller block size though, I have a Ryzen 3950X CPU, and it's good, but it's outclassed by all current processors in gaming one way or another lol, even the cheapo R5 5500 kills it when overclocked.
Great presentation. Great set. Loving this content. Gamers Nexus and LTT are incredible deep dive Jugganauts - but this channel is a fast fave for me as it gets to the nuts and bolts and covers the most relevant points without going too far off the deep end. Keeping these videos to 10-20 minutes is a great USP. I know I can get the hot topic info here without any filler. Hope it gets more subscribers 🙂
I really appreciate you doing SSDs benchmarks and reviews, I find that most reviewers will focus on GPUs and CPUs while mostly ignoring other components when they do also matter. Or maybe i'm just blind and don't know where to looks
Much needed video. I feel drives should also be compared with the same storage capacity or at the very least mentioned throughout comparisons. For example: WD 850X 2TB vs Samsung 990 pro 2TB. Showing a side by side comparison with one of those being only 1TB can in some cases be misrepresented. Even if it's slightly.
As someone who's a newbie in the SSD world, those reviews always confused me. I had a hard time deciding whether I should buy a 1TB of this or 2TB of that because sometimes, the 1TB of this particular brand is faster than the 2TB version of another brand.
The last points were some of the most important, so good summary. There are exceptions. A 512GB drive being 2/3 full and then you're working with a large file means the SSD could slow down depending on what you're doing. A 2 TB SSD 2/3 full and working with the same file doesn't matter because there is still plenty of headroom. So you have to understand the sizes of the files you're working with for one and as long as you have PLENTY of headroom vs. the size of the files you're working with you'll be OK. For gaming I use 2 NVMe drives, both 2TB and I won't let one get more than 2/3 full. That leaves plenty of space for saves, etc.... or whatever else a game might need to do with the drive. Because they're 2TB I could probably let them get to 3/4 full but I don't have that many games for me to fill 2, 2TB drives to even 2/3. So it's all good.
I just discovered this channel and i already bookmarked this video + the "Revisited 4070 Ti" one under "BEST GPU/SSD Comparison". This channel deservers waaaay more attention, youtube please...
A golden click bait title opportunity was missed: "SSDs, does size matter?" would have tempted many! Good informative topic coverage, it's tough for home users as mostly you end up reusing old drives as an enthusiast DIY builder, while the uninformed suffer poor OEM choices. As a long time UNIX/Linux admin, I would tweak the over-provisioning factor on HDD partitions, 20% for most write/read once areas and keep that usage separate from other data. For large software volumes I had control of and would replicate with infrequent changes 5% over-provisioning worked. On departmental user data, it was best to encourage some disk cleanup but have a reserve of space. When capacity was a real issue team leaders would put in requests for additional disk space. The point back then was fragmentation was no issue so long as free space was spread across the disk. In general I was rebuilding a server config every 2 years anyway and would MOVE all the data to fresh filesystems long before it became critical. I think SSD management software is doing something similar to coalesce file blocks on internal NAND pages to wear level and prepare free flash ready for writes.
Very good information. Very nicely presented by our lovely Hostess. I have the Samsung 980 Pro, 1 TB in a high performance (i-7) laptop. It really does quite well. I have a 500 GB SK Hynix Gold P31 drive in my i-5 laptop. I won't worry about performance loss because of the smaller size drive. The 500 GB SK Hynix drive is much faster than the OEM drive was. Cheers!
There are only a few things to remember when it comes to SSDs, SATA and NVMe. First one is never fill it up! The fuller they get, the slower they will run. So if you need 1TB of space buy a 2TB drive. Always buy a drive with a RAM cache. The price difference between drives with and without a RAM cache is small, but the performance difference is large for small writes, which is what is done most often. Last one is buy 3-bit MLC drives over 4-bit QLC drives if you can. QLC drives are cheaper to make, but the price difference isn't as big as it used to be, and of course QLC is slower and less reliable(they are warrantied for less writes than MLC).
I generally don't look a speed differences on the same drives of different capacities ... what look for is higher endurance (life span), higher capacity, longer life ! Thank you Nada !
I got the Firecuda 530 (7300/ 6900 i think) in 2TB config and can highly recommend it. Supposedly its very reliable and crazy durable, time will tell haha
@@Mack_Dingo as long as you have a decent read/ write speed you are good to go. Personally i would always go with the ones that have high durability like like Firecuda and the kingston you mentioned (check some videos on it being tested before tho). the Samsung 990 Pro had/ has problems with firmware according to Gamer Nexus, which led to SSD´s dying so i would skip on that.
I do not buy bigger drives for more speed, I buy them because of longevity. You typically have to micromanage small drives due to space constraints which causes more writes. I have 39TB's of storage in my machine (mix of nvme, sata ssd and sata hdd) and things get installed where it makes sense for bandwidth requirements. Key thing though is I minimize writes by putting things where they STAY for the life of the system.
