QLC vs TLC

didgemaster

didgemaster

didgemaster

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Looking for a budget NVME1TB or under. The QLC drives tend to be cheaper but often come with QLC as appose to TLC is there really that much real life difference in drives that use these technologies?
 
didgemaster said:
Looking for a budget NVME1TB or under. The QLC drives tend to be cheaper but often come with QLC as appose to TLC is there really that much real life difference in drives that use these technologies?
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I would have thought that QLC drives always come with QLC. :D
QLC drives have much lower endurance than TLC although whether that's a real problem depends on your usage. I believe the data also needs to be re-written more often as the cells hold less charge (?).

I have a policy of avoiding QLC drives just like I avoid SMR HDDs.
 
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Thanks for the reply - I'm wondering what sort of lifespan I could expect as there are some with 5 year warranty which seems very good. My plan is to put it in a mini PC that will act as a home firewall
 
The lifespan of the drive will be most impacted by how many times the individual memory cells of the drive are written to. Look at the warranty info for the drive, there should also be a maximum TB written figure. That will give you an indication of how many many TB of data can be written to the drive before the manufacture believes that an unacceptable number of drives (to the manufacturer) will start to fail.

If you are looking for a main boot drive, personally I would look for a TLC drive with DRAM as that will most likely have the longest lifespan. For a secondary storage drive QLC will most likely be fine as you it will not be undergoing frequent writes.
 
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Having QLC isn't a problem, so much as the drives are usually just crap(pier) with bottom of the barrel everything and low base specs to enable the manufacturer to swap it out with whatever junk they can get.

In theory, their endurance rating isn't likely to be a problem for the average user, but their ability to hold/retain your data accurately will deteriorate faster over time than a TLC drive.

If I wanted a budget drive for an older system I'd look for something like the SN570, which is stated as TLC in the datasheet.
 
Thanks both
Tetras said:
Having QLC isn't a problem, so much as the drives are usually just crap(pier) with bottom of the barrel everything and low base specs to enable the manufacturer to swap it out with whatever junk they can get.

In theory, their endurance rating isn't likely to be a problem for the average user, but their ability to hold/retain your data accurately will deteriorate faster over time than a TLC drive.

If I wanted a budget drive for an older system I'd look for something like the SN570, which is stated as TLC in the datasheet.
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I was starting to look and the SN570 but doesn't have DRAM
 
didgemaster said:
I was starting to look and the SN570 but doesn't have DRAM
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goes without saying that a nvme ssd with dram would be preferable
however, for the vast majority of users, a dramless nvme ssd would be more than sufficient
dram had more of an impact with sata ssds due to the lack of hmb

i would have no hesitation using a sn570 as a boot drive
 
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