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Warning - PNY "updated" the specs of the CS3030 drive. After the controller nerf (from E12 to E12s) they now lowered the TBW values and by a lot. 1TB version no longer has 1665TB (which was excellent) but just 360TB. That's the worst number on the market currently. AVOID!

https://www.pny.com/file library/company/support/product brochures/solid state drives/xlr8-ssd-cs3030-sell-sheet.pdf

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55 minutes ago, penguino said:

Warning - PNY "updated" the specs of the CS3030 drive. After the controller nerf (from E12 to E12s) they now lowered the TBW values and by a lot. 1TB version no longer has 1665TB (which was excellent) but just 360TB. That's the worst number on the market currently. AVOID!

https://www.pny.com/file library/company/support/product brochures/solid state drives/xlr8-ssd-cs3030-sell-sheet.pdf

Yeah, it looks like it's advised to just avoid all previously E12 based drives for a while until it would be clear which ones didn't switch to E12s.

As a side note, can someone explain why the durability downgrade is that major just by a controller change ? @NewMaxx@SSD Sean

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They changed the controller a while ago, TBW downgrade is more recent. They probably changed other components as well like memory chips to cheaper ones with less cycles.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Would a Transcend 830S 256gb (SATA m.2) be a good buy? It is the only one from B-Tier SATA which falls under my budget.

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Yes, it has DRAM and a decent controller.

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On 5/22/2021 at 4:16 PM, penguino said:

Warning - PNY "updated" the specs of the CS3030 drive. After the controller nerf (from E12 to E12s) they now lowered the TBW values and by a lot. 1TB version no longer has 1665TB (which was excellent) but just 360TB. That's the worst number on the market currently. AVOID!

https://www.pny.com/file library/company/support/product brochures/solid state drives/xlr8-ssd-cs3030-sell-sheet.pdf

The Phison E12S is better than the Phison E12, it has a better node process (12nm TSMC for the E12S and 28nm TSMC for the E12) and better temperatures thanks to the “heatsink”. Also, the TBW is a totally useless value.

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On 6/3/2021 at 4:16 PM, PatriotRCK said:

Would a Transcend 830S 256gb (SATA m.2) be a good buy? It is the only one from B-Tier SATA which falls under my budget.

Depends also on the price, it has a decent controller (Silicon Motion SM2258XT - so as all “XT” controller of Silicon Motion it is DRAM-less and it has one core at 400 MHz, four NAND channel and 1KB codeword of LDPC) and decent NAND Flash (Micron 64L TLC 3D, so B16A or B17A. The differences between B16A and B17A is the number of planes: 2 plane for B16A and 4 plane for B17A, so B17A has better performance and better interleaving. Both are 1500 P/E LDPC cycles with Floating Gate architecture, so as endurance they are equal). Anyway I prefer the Crucial BX500, now Crucial changes its NAND Flash and it is better as performance and especially endurance (you can’t notice the difference as performance because the SM2258XT restrict the performance).

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2 hours ago, reckeeeeee said:

Also, the TBW is a totally useless value.

Care to elaborate ? Sure, 360TB TBW is about 3GB of writes per month over 10 years which is still on the 'enough' side but barely so i'd say looking at how there're almost 7TBs of writes on my 1TB main SSD over the 7 months i have it for. And i don't do anything particularly write intensive on it, just browsing for the most part, i imagine someone with more write-intensive workloads would easily exceed or at least close 3GB of writes per month.

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He is right, the TBW value is unless. Also NewMaxx say it.
We need to know others parameters, not only a stupid number of Terabytes Written (TBW). For example to impact the endurance of SSD we need to know how much is the WAF (Write Amplification Factor), the frequency of activation of Garbage Collection, etc. Also impacts the architecture and which type of the NAND Flash (Floating Gate, Split Gate, BiCS, Replacement Gate, etc.), the ECC (Error Correction Code - if LDPC or BCH and how long is the codeword, 1KB, 2KB, 4KB, etc.) and others thing.
So, don't look at the TBW please.

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11 hours ago, Juular said:

Care to elaborate ? Sure, 360TB TBW is about 3GB of writes per month over 10 years which is still on the 'enough' side but barely so i'd say looking at how there're almost 7TBs of writes on my 1TB main SSD over the 7 months i have it for. And i don't do anything particularly write intensive on it, just browsing for the most part, i imagine someone with more write-intensive workloads would easily exceed or at least close 3GB of writes per month.

