buying ssd Difference between these two SSDs? What SSD to buy?

[TheNuzziNuzz]

Hi. A friend told me Silicone Power SSDs use the same module/chips as Samsung's SSDs but are at a much lower price.

 

Example:

https://www.amazon.com/Silicon-Power-Performance-Internal-SP001TBSS3A55S25/dp/B07B4G19X3

https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Inch-Internal-MZ-76E1T0B-AM/dp/B078DPCY3T/

 

So I would love to know what you guys know, and if you could make a suggestion for what I should use. My use case is best described as A little bit of everything. Just running a little low on space with my current 512gb and 1tb 860 evos.

 

Thanks

[Juular]

8 minutes ago, TheNuzziNuzz said:

Silicone Power SSDs use the same module/chips as Samsung's SSDs

Samsung doesn't sell\license neither their memory nor controllers to third-party manufacturers. That SP SSD uses Micron memory and Silicon Motion controller.

Choosing between them go for SP, but there's also even cheaper Team MS30 if you have M.2 slot for it. 110$ for that Samsung SSD doesn't worth it, you can get very-fast NVMe SSD for this price, like MDSSD BPX Pro.

[Jurrunio]

14 minutes ago, TheNuzziNuzz said:

A friend told me Silicone Power SSDs use the same module/chips as Samsung's SSDs but are at a much lower price.

Not a good friend

 

Samsung uses their in house controller without selling out to anyone so that's definitely different. Samsung flash memory is also exceedingly rare to be found in other brands of SSD @Juular the HP M700 is the only exception I think

 

Also the Silicon Power A55 does not have DRAM while the Samsung drive has. It's fine to not buy overpriced Samsung, but I'd rather get an SU800 or MX500.

[Juular]

3 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

Also the Silicon Power A55 does not have DRAM

That's not a concern with modern SSDs, they just use system RAM though HMB (it needs Windows 10 to work tho)..

[Jurrunio]

6 minutes ago, Juular said:

That's not a concern with modern SSDs, they just use system RAM though HMB (it needs Windows 10 to work tho)..

still not as good, there's extra latency invloved if it uses system RAM

[Enderman]

One is a cheap off brand SSD, the other is areliable SSD made 100% by samsung.

[Juular]

31 minutes ago, Enderman said:

off brand SSD

Like SSDs are Samsung's trademark lol. There's no off-brand SSDs, all modern SSDs except Samsung use the same limited choice of NAND and controllers from a handful of manufacturers, this particular type of NAND and controller this SP SSD uses can be found in a dozen of other models.

38 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

still not as good, there's extra latency invloved if it uses system RAM

Nanoseconds lol ? It doesn't affect performance nor durability. Your CPU somehow works with RAM latency why SSD wouldn't ? Check reviews for DRAM-less NVMe SSDs, there are hardly any performance penalty, whatever can affect the performance of this drive isn't DRAM-less design itself.

[Enderman]

2 minutes ago, Juular said:

Like SSDs are Samsung's trademark lol. There's no off-brand SSDs, all modern SSDs except Samsung use the same limited choice of NAND and controllers from a handful of manufacturers, this particular type of NAND and controller this SP SSD uses can be found in a dozen of other models.

Samsung makes 100% of the SSD themselves. Nand, controller, firmware, PCB, etc.

There are cheap crappy SSDs, and there are good SSDs.

Samsung, intel, crucial, those are the reliable brands that will actually perform as expected years down the line.

[Daniel Z.]

For a cheaper SSD, the QVO or SU800 are what I’d get.

[Juular]

Just now, Enderman said:

Samsung makes 100% of the SSD themselves. Nand, controller, firmware, PCB, etc.

Yep, and that's a good thing why ?

Intel makes their own CPUs so they're inherently better than AMD.

Seasonic makes their own PSUs so they're inherently better than other manufacturers.

This logic is flawed.

1 minute ago, Enderman said:

There are cheap crappy SSDs, and there are good SSDs.

That SSD is cheap but it's not crappy, check reviews. Cheap & crappy SSD would be Kingston A400, Crucial BX500, Intel 660p, Crucial P1 and a dozen of others.

