Is there a site where you guys look up 2TB M.2 SSD's?

[Edgar R. Zakarian]

Where can you look up benchmarks and notes of SSD for points such as

 

Performance rating / speed

Reliability

Overheating issues

BUS type, PCI-E 3/4/5 etc.

NVME / SATA

PRICE / GB

etc. etc.? 
Like a good and easy site.

 

Which 2TB M.2 SSD's do you guys use as boot drive? Are you happy with it? Any problems?

[Jurrunio]

If you want good information, sites that offer all information is exactly those you avoid because those that claim to be are so far unreliable.

 

Performance rating can be found on official product pages, sites like Versus.com complies those into a database. Actual tested performance are available in different reviewing sites such as guru3d and igorslab.

 

Reliability data and other problems are hard to look up since companies do not disclose RMA data, but if a drive has some common problems they will repeat in comments from buyers in various forums like here or Reddit. I'd recommend just searching with search engines like Google. If you're multilingual, use it to your advantage and search with different languages because customer leaving reviews wouldn't deliberately change to English. Plus not all products bearing the same name are the same in different regions, for example my Samsung S24 uses Qualcomm SD8 Gen 3 in North America and China, but changes to Samsung Exynos 2400 in Europe and perform differently because of this.

 

Bus time? You mean delivery time? Or bus width like PCIe 3.0 X4?

 

NVMe/SATA can be found on the official page, experienced eyes will be able to tell just by looking at the connector. An M.2 M-key only SSD is always NVMe (PCIe X4) while an M.2 B key or B+M key are either SATA or NVMe (PCIe X2, so it's slower than X4).

 

Price/GB is available on sites like PCPartPicker, or otherwise you could just have a calculator on hand when comparing prices from different retailers that might not be included in PCPP.

[Needfuldoer]

I just look up the data sheets from each manufacturer. 

 

Generally I put more weight behind rated longevity (TBW) and warranty than sheer performance numbers. The last gaming PC I built has two 2TB Intel 660p drives in it.

[podkall]

You can know which are better by googling the reviews of each SSDs as the reviewers compare them to other SSDs, or ask me for example.

[Jon-Slow]

Generally you're going to have to look for reviews, and then google the specific model to make sure there is nothing wrong or shady about it. Buying NVMe drives could be a little tricky.

 

First you need to consider what usecase you have, and if it even matters for you to try to spend extra for the absolute fastest. If you just want a gaming drive, it doesn't really matter for it to be the absolute fastest or the most expensive since pretty much no game is utlizing speeds that way. I personally have an SN850x black and a Samsung 990 pro for my games and work.

[PDifolco]

2 hours ago, Edgar R. Zakarian said:

Where can you look up benchmarks and notes of SSD for points such as

 

Performance rating / speed

Reliability

Overheating issues

BUS time

NVME / SATA

PRICE / GB

etc. etc.? 
Like a good and easy site.

 

Which 2TB M.2 SSD's do you guys use as boot drive? Are you happy with it? Any problems?

Storage Review https://www.storagereview.com/consumer has a lot of reviews, quite technical

A small Dutch channel, Techtesters https://www.youtube.com/@TechTesters has many vids about drives comparisons/benchmarks, more layman-oriented

 

[Ryker Robb]

3 hours ago, Edgar R. Zakarian said:

Where can you look up benchmarks and notes of SSD for points such as

 

Performance rating / speed

Reliability

Overheating issues

BUS time

NVME / SATA

PRICE / GB

etc. etc.? 
Like a good and easy site.

 

Which 2TB M.2 SSD's do you guys use as boot drive? Are you happy with it? Any problems?

https://www.techpowerup.com/ssd-specs/

[NobleGamer]

1 hour ago, Ryker Robb said:

Performance rating / speed

NVME / SATA

PRICE / GB
Like a good and easy site.

Pcpartpicker.com has these, and independent OS-agnostic performance tests with easy to understand numbers or nice charts that I'd trust more than most sites for the 150+ different SSDs they've tested.

 

Plus they compare prices from many different retailers, they have price histories, and price alerts - Its how I bagged a 970 EVO Plus 2TB for only $80 during the NAND surplus a year or so ago.

[Edgar R. Zakarian]

On 5/22/2024 at 11:49 AM, Jurrunio said:

If you want good information, sites that offer all information is exactly those you avoid because those that claim to be are so far unreliable.

 

Performance rating can be found on official product pages, sites like Versus.com complies those into a database. Actual tested performance are available in different reviewing sites such as guru3d and igorslab.

 

Reliability data and other problems are hard to look up since companies do not disclose RMA data, but if a drive has some common problems they will repeat in comments from buyers in various forums like here or Reddit. I'd recommend just searching with search engines like Google. If you're multilingual, use it to your advantage and search with different languages because customer leaving reviews wouldn't deliberately change to English. Plus not all products bearing the same name are the same in different regions, for example my Samsung S24 uses Qualcomm SD8 Gen 3 in North America and China, but changes to Samsung Exynos 2400 in Europe and perform differently because of this.

