SSD TIER LIST

[penguino]

On 7/4/2021 at 6:04 AM, 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? 

WD SN850.

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... 

Speed is limited by SATA protocol. Samsung 860 EVO, Crucial MX500 or WD Blue are all good SATA drives (DRAM,good components) that exist in M.2 format as well.

On 7/7/2021 at 6:31 AM, Super User said:

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

Prices vary from ciuntry to country and by a lot. The best B tier drives are WD SN750, Kingston KX2500, Samsung 970 EVO/EVO Plus, HP EX950 and Kioxia Exceria Plus are decent as well , you can't go wrong with any of them.

Out of C-tier ones the ADATA SX8200 Pro (S11 Pro) or Plextor M9P+/Lexar NM700 (they're almost identical) look decent compared to the rest.

On 7/7/2021 at 2:33 PM, Wooden Law - Black said:

the best tier C SSD is the Crucial P5, but only as performance, because it runs very hot

Not only it runs very hot but despite high scores in synthetic tests, real world performance is quite mediocre.

On 7/7/2021 at 5:43 PM, Wooden Law - Black said:

I would suggest the Samsung 970 EVO/EVO Plus which is better as reliability and performance

Reliability is the same (both are very reliable) and WD is actually a touch faster. I'd go for WD because it runs cooler and tends to cost less than 970 EVO Plus.

[Wooden Law - Black]

11 hours ago, penguino said:

Plextor M9P+/Lexar NM700

They have the same controller (Marvell 88SS1092) but not the same flash, the Plextor M9P+ has 96L Kioxia/Toshiba (BiCS4) and the Lexar NM700 has 64L Samsung (V4). 64L Samsung is technically superior as reliability, but not as performance (even is slightly worse), 51 MB/s per die 64L Samsung (512Gb) and 57 MB/s per die 96L Kioxia/Toshiba (512Gb). In my opinion the Lexar is better. 

 

11 hours ago, penguino said:

Not only it runs very hot but despite high scores in synthetic tests, real world performance is quite mediocre.

The SX8200 Pro has many revisions, and why Plextor M9P+/Lexar NM700 are better as performance than the Crucial P5? The Lexar NM700 has bigger SLC cache, but worse performance after it, around 300 MB/s during the data folding, almost like QLC drives. 

 

11 hours ago, penguino said:

Reliability is the same (both are very reliable) and WD is actually a touch faster. I'd go for WD because it runs cooler and tends to cost less than 970 EVO Plus.

True for the temperature but the reliability is not the same, because Samsung’s flash is better than the SN750’s flash (which is Kioxia/Toshiba BiCS3). Is better as reliability for the architecture, Replacement Gate on TCAT versus BiCS on CTF. Also, Samsung has the better etching. 

[FRD]

@VEXICUSCould you please add the following SSDs to the list?

Internal NVME:

- Kingston NV1

External:

- Crucial X8 Portable SSD

- Crucial X6 Portable SSD

[Wooden Law - Black]

On 7/25/2021 at 6:04 PM, FRD said:

@VEXICUSCould you please add the following SSDs to the list?

Internal NVME:

- Kingston NV1

External:

- Crucial X8 Portable SSD

- Crucial X6 Portable SSD

The Kingston NV1 is a 64L QLC (IMFT, so N18A) with SM2263XT/Phison E13T (the Phison E13T is slightly better for the number of cores and C.E. if I'm not wrong), not very good. I would put it in Tier D (Budget).
Although the Crucial X6 has better flash than the X8 (Micron 96L vs 64L QLC), it is a SATA drive (the controller is a SM2259XT, the same as the BX500) while the X8 is a NVMe drive (the controller is a SM2263) and this latter has a DRAM cache, so the X8 is better as performance and theoretically as reliability. I would put them in Tier D (Budget / Storage) only for the fact they are QLC. 

[Phantom-XT]

Could you please add 

 GIGABYTE UD PRO M.2 PCIE SSD

[Wooden Law - Black]

5 hours ago, Fahimsarker said:

Could you please add 

 GIGABYTE UD PRO M.2 PCIE SSD

Phison S10 as controller (quad-core, eight-channel with 4 CE - 32 in total - per channel) with Toshiba/Kioxia 64L TLC (BiCS3) as NAND and a DDR3 DRAM cache. Performance are ok, post SLC cache the speed decrease to around 300 MB/s and the SLC cache is very small. I would put it on the same level of PNY CS1311 and Seagate BarraCuda, so Tier B (Mid-end).