3 minutes ago, Enderman said:

Samsung, intel, crucial, those are the reliable brands that will actually perform as expected years down the line.

Why SSD wouldn't perform as expected down the line ? Like it's mechanical storage ? It's not. That's a piece of silicon. It doesn't change. Why SSDs start perform worse after some time is that they have less write buffer when they're not empty anymore, with good, properly designed SSDs that's not a problem. No other factors here.

[Juular]

1 minute ago, Daniel Z. said:

the QVO

That's an example of bad SSD, it's QLC, with terrible sustained write speeds.

[Enderman]

11 minutes ago, Juular said:

Yep, and that's a good thing why ?

Intel makes their own CPUs so they're inherently better than AMD.

Seasonic makes their own PSUs so they're inherently better than other manufacturers.

This logic is flawed.

They have full control over the manufacturing process, which is very important from an engineering standpoint.

When you take multiple things from different sources you can have issues with the individual parts or when building the system.

And yeah, intel has been inherently better than AMD for a long time, and seasonic makes some of the best PSUs that exist, so.....

 

11 minutes ago, Juular said:

Why SSD wouldn't perform as expected down the line ? Like it's mechanical storage ? It's not. That's a piece of silicon. It doesn't change. Why SSDs start perform worse after some time is that they have less write buffer when they're not empty anymore, with good, properly designed SSDs that's not a problem. No other factors here.

 

Well, yeah. Clearly you haven't seen the crappy kingston SSDs that would have slow reads and writes after only a few months of use, or all the cheap off brand SSDs that have SMART errors after short periods of time, or outright failures.

 

 

[Juular]

1 minute ago, Enderman said:

When you take multiple things from different sources you can have issues with the individual parts or when building the system.

That's what QC department are for. You wouldn't get better quality product just because you manufacture everything by yourself if you don't do QC, neither you'll get worse quality product if you do QC properly but outsource all components to third-party.

3 minutes ago, Enderman said:

And yeah, intel has been inherently better than AMD for a long time, and seasonic makes some of the best PSUs that exist, so.....

Intel was better because AMD are, well, AMD, they have their ups and downs constantly, probably because they're note even remotely comparable in RnD strength to Intel. This has nothing to do with outsourcing their silicon to third party.

Same for Seasonic, they're good, no doubt but they're not only ones that make good PSUs, CWT, SuperFlower, Delta, Andyson, all these OEMs make equally good designs, PSU manufacturers rebrand them but that doesn't make these units bad. All of them have bad and good designs, Seasonic including.

Back to our argument about SSDs, i'm not going to argue with you over this further, just check some reviews on say ADATA SX8200 Pro and Corsair MP510 and compare their prices to even Samsung 970 Evo, not to say 970 Pro. Samsung days of supremacy in SSDs market are long gone. They're good no doubts, but usually you can get equally good products from other manufacturers for lesser price.

8 minutes ago, Enderman said:

Well, yeah. Clearly you haven't seen the crappy kingston SSDs that would have slow reads and writes after only a few months of use,

That's why i said "with good, properly designed", Kingston A400 you're talking about are prime example of improperly designed SSD. And again, it's not about "few months of use", it's just about available write buffer when SSD aren't empty anymore or straight up full.

10 minutes ago, Enderman said:

or all the cheap off brand SSDs that have SMART errors after short periods of time, or outright failures.

No, they don't, modern ones with 3D TLC memory and modern era controllers at least. I'd ask you for sources but i'm sure you couldn't provide any.

[Jurrunio]

10 hours ago, Juular said:

Nanoseconds lol ? It doesn't affect performance nor durability. Your CPU somehow works with RAM latency why SSD wouldn't ? Check reviews for DRAM-less NVMe SSDs, there are hardly any performance penalty, whatever can affect the performance of this drive isn't DRAM-less design itself.

No it's more like milliseconds.

https://storagereview.com/kingston_a1000_m2_nvme_ssd_review

If you compare CPU and SSD here, then why even have VRAM on budget graphics cards? 1650S only has theorectical bandwidth of 128GB/s, 2666MHz dual channel DDR4 can already do twice that. PCIe x16 is even faster than PCIe x4 that most NVMe SSDs have access to. This is illogical. Or rather, only works with your broken logic.

