Should I get a DRAM-less NVME SSD for this usage?

[C-M]

Currently using a WD Blue NVME SSD in a 10Gbps enclosure by Pluggable. It's limited to around 700MB/s which is fine for me. 

 

Looking at picking up a second drive ideally 4TB as I need the storage. I'll mostly be using it for photography and video editing and storage on the go. Absolute speed isn't an issue especially given it'll go in 10-20 Gbps enclosure. 

 

Any drive recommendations for this type of usage, or should I just buy based on TBW?

 

p.s. I'd been considering the Lexar NM790 as a DRAM-less drive, due to lower energy (and perhaps heat?). 

[Motifator]

Go DRAM backed up... it's usually better under most scenarios. Sure, HBM or USB... do a different thing. But onboard DRAM is still the means of the go-to for me.

Axiom, Apacer, etc. Buy a NON gaming oriented, good SSD.

[kokosnh]

The Phison E18 based SSD are actually one of the coolest. 
 

as for enclosure, do note, that HBM do not work over USB. 

[Motifator]

28 minutes ago, kokosnh said:

The Phison E18 based SSD are actually one of the coolest. 
 

as for enclosure, do note, that HBM do not work over USB. 

I don't dig to do a lot of flex jackson in here but... yes...

some fine Phison up my mini's.
 

[NewMaxx]

NM790 is fine, just make sure the enclosure has thermal padding for the drive. Its controller gets hot. I have one of the 4TB ones which I mini-reviewed on my subreddit, it's a good fit for your use case.

[C-M]

On 3/12/2024 at 2:23 AM, NewMaxx said:

NM790 is fine, just make sure the enclosure has thermal padding for the drive. Its controller gets hot. I have one of the 4TB ones which I mini-reviewed on my subreddit, it's a good fit for your use case.

Is the fact that HBM doesn't work over USB likely to be issue when transferring large video files and projects?

[kokosnh]

The USB to NVMe bridge is larger bottleneck, then lack of HBM, but it’s already over USB so latency penalty, and worst 4K, probably won't matter as much, but it still add up to it.
But well, if there’s a good dram SSD in the same price, go for it, if not, then NM790 is ok mid range PCIe 4.0 SSD. It’s just that it’s maxio and YMTC. 

[NewMaxx]

14 hours ago, C-M said:

Is the fact that HBM doesn't work over USB likely to be issue when transferring large video files and projects?

Not directly. DRAM (and HMB) is used mostly for mapping which is most relevant for small I/O. Such I/O, as kokosnh states, is already bottlenecked by USB. Indirectly, some DRAM-less drives may be slower in sustained sequential/large I/O because of a reliance on a large SLC cache to mask poor performance. However, this isn't really the case for the 4TB NM790. Check the sustained write performance in the Tom's Hardware review. Also, at 4TB, you are already getting the most out of any drive's interleaving, which will probably exceed USB bandwidth (10Gbps for sure). I think that's also the case for 20Gbps with this drive. Transfers like this are often Q1T1, though, which will be slower, but you may be able to thread manually.