WD Blue SN570 vs Crucial P3 Plus.... in a PCIe 3.0 system?

Audigex · 16 Sep 2023 at 03:10

My current system drive is a 250GB Samsung 960 EVO (claimed: 3.2GB/s read 1.9GB/s write), which is running out of space. Realistically my Samsung is plenty fast enough and I don't give much of a crap about it being any faster, but I'd rather avoid any replacement being any slower

In my system already I have a 1TB Crucial P3 Plus (claimed 5GB/s read, 4.2GB/s write) that I use for game storage. I also have a new 1TB WD Blue SN570 (claimed 3.5GB/s read, 3GB/s write) sitting on the desk

I'm toying with the question of which of those two drives to use for the system drive. The Crucial is faster on paper but it would be more effort to swap them over, whereas he WD Blue is technically a slower drive, but I can just swap it in without having to move any data around.

Considering that I'm running a PCIe 3.0 motherboard and both of the 1TB drives are rated as being faster than my current Samsung drive, am I going to see any real world difference between the Crucial and WD drives that would be worth messing around, or should I just install the WD Blue and not worry about it?

Tetras · 16 Sep 2023 at 15:10

The SN570 is TLC, rated to 600 TB written (1TB capacity), whereas the P3 Plus is QLC, rated to 220 TB written (1TB capacity), so for a system drive, I'd be using the SN570.

Audigex · 16 Sep 2023 at 17:17

Thanks, that makes perfect sense. Sounds like the easier option is the best option then!

bimbleuk · 16 Sep 2023 at 17:32

One thing I found with the 1TB SN570 when used as a game drive was that Steam downloads were inconsistent until I disabled the write caching. Seems it was a common fix but should still perform well as a boot drive.

Buttkicker · 1 Oct 2023 at 09:59

i bought the sn570 when they first came out and in my PC with 3 other drives and it works really well for such a cheap drive it is still showing 100% health status whereas my much newer WD SN850 which is my boot drive is showing 97% also got a crucial plus 5 1tb drive which is about 15 months old showing 96% but the crucail is my most used 'storage' drive

and in the last 6 weeks i bought the WD 2Tb sn850x
in real terms usage i would find it hard to seperate them as they are all as fast as hell

but the sn570 is a steal at the current prices for it
my 2p