How many SSD's have died on you due to going over their TBW? Probably none. My OS drive is a 960 EVO NVMe (500 GB), and it's well over 4 years old. I have >17k hours on it, >21 TB writes and 35 TB reads..and it's still at 97 % life remaining. This, after it being >95 % full for the better part of a year(it's now around 50 % full). 300TBW is plenty for all but the most-punishing of users.
@@Mr1Tanker I have had 2 ssd's die on me but they were first gen sata 2 ssd's (256 and 480). I no longer buy small ssd's, they simply do not make sense. * Constantly micro managing them is painfull. * Slow internet speed, which makes re-installing stuff painfull I have every single game I own installed and ready to play at a button press (barring annoying pending updates). Media and retro goes on the hdd drives, games and apps go on the solid state.
@@garytallowin6623 I try to buy the highest capacity drives for that socket that don't cost silly money, or have QLC NAND, given that the number of sockets in the machine is limited.
@@katrinabryce I have 4x2TB ssd's raided in an external enclosure which plugs into a pci express raid card, this has my entire steam library on it. I have the corsair 680X case which allows for 4 x sata ssd's and 3 x sata hdds. Then there is the nvme slots on the board.
@@garytallowin6623 I have 4 x 10TB mechanical disks + 2 x 2TB SATA ssds for my storage array, + a 4TB NVME for the operating system and virtual machine images. I have one spare NVME slot that is currently unoccupied. At some point in the future it will likely get a 4 or 8TB NVME, and I'll move some of the VM images over to it. I also have 4 spare x16 PCI-e slots that support bifurcation, so I could put NVMEs in them in the future.
I know, but I didn't have one type of SSD in both 2TB and 4TB free for testing, and it gets really expensive to buy several SSDs just for this ;) I'll definitely talk about it when I'm able to.
I wish she tested some SATA SSD's also. In multiple comparison tests, she always includes a SATA SSD alongside NVMe SSD's. This is a great inclusion for comparison. SATA SSD's are much slower and getting obsolete it would be good to know if buying a larger SATA SSD with larger DRAM cache is helpful and by how much. Great video. Thanks Nada.
Thank you! Performance wise there's been basically zero real benefit to buying SATA SSDs in capacities larger than 1TB. This was the case for the 870 EVO, 870 QVO, MX500 and BX500, the last ones that were tested in multiple capacities. But I think those are all a bit too old to clutter the newer graphs, I'm already cutting out some NVMe SSDs just to keep the graphs somewhat easy to follow.
How to choose a M.2 NVMe SSD: Choose overall capacity Check for RAID 0: • Available: Take 2 SSDs with 1/2 of your target size • Else: Take the greatest for your budget
Yup, 1tb drives generally use all the channels of the controller, sometimes 2Tb can overcome it a bit, some other times (depending from the controller, number of Nand ICs on the PCB and relative wiring) they can even be faster. 500Gb generally use only half the controller channels 250gb only 1. Main differences are most notable in writes yes, but also reads can take a hit, nice informative video :)
Interesting point, I'll start including Lego links in all my descriptions! If you check back a bit later I'll include some, but here's the Bonsai: geni.us/pndxCfB
Not sure if already commented, but missed opportunity here. The thumbnail text should have been "Does size matter?" C'mon guys definitely an easy 1m + more views
DId Magician test on my two 970 Evo plus, default settings. 1Tb - 3483\3286, 500Gb - 3474\1163, felt very weird, run 500Gb again... 3536\923. Both drives seems to be in ok order, both are around 60% free space.
I'd be interested in seeing the same type of test but like a single Samsung 990 2TB SSD for boot AND data vs 1TB boot + 1TB data drive, with games playing off the data drive and see if theres any performance difference.
If you are using both drives simultaneously, that would be about twice as fast as accessing both sets of files on the same drive. Depends how often that happens though, my guess is, not very often.
I was just thinking about you, I'm wanting to buy a WD Black SN770 256GB for a boot drive, then I read the read and write speeds compared to it's bigger brothers, I'll enjoy watching.
Definitely buy at least a 512GB nowadays. The price is often the same and they're faster/more durable. 1TB is better value still, but if you don't need more than a few 100 gigabytes, 512 is fine.
Normally the bigger size have more chips so they can run multiply writes on all of them together. Also the reason why the M2 MAcs are slower. Ps you need to pass the cache before u can tell the real performance. Else u are just testing the DRAM or SLC Cache.
What about when the drive is filled up? Does free capacity affect performance? One buys a 1TB drive, but than has to keep 200GB+ free at all times to not lose performance is a waste.