 

10 hours ago, Daniel Z. said:

For a cheaper SSD, the QVO or SU800 are what I’d get.

I won't touch the Qvo when Intel and Crucial are selling NVMe QLC SSDs while QVO is still SATA

 

10 hours ago, Juular said:

Cheap & crappy SSD would be Kingston A400, Crucial BX500

The Crucial BX500 uses the same SMI2258XT controller + 64 layer 3D NAND from Micron as the Silicon Power A55, but then you think the A55 is decent, BX500 is bad. Funny how that works.

 

10 hours ago, Juular said:

Why SSD wouldn't perform as expected down the line ?

Build quality mostly, because brands that don't at least make their own NAND flash modules are under strong price pressure, so they may cut corners slightly too much. Also things like changing to worse parts after a period of time happens, like this

https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/184253-ssd-shadiness-kingston-and-pny-caught-bait-and-switching-cheaper-components-after-good-reviews

 

10 hours ago, Juular said:

That's what QC department are for. You wouldn't get better quality product just because you manufacture everything by yourself if you don't do QC, neither you'll get worse quality product if you do QC properly but outsource all components to third-party.

That's also a thing they cut cost on, no matter you know or not

 

10 hours ago, Juular said:

Same for Seasonic, they're good, no doubt but they're not only ones that make good PSUs, CWT, SuperFlower, Delta, Andyson, all these OEMs make equally good designs, PSU manufacturers rebrand them but that doesn't make these units bad. All of them have bad and good designs, Seasonic including.

PSU OEMs can totally make terrible ones for a quick dollar

 

 

[GamerBlake]

12 hours ago, TheNuzziNuzz said:

Hi. A friend told me Silicone Power SSDs use the same module/chips as Samsung's SSDs but are at a much lower price.

 

Example:

https://www.amazon.com/Silicon-Power-Performance-Internal-SP001TBSS3A55S25/dp/B07B4G19X3

https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Inch-Internal-MZ-76E1T0B-AM/dp/B078DPCY3T/

 

So I would love to know what you guys know, and if you could make a suggestion for what I should use. My use case is best described as A little bit of everything. Just running a little low on space with my current 512gb and 1tb 860 evos.

 

Thanks

Have you considered the 860 QVO?

 

I also have a 1TB 860 Evo and a 1TB 970 Evo Plus M.2 NVMe ssd but I noticed the QVO is cheaper than the Evo so I bought a 1TB one of those too and I notice it’s just as fast as my 860 Evo except when I am transferring files that are larger than ~15GB.

 

You can get a 1TB Samsung 860 QVO sata ssd for like $90 on Amazon (+ 5% back if you have a Prime store card making the cost about $85 with free shipping).

 

Just a recommendation.

[Juular]

 

What the fuck is that lol Quality review, yeah.

Kingston A1000 are rather slow SSD by any means, see reviews for ADATA SX6000 Pro \ S5, HBM SSDs can be fast.

27 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

If you compare CPU and SSD here, then why even have VRAM on budget graphics cards?

Because GPU depends on RAM the latency way more than SSD ? And even then, there are GPUs that use system RAM, did you know ? Low-performance dGPUs but still.

27 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

I won't touch the Qvo when Intel and Crucial are selling NVMe QLC SSDs while QVO is still SATA

Yep, if you actually read my comments here, you'll see that i've mentioned Intel 660p and Crucial P1 as examples of bad SSDs too. Not that they're that terrible but definitely don't worth 100$ per 1TB.

27 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

The Crucial BX500 uses the same SMI2258XT controller + 64 layer 3D NAND from Micron as the Silicon Power A55, but then you think the A55 is decent, BX500 is bad.

I might be wrong then, i think i've seen a review of BX500 where it was rather bad.

27 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

Build quality mostly, because brands that don't at least make their own NAND flash modules are under strong price pressure, so they may cut corners slightly too much.

May or may not, Kingston and Team (might be others) were indeed changing their SSDs without changing the model name on lower-end SATA SSDs. I don't know about any such example for NVMe SSDs, except for probably very shady SP NVMe SSDs lineup. Only other examples are actually changing 64-layer NAND for 96-layer on Corsair and ADATA SSDs which improves performance.