I guess this is about the PNY CS3030 change - it so happens their new DWPD value (e.g. at 1TB) matches what we see with good QLC drives like the Intel 670p. It's likely the 4TB SKU - which was added later, with "3D TLC" being changed to "3D NAND" - is QLC-based. This also occurred with the ADATA SX8100. Of course, the lower-capacity SKUs are still TLC based on the listed performance metrics. This is still a very ample amount of writes for most users and it's irrelevant because you are more likely to hit/surpass the 5-year mark than the TBW. Even if you do exceed the TBW, failure is very unlikely from flash wear but compounding factors that are more likely in risk-taking buyers (i.e. Chia farms). Which is to say, their claims are valid. Even on Chia-oriented drives like the Team T-Create Expert PCIe, you have the manufacturer refusing to detail the flash they're using (it's currently 64L FortisMax TLC) and the only reason is that they want to leave the door open to changing it. In other words, "nothing to see here."

 

As a secondary point: the E12 drives had a very high TBW at launch. When they switched flash and to less DRAM ("E12S"), the TBW usually remained the same. Literally different generation of flash and different architecture of flash and with higher potential write amplification, but same TBW. Why? Because it's arbitrary. The E12s always had an inflated TBW specifically because Phison developed the controller to be a Samsung killer, specifically 970 EVO/PRO - they were targeting the PRO with the TBW because people look at that value for endurance, despite the fact the 3D MLC on the 970 PRO is rated for up to 20 times the writes as BiCS3 TLC.

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13 hours ago, reckeeeeee said:

The differences between B16A and B17A is the number of planes: 2 plane for B16A and 4 plane for B17A, so B17A has better performance and better interleaving.

Be careful on this point. B17A is twice as dense, 512Gb/die vs 256Gb/die, which means it has the same performance and interleaving per capacity. B17A is basically two B16As stacked next to each other - B16A has a die size of 58.17mm2 vs. 108.1mm2 on B17A, the difference being due to redundant circuitry (look at the B16A left edge).

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Are there any advantages getting a phison e16/18 over e12 if you only have pcie 3.0?

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1 hour ago, tomdd said:

Are there any advantages getting a phison e16/18 over e12 if you only have pcie 3.0?

Bigger hole in your wallet ?

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On 6/15/2021 at 6:03 AM, tomdd said:

Are there any advantages getting a phison e16/18 over e12 if you only have pcie 3.0?

No. If you want to use a PCIe 4.0 around 5000/7000 MB/s you need a motherboard that support the PCIe 4.0, like B550, X570, Z490 and Z590 with a 11th CPU.

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Can we get some clarification on what the criteria are for placement on the list? Are they rated on Burst performance? Sustained R/W? Sequential or Random Speeds? Longevity?

I see some items on this list like the Intel 760p SSDs that are absolutely some of the best gen3 NVMEs on the market, and they are listed as C-Tier (mid end). They don't tend to have great burst speeds, but they have some of the highest sustained random R/W out there, and they have the absolutely best durability of any TLC drive.

Likewise, Why is Samsung's 980 (pablo) in the same C-Tier, when it is clearly an E-Tier, low end drive with no DRAM cache, janky QLC VNAND, and the same 4-channel controller found in other E-Tier drives?

I think the Tier list should just be broken down by DRAM/DRAMLESS drives / VNAND or BiCS flash type (MLC / TLC / QLC) / Layers (64 / 96 / 128), and Controller channels.

That way viewers can look at the list and know if they are getting an quality drive (Samsung 980 Pro: 1GB DRAM cache, 128layer MLC VNAND flash, 12-channel controller with HBM support). (should be top of the list)

Or absolute trash (Samsung 980: No DRAM cache, 128 layer QLC VNAND flash, 4-channel controller) (should be bottom of the list)

As it stands, the tier list seems to be based on price and brand perception

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does everything on this list have dram ?

I have an ASUS G14 2021 with Manjaro KDE and I am a professional Linux NoOB and also pretty bad at General Computing.

 

ALSO I DON'T EDIT MY POSTS* NOWADAYS SO NO NEED TO REFRESH BEFORE REPLYING *unless I edit my post

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On 6/24/2021 at 3:38 AM, linux fanboy said:

does everything on this list have dram ?

No, some are DRAM-less, like the Kingston A400.

 

On 6/22/2021 at 3:27 PM, OrdinaryPhil said:

Can we get some clarification on what the criteria are for placement on the list? Are they rated on Burst performance? Sustained R/W? Sequential or Random Speeds? Longevity?

