Samsung 860 QVO 2TB or SanDisk Ultra 3D 2TB SSD?

[TheManInTheSuite]

Hi, i need some advice on this, im thinking about replacing my 2TB WD Black HDD with an SSD, though i don't know with which one, the options would be either the QVO 860 or the SanDisk Ultra 3D, both in a 2TB Capacity,
I probably would move a lot of files around and install a bunch of games, which could slow down over larger files as soon as the SLC and MLC "cache" gets filled up, maybe store pictures or record some videos onto it, so i thought maybe i shouldn't get the QLC based QVO, but the SanDisk is a pretty old drive at this point, that's probably why it uses TLC NAND. Which one would you recommend? 

[Jumballi]

Under no circumstance should you look at getting a qlc ssd for the situation you are in now. At 50% capacity, they drop speed to slower than a hdd. All my friends who went against my advice regret doing so. Stick with tlc for the time being until they fix the issues with qlc.

[Kedohawyr]

The SanDisk Ultra 3D is the same drive as the WD Blue 3D (WD owns both brands) and it's a very respectable SATA SSD that I'd easily recommend (same goes for the Crucial MX500).

 

The Samsung 860 QVO is sketchy in a number of ways, from its regular performance to its performance as it's filled up to its write endurance. QLC memory, or at least the design currently being used by Samsung, does not seem to be ready. If QVO drives were being sold at a significant discount compared to the 3 drives I mentioned before then there might at least be some reason to consider them as storage drives. But in my market they are not (don't know what prices you have), and for the same or similar price there isn't any good reason to go with a markedly worse drive.

 

 

[TheManInTheSuite]

14 minutes ago, Jumballi said:

Under no circumstance should you look at getting a qlc ssd for the situation you are in now. At 50% capacity, they drop speed to slower than a hdd. All my friends who went against my advice regret doing so. Stick with tlc for the time being until they fix the issues with qlc.

Thank you! Gonna go with the SanDisk then.

[TheManInTheSuite]

4 minutes ago, Kedohawyr said:

The SanDisk Ultra 3D is the same drive as the WD Blue 3D (WD owns both brands) and it's a very respectable SATA SSD that I'd easily recommend (same goes for the Crucial MX500).

 

The Samsung 860 QVO is sketchy in a number of ways, from its regular performance to its performance as it's filled up to its write endurance. QLC memory, or at least the design currently being used by Samsung, does not seem to be ready. If QVO drives were being sold at a significant discount compared to the 3 drives I mentioned before then there might at least be some reason to consider them as storage drives. But in my market they are not (don't know what prices you have), and for the same or similar price there isn't any good reason to go with a markedly worse drive.

 

 

Thank you! good to know, glad im asked before buying! they are pretty similar, the SanDisk only costs 20€ more, so i guess im gonna go with it, don't want the problems involved with Samsung's QLC if it's that bad- 

[Jurrunio]

Problem with the QVO is that it costs just as much as the NVMe based Intel 660p and Crucial P1, and those are faster.

[TheManInTheSuite]

7 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

Problem with the QVO is that it costs just as much as the NVMe based Intel 660p and Crucial P1, and those are faster.

I know, but the P1 and the 660p is also QLC, i have a Mortar MAX and already use a Kingston KC2000 1TB as my main drive in the first M.2 Slot. 
I, for some reason, don't want to use the second one, maybe i want to put in an Wifi/Bluetooth expansion card in it

[Jurrunio]

2 minutes ago, TheManInTheSuite said:

maybe i want to put in an Wifi/Bluetooth expansion card in it

Oh for wireless connection you need M.2 A or E key, in other words you can't do that. Not sure if adapter can help you with that.

[TheManInTheSuite]

Just now, Jurrunio said:

Oh for wireless connection you need M.2 A or E key, in other words you can't do that. Not sure if adapter can help you with that.

Oh, alright! Probably i mixed up something- But would it be a good idea to use that second Slot, or any QLC Based M.2 SSD? (and i wrote the P1 was a SATA based drive, deleted it, the MX500 had a SATA based version.) 

[Jurrunio]

15 minutes ago, TheManInTheSuite said:

Oh, alright! Probably i mixed up something- But would it be a good idea to use that second Slot, or any QLC Based M.2 SSD? (and i wrote the P1 was a SATA based drive, deleted it, the MX500 had a SATA based version.) 

QLC's fine when capacity is this large, more capacity means more cells to write over, and lifespan is increased.

[TheManInTheSuite]

10 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

QLC's fine when capacity is this large, more capacity means more cells to write over, and lifespan is increased.

So, for my case with 2TB (that will probably filled up to only around 100/200GB left empty) it would work out fine? Or would the SanDisk TLC based SSD be better? And what's with the Speeds when moving around large files?

[Jumballi]

7 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

QLC's fine when capacity is this large, more capacity means more cells to write over, and lifespan is increased.

Except when you see that he intends to use it for games, and that most triple A games, even the free ones, are anywhere from 50gb-100gb. If he has 10 triple A games, he's hit the 50% mark where the extreme slowdown starts. My friend went with the intel 660p thinking that just because it's form factor looks the same, it'd act the same, the minute it hit 50% he texted me saying that he wished he hit it 2 days ago, when it was still able to be returned.

[Jumballi]

3 minutes ago, TheManInTheSuite said:

So, for my case with 2TB (that will probably filled up to only around 100/200GB left empty) it would work out fine? Or would the SanDisk TLC based SSD be better? And what's with the Speeds when moving around large files?

