SSD TIER LIST

[sailsman63]

Does anyone know what the color-coding here actually means?

[Hairless Monkey Boy]

10 hours ago, sailsman63 said:

Does anyone know what the color-coding here actually means?

Yes.

[sailsman63]

4 hours ago, Hairless Monkey Boy said:

Yes.

I suppose I walked into that one. Would someone be willing to explain? It's not mentioned in the OP at all.

[Hairless Monkey Boy]

2 minutes ago, sailsman63 said:

Would someone be willing to explain? It's not mentioned in the OP at all.

Yes. And yes it is.

Spoiler

 

[sailsman63]

8 hours ago, Hairless Monkey Boy said:

yes it is.

Ahhh.... I'm either going blind, or it was (very successfully) hiding from me! Good to know.

[williamcll]

Any idea on what's inside Netac's slower models like the NV2000 and NV5000?

[penguino]

On 11/28/2022 at 9:18 PM, pim69 said:

where does the WD black SN770 fit into this list? PCIE gen4, dramless. I'm considering this vs crucial P5plus, but don't know if either of these manufacturers are participating in replacing controllers or nand flash with inferior parts.

Tier D, maybe C. P5 Plus is better.

On 12/16/2022 at 2:41 AM, JerryPoste said:

Is Sabrent Rocket 4.0 really better than the SK hynix Gold P31? I'm not sure which one to buy since both are at the same price and some people have told me the P31 is better than the Sabrent 4.0 even if it's gen3

It is better, It's a solid 1st gen PCI-E 4 drive based on Phison's reference design. Solid controller, good SSD.

[will0hlep]

Patriot P310 m.2 nvme drives? What about the Kingston NV2?

[Wooden Law - Black]

On 1/8/2023 at 2:02 PM, will0hlep said:

Patriot P310 m.2 nvme drives? What about the Kingston NV2?

The NV2 should be better than the P310, but it depends on the revision as it could come with QLC flash.  

[jancsicso]

Hi guys. 

 

Im looking for a new ssd for my NAS. Since I have a free m2 and  multiple sata ports, I can choose whatever I want. 

 

The endurance rating should be high, also I want to get persistent sustained write and read speeds with large (50+ gb) files. Right now I have a Kingston A400, which enters into pure garbage tier. Sustainable write speed gets literally 30 mbps after ~2gb was written on it and it needs like 5 minutes or so to recover from this state after the write is over. 

 

I was looking at WD RED SN700, also WD RED SA500, both 1tb. They have roughly the same price and the endurance seems more then enough for me. Since none of these are listed in the tier list, I just wanted to ask the general public opinion about these ssds. Are they good? How do they compare to more consumer grade options? 

[Cyber Akuma]

I guess it would be better to post here than creating a thread about it.

 

So I noticed that there are some 1TB SSDs on Amazon that have recently gone below $50, and according to CamelCamelCamel these drives were all above $50 before. I know these are not the best drives by any means, but I am looking for a drive that I am going to be exclusively putting just my games from Steam, GoG, Itchio, etc on to move them off of my OS drive (Which is itself a 240GB PNY CS900). 
 
The four drives I found are these:  
 PNY CS900 1TB (SSD7CS900-1TB-RB) 
https://www.amazon.com/PNY-CS900-500GB-Internal-Solid/dp/B07Y5VDNT9/  
 
 TEAMGROUP AX2 1TB 3D NAND TLC (T253A3001T0C101)  
https://www.amazon.com/TEAMGROUP-AX2-Internal-Compatible-T253A3512G0C101/dp/B08CKFDPJ3  
 
 SP 1TB SSD 3D NAND A55 SLC (SP001TBSS3A55S25)  
https://www.amazon.com/Silicon-Power-Performance-Internal-SP001TBSS3A55S25/dp/B07B4G19X3/
 
 TEAMGROUP T-Force Vulcan Z 1TB SLC (T253TZ001T0C101)  
https://www.amazon.com/TEAMGROUP-T-Force-Vulcan-Internal-T253TZ001T0C101/dp/B09WMP5B5N/ 

 

The PNY and SP drive I was able to find in the C-tier list, the TeamGroup AX2 I could not find in the list and the TeamGroup Vulcan appears to actually be B-Tier (although it's called  Vulcan Z, not sure if that's a different model)? Additionally out of those three brands Team Group was the only one to have drives in the D-tier range too.

 

I have to admit, I am very VERY skeptical of the ones that claim they are SLC, for something this cheap I would be surprised if they aren't even QLC. They are all $44-48. Not really looking to spend much more, only reason I am really considering it is because some are as cheap as $44. Again, they will exclusively just host downloaded games, so having huge write speeds or them not being as reliable as a Samsung (Assuming any of these aren't known to die in just a few months or something) is not important as long as they aren't going to be even worse for even just loading games off of for some reason. 
 
Is anyone familiar with any of these? Any specific one I should get over others? 

[Wooden Law - Black]

On 1/23/2023 at 9:09 PM, Cyber Akuma said:

Is anyone familiar with any of these? Any specific one I should get over others? 