[Shadowclash10]

I want to get a 1TB NVME Gen 3 SSD, for around $140. It seems like the best options ATM are either the WD SN750, SK Hynix P31, or the Corsair MP510. I know people recommend the P31 in laptops, cause it's more efficient. That doesn't come at the cost of worse performance, right (using it on my dektop rig, so the efficiency part shouldn't be a big deal)? The 980 got heavily discounted, but it seems like I shouldn't go that route since it's DRAM-less. 

[Evija]

I need to choose between a SEAGATE - SSD INT 1TB FIRECUDA 520 PCIE M.2 and a CORSAIR - SSD INT 1TB MP600 PCIE M.2. It's a restricted product list as I have a certain balance to use on an online shop.  The only real difference I can see is that the Corsair has a heatsink. I intend to get a desktop but I'm currently using a laptop that has a 256GB SSD, but I'm not sure if this will be enough in the future, as I need to install CAD software.  I would have to remove the heatsink from the Corsair to put it in the laptop, but Corsair said this would void the warranty. If I was to use one of these SSD's in a desktop, which is the better choice?

 

Thank you

[Wooden Law - Black]

12 hours ago, Shadowclash10 said:

That doesn't come at the cost of worse performance, right

No. The SK Hynix Gold P31 is the best choice since it is available in your country, is one of the best SSDs PCIe 3.0, better than the WD SN750 and MP510 (which has changed its hardware). 

 

10 hours ago, Evija said:

I need to choose between a SEAGATE - SSD INT 1TB FIRECUDA 520 PCIE M.2 and a CORSAIR - SSD INT 1TB MP600 PCIE M.2. It's a restricted product list as I have a certain balance to use on an online shop.  The only real difference I can see is that the Corsair has a heatsink. I intend to get a desktop but I'm currently using a laptop that has a 256GB SSD, but I'm not sure if this will be enough in the future, as I need to install CAD software.  I would have to remove the heatsink from the Corsair to put it in the laptop, but Corsair said this would void the warranty. If I was to use one of these SSD's in a desktop, which is the better choice?

 

Thank you

They are the same drive since the same hardware (controller Phison E16 with Kioxia BiCS4 and DDR4 DRAM cache), in fact they have the same performance. Anyway, I would choice the SK Hynix Gold P31 for the high efficiency, or some drive that has a better efficiency. 

[FRD]

On 8/9/2019 at 1:17 PM, VEXICUS said:

Gigabyte - AUROS RGB AIC (Phison E12)

AUROS should be AORUS here.

 

About these:

On 8/9/2019 at 1:17 PM, VEXICUS said:

Gigabyte - NVMe v2* (Phison E13T) [1]

 

On 8/9/2019 at 1:17 PM, VEXICUS said:

Gigabyte - NVMe* (Phison E8T) [1]

When we are in the market for one, how do we know which is which? What's the difference between them? I know it's still work in progress, but still asking.

[Wooden Law - Black]

6 hours ago, FRD said:

When we are in the market for one, how do we know which is which? What's the difference between them? I know it's still work in progress, but still asking.

This is the V2 revision, so with Phison E13T as controller (which is “meh” both the controller - DRAM-less, four-channel with dual-core ARM Cortex-R5 - and SSD). The V1 revision doesn’t have 1 TB SKU (512 GB as maximum) while the V2 yes. 

[FRD]

1 hour ago, Wooden Law - Black said:

This is the V2 revision, so with Phison E13T as controller (which is “meh” both the controller - DRAM-less, four-channel with dual-core ARM Cortex-R5 - and SSD). The V1 revision doesn’t have 1 TB SKU (512 GB as maximum) while the V2 yes. 

I see. That's why it's also a not so great performing and not a popular SSD. Good to know. I was checking the 1TB price, so it's the V2 one in this case.

[Wooden Law - Black]

8 minutes ago, FRD said:

I see. That's why it's also a not so great performing and not a popular SSD. Good to know. I was checking the 1TB price, so it's the V2 one in this case.

I edited my reply linking the SSD in the case you want to check. 
 

In this price range I suggest the WD SN550 (very good DRAM-less with 96L TLC NAND Flash) or the Kingston A2000.

[FRD]

3 minutes ago, Wooden Law - Black said:

I edited my reply linking the SSD in the case you want to check. 
 

In this price range I suggest the WD SN550 (very good DRAM-less with 96L TLC NAND Flash) or the Kingston A2000.

Thanks, I checked it. Just for the 512GB and lower ones it will be harder to recognize which one, unless you have the knowledge about it of course.