Help me choose between 990 pro, for 125gbp, fury renegade for 98gbp, 980 pro for 111gbp, sn850x for 113gbp or finally kc3000 for 93gbp from amazon these are all 2tb variant, purpose to buy, data transfer and storage no gaming plus pcie gen 3 slot on asus 14 or external enclosure for faster transfer speeds on various devices with 20gbps enclosure. Thanks
Should always get the higher capacity if you can afford it to preserve slc cache performance and life span, spare space is over provisioning, its not wasted.
Back when gen 4 SSDs were coming out, this very channel had erroneous comparisons between the Samsung 980 Pro and the Sabrent Rocket 4 (I think thats the name) for the exact same reason. It named the latter (Sabrent), the faster drive but in the comparisons it was the 1TB 980 versus the 2TB Rocket. The same point/idea came up in another video comparison between PCIe4 SSDs and I know I commented on at least one of them. What was more egregious here is that it was stated that "we have the 1TB which should have the same performance" -- when some of the very obvious specs (cache size) were different. It's very well known that outside of the Samsung 970 Evo drives (Gen3), pretty much every SSD has huge performance when operating within it's cache size and sees a massive performance drop once it extends beyond it. So when tests transfer an amount under, or not much over the cache size, it is entirely the cache that determined the speed of the drive.
I have seen technical review/results that reflect that the "PRO" versions of the Samsung 980/990 are not worth the extra money. Btw, as of this date (May 2, 2023) you can get the 1TB version of the Samsung 980 (non-PRO) for only $59 at Amazon in US.
Thanks Nada and Techtesters for this roundup 🥰😇👍. I feel we’ve moved past 250/256GB 🥳✊capacity drives. Even todays budget builds are sometimes 500/512GB NVME or mainly 1TB NVME drives 👍😇. As a result of reduced manufacturing costs, there’s a lot more quality and budget friendly NVME drives with DRAM cache so everyone buying today is guaranteed a decent level of performance….. and spending a lot more gets you (generally slightly) faster drives for more intensive based applications / software.
Real RAID controller with battery backed rw cache - 7200 spinners can get you close enough performance to sata ssd. I use nvme for boot and 8x2.5 sata as data disks on PERC controller
Thank you for the information. New to your channel. I have a MacBook Pro. Thinking it would be a good idea to replace a couple of external HD with a 4TB SSD. Have you done a video about comparing an external 4tB SSD with an internal NVME in an enclosure?
Hi :) Was curious if you could do a review on a comparison of these guys (if you havent already). They're a mix of high performance SSDs and Value SSDs at the 2TB mark: - Silicon Power 2TB UD90 NVMe 4.0 Gen4 PCIe M.2 SSD R/W (SP02KGBP44UD9005) - fanxiang S880 2TB PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD M.2 2280 Internal Solid State Drive - SAMSUNG 990 PRO SSD 2TB PCIe 4.0 M.2 Internal Solid State Hard Drive - XPG 2TB GAMMIX S70 Blade PCIe Gen4 M.2 2280 Internal Gaming SSD (AGAMMIXS70B-2T-CS)
990 Pro and S70 Blade data should be included in later videos. Silicon Power seems to be hard to get in the EU. Never heard of Fanxiang, is that a China/Ali only brand?
I have purchased a much larger SSD for my main computer for one reason only: reliability. This is because every single SSD has a finite amout of "write cycles". Larger capacity disks tend to have more "endurance". But the type of NAND also plays a role. For example "TLC NAND" disks are best for performance but have (relatively) few "write cycles". So a larger TLC NAND SSD may be the best of both worlds.
But have you ever come close to writing an SSD to death? I still have a near 10 year old 256GB Crucial MX100 for my Windows boot drive. It's still over 90% healthy.
@@Sunlight91 I've killed a samsung 850 evo drive lol. Had it for about two years and just doing game installs and transfers I put over 60tb of data into it which was the limit of my particular drive as it failed right after that.
Hi Nada, Great video, useful information. I'm a little late to the comment sections, but I do have a question about storage. Does using 2 SSD's vs 1 SSD increase speed/efficeincy? (i.e. installing (1) 4 TB SSD vs installing (2) 2 tb SSD's). Is it like RAM, where more ports increases the efficiency? Does Raid 0 give any significant gains with the fast speeds that Gen 4 or Gen 5 SSD's have nowadays?
Would you say writing or reading a drive for backup image purposes is a scenario similar to the consistency tests? I specifically do not write user data to my system partition to keep it small for backup purposes, but taking a full image already takes up to an hour. It will take longer for people who are more cavalier with where they save data, and I even only have a single game installed.
The consistency test is really write heavy, so if you use it to backup large (or a lot of) files TO constantly, you want to look at one that holds up under stress. If you're using an SSD as a boot drive and you're copying the files from it to another backup location, you don't need one that does well in the consistency bench.
