Good value good performance storage?

danlightbulb · 11 Apr 2020 at 17:04

Hi,

I need some more storage in my PC.

My OS is on a 240Gb SATA SSD which is now full since I started more gaming.

I'm not sure whether to go for a top of the range NVME (Samsung 970Evo 500Gb for £108), and swap the OS over to it;
Or just keep my OS on its current drive and get a Samsung 870 QVO 1TB for £100 as a 2nd drive.

Any other suggestions? Don't really want to spend much more than £100 ish.

Thanks

danlightbulb · 11 Apr 2020 at 19:29

Just been reading up a little and it seems things have moved on quite a bit from 2016 when I got my rig.

My current SSD is a Kingston HyperX Fury which I understand to be an MLC drive. These days, most drives, even the expensive ones, seem to be TLC. I think back in 2016, people were recommending getting MLC over TLC, but now it seems people are recommending getting TLC over QLC, and there are not many MLC drives around unless going to silly prices (Samsung Pro models are double the price of their Evo models).

Also a standard SATA SSD does not seem to be very much cheaper than a far faster NVME drive. So the best bang for buck appears to be a 1TB NVME TLC drive like either the WD blue SN550 of for just £5 more, the faster (on paper) Sabrent Rocket.

I don't really need to switch my OS drive but if Im forced to get an NVME just because of the way they are priced then I may as well switch it?

StevieP · 11 Apr 2020 at 20:07

Personally I've got an ADATA NVME drive for my OS and then a 2TB Crucial SSD for my games/storage - although hand on heart I can't say I can tell the slightest difference between the NVME and SSD speed-wise! The benchmark differences are staggering but in terms of real-world experience there is nothing in it!

lsg1r · 11 Apr 2020 at 20:08

Personally I'd just buy a second 'storage' drive, although I'm not sure I'd pick the samsung qvo drives.

IMO the difference between nvme and sata ssd's is nowhere near as noticeable as hard drive to ssd is/was, hell I can't say I noticed any massive changes between a crucial m4 and a samsung 850evo when I swapped them out on a rig with no way to use an nvme.

danlightbulb · 11 Apr 2020 at 20:23

I would buy a second SATA SSD but the prices seem disproportionate to the far faster NVME drives?

£125 for the WD blue SN550 1TB.
£130 for the Sabrant Rocket 1TB.

1TB SATA SSDs seem to be around the £105-£115 mark so there's really not much in it.

I used to faff about years ago with having multiple drives and partitions etc. Nowadays I don't see much benefit, the main OS drives still get clogged up and you have to constantly think where you're putting documents etc. I don't use my pc hard drive for any personal files now as I have a NAS which I use as a home server which is also backed up to a separate drive. I have a load of videos also on the NAS which I don't back up. And I don't bother backing up games because they can all be re-downloaded off Steam in a few hours.