 

Bus time? You mean delivery time? Or bus width like PCIe 3.0 X4?

 

NVMe/SATA can be found on the official page, experienced eyes will be able to tell just by looking at the connector. An M.2 M-key only SSD is always NVMe (PCIe X4) while an M.2 B key or B+M key are either SATA or NVMe (PCIe X2, so it's slower than X4).

 

Price/GB is available on sites like PCPartPicker, or otherwise you could just have a calculator on hand when comparing prices from different retailers that might not be included in PCPP.

Thanks! 
Yes I meant the interface type:

BUS type, PCI-E 3/4/5 etc.

 

Sorry for the confusion.

[Edgar R. Zakarian]

On 5/22/2024 at 12:47 PM, Jon-Slow said:

Generally you're going to have to look for reviews, and then google the specific model to make sure there is nothing wrong or shady about it. Buying NVMe drives could be a little tricky.

 

First you need to consider what usecase you have, and if it even matters for you to try to spend extra for the absolute fastest. If you just want a gaming drive, it doesn't really matter for it to be the absolute fastest or the most expensive since pretty much no game is utlizing speeds that way. I personally have an SN850x black and a Samsung 990 pro for my games and work.

For speed I was thinking in terms of bootdrive, responsiveness, etc. You know a snappy PC.

 

The detail about if my game takes 10 more seconds to load or similar doesn't bother me, so I was just focusing on the operating system and boot up times.

So I was wondering if you can even tell the difference between for example samsungs fastest ssd, and some random cheap kingston SSD.

[podkall]

1 hour ago, Edgar R. Zakarian said:

Thanks! 
Yes I meant the interface type:

BUS type, PCI-E 3/4/5 etc.

 

Sorry for the confusion.

3.0 is plenty 4.0 is more than enough 5.0 is like buying Bugatti instead of Lambo

 

1 hour ago, Edgar R. Zakarian said:

For speed I was thinking in terms of bootdrive, responsiveness, etc. You know a snappy PC.

 

The detail about if my game takes 10 more seconds to load or similar doesn't bother me, so I was just focusing on the operating system and boot up times.

So I was wondering if you can even tell the difference between for example samsungs fastest ssd, and some random cheap kingston SSD.

Then you want either reasonable price/performance SSD, or the cheapest DRAM/Professional SSD for guaranteed snappyness and longevity.

 

M.2 SSD basically guarantees several gigabytes of read/write speeds, quality and specs ensure these speeds are higher and more consistent with less latency,

 

you can imagine how 3GB/s and 7GB/s aren't really that much different when all the system files, and all the other files are barely 100kb right?

 

sure in bulk there's more, that's why you'd notice several seconds decreased load time if the game you're playing scales to 80GB in size or more possibly, loading that takes less seconds for the faster SSD,

 

and then snappyness of course, you can have 70gazillion read speed and you'd notice differnce if same speed drives had different latency in doing their job.

[Edgar R. Zakarian]

6 hours ago, podkall said:

3.0 is plenty 4.0 is more than enough 5.0 is like buying Bugatti instead of Lambo

 

Then you want either reasonable price/performance SSD, or the cheapest DRAM/Professional SSD for guaranteed snappyness and longevity.

 

M.2 SSD basically guarantees several gigabytes of read/write speeds, quality and specs ensure these speeds are higher and more consistent with less latency,

 

you can imagine how 3GB/s and 7GB/s aren't really that much different when all the system files, and all the other files are barely 100kb right?

 

sure in bulk there's more, that's why you'd notice several seconds decreased load time if the game you're playing scales to 80GB in size or more possibly, loading that takes less seconds for the faster SSD,

 

and then snappyness of course, you can have 70gazillion read speed and you'd notice differnce if same speed drives had different latency in doing their job.

But do you think you'd notice more snappyness from for example a 250GB Sata SSD VS a modern budget M.2 2TB SSD?

[Jurrunio]

7 hours ago, Edgar R. Zakarian said:

So I was wondering if you can even tell the difference between for example samsungs fastest ssd, and some random cheap kingston SSD.

For system boot up, not really because there's no large reads/writes involved. Even some outright terrible SSDs typically have very short response times and random read/write compared to HDDs already so it's hard to notice any improvements to better SSDs here.

[podkall]

41 minutes ago, Edgar R. Zakarian said:

But do you think you'd notice more snappyness from for example a 250GB Sata SSD VS a modern budget M.2 2TB SSD?

yep,

 

 

 

 

 

If you want I can give you basic examples of which SSDs to use when.

