Which NVMe SSDs?

[GoogalyMoogaly]

So I'm pretty new to the world of NVMe SSDs so apologies if my thoughts/questions are a little silly.



I'm thinking of trying to move away from HDDs and older SATA SSDs So thought I'd buy a couple of NVMe drives. I'm thinking of getting 2 drives for a couple of reasons, capacity mostly and the thought that one could be more storage based while the other is OS and other applications that would benefit from the speed (I realise with 2 NVMes neither drive will be slow). So with this in mind I'm OK if one is less performant than the other, but it doesn't matter if they're similar.

I think the 3 drives I've narrowed it down to, from most expensive to least is:

1. Crucial P5 Plus 2TB
2. Kingston KC3000 2TB
3. WD Blue SN570 2TB

What would be the best combination? I don't mind different drives or 2 of the same.

My concerns with each are:

• the P5+ is the most expensive and I think can run hot
• the KC3000 is doubled-sided at that capacity so not sure if that causes any issues with installation or cooling
• the SN570 is the lowest performance and the lowest endurance

My other thoughts with NVMe drives is the thermal pad used with heatsink (which often come with motherboards). It seems to make changing NVMe drives much more of a pain. Where do you get new pads from if one gets mangled when removing a drive?
I sorta wish they could just use thermal paste but I guess that would have its own issues?

 

[GoogalyMoogaly]

Yeah, I realise the WD Blue is gen 3, but I figure there probably won't be too much noticeable difference outside of benchmarks and I'd be happy to use that as the more storage based drive of the 2.