Get a pro drive in this situation, at around 80% tlc experiences a similar slowdown, that of which is mostly remedied in the samsung pro. Or just store some games on the hdd that you're cool with waiting the extra few seconds to load.

[Zando_]

2 minutes ago, Jumballi said:

Except when you see that he intends to use it for games, and that most triple A games, even the free ones, are anywhere from 50gb-100gb. If he has 10 triple A games, he's hit the 50% mark where the extreme slowdown starts. My friend went with the intel 660p thinking that just because it's form factor looks the same, it'd act the same, the minute it hit 50% he texted me saying that he wished he hit it 2 days ago, when it was still able to be returned.

Ooof. I run a 1TB 970 Evo as a game drive so I haven't had any issues like that. The Sabrent Rocket is usually only a few $ more than the 660p, think it's any good? From what I've read it's basically a faster writing 660p without the drawbacks. I forget what kind of flash it uses though. I've been eyeing the 2TB ones for when I have the budget. 

[TheManInTheSuite]

i think im gonna go with the SanDisk and just leave around 100-200GBs Free, that would work out the best i guess, even if i only have max speeds of around 550MB/s, it's probably better than slowing down to slower than HDD speeds when the Cache's empty at 50%- 

[Jumballi]

2 minutes ago, TheManInTheSuite said:

i think im gonna go with the SanDisk and just leave around 100-200GBs Free, that would work out the best i guess, even if i only have max speeds of around 550MB/s, it's probably better than slowing down to slower than HDD speeds when the Cache's empty- 

I think there's a bit of miscommunication. Think of every cell having a door, and every layer is a fat dude trying to get out at the same time as the other ones. Since data on an ssd is written by spreading it around the whole drive, you might only have 1 bit written to every cell. Now you can probably see what I'm getting at here, eventually the rooms get filled and all 4 of the fat bits try to leave through the small door, causing a small slowdown. Now add it to millions of bits, and you get significant slowdown. This is different than a ram/slc cache, as an ssd can operate without one, those are just to give a blast of speed during the initial read/write of a file, and don't affect long term usage in most cases.

[Jurrunio]

13 minutes ago, Jumballi said:

hit the 50% mark where the extreme slowdown starts

that's what happens when you write all of that in at once and leave no time for the SSD to rearrange its cache.

[Jumballi]

Just now, Jurrunio said:

that's what happens when you write all of that in at once and leave no time for the SSD to rearrange its cache.

No and I speak from first hand experience, even small files are affected after a shutdown and start up days after the drive initially slows down.

[TheManInTheSuite]

3 minutes ago, Jumballi said:

I think there's a bit of miscommunication. Think of every cell having a door, and every layer is a fat dude trying to get out at the same time as the other ones. Since data on an ssd is written by spreading it around the whole drive, you might only have 1 bit written to every cell. Now you can probably see what I'm getting at here, eventually the rooms get filled and all 4 of the fat bits try to leave through the small door, causing a small slowdown. Now add it to millions of bits, and you get significant slowdown. This is different than a ram/slc cache, as an ssd can operate without one, those are just to give a blast of speed during the initial read/write of a file, and don't affect long term usage in most cases.

but the think is, that TLC would still be faster than QLC, since there are less bits per cell. or less fat dudes trying to get through a door. 

[TheManInTheSuite]

5 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

that's what happens when you write all of that in at once and leave no time for the SSD to rearrange its cache.

but still, if i would for example copy an 80Gb File, i would probably drain that cache and really get a slow down during the accuring transfer, TLC wouldn't get that big of a hit as QLC in that scenario, that's what im getting out of this conversation- 

[Jumballi]

Just now, TheManInTheSuite said:

but the think is, that TLC would still be faster than QLC, since there are less bits per cell. or less fat dudes trying to get through a door. 

And that’s what I’m trying to explain, tlc has these issues when it launched and they fixed them, give a year or so, and these problems should just quietly go away in new drive.

[TheManInTheSuite]

1 minute ago, Jumballi said:

And that’s what I’m trying to explain, tlc has these issues when it launched and they fixed them, give a year or so, and these problems should just quietly go away in new drive.

so for now a TLC based drive would be better in any case, because it would be always faster/sustain fast(er) speeds?

[Jumballi]

1 minute ago, TheManInTheSuite said:

so for now a TLC based drive would be better in any case, because it would be always faster/sustain fast(er) speeds?

today yes, tomorrow maybe.

 

[Jurrunio]

6 minutes ago, Jumballi said:

No and I speak from first hand experience, even small files are affected after a shutdown and start up days after the drive initially slows down.

My SU635 240GB (shit SSD btw, not fast at all even when empty in the first place) doesn't show significant speed dip with my 1-3GB files until I hit about 80% usage, of which it can compete with a 5400RPM HDD and will still lose.

 

4 minutes ago, TheManInTheSuite said:

but still, if i would for example copy an 80Gb File, i would probably drain that cache and really get a slow down during the accuring transfer, TLC wouldn't get that big of a hit as QLC in that scenario, that's what im getting out of this conversation- 

I didn't say you should buy the NVMe QLC drive, I just mention them to bash the 860 QVO. As a game storage most of its content can easily sit there for years, not good for less durable cells in the first place.

[TheManInTheSuite]

Just now, Jumballi said:

today yes, tomorrow maybe.

 

Ok! Thanks, so im guess im gonna go with the SanDisk then, seems the most logical choice, since i need an SSD now.