27 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

That's also a thing they cut cost on, no matter you know or not

That's unrelevant for our topic. Check actual reviews on the end product if it's actually good or not.

27 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

PSU OEMs can totally make terrible ones for a quick dollar

Again, unrelevant. Everyone can do that, would they do that are completely different question.

 

I don't see your argument here really, there are good and bad SSDs, you just get the one with best value among those that good. Samsung SSDs generally have bad value, both for SATA & NVMe versions. For SATA ones you can usually find at least Crucial MX500 for cheaper that are universally acclaimed, and there's shitton of good NVMe SSDs for almost twice less than 970 Evo\Pro, some of them even best Pro performance in all metrics but the sustained write speeds and even there they lose by rather small margin.

  

14 minutes ago, GamerBlake said:

I also have a 1TB 860 Evo and a 1TB 970 Evo Plus M.2 NVMe ssd but I noticed the QVO is cheaper than the Evo so I bought a 1TB one of those too and I notice it’s just as fast as my 860 Evo except when I am transferring files that are larger than ~15GB.

When it's slower than HDD, yeah. QLC SSD. But with price spikes after recent sales in US i can't recommend any definitely good alternatives either, only NVMe ones for 110$.

[TheNuzziNuzz]

Thank you so much @Juular @GamerBlake @Jurrunio @Enderman @Daniel Z. for all this conversation. It was not what I was expecting at all. I'm glad I am able to start to understand all this more, but I think it has left me with more questions than answers.

 

$15-25 doesn't make a huge difference for me. I've always gone with Samsung SSDs and the real question was if my friend who said SP uses the same chips is true because I wouldn't want to pay $15-25 extra for no performance benefit.

 

So everyone knows, I plan to upgrade to 32gb of Ram, and those small differences probably won't be that huge for me. The main thing I do is produce music, and just being on any SSD instead of a drive gets me 90% of the improvement i need.

 

I've always stuck with saumsung SSDs. The one time I got I think it was a Crucial MX500 or 350 m.2 (Just used for a few games and windows) I actually had it die on me after about 3 years of use, yet my 128gb 850 evo strach SSD from 6 years ago still works like new. I didn't want that to happen to me anytime soon. 

 

Would love a definitive answer, but I may be asking for too much. Super appreciate all the conversation guys, and thank you for answering my initial question about the same chips thing, it definitely sounded like fake news to me but I wanted to make sure.

 

Also I do have an open m.2 slot, what probably makes the most sense for me is to get the same or better than my current boot 860 evo, clone windows to it, and continue to store my files across my other drives.

 

Thanks again for everything!

[GamerBlake]

12 minutes ago, TheNuzziNuzz said:

Thank you so much @Juular @GamerBlake @Jurrunio @Enderman @Daniel Z. for all this conversation. It was not what I was expecting at all. I'm glad I am able to start to understand all this more, but I think it has left me with more questions than answers.

 

$15-25 doesn't make a huge difference for me. I've always gone with Samsung SSDs and the real question was if my friend who said SP uses the same chips is true because I wouldn't want to pay $15-25 extra for no performance benefit.

 

So everyone knows, I plan to upgrade to 32gb of Ram, and those small differences probably won't be that huge for me. The main thing I do is produce music, and just being on any SSD instead of a drive gets me 90% of the improvement i need.

 

I've always stuck with saumsung SSDs. The one time I got I think it was a Crucial MX500 or 350 m.2 (Just used for a few games and windows) I actually had it die on me after about 3 years of use, yet my 128gb 850 evo strach SSD from 6 years ago still works like new. I didn't want that to happen to me anytime soon. 

 

Would love a definitive answer, but I may be asking for too much. Super appreciate all the conversation guys, and thank you for answering my initial question about the same chips thing, it definitely sounded like fake news to me but I wanted to make sure.

 

Also I do have an open m.2 slot, what probably makes the most sense for me is to get the same or better than my current boot 860 evo, clone windows to it, and continue to store my files across my other drives.

 

Thanks again for everything!

You’re very welcome :).