I agree about the SN550 and A2000, both great budget drives. Actually right now in my country the Crucial P2 is on sale for cheaper than the ones you mentioned. Pretty decent budget QLC drive as well I think.

[Wooden Law - Black]

50 minutes ago, FRD said:

Thanks, I checked it. Just for the 512GB and lower ones it will be harder to recognize which one, unless you have the knowledge about it of course.

I agree about the SN550 and A2000, both great budget drives. Actually right now in my country the Crucial P2 is on sale for cheaper than the ones you mentioned. Pretty decent budget QLC drive as well I think.

Mhhh… no. The Crucial P2 is a terrible SSD. It is DRAM-less (Phison E13T) and it has QLC NAND (N28A - Micron 96L). Buy it only if it has a very lower price than A2000, SN550, etc. 

[Wooden Law - Black]

By the way I suggest to add the Seagate FireCuda 530 (Phison E18 + Micron 176L - B47R) and the Crucial P5 Plus (Micron DM02A1). Both are PCIe 4.0, the FireCuda is probably the best SSD M.2 at the moment and the P5 Plus is very good (worse than the FireCuda 530 since the worse controller). Also, the P5 Plus doesn’t run hot like the PCIe 3.0. 

[PianoPlayer88Key]

So how does this affect the tier position for the Crucial P2?

 

https://www.tomshardware.com/features/crucial-p2-ssd-qlc-flash-swap-downgrade

[Wooden Law - Black]

5 hours ago, PianoPlayer88Key said:

So how does this affect the tier position for the Crucial P2?

 

https://www.tomshardware.com/features/crucial-p2-ssd-qlc-flash-swap-downgrade

By placing it in Tier D (Budget). QLC and DRAM-less, almost garbage.

[PianoPlayer88Key]

 

8 hours ago, Wooden Law - Black said:

By placing it in Tier D (Budget). QLC and DRAM-less, almost garbage.

 

Ahh, I would have thought it would demote it to Tier E, or even a new Tier F (Scheiße), as it's currently showing in Tier D, colored as a TLC drive?

 

On 8/8/2019 at 11:17 PM, VEXICUS said:

Welcome to the SSD tier list.

 

  Hide contents

NAND TYPES

 

SLC

MLC

TLC

QLC

 

Underline denotes the best SSDs in their respective tiers.

 

SSD's without DRAM cache are marked with an asterisk *

SSD's that support HMB are marked with [1] (Work In Process)

 

NVMe

 

Tier D (Budget)

• Crucial - P1 (SMI SM2263), P2* (Phison E13T) [1]

 

Tier E (OKAYish)

• Corsair - MP300 (Phison E8)
• Gigabyte - NVMe* (Phison E8T) [1]

 

 

 

I'd like to see someone take one of the QLC versions of the P2, and benchmark it against a couple same-capacity hard drives (probably one CMR, one SMR), in sustained writes.

 

No, I don't mean just doing a quick run of CrystalDiskMark on them and calling it a day.  They need to exceed any "fast cache" that may exist.

 

I mean, start with completely empty,  secure erased / DBANned / freshly-formatted drives, and copy large files (>10GB each, except for one or two smaller as needed to exactly match the capacity) onto them until the drive is completely full, as in:

 

F:\>dir

 

(Drive info, list of files)

"0 Bytes Free"

 

F:\>

 

 

BTW some time ago when I was testing write speeds of a few blank hard drives, I used a Windows version of the Linux "dd" utility (ddrescue) to generate a single file that was the exact size in bytes of the space available after formatting (for example, for a "1TB" drive that should be "1,099,511,627,776 bytes", imo, not 1,000...), then used a DOS/cmd utility that has a time function (either "timethis" downloaded from an older Windows version toolkit iirc, or maybe robocopy does it too?) to copy the file to the drive under test.

 

I'm on my phone right now so can't easily (if at all, if I've even uploaded it anywhere), but an 8.4GB PATA drive I tested took about 11 or 12 minutes to write its entire capacity.

[Wooden Law - Black]

1 hour ago, PianoPlayer88Key said:

Ahh, I would have thought it would demote it to Tier E

Tier E contains only NVMe SSD that has Phison E8/E8T as controller, so PCIe 3.0 x2. This isn’t PCIe 3.0 x2, is x4, and fortunately in SLC cache performs better than a x2. 

 

1 hour ago, PianoPlayer88Key said:

or even a new Tier F (Scheiße),

Well, really useful for garbage SSD, like TCSUNBOW, KingDian, Torosus, Asenno, etc.