I would think the Binning has a part to play especially in Samsung's case, the higher capacity drives likely get the better Binned chips. I have the Samsung 980 Pro 2TB As my Main drive, and a WD Black SN750 1TB for my Favorite games on my X570 Mobo, plus a WD Blue 1TB SSD for Games, A Samsung 870 QVO 2 TB and a WD Black 2TB HDD for Backups, I'll be replacing my HDD with the QVO soon, The HDD is just too large.
I just buy the largest that my budget will allow because it allows more games...especially when games like Ark take up like 300GB. Even if there aren't performance differences, if you have the cash, bigger is better for gaming...because you can store more games.
Crucial P2 is definitely one of the weirdest one out there. It's fine if you're getting 1TB or 2TB. Smaller capacity ones are weird. 250GB supports upto 2100/1150 MBps R/W 500GB supports upto 2300/940 MBps R/W
@@sontran6828 as long as you don't put it on full performance mode in magician software and use the standard mode, you should not need the 3rd party heatsink for your SSD ;-)
I'm kinda angry at youtube now for hiding this channel from me for so long. This is really useful stuff, especially when it comes to SSDs. All of the SSD benchmarking websites out there are such a nightmare to navigate. It's nice to get some solid answers.
Subscribe. It's painless.
AGREED! I just discovered this channel and i already bookmarked this video + the "Revisited 4070 Ti" one under "BEST GPU/SSD Comparison". This channel deservers waaaay more attention, youtube please...
This channel is amazing. Plentiful accurate information presented in a concise and digestible manner. 13 out of 10.
That's right. There's a multitude of low quality brand sponsored content that makes difficult to make a good choice. This channel is great.
Short answer: Yes, drives of the same model and specs are faster because they have more modules that split the load between them hence the higher speeds and if they have DRAM the higher capacities usually have more of it too.
Damn, guess I outta splurge on 2tb then. I have a 500gb samsung nvme, but use a 7.6tb U.2 as my boot drive
@@BBWahoo Considering you have an 8TB enterprise drive in, I am guessing you have money. And, in that case, get an 512 GB intel optane SSD. While sequential write speed is not that great, what matter for OS, and game loading is latency and random read/write, and for that, optane makes normal SSDs fell like hard drives.
@@Just4Games2011
I had money, past tense 😭
You are correct in your assumption though, I am using a Micron 9200 enterprise drive, and also am using a 260gb intel optane 900p as L2 storage with PrimoCache.
Honestly pretty swell, I cache all my SSD's, redundant sure, but I can certainly feel the difference, I wish I had better single core perf in my cpu for a smaller block size though, I have a Ryzen 3950X CPU, and it's good, but it's outclassed by all current processors in gaming one way or another lol, even the cheapo R5 5500 kills it when overclocked.
@@BBWahoo I know the feel about the money brother.
Hmm, still, shouldn't an 5800X3D be better that a 5600 when paired with good RAM?
@@randomguydoes2901 I am comparing it to 7000 series.
The writing, pace, quality and content is on point. You’re filling a gap on YT that I feel was missing. Very relevant for a layman like me!
You left out she is good looking also.
Nice presentation. I like the way you use props such as plants and figurines to show the SSDs. Makes things more interesting.
I've been liking the more in-depth videos. They have more info but are still accessible to the layman.
Great presentation. Great set. Loving this content. Gamers Nexus and LTT are incredible deep dive Jugganauts - but this channel is a fast fave for me as it gets to the nuts and bolts and covers the most relevant points without going too far off the deep end. Keeping these videos to 10-20 minutes is a great USP. I know I can get the hot topic info here without any filler. Hope it gets more subscribers 🙂
I like this delivery. Succinct, pertinent, straight to the point, with thoughtful data
Thanks again for the great content!
My pleasure, and thank you!
I really appreciate you doing SSDs benchmarks and reviews, I find that most reviewers will focus on GPUs and CPUs while mostly ignoring other components when they do also matter. Or maybe i'm just blind and don't know where to looks
Timely video since I'm shopping for a 2TB NVMe as a system/game drive. Thanks Nada!
Interesting results, didn't expect those anomalies in later ones!
HUGE ANIME BREASTS
Much needed video. I feel drives should also be compared with the same storage capacity or at the very least mentioned throughout comparisons. For example: WD 850X 2TB vs Samsung 990 pro 2TB. Showing a side by side comparison with one of those being only 1TB can in some cases be misrepresented. Even if it's slightly.
Its like a 1060 6GB vs a 1060 3GB
@@Mack_Dingo Exactly.
As someone who's a newbie in the SSD world, those reviews always confused me. I had a hard time deciding whether I should buy a 1TB of this or 2TB of that because sometimes, the 1TB of this particular brand is faster than the 2TB version of another brand.
The last points were some of the most important, so good summary. There are exceptions. A 512GB drive being 2/3 full and then you're working with a large file means the SSD could slow down depending on what you're doing. A 2 TB SSD 2/3 full and working with the same file doesn't matter because there is still plenty of headroom.