 

Just a piece of advice: You might want to check out Newegg’s “Shellshocker” deals. Every day they have sales on different items and SSDs of all kinds are often on those sales. Yesterday it was the Sabrent Rocket M.2 NVMe ssd. But I’ve seen lots of them on “Shellshocker” sale. You might be able to save some money that way or buy an SSD that is better than you thought you could afford because it’s on sale.

 

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Keep in mind performance is not the only criterion to consider when camparing SSDs. There is also reliability, write life, and warranty life, for starters. Many of the lower priced SSDs (such as QLC SSDs) will deteriorate in performance during sustained writes and/or when they get around half full. Many lower priced SSD have inferior NAND chips: usuaally, you can spot these becasue they will have slightly smaller rated sizes, such as 240GB instead of the usually 250GB or 245 GB, or 480 instead of the usuall 500GB or 512GB due to the extra overprovisioning the manufacturers add to compensate (somewhat) for the lower quantity. Many lower priced SSDs come without DRAM caching which will cause serious performance issues down the road, not to mention reduce write life.

 

Frankly, the only SSDs I will recommend are the Samsung Pros and EVOs (becasue I have actually used a bunch of them with excellent results) and the Crucial MX500s (only because of their good reputation). The latter I recommend only for budget drives when the Sammys are too steep for someone on a tight budget but I prefer the Sammys and will not risk the MX500 series (and I'm a retiree on a so-called fixed budget).

[Jurrunio]

25 minutes ago, Juular said:

What the fuck is that lol Quality review, yeah.

pretty much shows how the SSD slows down and latency still climbs up as the test goes on

 

26 minutes ago, Juular said:

Kingston A1000 are rather slow SSD by any means, see reviews for ADATA SX6000 Pro \ S5, HBM SSDs can be fast.

Spoiler

OMG WTF, much worse than even the A1000

 

Spoiler

Spoiler

Suddenly makes the A1000 look good

Another source then

Spoiler

Still ranks last, only faster than a discontinued SATA SSD

 

31 minutes ago, Juular said:

Because GPU depends on RAM the latency way more than SSD ?

then yeah. call that an exaggerated reason to get SSDs with DRAM.

 

1 hour ago, Juular said:

And even then, there are GPUs that use system RAM, did you know ? Low-performance dGPUs but still.

no, only iGPUs use system RAM. GT1030 DDR4, GT730 DDR3 etc still have dedicated VRAM on the card itself. it's slow VRAM, still not system RAM.

 

1 hour ago, Juular said:

That's unrelevant for our topic. Check actual reviews on the end product if it's actually good or not.

1 hour ago, Juular said:

Again, unrelevant. Everyone can do that, would they do that are completely different question.

You're the one who started with these questions and examples. I just counter them. All of us are way out of the scope of "A55 vs 860 Evo" already.

 

1 hour ago, Juular said:

I don't see your argument here really, there are good and bad SSDs, you just get the one with best value among those that good. Samsung SSDs generally have bad value, both for SATA & NVMe versions. For SATA ones you can usually find at least Crucial MX500 for cheaper that are universally acclaimed, and there's shitton of good NVMe SSDs for almost twice less than 970 Evo\Pro, some of them even best Pro performance in all metrics but the sustained write speeds and even there they lose by rather small margin.

I didnt argue the choice between SATA and NVMe, you're the one using NVMe drives to try prove DRAM is not worth caring about that pulled NVMe into the conversation. A55 and 860 Evo are both SATA.

 

1 hour ago, Juular said:

When it's slower than HDD, yeah. QLC SSD. But with price spikes after recent sales in US i can't recommend any definitely good alternatives either, only NVMe ones for 110$.

at this point QLC NVMe basically cost the same as TLC SATA of the same capacity, so all you need to ask is whether you value burst speed or performance that stays true up till you fill most of it up.

[Juular]

36 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

pretty much shows how the SSD slows down and latency still climbs up as the test goes on

Except that the graph itself is fucked like real hard, i don't see how you don't see that.

