An SSD Purchase Guide!

Intel_man

VIP Member
Everyone makes mistakes or misses things from time to time. But when the opportunity presents itself to inform others, your approach is sometimes quite ineffective. For example, 10 months ago I broached the subject of DRAM-less SSDs; the brazenness of your responses in that thread accomplished nothing but dissension. You should consider the fact that talking to people in different manners yields varying responses. Your goal in this forum shouldn't be to run people over and you could have handled this thread in an entirely different way.
If you're still hung about that discussion, then let me rephrase my whole stance on that matter. There's more to judging performance than whether a product has a specific part over the other (i.e. product A has dram, and product B does not). It is more important to objectively look at graphs and charts that are created through normalized tests to determine if the performance of the product is worth the asking price of the item.


On a side note, I'm not trying to run people over, but it is too common of a sight to see people use marketing jargon and phrases instead of using objective data sets to base their opinions on or write in a matter of a neutral position and people take things way too personal when I challenge their statement. A simple clarification backed by credible/reputable information would have ended my doubts on the matter.

My reason to why I think it's a beginner's guide is because it's not super technical and I would say doesn't touch/mention on the more indepth ideas, or even just provide other readings to go beyond what this guide covers. The word "beginner's" is not to describe a new person just starting to understand the topic, but more like the "start" of the topic of SSDs.
 
Last edited:

StAugnative

New Member
Thank you for posting this. Some of us (ME) hasn't kept up with all the technology out there. This gives a great basic understanding of the M2 for those of us (ME) who had heard of M2 but never really looked into it. Since I'll be up grading or doing another build soon, this helped me a great deal.

John
 

OmniDyne

Active Member
Updated the guide to reflect the release of SSDs utilizing newer Phison E12 controllers with Toshiba 64-layer 3D TLC NAND; these drives brought a huge leap in performance for Phison based SSDs and brought much needed direct competition to SSDs utilizing Silicon Motion controllers and IMFT (Intel and Micron) NAND. Additionally, drives combining E12 and Toshiba NAND have over twice the endurance of competing SM/ Intel-Micron based SSDs. 1TB PCIe NVMe 3.0/3.1 x4 SSDs can now be purchased for around $100.

SATA based SSDs have become less and less common, to the point where it's hard to find SATA SSDs worth mentioning. Additionally, many formally popular SATA SSDs have been discontinued. For example, the much slower 1TB SATA based MX500 hovers around $110. If you're operating a computer with M.2 PCIe NVMe slots, purchasing a SATA based SSD is pointless, even at the lower end of the market; the HP EX900 M.2 250GB PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe SSD sits at $37.

Manufacturers of QLC NAND still seem to be having issues with yields and pricing continues to be mostly uncompetitive.

It appears three (3) PCIe Gen 4 SSDs have hit the market and are extremely expensive and out of scope for the typical consumer. That being said, it's something I'll have to add to the guide as Gen 4 is kind of mainstream, or at least an update to the mainstream interface/ protocol.
 
Top