Is Dram necessary in an nvme m.2 for an OS storage device?

Millios · May 25

Im between a kingstone nvme m.2 and a samsung 980 pro. Both 1TB vastly different prices and they will be used as main storage to have the OS. Is dram necessary/that much better to have? or can i just get a dramless one and be just fine?

Electronics Wizardy · May 25

Its definitely not necessary. I manage/work with many systems with dramless drives and run Windows 11 without issue.

Also there is much more to a drive than dram. look at reviews of the specific drives to get a much better feel for performance that if it has dram or not.

porina · May 25

Now we kinda have 3 classes:

With DRAM
Without DRAM, with HMB
Without DRAM, no HMB

Feels like the move from 3 to 2 has helped although I'm not sure exactly which drives support which. Certainly with SATA, which didn't support it, you can easily feel the difference between 1 and 3 in more complex disk intensive uses e.g. Windows Updates, game patches.

jaslion · May 25

As long as the drive can use dram as a cache (and you have some ram free) having a dram less drive is quite fine.

Back in early days of nvme when they coulsnt do dram caching and definitly sata because it cant do it you WILL notice the lack of a dram cache.

However most dramless drives will do caching you should verify it tho.

Also post what drive you are getting. One yo avoid thay is very popular now is the kigston nv2 since its very low quality and quickly gets slow as well as have a short lifespan of terrabytes to be written that you can quite easily achive in a couple years.

Millios · May 25

15 minutes ago, jaslion said:

As long as the drive can use dram as a cache (and you have some ram free) having a dram less drive is quite fine.

Back in early days of nvme when they coulsnt do dram caching and definitly sata because it cant do it you WILL notice the lack of a dram cache.

However most dramless drives will do caching you should verify it tho.

Also post what drive you are getting. One yo avoid thay is very popular now is the kigston nv2 since its very low quality and quickly gets slow as well as have a short lifespan of terrabytes to be written that you can quite easily achive in a couple years.

As i mentioned im between the samsung 980 pro and if the kingston nv2 is out then my budget option is the crucial P3 gen4. (the 1tb version of each respectively)

https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-Plus-PCIe-NAND-5000MB/dp/B0B25NXWC7

https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-980-PCIe-NVME-MZ-V8P1T0BW/dp/B08PBFP4NV/ref=sr_1_6?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.NmWV6IRAg-XJnU-_tHcMTvi7eltQyOghYr5XVKJTzTWFk2FS8D1EnfLIynCkgVj5Z8UvronpoFXES8CuBZqONTS6B7YemlWItEMcxzuUoCECUhT4tGHqkrbs3xjpT5eZPToU8sUTSgKYobKHiZTicFgFdNCKfFMTOFQs4IeAI3YEMJIV1RLiACauwyYGoj97ihA4U0wTZFjbf0YLBPF20KyBgtyeSy9BWKtwi8imtsw.fLG9tnmwwNGTNycDS15LLsverPM2-1JC-y9tMz-3a_g&dib_tag=se&keywords=samsung+980+pro+1tb&qid=1716630001&sr=8-6

here are the links to both as well from amazon. (not my vendor so different prices but the same product)