36 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

OMG WTF, much worse than even the A1000

Again, ADATA SX6000 Pro. Yep, last review are right one. There's not only a latency to SSDs and while that 99th percentile data looks terrible, if you see actual real life usage data in the same review, there's actually not much of a difference even with very fast NVMe SSDs. Modern controllers and OS are smart, requests are queued and while single request may be slow, multiple queued requests will be faster on average. That's budget SSD, don't expect it to perform the same as actually performance models, it's okay for a gaming build and even most workstation ones. Not that it's that cheaper than TLCs tho but that's aside for the argument over SSDs and the significance of onboard DRAM.

36 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

no, only iGPUs use system RAM

Yep, i wanted to say iGPU, as in integrated.

36 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

You're the one who started with these questions and examples. I just counter them. All of us are way out of the scope of "A55 vs 860 Evo" already.

Yep, and that's my main argument. Don't judge products by it's brand or whether it's manufacturer actually makes all components itself or outsources them. That's unrelevant. What matters is the quality of end product.

36 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

I didnt argue the choice between SATA and NVMe, you're the one using NVMe drives to try prove DRAM is not worth caring about that pulled NVMe into the conversation. A55 and 860 Evo are both SATA.

It's just that i don't dig much on SATA SSDs but i know a lot more on NVMe SSDs so naturally i make an example from them. But okay, if you actually see reviews on SP A55 it isn't bad either, just your average budget SATA SSD, definitely better than say Kingston A400 and it's cheaper than Samsung 860 Evo which costs just as much as NVMe SSDs, MDD BPX Pro for example, which isn't very well known brand but it uses the same hardware as a dozen of other very fast NVMe SSDs and there are reviews that confirm that.

36 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

at this point QLC NVMe basically cost the same as TLC SATA of the same capacity, so all you need to ask is whether you value burst speed or performance that stays true up till you fill most of it up.

From Samsung ? Sure lol. I've seen Intel 660p (or it was Crucial P1) get to about 80$ per 1TB version ONCE, usually it hovers around 100$, when it'll get lower it might be worth to get for budget builds that don't need very good write speeds but until, literally any other NVMe TLC SSD will be better. Same for SATA QLCs, ADATA SU600\630 are just terrible and Samsung QVO are meh at most, might be a bit faster in some metrics than cheap TLCs but sustained write speeds and cache size are just as low as you expect from QLC, no miracles here.

[Anomnomnomaly]

14 hours ago, Jurrunio said:

but I'd rather get an SU800 or MX500.
 

 

I'd also agree with the Crucial MX500, got a couple of 1TB drives in my system and they give decent speeds.

[Jurrunio]

15 minutes ago, Juular said:

From Samsung ? Sure lol. I've seen Intel 660p (or it was Crucial P1) get to about 80$ per 1TB version ONCE, usually it hovers around 100$, when it'll get lower it might be worth to get for budget builds that don't need very good write speeds but until, literally any other NVMe TLC SSD will be better. Same for SATA QLCs, ADATA SU600\630 are just terrible and Samsung QVO are meh at most, might be a bit faster in some metrics than cheap TLCs but sustained write speeds and cache size are just as low as you expect from QLC, no miracles here.

Samsung never made any QLC NVMe SSD, of course not. I'm talking about the 660p/P1 compared to TLC SATA. 2TB for example the 660p and WD Blue is the same price.

 

22 minutes ago, Juular said:

Except that the graph itself is fucked like real hard, i don't see how you don't see that.

I've seen SSDs that are really that bad, just not so common in western countries. My Transcend SSD220S does that level of bad even after a fresh formatting. Not sure if it's the 3 year worth of wear taking a toll on it, but it is slow and not that responsive.

[Juular]

10 hours ago, Jurrunio said:

2TB for example the 660p and WD Blue is the same price.

Or Mushkin Pilot for the same price, which is as fast as Samsung 970 Evo.

10 hours ago, Jurrunio said:

I've seen SSDs that are really that bad, just not so common in western countries.

That. Graph. Is. Fucked.

Look at it closely again, it's not continuous, these lines are all over the place, they don't obey the axis, it would look like that only if that would be 3D graph, it's not.

Thus that review are just of no use since it doesn't provide any meaningful data.

 

[Jurrunio]

31 minutes ago, Juular said:

they don't obey the axis,

note that it's IOPS and latency, they do not have to be linearly dependent on one another. It's just like saying the engine of a car's RPM must be proportional to the car's speed at all times.