So you have to understand the sizes of the files you're working with for one and as long as you have PLENTY of headroom vs. the size of the files you're working with you'll be OK. For gaming I use 2 NVMe drives, both 2TB and I won't let one get more than 2/3 full. That leaves plenty of space for saves, etc.... or whatever else a game might need to do with the drive. Because they're 2TB I could probably let them get to 3/4 full but I don't have that many games for me to fill 2, 2TB drives to even 2/3. So it's all good.
thanks for this video, was looking forward to this capacity comparison
My pleasure!
I just discovered this channel and i already bookmarked this video + the "Revisited 4070 Ti" one under "BEST GPU/SSD Comparison". This channel deservers waaaay more attention, youtube please...
A golden click bait title opportunity was missed:
"SSDs, does size matter?" would have tempted many!
Good informative topic coverage, it's tough for home users as mostly you end up reusing old drives as an enthusiast DIY builder, while the uninformed suffer poor OEM choices.
As a long time UNIX/Linux admin, I would tweak the over-provisioning factor on HDD partitions, 20% for most write/read once areas and keep that usage separate from other data.
For large software volumes I had control of and would replicate with infrequent changes 5% over-provisioning worked.
On departmental user data, it was best to encourage some disk cleanup but have a reserve of space. When capacity was a real issue team leaders would put in requests for additional disk space.
The point back then was fragmentation was no issue so long as free space was spread across the disk.
In general I was rebuilding a server config every 2 years anyway and would MOVE all the data to fresh filesystems long before it became critical.
I think SSD management software is doing something similar to coalesce file blocks on internal NAND pages to wear level and prepare free flash ready for writes.
Idk why but your reviews I like the most. Tks for answering this, been trying to get an answer to this for a while. Cheers
Very good information. Very nicely presented by our lovely Hostess. I have the Samsung 980 Pro, 1 TB in a high performance (i-7) laptop. It really does quite well.
I have a 500 GB SK Hynix Gold P31 drive in my i-5 laptop. I won't worry about performance loss because of the smaller size drive. The 500 GB SK Hynix drive is much faster than the OEM drive was.
Cheers!
Very clean and informative video thank you for giving us great tech content.
always good to have a refresher, plus these reviews help the new users.
Thank you so much for finally getting round to making this vieo. I look foraward to your review and recomendation on the new gen 5 drives.
Good information, just found your channel today and have enjoyed it.
Great tests! I'm much into SSD and your channel seems to be very good! I now subscribed! :) Keep up the good job!
Wow! I've just got recommended by RUclips now and I instantly subscribed after hearing your accent
Such a pleasant reviewer Thank You Lady 😉👍
Thank you for your well presented video, I learned a lot about SSDs from your channel ;-)
I love your SSD tests. i returned many times to compare data
There are only a few things to remember when it comes to SSDs, SATA and NVMe. First one is never fill it up! The fuller they get, the slower they will run. So if you need 1TB of space buy a 2TB drive. Always buy a drive with a RAM cache. The price difference between drives with and without a RAM cache is small, but the performance difference is large for small writes, which is what is done most often. Last one is buy 3-bit MLC drives over 4-bit QLC drives if you can. QLC drives are cheaper to make, but the price difference isn't as big as it used to be, and of course QLC is slower and less reliable(they are warrantied for less writes than MLC).
I generally don't look a speed differences on the same drives of different capacities ...
what look for is higher endurance (life span), higher capacity, longer life !
Thank you Nada !
You are the best teacher to teach us this kind of knowledge I want !!
Cool. Would love if you could test if having a nearly full SSD still can hamper your performance with modern SSD's.
I want this too. I read somewhere that you should keep your SSD free capacity at least 10%, and at least 50% to have the best performance
No need, it absolutely still does even on the newest and shiniest SSD's. It's one of the few downsides to the technology.
Great video...Very useful information
Awesome test, thank you!
Thank you!
I got the Firecuda 530 (7300/ 6900 i think) in 2TB config and can highly recommend it. Supposedly its very reliable and crazy durable, time will tell haha
I have one of those as well as the 1TB model, both have worked great for me.
What about the Kingston fury has 2petabyte endurance(2TB) the 4 is 4PB
@@Mack_Dingo as long as you have a decent read/ write speed you are good to go.
Personally i would always go with the ones that have high durability like like Firecuda and the kingston you mentioned (check some videos on it being tested before tho).
the Samsung 990 Pro had/ has problems with firmware according to Gamer Nexus, which led to SSD´s dying so i would skip on that.
I was always told size dosent matter!
Hello, recently subscribed to your channel. I enjoyed your well presented videos. Thank you and your team. Looking forward to your content. Cheers.
Thanks and welcome!
The questions asked are very common, but are mostly buried in chats, thank you for addressing them.
thanks for the video! ssds are so much faster than magnetic drives its not a big deal for loading games
I'm just so glad in the US the 2TB are down to the same price as the 1TB used to be
I can agree 100% with that.