 

1 hour ago, PianoPlayer88Key said:

as it's currently showing in Tier D, colored as a TLC drive?

I don’t know, you have to ask him. I think yes, he changes it if I remember correctly.

 

1 hour ago, PianoPlayer88Key said:

I'd like to see someone take one of the QLC versions of the P2, and benchmark it against a couple same-capacity hard drives (probably one CMR, one SMR), in sustained writes.

 

No, I don't mean just doing a quick run of CrystalDiskMark on them and calling it a day.  They need to exceed any "fast cache" that may exist.

Well, at least a HDD do 100/150 MB/s, according to Tom’s Hardware this revision of P2 do 40 MB/s…

[anticeon]

I found Write Endurance result from Russian website, the funny thing is old technology with Big Overprovision will outlast Latest Nand with Small Overprovision.

 

Some good reputation SSD are in the bottom list of this test. anybody can explain why ... ?

[Wooden Law - Black]

2 hours ago, anticeon said:

Some good reputation SSD are in the bottom list of this test. anybody can explain why ... ?

Yeah: bad test methodology. Look at the ADATA SU800, it fails before reaching its TBW at its capacity (256 GB), and it had a big over-provisioning like data center/enterprise SSDs (20.8%) and it was in pSLC. I suggest to take it with grain of salt.

[White7561]

Hi guys. So I've been using the Addlink S70 and I noticed that the first post isn't really that accurate anymore regarding S70 since a year ago or so , their new revisions use Phison E12S instead of the Phison E12. Also it's single sided now. Anyways, does that change the tier for this drive?? Here are the chips it's using. Mine is bought like a year ago I think. It's the 1TB one.

[PianoPlayer88Key]

It's probably a good thing I'm not in charge of the tier list, because ...

If I caught a company changing components (like controllers, flash, DRAM, etc) in their SSDs without changing the marketing name (part number only isn't good enough) or marketing it as an entirely new line - even if it's only a small change like 7001 vs 6999 MB/s write speeds before cache runs out, or 600 vs 576 TBW endurance, or 100 vs 96 GB SLC cache ...

I would likely at least demote that model, regardless of revision, all the way down to Tier E.  (I would also put a note explaining the components had changed for the worst, and say that if you bought this model before X date (which would already be in the past then), it was actually tier whatever it had been, to appease those who had bought one much earlier and were afraid they had crap.)

If the same maker did it again, even if it was multiple decades later (for example if Seagate had pulled a stunt like that with the ST-506, ST-412, ST-225, etc, then did it again when the smallest then-new SSDs are big enough to exceed the GPT or 64-bit limits), then that entire brand would go in the bottom tier.  It could take new management, ownership, or even being acquired by another company with a better reputation, to have a chance at redemption.

 

There's another thing I don't exactly love either, which is done by pretty much the entire storage industry in my limited observation.  (Windows, for all the things it does wrong, actually gets this one right, imo, and turn of the tables, the Linux distros I've used get it wrong.)

That sin is ... quoting / advertising capacities in decimal units, instead if binary units like RAM, I believe, is done.

A 1TB SSD should have 1,099,511,627,776 bytes free after formatting, not ~1,000,000,000,000 bytes.

 

Regardless of what you believe about the timing of the end of the world,

Spoiler

(I personally believe the Bible,

Spoiler

and in a relatively short time frame, like idk if things would start happening in my lifetime, maybe some of the initial preparation already could have,

but even for those who believe evolutionary time scales,)

 

There just isn't enough time for all the Hail Marys, Our Fathers, etc that would need to be said. (Although I'm not Catholic either...)

 

[Wooden Law - Black]

7 hours ago, White7561 said:

Hi guys. So I've been using the Addlink S70 and I noticed that the first post isn't really that accurate anymore regarding S70 since a year ago or so , their new revisions use Phison E12S instead of the Phison E12. Also it's single sided now. Anyways, does that change the tier for this drive?? Here are the chips it's using. Mine is bought like a year ago I think. It's the 1TB one.

No, it has around the same performance. All drives that had Phison E12 now changed to a Phison E12S, which is improvement since the Phison E12S has smaller size (so the manufacturer of the SSD/Phison can fit more NAND packages), a nichel case (which improve the temperature) and maybe a lower nanometres (28 -> 12 by TSMC), so a lower power consumption. In addition to this, it probably changed the NANDs: now it has Micron 96L TLC B27A, maybe before had Toshiba/Kioxia BiCS3 TLC (64L).