Which nvme m2 drive - Samsung, Corsair or WD

tamzzy · 28 Mar 2019 at 09:52

apostolis_kt said:
I was checking on that not sure where I read that if it reaches the buffer then its as slow as an HDD otherwise i would have bought one on that price

https://www.anandtech.com/show/13078/the-intel-ssd-660p-ssd-review-qlc-nand-arrives/

Even though our synthetic tests are designed to give drives a reasonable amount of idle time to flush their SLC write caches, the 660p keeps most of the data as SLC until the capacity of QLC becomes necessary. This means that when the SLC cache does eventually fill up, there's a large backlog of work to be done migrating data in to QLC blocks. We haven't yet quantified how quickly the 660p can fold the data from the SLC cache into QLC during idle times, but it clearly isn't enough to keep pace with our current test configurations. It also appears that most or all of the tests that were run after filling the drive up to 100% did not give the 660p enough idle time after the fill operation to complete its background cleanup work, so even some of the read performance measurements for the full-drive test runs suffer the consequences of filling up the SLC write cache.

In the real world, it is very rare for a consumer drive to need to accept tens or hundreds of GB of writes without interruption. Even the installation of a very large video game can mostly fit within the SLC cache of the 1TB 660p when the drive is not too full, and the steady-state write performance is pretty close to the highest rate data can be streamed into a computer over gigabit Ethernet. When copying huge amounts of data off of another SSD or sufficiently fast hard drive(s) it is possible to approach the worst-case performance our benchmarks have revealed, but those kind of jobs already last long enough that the user will take a coffee break while waiting.

Nutella33 · 28 Mar 2019 at 10:43

apostolis_kt said:
I was checking on that not sure where I read that if it reaches the buffer then its as slow as an HDD otherwise i would have bought one on that price

Poor performance when overloading the cache with sequential writes happens on all SSD's and has similar performance issues across all SSD's.

apostolis_kt said:
I take it on day to day use you are not hitting the limit of the buffer, but since i am building one PC every 10 years I dont mind spending a bit more and getting something better.

What you are talking about is a performance drop after 40GB+ single files are being written that is present in all SSD's.

But if you want to wait and can, then fair enough. Just sounded like you were wanting to buy soon.

apostolis_kt · 28 Mar 2019 at 13:54

Indeed because its my birthday soon and I need another component off the list but my deadline is when finally Zen 2 comes out and I build my new pc. So i can wait. Thank you all for the info I haven't been following much the NVME drives because until recently they were very expensive

Nutella33 · 30 Mar 2019 at 18:41

apostolis_kt said:
Indeed because its my birthday soon and I need another component off the list but my deadline is when finally Zen 2 comes out and I build my new pc. So i can wait. Thank you all for the info I haven't been following much the NVME drives because until recently they were very expensive

Yeah for sure, they are dropping the longer you wait as well so no rush

I've seen a 2TB 660p for £190 today, so zen's release time will be great.

Cooler running · 4 Apr 2019 at 21:37

I've heard good things about the corsair drive, but have the older mp500.

doodah · 8 Apr 2019 at 10:32

Has anyone gone with what I presume are cheaper Chinese alternatives?

I have searched on here with no results. Bought myself a YUCUN 480GB SSD M.2 2280 PCIe Express GEN3.0x4 NVMe Solid State Drive a couple of months ago (£70). A risk I know but it comes with a warranty, which I can't now find out how long as the item has been discontinued at the rain forest. Amazing drive so far, just wondered if any one else had taken the plunge.

Edit - only 1 year which isn't great but I'll take the risk as it's only serving as a boot drive in my HTPC.

However I have seen a SP P34A80 PCIe Gen 3x4 M.2 2280 1TB for £140, usual balls to the wall specs and a 5 year warranty.

tamzzy · 8 Apr 2019 at 11:20

doodah said:
However I have seen a SP P34A80 PCIe Gen 3x4 M.2 2280 1TB for £140, usual balls to the wall specs and a 5 year warranty.

silicon power isn't a no-name chinese brand though. it's a taiwanese company with multinational offices.

doodah said:
I have searched on here with no results. Bought myself a YUCUN 480GB SSD M.2 2280 PCIe Express GEN3.0x4 NVMe Solid State Drive a couple of months ago (£70). A risk I know but it comes with a warranty, which I can't now find out how long as the item has been discontinued at the rain forest. Amazing drive so far, just wondered if any one else had taken the plunge.

Edit - only 1 year which isn't great but I'll take the risk as it's only serving as a boot drive in my HTPC.

as always, depends on how lucky you're feeling with your data - and if you wish to play russian roulette with it.
in your case, boot drive for HTPC means it's pretty perishable. but if it was for mission-critical work/data...different matter entirely...

doodah · 8 Apr 2019 at 11:27

Hahaha thanks, the power of assumptions!

Holding back on the SP drive, very mixed reviews on the rain forest. It's a shame the Yucun ones can't be had as I would snap up another 480 or 1TB in a heartbeat.

Smoogels · 8 Apr 2019 at 12:15

doodah said:
However I have seen a SP P34A80 PCIe Gen 3x4 M.2 2280 1TB for £140, usual balls to the wall specs and a 5 year warranty.

The Corsair MP510 is also £140 with the same controller and NAND. Not sure what Silicon Power support is like but since Corsair is generally good in this regard I would be inclined to lean towards that considering the price is the same.

doodah · 8 Apr 2019 at 13:16

Smoogels said:
The Corsair MP510 is also £140 with the same controller and NAND. Not sure what Silicon Power support is like but since Corsair is generally good in this regard I would be inclined to lean towards that considering the price is the same.

Legend. Sold. Really don't mind having an unknown drive in my HTPC but would prefer something a little more robust/well known in my main rig. That looks great - £140 for a 1TB NVMe drive is a steal!!!!

tamzzy · 8 Apr 2019 at 13:18

FWIW, MP510 also boasts better write endurance than the samsung evos

tamzzy · 9 Apr 2019 at 19:33

ALINATY said:
What are your thoughts on the current NVME field. Found a few of those on offer we are talking about 50 pounds difference between the Corsair and the Samsung not sure if its worth to skimp or not. Or should I wait till Zen 3 pops up and then see what technology comes up with or prices drop?

the corsair MP510 is (practically) the same as the phison E12 on the graphs above. so you can see the benchmark difference.
the sammy 970 evos have an extra 40gb extra compared to the corsair (960gb vs 1tb). even then, you're paying ~ £1.89 per 10gb with the sammy, and £1.49 per 10 gb for the corsair.
up to you if you think it's worth the extra. as i said, real world difference between sata3 and nvme is already minimal for gaming loads. real world difference between 2 very good nvme drives are going to be even less than minimal.
hint: i wouldn't.

doodah · 13 Aug 2019 at 10:01

LOL this Corsair MP510 must be popular, seemingly out of stock across the nation.