[US] $100 Mushkin Tempest 2TB M.2 NVMe PCIe Gen 3 Drive

[YoungBlade]

Amazon is selling the Mushkin Tempest 2TB PCIe Gen 3 NVMe 1.4 drive for $100 today.

 

Link - https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B09M86W9RL

 

The drive lacks a DRAM cache and instead uses SLC caching. The drive's max performance isn't anything amazing by today's standards - 3,250MB/s reads and 2,900MB/s writes - but that's well in-line with a lot of Gen 3 drives. Also, the 3 year warranty and 1000TBW endurance are decent.

 

I think this would be ideal as a secondary drive for games storage, as game loading doesn't benefit from a DRAM cache. It could function as a boot drive for mid-range or lower tier systems, but I wouldn't recommend it as a primary drive for a high end rig.

[SignatureSigner]

If all I needed was more game storage I would def pick this up.

[YoungBlade]

2 hours ago, SignatureSigner said:

If all I needed was more game storage I would def pick this up.

Same. I've got a 2TB 860 EVO SATA drive that I use for bulk games storage and then a 1TB Crucial P1 NVMe drive for my most important games. Since almost no games benefit from anything beyond a SATA drive these days, and I've got a second decent sized NVMe in case one does, I've got no reason to grab this. But for someone running out of space with a spare M.2 slot? This would be excellent.

[Paul Rudd]

On 1/27/2023 at 7:21 AM, YoungBlade said:

It could function as a boot drive for mid-range or lower tier systems

For 3 years though, right? Or do you figure its 1,000 TBW would last more than 3 years?

 

The lack of DRAM cache shouldn't be an issue with HMB technology.

 

It's tough to pass on a $100 2 TB drive like this but there's the old saying, "there's always a catch". BrycenM, some random Amazon reviewer of the Mushkin Tempest, gave it 1 star out of 5 because after less than 4 months of use the drive started crashing regularly. It was the 256 GB model so a much lower 125 TBW rating. I'd say it dying was expected with a TBW that low.

[YoungBlade]

3 minutes ago, Paul Rudd said:

For 3 years though, right? Or do you figure its 1,000 TBW would last more than 3 years?

 

The lack of DRAM cache shouldn't be an issue with HMB technology.

 

It's tough to pass on a $100 2 TB drive like this but there's the old saying, "there's always a catch". BrycenM, some random Amazon reviewer of the Mushkin Tempest, gave it 1 star out of 5 because after less than 4 months of use the drive started crashing regularly. It was the 256 GB model so a much lower 125 TBW rating. I'd say it dying was expected with a TBW that low.

It has a 3 year warranty, so I'd expect it would last at least that long. I've generally had good luck with DRAM-less SSDs - I've only had one dud that degraded quickly out of nearly a dozen purchased. But you can always get unlucky.

 

As for the TBW, that entirely depends on what you're doing with the drive. For general usage and gaming, that should be plenty to last 3 years - games may take up a ton of space, but they only need to be written to the drive once and then have updates after that.