Which 250GB NVMe drive?

[Lither]

I have bought a used Optiplex for my home office PC and looking to replace the mechanical drive with a NVMe one as it has a PCIe NVMe slot, will be used for running a Windows 7 VM that has a small database around 4GB, little bit of Photoshop and just browsing, emails and word processing.

Budget is around £40-50, looking for one that is reliable with good specs eg good read/write speed and with DRAM, if 500GB price point isn't far off I might go for that

 

[Lither]

You can get a 500GB 2.5 SATA one with dram for that price (WD Blue or MX500), but a PCI-E NVME is trickier. I'd probably just get the 500GB SN570 (dramless) for £43.

The cheapest 250GB I can find with DRAM is the Corsair MP510 for £40 (but the 480GB is currently on offer for £50, not many in stock though).

The Crucial P5 is often on offer too, but it does have a reputation for running hot.

Another alternative is the SN750 (not the SE, which is dramless), which was on offer not long ago, if you can find any in stock.

I believe the Viper VPN100 that OCUK have for £50 (512GB) also has DRAM, but only a 3 year warranty.

I can stretch the budget to £60-70 max for a decent 256/512GB DRAM NVMe as it's not something that gets replaced often and prefer it over SATA SSD due to fewer cables

The Viper VPN100 does look good for the price for 512GB but Patriot has swapped to a different controller/memory and have a bad rep for doing that, with the new budget which one would you go for?

 

[Lither]

Currently out of stock TeamGroup MP34 could be with higher than usual TBW.

TeamGroup MP34 512GB NVMe PCIe M.2 Solid State Drive

Order TeamGroup MP34 512GB NVMe PCIe M.2 Solid State Drive now online and benefit from fast delivery.

www.overclockers.co.uk

https://www.teamgroupinc.com/en/catalog/act.php?act=2&index_id=148

Unless TeamGroup hasn't bothred to chage spec sheet.
At least QLC based MP34Q has also different TM8FPJ starting model/part number.

Both Corsair MP510 and WD SN750 are out of stock.
Kioxia RC500 Pro would be in stock.
Though price goes higher and use of few higher density NAND chips in lower number of channels lowers sequential performance.

Crucial P2 and Intel 660p are QLC drives

There just isn't as much competition in these small sizes compared to 1TB competition.

Just had a look and yeah there isn't much options in the small sizes NVMe market with TLC DRAM and good controller/memory for the price point, will go for the reputable MX500 instead as speed won't be noticeable for normal usage