I do not buy bigger drives for more speed, I buy them because of longevity. You typically have to micromanage small drives due to space constraints which causes more writes.
I have 39TB's of storage in my machine (mix of nvme, sata ssd and sata hdd) and things get installed where it makes sense for bandwidth requirements.
Key thing though is I minimize writes by putting things where they STAY for the life of the system.
How many SSD's have died on you due to going over their TBW? Probably none. My OS drive is a 960 EVO NVMe (500 GB), and it's well over 4 years old. I have >17k hours on it, >21 TB writes and 35 TB reads..and it's still at 97 % life remaining. This, after it being >95 % full for the better part of a year(it's now around 50 % full). 300TBW is plenty for all but the most-punishing of users.
@@Mr1Tanker I have had 2 ssd's die on me but they were first gen sata 2 ssd's (256 and 480).
I no longer buy small ssd's, they simply do not make sense.
* Constantly micro managing them is painfull.
* Slow internet speed, which makes re-installing stuff painfull
I have every single game I own installed and ready to play at a button press (barring annoying pending updates).
Media and retro goes on the hdd drives, games and apps go on the solid state.
@@garytallowin6623 I try to buy the highest capacity drives for that socket that don't cost silly money, or have QLC NAND, given that the number of sockets in the machine is limited.
@@katrinabryce I have 4x2TB ssd's raided in an external enclosure which plugs into a pci express raid card, this has my entire steam library on it.
I have the corsair 680X case which allows for 4 x sata ssd's and 3 x sata hdds.
Then there is the nvme slots on the board.
@@garytallowin6623 I have 4 x 10TB mechanical disks + 2 x 2TB SATA ssds for my storage array, + a 4TB NVME for the operating system and virtual machine images. I have one spare NVME slot that is currently unoccupied. At some point in the future it will likely get a 4 or 8TB NVME, and I'll move some of the VM images over to it. I also have 4 spare x16 PCI-e slots that support bifurcation, so I could put NVMEs in them in the future.
I LOVE those Lego props! Especially the bonzai tree. They are so cute
Awesome content, Thanks
Would also be interesting to compare 2TB and 4TB.
I know, but I didn't have one type of SSD in both 2TB and 4TB free for testing, and it gets really expensive to buy several SSDs just for this ;)
I'll definitely talk about it when I'm able to.
@@TechTesters I'm really keen on this too. Don't you have tested the 990 Pro 4TB? So it's in stock for comparing it with the 990 Pro 1 and 2 TBs...
I have 990 pro(2tb) by Samsung and it pretty good I'm using it for months without any problems.
I wish she tested some SATA SSD's also. In multiple comparison tests, she always includes a SATA SSD alongside NVMe SSD's. This is a great inclusion for comparison. SATA SSD's are much slower and getting obsolete it would be good to know if buying a larger SATA SSD with larger DRAM cache is helpful and by how much. Great video. Thanks Nada.
Thank you! Performance wise there's been basically zero real benefit to buying SATA SSDs in capacities larger than 1TB. This was the case for the 870 EVO, 870 QVO, MX500 and BX500, the last ones that were tested in multiple capacities. But I think those are all a bit too old to clutter the newer graphs, I'm already cutting out some NVMe SSDs just to keep the graphs somewhat easy to follow.
@@TechTesters Good to know. Thanks for the info.
this channel is goat, great useful content.👍
How to choose a M.2 NVMe SSD:
Choose overall capacity
Check for RAID 0:
• Available: Take 2 SSDs with 1/2 of your target size
• Else: Take the greatest for your budget
Yup, 1tb drives generally use all the channels of the controller, sometimes 2Tb can overcome it a bit, some other times (depending from the controller, number of Nand ICs on the PCB and relative wiring) they can even be faster. 500Gb generally use only half the controller channels 250gb only 1. Main differences are most notable in writes yes, but also reads can take a hit, nice informative video :)
Doh, just bought an SSD yesterday, would have liked to have seen this first.
Exchange it for something bigger/better.
05:55 If you're willing to, could you post a link for the Bonsai tree?
Interesting point, I'll start including Lego links in all my descriptions! If you check back a bit later I'll include some, but here's the Bonsai: geni.us/pndxCfB
@@TechTesters Thank you very much. I waited for the links in the description. Never realised that it was a Lego product. Just bought it. 🙃🙂
Nice video again Nada ✌
Not sure if already commented, but missed opportunity here. The thumbnail text should have been "Does size matter?" C'mon guys definitely an easy 1m + more views
Thanks. Very clearly.
DId Magician test on my two 970 Evo plus, default settings. 1Tb - 3483\3286, 500Gb - 3474\1163, felt very weird, run 500Gb again... 3536\923. Both drives seems to be in ok order, both are around 60% free space.
