Budget ssd recommendations

[AllyPuyo]

I'm looking for a budget 512gb ssd, which will be used for games. Pcie 3.0 is enough for me. It'll be installed in my laptop so low power consumption would be nice. I have 35 usd but the cheaper the better. These are my options

Which one should I buy?

[Wh0_Am_1]

If it's available check out the Teamgroup MP33. Otherwise I would personally select the Crucial P3

[AndreiArgeanu]

I've been using the 500GB P3 as my main drive on my laptop and I've been dual booting Windows and Ubuntu of off it and it works well. They're cheap and from a trusted brand with 110TBW and 5 year warranty. It definitely would make for a great game drive. If you can afford it, definitely spring for the 1TB model, that way you get the best value, it's only an extra 10-12$ usually for twice the storage. In the UK this means that the 1TB is 0.038£/GB as opposed to the 500gb with a 0.052£/GB.

 

I don't personally trust Toshiba/Kioxia due to personal experience, when I tried to claim warranty, they wanted me to ship it all the way to Germany with my own money, at which point it just made more sense to buy a new one due to cost.

 

The 970 Evo is a good system drive since it has a cache on it and 980 is also good, I've been using the 980 in my PC for a while and its great. The 970 Evo does have 1200TBW alongside a 5 year warranty and the 980 has 300TBW and 5 year warranty which is higher than the P3 but I wouldn't say that's a problem, especially for a game drive and given that they all use TLC nand.

[kokosnh]

P3 is a locked to PCIe 3.0 Phison E21T ( 1-core, 4-channel’ DRAMless ) + 176l QLC micron NAND.

 

It’s slow, DRAMless QLC SSD. 

 

some people complain here, they have problems in games installed on it ( micro stutters, texture pop ups, etc.)

 

the best value is Kioxia G2 plus, it is a good SSD.

as it’s Phison E12s (2-core, 8-channel, 12 nm TSMC) + dram + 96l TLC Kioxia / toshiba nand. 
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/kioxia-exceria-plus-g2-2-tb/17.html

 

next it samsung 970 evo, the fastest of them all, but it’s little hot for laptop.  samsung 980 is just no for that price, it’s DRAM less TLC in a price of a dram ones.

[NobleGamer]

I personally have two 970 EVO Plus SSDs because of their consistent random read/write speeds and sustained writes, aside from the benefits of it having cache and I think the others dont. I got the second one recently because Samsung had a flash dale that matched price with the best budget/mid tier pcie 3 options. These are worse on budget priced drives, which won't matter much for everyday use or gaming, but a small difference lots of small files or writing files for a long time (large or many).

 

P3 is ok of the budget options but check that its TBW is ok for what you want for endurance, though I also agree with MP33 because its just as good or better cacheless performance but with higher TBW.

 

3 hours ago, AndreiArgeanu said:

500GB P3 as my main drive on my laptop and I've been dual booting Windows and Ubuntu of off it and it works well. They're cheap and from a trusted brand with 110TBW and 5 year warranty.

 

3 hours ago, AndreiArgeanu said:

the 980 has 300TBW and 5 year warranty

For OPs sake - Those seem like weak TBW ratings compared to the MP33 and 970 EVO Plus, and the drive size matters compared to TBW.