Help choosing an ssd...

[Parabellum117]

Looking to upgrade my storage. I have a ~$120 budget and would like 1tb of storage. I won a gift card to Best Buy, so I'm going to buy it from there. I'm in between the following two NVME SSDs and would love some feedback.

 

Option 1: Samsung SSD 980 (Not Pro)

 

Option 2: Adata XPG Gammix S50 Lite

 

The Samsung is gen 3, while the Adata is gen 4. Both are 1tb and cost $120. My motherboard only supports gen 3 (Gigabyte Aorus B450 Pro WiFi), but I am wondering if the gen 4 ssd would still perform better regardless. It also allows more room for a (motherboard) upgrade in the future.

 

Would love some feedback to help make the decision! Heard great things about the Samsung 980, but I want to make sure I am getting the best deal.

[tkitch]

gen 4  doesn't add anything over gen 3 still.  Especially in a G3 board.

 

What's the expected lifespan on each drive?  Get the one that's higher

[Parabellum117]

The adata is 740tb while the Samsung is 600tb for lifespan.

[Dedayog]

12 minutes ago, Parabellum117 said:

Looking to upgrade my storage. I have a ~$120 budget and would like 1tb of storage. I won a gift card to Best Buy, so I'm going to buy it from there. I'm in between the following two NVME SSDs and would love some feedback.

 

Option 1: Samsung SSD 980 (Not Pro)

 

Option 2: Adata XPG Gammix S50 Lite

 

The Samsung is gen 3, while the Adata is gen 4. Both are 1tb and cost $120. My motherboard only supports gen 3 (Gigabyte Aorus B450 Pro WiFi), but I am wondering if the gen 4 ssd would still perform better regardless. It also allows more room for a (motherboard) upgrade in the future.

 

Would love some feedback to help make the decision! Heard great things about the Samsung 980, but I want to make sure I am getting the best deal.

I'd get the Samsung just because I like their products and they've shown to be well put together.  Adata is fine as well.  Gen 4 vs Gen 3 won't make any difference at all, it won't perform better "regardless". It just won't perform better period.

 

Going Gen 4 in the future isn';t going to do anything even with a motherboard that supports it.  You won't notice any difference. 

 

1 minute ago, Parabellum117 said:

The adata is 740tb while the Samsung is 600tb for lifespan.

You won't hit 600TB written for over a couple decades most likely, and by then you'll be using something else anyway. 

[Chris Pratt]

The only issue with the 980 is that it uses HMB instead of dedicated DRAM. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but you need to be aware of the consequences. You can address about 64GB of the drive at once. If you're dealing with files larger than that or reading more than that much data, in general, at once, speeds fall off a cliff. For most normal usage, that's not going to be an issue. Even with a game like CoD that might be 150GB installed, you won't normally be using more than 50GB or so of game data at any one time. Like I said, just something to be aware of. With more intense usage patterns, the drive will be a dog, though.

[Parabellum117]

8 hours ago, Chris Pratt said:

The only issue with the 980 is that it uses HMB instead of dedicated DRAM. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but you need to be aware of the consequences. You can address about 64GB of the drive at once. If you're dealing with files larger than that or reading more than that much data, in general, at once, speeds fall off a cliff. For most normal usage, that's not going to be an issue. Even with a game like CoD that might be 150GB installed, you won't normally be using more than 50GB or so of game data at any one time. Like I said, just something to be aware of. With more intense usage patterns, the drive will be a dog, though.

Good to know, thanks!