I'd be interested in seeing the same type of test but like a single Samsung 990 2TB SSD for boot AND data vs 1TB boot + 1TB data drive, with games playing off the data drive and see if theres any performance difference.
If you are using both drives simultaneously, that would be about twice as fast as accessing both sets of files on the same drive. Depends how often that happens though, my guess is, not very often.
For gaming u should use os drive
I was just thinking about you, I'm wanting to buy a WD Black SN770 256GB for a boot drive, then I read the read and write speeds compared to it's bigger brothers, I'll enjoy watching.
Definitely buy at least a 512GB nowadays. The price is often the same and they're faster/more durable. 1TB is better value still, but if you don't need more than a few 100 gigabytes, 512 is fine.
Normally the bigger size have more chips so they can run multiply writes on all of them together.
Also the reason why the M2 MAcs are slower.
Ps you need to pass the cache before u can tell the real performance. Else u are just testing the DRAM or SLC Cache.
Great vid sis...👍
What about when the drive is filled up? Does free capacity affect performance? One buys a 1TB drive, but than has to keep 200GB+ free at all times to not lose performance is a waste.
Help me choose between 990 pro, for 125gbp, fury renegade for 98gbp, 980 pro for 111gbp, sn850x for 113gbp or finally kc3000 for 93gbp from amazon these are all 2tb variant, purpose to buy, data transfer and storage no gaming plus pcie gen 3 slot on asus 14 or external enclosure for faster transfer speeds on various devices with 20gbps enclosure. Thanks
Should always get the higher capacity if you can afford it to preserve slc cache performance and life span, spare space is over provisioning, its not wasted.
Back when gen 4 SSDs were coming out, this very channel had erroneous comparisons between the Samsung 980 Pro and the Sabrent Rocket 4 (I think thats the name) for the exact same reason. It named the latter (Sabrent), the faster drive but in the comparisons it was the 1TB 980 versus the 2TB Rocket. The same point/idea came up in another video comparison between PCIe4 SSDs and I know I commented on at least one of them. What was more egregious here is that it was stated that "we have the 1TB which should have the same performance" -- when some of the very obvious specs (cache size) were different.
It's very well known that outside of the Samsung 970 Evo drives (Gen3), pretty much every SSD has huge performance when operating within it's cache size and sees a massive performance drop once it extends beyond it. So when tests transfer an amount under, or not much over the cache size, it is entirely the cache that determined the speed of the drive.
I remain loyal to Firecuda Seageate 😎
I have seen technical review/results that reflect that the "PRO" versions of the Samsung 980/990 are not worth the extra money. Btw, as of this date (May 2, 2023) you can get the 1TB version of the Samsung 980 (non-PRO) for only $59 at Amazon in US.
The actual speed of any drive is TBW/warranty period
Thanks Nada and Techtesters for this roundup 🥰😇👍. I feel we’ve moved past 250/256GB 🥳✊capacity drives. Even todays budget builds are sometimes 500/512GB NVME or mainly 1TB NVME drives 👍😇. As a result of reduced manufacturing costs, there’s a lot more quality and budget friendly NVME drives with DRAM cache so everyone buying today is guaranteed a decent level of performance….. and spending a lot more gets you (generally slightly) faster drives for more intensive based applications / software.
Real RAID controller with battery backed rw cache - 7200 spinners can get you close enough performance to sata ssd. I use nvme for boot and 8x2.5 sata as data disks on PERC controller
Thank you for the information. New to your channel. I have a MacBook Pro. Thinking it would be a good idea to replace a couple of external HD with a 4TB SSD. Have you done a video about comparing an external 4tB SSD with an internal NVME in an enclosure?
I would like to see a review of the Sabrent Rocket and SK Hynix P31
So smart and so cute. You're winning. Thanks for the video.
more flash chips means they can be read/write in //, so it could increase output ... simple (like in a RAID0)
Tech mommy ! This video helped me to decide on my next upgrade 😀
Hi :) Was curious if you could do a review on a comparison of these guys (if you havent already). They're a mix of high performance SSDs and Value SSDs at the 2TB mark:
- Silicon Power 2TB UD90 NVMe 4.0 Gen4 PCIe M.2 SSD R/W (SP02KGBP44UD9005)
- fanxiang S880 2TB PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD M.2 2280 Internal Solid State Drive
- SAMSUNG 990 PRO SSD 2TB PCIe 4.0 M.2 Internal Solid State Hard Drive
- XPG 2TB GAMMIX S70 Blade PCIe Gen4 M.2 2280 Internal Gaming SSD (AGAMMIXS70B-2T-CS)
990 Pro and S70 Blade data should be included in later videos. Silicon Power seems to be hard to get in the EU. Never heard of Fanxiang, is that a China/Ali only brand?
