SSD purchase for BF

[Imakuni]

So I'm browsing through a 1TB NVME drive to replace my aging 250gb one. Filtering our local BF deals, I've sieved the XPG S70 Blade for 440$, the Kingston KC3000 for 460$ and the Kingston Fury Renegade for 470$. For reference, the glorious NV2 is going for 260 / 550 on the 1/2TB model.

 

Given I don't really need all that performance (In fact, I don't have a 4.0 board just yet), I figured the S70 would do just fine for a pretty high end drive, but I'd like a second opinion if the other 2 are considerably better.

[lafrente]

Those are some CRAZY prices for an nvme ssd. Unless you're 4k video editing all the time, it's just waste of money.

 

I looked it up and you probably have an extra zero on those prices lol

Edited November 24, 2023 by lafrente

[Imakuni]

7 minutes ago, lafrente said:

Those are some CRAZY prices for an nvme ssd. Unless you're 4k video editing all the time, it's just waste of money.

 

I looked it up and you probably have an extra zero on those prices lol

It's just a different currency, that's all.

 

As for usage, I don't do video editting, but I figure I could use something a bit better to double up as a torrent drive. I also get some highly parallell small file writing at times (as in, around 5MB per cpu core every other second), so there's that.

[SImoHayha]

NVME is NVME it's gonna be fast regardless, unless you're a hardcore video editor/really I mean real/true enthusiast just get whatever is the cheapest no need for the high end stuff at all really .  just get the cheapest for the size you want. 

[mariushm]

1st ... get drive with TLC, not QLC 

 

2nd ... pick a few models, then look for reviews to determine how much SLC cache the drives so you'll know how they behave.

 

SSD drives convert a portion of the memory into SLC cache - for example they take 30 GB of TLC and make 10 GB of SLC write cache,  or they take 40 GB of QLC and make 10 GB of SLC cache 

When you're writing data fast to the drive, the SSD controller writes data super fast in this portion of SLC write cache and once this cache is filled, the speeds slow down to the actual speed of TLC or QLC. When you're done copying or when the drive has no other choice, it will start moving data from this SLC write cache back to TLC/QLC memory areas.

 

So you get 3-5 GB/s while the ssd controller writes into this slc write cache, and once that's filled speeds drop to 400-800 MB/s for TLC and 50-200 MB/s for QLC drives.

 

Some SSDs can only convert a limited amount of spare memory to this write cache, for example 10 GB to 100 GB for every 1 TB, other SSDs can practically convert ALL the spare memory to SLC write cache and convert it back to TLC/QLC as needed, making it possible to achieve those fast transfer rates for a longer time.

 

So if you need a SSD just for OS and for running games from it, or mostly read operations, this doesn't matter to you.  

If you need a SSD where most transfer operations are in the gigabytes then you could live with a cheaper QLC drive, because it will be very rare that you'll copy a big enough amount that you'll fill the write cache\

But if you want to use the drive for example to capture raw 4K footage or basically to have something sustain 500 MB/s for minutes at at a time or something like that, then you want to be careful about what drive you get.