ssd Intel 660p or something else?

[Gapi]

 

I was going to put a 2tb intel 660p ssd in my pc, but now I'm not sure anymore. Would it be better to go with a 2TB hard drive and a 500GB samsung 860 or 970? Is there any other well priced 2TB ssd that would be good - there's a WD blue for a bit more: https://pcpartpicker.com/product/CXvbt6/western-digital-blue-2tb-m2-2280-solid-state-drive-wds200t2b0b but it looks like it has the same drawbacks. Also what's the difference between https://pcpartpicker.com/product/CXvbt6/western-digital-blue-2tb-m2-2280-solid-state-drive-wds200t2b0b and https://pcpartpicker.com/product/Mtprxr/western-digital-0-25-2000000rpm-internal-hard-drive-wds200t2b0a ? Overall, I just need around 2TB space for games and am confused what's the best affordable option. Thanks.

[Sakkura]

The Intel 660p is superior to the WD Blue, which is SATA, as well as to an SSD+HDD configuration in most ways.

 

The difference between the two versions you're linking is that one is 2.5" SATA and the other is M.2 SATA; they're internally identical and perform the same, they just plug in differently.

 

Just get the 660p.

[Jurrunio]

WD Blue HDD's space is clear, it's the cheapest and also the slowest.

 

WD Blue SSD runs TLC NAND in SATA, 660p runs QLC NAND in NVMe, which means 660p is always faster. The only exception is when you fill them to nearly full, since SLC cache size is only a portion of empty space it will slow down when SLC cache size gets overwhelmed. Imo that doesn't happen at all for a game storage until you hit 80% usage, and even then it might not be noticeable.

 

860 Evo and 970 Evo are both overpriced, massively. They might be the best otherwise, but competitors like the Crucial MX500 & WD Blue for the 860 Evo, Adata SX8200 Pro or HP EX950 are like 95% as good for a noticeable price decrease.

 

970 Evo btw runs TLC NVMe so it's at a whole tier ahead of the 660p, and so is its price.

[Gapi]

1 minute ago, Sakkura said:

The Intel 660p is superior to the WD Blue, which is SATA, as well as to an SSD+HDD configuration in most ways.

 

The difference between the two versions you're linking is that one is 2.5" SATA and the other is M.2 SATA; they're internally identical and perform the same, they just plug in differently.

 

Just get the 660p.

Ok. Thanks!

[mariushm]

Well it depends.

660p is FASTER for reading and most of the time for writing. However, it uses QLC memory which has lower endurance, which means in theory it degrades faster and can't be used for LOTS of writing on the drive.

 

660p has 1.8 GB/s read and 1.8 GB/s write, as long as the SLC cache holds up. When SLC cache is filled, the speeds go down to nearly 100 MB/s.

See picture below.. if your 2 TB drive is 75% or more full, you'll only have ~ 24 GB of SLC cache... if you copy or install a 40-50 GB game, after the first 24 GB speeds will slow down to 100-200MB/s.

Of course, for regular people this almost never happens, you just have to be aware that it's a thing.

However, if you don't often copy big files, maybe you'd be fine with the 450-550 MB/s of sustained write speeds the WD Blue offers.

 

The endurance is also kinda small, at 100 TB per 512 GB, so your 2 TB drive has a 400 TB endurance value.  In comparison, the WD Blue with TLC memory has an endurance of 500 TB and in all honestly it should be rated for more. The 660p just inflates the rating due to the higher SLC size used for caching.

 

There's drives like HP EX950 which have 1400 TB of endurance and 3.5GB/s of read and 3GB/s write speeds... and they're 275$ ... about 90$ more than a 660p  and 55$ more than 216$ WD Blue. Not that big of a price difference.

 

 

[hello_there_123]

19 minutes ago, mariushm said:

 If you copy or install a 40-50 GB game, after the first 24 GB speeds will slow down to 100-200MB/s.

Keep in mind that unless OP has gigabit ethernet, 100-200mb/s is much faster than his/her internet speed.

[Gapi]

1 minute ago, hello_there_123 said:

Keep in mind that unless OP has gigabit ethernet, 100-200mb/s is much faster than his/her internet speed.

um yeah i have like 20mbps so intel should be enough

[WereCatf]

I have the 1TB 660p and I, for one, haven't regretted getting it. Plenty of space and good read-speeds, perfect for slapping Steam-, GOG-, and whatnot libraries on.

[porina]

1 hour ago, mariushm said:

The endurance is also kinda small, at 100 TB per 512 GB, so your 2 TB drive has a 400 TB endurance value.  In comparison, the WD Blue with TLC memory has an endurance of 500 TB and in all honestly it should be rated for more. The 660p just inflates the rating due to the higher SLC size used for caching.

Endurance is not a problem for any regular user. To reach the 2TB's endurance in warranty you'd have to write 200GB average a day, every day. The first few days after you get it, you might exceed that as you set up games, but patches and stuff don't add up to much after. Even with typical OS usage on top you'll be hard to sustain that average.

[mariushm]

There are still some people that would burn up a SSD.

For example, if you're streaming daily for a few hours, you may have OBS configured to use hardware encoder for streaming and software encoder x264 set at "near lossless" for highest quality and lowest cpu usage, giving you bitrates of 100-300 mbps (if you record 4K or 1440p at 60fps).

 

Such content can then be cropped/cut and encoded at very good quality (like 30-50mbps) and made into episodes for Youtube or other platforms (or Patreon members etc) or for archival (in case you'd want to reupload to Youtube or whatever)

 

Anyway, yeah, I agree with you, with high capacity drives endurance is not much of a problem. Such a heavy user would be able to afford to update or replace the SSD every couple of years anyway and technology advances so much that in 2-3 years there may be way more advanced SSD drives on the market making the current drives obsolete.