 

 

• Cheap dirt boot drive and only gaming purpose or programs that don't force you to delete files often, very low budget build:

 

PCPartPicker Part List

Storage: *Patriot P300 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive  ($57.99 @ Newegg Sellers)
Total: $57.99
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
*Lowest price parts chosen from parametric criteria
Generated by PCPartPicker 2024-05-24 15:00 EDT-0400

 

 

• Build has bit of budget to get slightly better SSD that is more consistent, has more longevity and doesn't suffer in extended tasks: (/professional apps build that needs at least decently reliable SSD but has 0 room for more expensive SSD)

 

PCPartPicker Part List

Storage: TEAMGROUP MP44L 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive  ($64.98 @ Amazon)
Total: $64.98
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2024-05-24 15:02 EDT-0400

 

 

• The beginning of SSD behemoths that stay consistent for majority of the time, less useful in gaming, more useful in professional apps, content creation, etc., have even more longevity:

 

PCPartPicker Part List

Storage: Western Digital Black SN770 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive  ($79.98 @ Amazon)
Total: $79.98
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2024-05-24 15:06 EDT-0400

 

• The budget is big and the SSD needs to be fast, no room for latency due to reading or something:

PCPartPicker Part List

Storage: Acer Predator GM7000 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive  ($84.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $84.99
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2024-05-24 15:08 EDT-0400

 

 

• Throwing money in the fire for the most reasonable performance drive:

PCPartPicker Part List

Storage: Samsung 990 Pro 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive  ($169.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $169.99
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2024-05-24 15:09 EDT-0400

 

 

All examples used 1TB except the last one, because in Samsung and other brands, more TB means bigger DRAM cache.

[Jon-Slow]

17 hours ago, Edgar R. Zakarian said:

For speed I was thinking in terms of bootdrive, responsiveness, etc. You know a snappy PC.

 

The detail about if my game takes 10 more seconds to load or similar doesn't bother me, so I was just focusing on the operating system and boot up times.

So I was wondering if you can even tell the difference between for example samsungs fastest ssd, and some random cheap kingston SSD.

 

Basically snappiness are a couple of things, one is the boot time as you've mentioned, but this one is a bit tricky because if you have a Ryzen 7000 or X3D with EXPO enabled, your boot time is going to be super long regardless of what NVME you get. So your CPU/RAM also matters. I have a 13900Kf with DDR5 6000MT/s and a SN850x black for boot drive and it boots up in under 5 sec. Any gen4 drive is going to give you around the same snappiness.

 

The next thing would be launching apps, saving and loading of work files, searching your drive, recalling, drawing,... this is also partly handled by your CPU+RAM so the NVMe is not the sole factor.

 

The one that's most important is copy-pasting, and saving/wirting files from work apps that have large file sizes saved to the drive. This last one is basically where you have to look at if you think it is worth it to spend extra on faster NVMe drives. If your work app has to save a lot of large files to the drive, and the save/autosave feature takes long, you can cut that time by some seconds with the fastest drive. All in all, I wouldn't worry about it if this last thing isn't an issue for you. I would just get something like the 990 pro or the SN850x and call it a day, even much cheaper drives would be great for games if that's all you need it for.

[Edgar R. Zakarian]

11 hours ago, podkall said:

yep,

 

 

 

 

 

If you want I can give you basic examples of which SSDs to use when.

 

 

• Cheap dirt boot drive and only gaming purpose or programs that don't force you to delete files often, very low budget build:

 

PCPartPicker Part List

Storage: *Patriot P300 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive  ($57.99 @ Newegg Sellers)
Total: $57.99
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
*Lowest price parts chosen from parametric criteria
Generated by PCPartPicker 2024-05-24 15:00 EDT-0400

 

 

• Build has bit of budget to get slightly better SSD that is more consistent, has more longevity and doesn't suffer in extended tasks: (/professional apps build that needs at least decently reliable SSD but has 0 room for more expensive SSD)

 

PCPartPicker Part List

Storage: TEAMGROUP MP44L 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive  ($64.98 @ Amazon)
Total: $64.98
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2024-05-24 15:02 EDT-0400

 

 

• The beginning of SSD behemoths that stay consistent for majority of the time, less useful in gaming, more useful in professional apps, content creation, etc., have even more longevity:

 

PCPartPicker Part List

Storage: Western Digital Black SN770 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive  ($79.98 @ Amazon)
Total: $79.98
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2024-05-24 15:06 EDT-0400

 

• The budget is big and the SSD needs to be fast, no room for latency due to reading or something:

PCPartPicker Part List

Storage: Acer Predator GM7000 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive  ($84.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $84.99
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2024-05-24 15:08 EDT-0400

 

 

• Throwing money in the fire for the most reasonable performance drive:

PCPartPicker Part List

Storage: Samsung 990 Pro 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive  ($169.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $169.99
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2024-05-24 15:09 EDT-0400

 

 

All examples used 1TB except the last one, because in Samsung and other brands, more TB means bigger DRAM cache.

WOW thanks for the big breakdown. Now I know my options!