I have purchased a much larger SSD for my main computer for one reason only: reliability. This is because every single SSD has a finite amout of "write cycles". Larger capacity disks tend to have more "endurance". But the type of NAND also plays a role. For example "TLC NAND" disks are best for performance but have (relatively) few "write cycles". So a larger TLC NAND SSD may be the best of both worlds.
But have you ever come close to writing an SSD to death? I still have a near 10 year old 256GB Crucial MX100 for my Windows boot drive. It's still over 90% healthy.
@@Sunlight91 Same here, my 11 years old Samsung 830 (MLC) 256GB still over 90% as well.
@@Sunlight91 I've killed a samsung 850 evo drive lol. Had it for about two years and just doing game installs and transfers I put over 60tb of data into it which was the limit of my particular drive as it failed right after that.
Evo 860 & T7 ✨
can you review some 40 series laptops
Question, how do we know if our SSDs are approaching their lifespan limits? And can we ''prolong'' them by not using upto 90% or 80% of the capacity?
Hi Nada, Great video, useful information. I'm a little late to the comment sections, but I do have a question about storage. Does using 2 SSD's vs 1 SSD increase speed/efficeincy? (i.e. installing (1) 4 TB SSD vs installing (2) 2 tb SSD's). Is it like RAM, where more ports increases the efficiency? Does Raid 0 give any significant gains with the fast speeds that Gen 4 or Gen 5 SSD's have nowadays?
The 2.0 TB WD_BLACK SN850X NVMe SSD is the BEST... because I bought it! 😄
Thanks for this - that's really useful information! Would love if you could make a video about the 980/990 pro reliability issues.
Would you say writing or reading a drive for backup image purposes is a scenario similar to the consistency tests? I specifically do not write user data to my system partition to keep it small for backup purposes, but taking a full image already takes up to an hour. It will take longer for people who are more cavalier with where they save data, and I even only have a single game installed.
The consistency test is really write heavy, so if you use it to backup large (or a lot of) files TO constantly, you want to look at one that holds up under stress. If you're using an SSD as a boot drive and you're copying the files from it to another backup location, you don't need one that does well in the consistency bench.
Did they end up fixing the issues with the 990 pro from Samsung? Last I heard they were working themselves to death 😆
Still waiting for clarification from Samsung, but the latest firmware should be fine.
I would think the Binning has a part to play especially in Samsung's case, the higher capacity drives likely get the better Binned chips. I have the Samsung 980 Pro 2TB As my Main drive, and a WD Black SN750 1TB for my Favorite games on my X570 Mobo, plus a WD Blue 1TB SSD for Games, A Samsung 870 QVO 2 TB and a WD Black 2TB HDD for Backups, I'll be replacing my HDD with the QVO soon, The HDD is just too large.
I doubt any SSD manyfacturer does any binning for NAND flash.
@@Raivo_K I know that memory modules are binned, and it has memory, NAND flash is memory, it stores information.
More importantly, last longer!
Make a video of budget gen 3 ssds for gaming and daily work use
I just buy the largest that my budget will allow because it allows more games...especially when games like Ark take up like 300GB. Even if there aren't performance differences, if you have the cash, bigger is better for gaming...because you can store more games.
Crucial P2 is definitely one of the weirdest one out there. It's fine if you're getting 1TB or 2TB. Smaller capacity ones are weird.
250GB supports upto 2100/1150 MBps R/W
500GB supports upto 2300/940 MBps R/W
nice ! i wanted this answer 😃
Can you please test Fantom's 8TB and 4TB VENOM8 drives? They also make 2TB and 1TB versions. Thanks!
Thank you.
I have one, is Dram-less ssd matters for a boot drive?
Does life cycle vary with drive size?
TL:DR
*Don't worry to much on the speed diference.
*Just buy a SSD over 500 gb and you should be fine for most situations.
Too bad Optane is gone. It did not care about the overall size or how filled it was. A 400GB model performed the same as 2TB model.
thought of buying 500gb 980 pro as a boot drive and 1 2tb or 2 x 1tb for game and other productivity storage..
Could you guys test the Mushkin Vortex NVME SSD 2TB. Its very Cheap here in europe
Are avoiding the 2Tb version of the 980 PRO because of the quick dying problems they have ?
if you firmware version start with number 5, you're good to go...........starts with number 3 then no buenos
Should be fine with the firmware update :)
I've been using mine since launch with no issues, but that's n=2.
@@TechTesters I've upgraded my samsung book 3 pro with 980 pro 2TB, should i add a headsink on it?
@@sontran6828 as long as you don't put it on full performance mode in magician software and use the standard mode, you should not need the 3rd party heatsink for your SSD ;-)
How do I verify if a SSD has dram cache bcoz the results on manufacturers website are very vague about it.
Watch reviews :P
Product pages often aren't clear about it at all unfortunately.
Comment 100 - Good point about right-sizing the drive for your storage and to not ramp up over 90% if possible. 😁
Good one🎉
Thank you!