SSD (SLC, MLC, QLC etc)

Rowan88 · 18 Aug 2021 at 08:33

Hi,

I was going to replace my HDD with SSD in my current PC (and use for my future upgrade) but I was looking at 2TB SSD yesterday and I was probably going with either the Samsung 870 QVO or Crucial.

But I noticed someone saying something about "Make sure the drive is not QLC as these are a lot slower.

Are these drives QLC?

And if so what is a good 2TB SSD (SATA) to purchase. Will mostly be installing all my games on it.

dave28 · 18 Aug 2021 at 08:49

Get the Crucial MX500 2TB

alec · 18 Aug 2021 at 14:16

Rowan88 said:
these are a lot slower

A lot slower in one edge case of "write a lot of data (more than fits in SLC cache) at once".
Valid argument against QLC is ~ 4x lower write durability. Again only matters if there will be a lot of writes during its lifetime.
In most other aspects QLC SSD is as good as TLC, e.g. saturating SATA interface up to 550MB/s in basic reading and writing.

But point about warranty is a good one.

Rowan88 · 18 Aug 2021 at 14:28

Cheers,

So as its for gaming I shouldn't really be concerned about the "type", Just go for brand-price-warranty-size.

EsaT · 18 Aug 2021 at 15:20

dave28 said:
Get the Crucial MX500 2TB, it has 2 years more warranty just to start with. Neither are QLC i dont think

Samsung QVOs are all QLC.
Samsung's x-bit MLC marketing names are purposely misleading.

alec said:
A lot slower in one edge case of "write a lot of data (more than fits in SLC cache) at once".
Valid argument against QLC is ~ 4x lower write durability. Again only matters if there will be a lot of writes during its lifetime.
In most other aspects QLC SSD is as good as TLC, e.g. saturating SATA interface up to 550MB/s in basic reading and writing.

870 QVO is botto mend also in many things like OS loading:
And anything involving also writes makes its performance drop even further
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/samsung-870-qvo-1-tb/7.html
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/samsung-870-qvo-1-tb/8.html

dave28 · 18 Aug 2021 at 15:25

EsaT said:
Samsung QVOs are all QLC.
Samsung's x-bit MLC marketing names are purposely misleading.

Sorry, i will edit my post. I would 100% get the Crucial

EsaT · 18 Aug 2021 at 15:26

Rowan88 said:
And if so what is a good 2TB SSD (SATA) to purchase. Will mostly be installing all my games on it.

As you will be using it as game drive instead of system drive, I would suggest looking toward future and next PC upgrade.

You have there PCIe x4 slot, which could take NVMe drive using adapter.
And WD Blue SN550 doesn't cost any more than good SATA drive.
You could then put it directly into M.2 slot in new PC.

WD Blue SN550 2TB SSD NVME M.2 2280 PCIe Gen3 Solid State Drive (WDS200T2B0C)= £199.99
Akasa M.2 SSD to PCIe Adapter Card= £13.99

alec · 18 Aug 2021 at 15:28

EsaT said:
870 QVO is bottom end also in many things like OS loading

This may be specific to lower end model, which doesn't have enough chips to fill all channels on controller. And less RAM cache
4 and 8 TB models look much better in https://www.anandtech.com/show/16136/qlc-8tb-ssd-review-samsung-870-qvo-sabrent-rocket-q/3

Rowan88 · 18 Aug 2021 at 15:51

Thanks for the info,

Would love to hold off till my new system but GPU is the first part needed and could be waiting a while (until I crack and overpay £300).

I just assumed a simple 2TB SATA would be an easy transfer for this system, even if it got used a storage drive in the next machine and bought what you linked above as my Gaming folder.

Cheers