The CS900 is a Phison S11 drive with Micron 64L TLC flash, so is DRAM-less and a bit old, whereas the A55 has many revisions, some of them are DRAM-based others not, like the one with the Phison S11 or the Silicon Motion SM2259XT. The Vulcan Z among them is probably the best, both because there's the possibility that Team Group changed its hardware (I guess they changed the SM2258 with the SM2259 and the flash from 64L to a newer version) and because it's DRAM-based. Avoid the AX2, there are no reviews, it could be QLC and DRAM-less.  

 

P.S.: although the Amazon page says "SLC" none of these SSDs use SLC flash, they have the SLC cache, which is a different thing. 

[DDT]

anyone know how much Dram the 4tb WD Blue 3d has?

[penguino]

Patriot P220 is not a mid-end SATA drive, nor it has Phison S12 controller. It's a budget product with a cheap DRAM-less Maxio controller (Maxio MAS1102B) and chinese YMTC memory chips (128-layer TLC):

 

Also if someone knows the person updating this:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1B27_j9NDPU3cNlj2HKcrfpJKHkOf-Oi1DbuuQva2gT4/edit#gid=0

 

You may give him/her a hint.

[Wooden Law - Black]

On 2/9/2023 at 6:34 PM, penguino said:

Patriot P220 is not a mid-end SATA drive, nor it has Phison S12 controller. It's a budget product with a cheap DRAM-less Maxio controller (Maxio MAS1102B) and chinese YMTC memory chips (128-layer TLC):

He probably wrote "Phison S12" after reading this article: https://www.techpowerup.com/262765/patriot-at-ces-2020-introduces-p210-and-p220-ssds-showcases-portfolio. 

[penguino]

Well the P220 didn't hit the stores until late 2022, they probably changed quite a lot in the final product since CES 2020.

[trevb0t]

@VEXICUS I see the Neo-Forza NFS01 is C-Tier, the NFS06 is B Tier, is it safe to say the NFS10 a step up from the 06? (maybe not a whole tier, just technically better specced?)

[RevGAM]

Fantastic! Thank you so much! I wish someone in new builds had mentioned that this list exists! You rock!

What do you think of the Passmark list?

 

Do you have any intention of adding to the list drives that should be avoided, or those that have been nerfed by fraudulently replacing parts without telling consumers in any way (if it's even possible for the average consumer to differentiate between the originals and the later editions with inferior parts)? Or just a list of manufacturers that are known to (past or present) committing such fraud?

 

By fraud, I refer to changing parts wherein performance and/or longevity is nerfed in a significant way, rather than the usual logistical need of getting the "same" parts from other manufacturers.

 

Finally, I just got a WD Black SN770 2TB and was wondering where that fits. I'm guessing B or C given that the 850s are A and the 750s are C & D. I was also wondering about the tiny number of chips on the SSD (I just love how the WD website doesn't show the backside of the SSD!). It's like they said "Well, we could put this on a smaller form factor but, well, everyone's buying 2280 right now, so...." Also, I'm wondering if that configuration has any negative impact on performance, especially sustained reading or writing...?

 

Thanks!

[RevGAM]

For anyone with a Samsung 980 Pro 2TB SSD with firmware version starting with 3 (specifically 3B2QGXA7) manufactured in 2021, watch this Jayz2Cents video about the controller corrupting it - you can flash the firmware to fix the problem BEFORE it turns on read-only protection, but not after.

[RevGAM]

And, in reference to Vexicus' mention of manufacturers switching parts, here's an LTT video about Adata, Kingston & PNY doing just that.

[Wooden Law - Black]

On 2/25/2023 at 1:11 PM, RevGAM said:

 

Finally, I just got a WD Black SN770 2TB and was wondering where that fits. I'm guessing B or C given that the 850s are A and the 750s are C & D.

I think it’s a middle way between Tier A and Tier B. It’s near to be a fake PCIe 4.0, but it’s still better than the S50 Lite.

[RevGAM]

6 minutes ago, Wooden Law - Black said:

I think it’s a middle way between Tier A and Tier B. It’s near to be a fake PCIe 4.0, but it’s still better than the S50 Lite.

Why do you say fake?

[Wooden Law - Black]

On 2/28/2023 at 2:49 PM, RevGAM said:

Why do you say fake?

Maybe "fake" is not the perfect term to define this kind of SSDs, but what I mean is that a "fake PCIe 4.0" is closer to a PCIe 3.0 than a PCIe 4.0 one in terms of performance. Look at the S50 Lite, for example: 3900/3200 MB/s in reading/write. 

[RevGAM]

That Adata is significantly slower than the SN770, so I'm still not following you.  What are max stats for gen 3?

[Steeve2023]

Hello,
Thank you for this list which must have required a lot of work.
I would like to participate even modestly by informing you that the nvme 3 gen 4 Firecuda 520 SSD has had its technical characteristics modified. It has a TBW for the 1TB version which is now 600 and for the 2TB version of 1200, a big difference in endurance unless I am mistaken. Taking these changes into account, in which category would you put these two ssd?
The TBW of the 1TB was previously 1300TB and the 2TB was 3600TB
Long live this list

new-firecuda-520-ssd-DS2124-1-2210-en_US.pdf