I see some items on this list like the Intel 760p SSDs that are absolutely some of the best gen3 NVMEs on the market, and they are listed as C-Tier (mid end). They don't tend to have great burst speeds, but they have some of the highest sustained random R/W out there, and they have the absolutely best durability of any TLC drive.

Likewise, Why is Samsung's 980 (pablo) in the same C-Tier, when it is clearly an E-Tier, low end drive with no DRAM cache, janky QLC VNAND, and the same 4-channel controller found in other E-Tier drives?

I think the Tier list should just be broken down by DRAM/DRAMLESS drives / VNAND or BiCS flash type (MLC / TLC / QLC) / Layers (64 / 96 / 128), and Controller channels.

That way viewers can look at the list and know if they are getting an quality drive (Samsung 980 Pro: 1GB DRAM cache, 128layer MLC VNAND flash, 12-channel controller with HBM support). (should be top of the list)

Or absolute trash (Samsung 980: No DRAM cache, 128 layer QLC VNAND flash, 4-channel controller) (should be bottom of the list)

As it stands, the tier list seems to be based on price and brand perception

This list is based also on the hardware of each drive: controller, NAND and DRAM cache (if it's present). The Intel 760p is not one of the best NVMe 3.0 in the market: according to Tom's Hardware review, it has poor performance after the SLC cache (and the SLC cache seems be small) and decent/poor performance in sequential read and sequential write in QD 2 128KB (see the 512GB SKU).

Also, the Samsung 980 is a TLC drive: it has 128L V-NAND TLC (V6) and also Samsung 980 PRO is a TLC drive (again 128L V-NAND TLC V6) and it has a 8 channel controller, not 12.

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  • 2 weeks later...

So let’s say I’m getting a gen4 nvme 1tb right now? What’s the most consistent brand to buy right now? 

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6 hours ago, xi4n9 said:

So let’s say I’m getting a gen4 nvme 1tb right now? What’s the most consistent brand to buy right now? 

Depends also on your budget and your country, but I think the Samsung 980 PRO is the best choice.

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I was looking to upgrade storage in my laptop. Currently I have 1 TB HDD. I think my laptop has an M.2 SATA III slot. Is there any big difference between various manufacturers as most of them offer speeds around 500 MBPS regardless of price... 

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Which out of tier B or C would you guys suggest as the most budget option in those respective tiers?

 

Sorry for picking your brains and appreciate any thoughts on this matter.

 

Gracias

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On 7/4/2021 at 12:41 PM, ishavgupta said:

I was looking to upgrade storage in my laptop. Currently I have 1 TB HDD. I think my laptop has an M.2 SATA III slot. Is there any big difference between various manufacturers as most of them offer speeds around 500 MBPS regardless of price... 

Depends on the SSD, in some case there are big differences as come reliability rather than performance. The Samsung 870 EVO is the best SATA SSD to be until after the 860 PRO, which is MLC limited by the SATA III. 

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7 hours ago, Super User said:

Which out of tier B or C would you guys suggest as the most budget option in those respective tiers?

 

Sorry for picking your brains and appreciate any thoughts on this matter.

 

Gracias

The best tier B SSD is the SK Hynix Gold P31 - unavailable in many countries - while the best tier C SSD is the Crucial P5, but only as performance, because it runs very hot. It reached 100+ degrees on the controller during a stress test. 
Anyway, the HP EX950 (SM2262ENG + IMFT 64L TLC) is also a good choice. 

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1 hour ago, Wooden Law - Black said:

it runs very hot. It reached 100+ degrees on the controller during a stress test

Thanks for the reply. Though i understand real world scenario is quite different from a stress test i want to avoid ones that have a tendency to heat up. (I live in an extremely hot and humid temperate climate). What i am ideally looking for is one which doesn't heat up as much without sacrificing too much of performance. I hope i am making sense. 🙂

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1 hour ago, Super User said:

Thanks for the reply. Though i understand real world scenario is quite different from a stress test i want to avoid ones that have a tendency to heat up. (I live in an extremely hot and humid temperate climate). What i am ideally looking for is one which doesn't heat up as much without sacrificing too much of performance. I hope i am making sense. 🙂

A real word scenario is not completely different from a stress test, usually is a data transfer. 
You could take look at the WD SN750, it has a great price and is an excellent drive (or at least, it has a great price in my country). I would suggest the Samsung 970 EVO/EVO Plus which is better as reliability and performance (the EVO is 64L while the EVO Plus is 92L), but they run hot, almost like the Crucial P5. The SN750 has decent temperature. 

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