Best 1TB SSD Option

[Anniemoose98]

Hi All,

 

I currently have a Samsung 750EVO 250GB SSD that I love, but have filled to the brim. Along with this, I have a WD Black 3TB. I want to upgrade to a 500GB or 1TB SSD so that I can put most of my stuff on the SSD (games, programs, files, etc.) and leave my HDD for long term storage and backups. Choosing an SSD seems much harder than when I chose my 750EVO - that was simply the best price / performance on the market at the time. Now, with NVMe prices coming down, choosing an SSD has become that much more difficult.

 

The options that I'm looking at are 

 

1.) 500GB / 1TB 850EVO

 

or

 

2.) the new 960EVO 500GB / 1TB

 

or

 

3.) Something completely different?

 

I'm heading off to college, so whatever I choose needs to last me four years. My question is, what would be my best option? Price to performance is quite important to me. I do light gaming and light photoshopping as well as other school work type things. Would the NVMe (on my Gigabyte Z170N-Gaming 5 / i5 6600k / 16GB / GTX 970) drive offer a significant, noticeable improvement over the SATA 850EVO (or whatever else is recommended)? Would 500GB be enough, or should I stick with a 1TB?

 

Thanks!

 

Anniemoose98

[ARikozuM]

MX300 1.1TB.

[Anniemoose98]

1 minute ago, ARikozuM said:

MX300 1.1TB.

I've only ever owned Samsung SSDs, so switching brands scares me a little. Is price / performance better? Is reliability alright? I do backups, but don't want to get burned with a lemon of a product.

[SeanAngelo]

2 minutes ago, Anniemoose98 said:

I've only ever owned Samsung SSDs, so switching brands scares me a little. Is price / performance better? Is reliability alright? I do backups, but don't want to get burned with a lemon of a product.

why not just get an SSD for the most important programs you use and the other stuff in a HDD? 500GB is enough. why store documents on an SSD when it can go in a hard drive?

[ARikozuM]

4 minutes ago, Anniemoose98 said:

I've only ever owned Samsung SSDs, so switching brands scares me a little. Is price / performance better? Is reliability alright? I do backups, but don't want to get burned with a lemon of a product.

Crucial, Samsung, and SanDisk are the companies I've never had issues with. A-Data makes some good drives that I like but if you're willing to pay for performance, those are the ones to go to.

[Anniemoose98]

1 minute ago, SeanAngelo said:

why not just get an SSD for the most important programs you use and the other stuff in a HDD? 500GB is enough. why store documents on an SSD when it can go in a hard drive?

To be fair, it will be mostly games / programs. I have a rather large Steam library, and only have a few games + Windows on my 250GB. I just don't want to run out of space and continue to get frustrating out of room errors. A quick look shows that my library alone takes up 332.9GB of storage.

[Anniemoose98]

2 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

Crucial, Samsung, and SanDisk are the companies I've never had issues with. A-Data makes some good drives that I like but if you're willing to pay for performance, those are the ones to go to.

Alright, thank you so much. I've used SanDisk products in the past (since the days of CF!) and have never had an issue, but haven't ever used Crucial, so the vote of confidence in them helps a ton. I've noticed that performance of the MX300 is quite a bit lower than the 850EVO - will this be noticeable in day to day use, such as gaming?

[ARikozuM]

1 minute ago, Anniemoose98 said:

Alright, thank you so much. I've used SanDisk products in the past (since the days of CF!) and have never had an issue, but haven't ever used Crucial, so the vote of confidence in them helps a ton. I've noticed that performance of the MX300 is quite a bit lower than the 850EVO - will this be noticeable in day to day use, such as gaming?

No. Artificial benchmarks are hitting the drive much harder (especially at deeper queues) than any normal user would. I haven't found any issues with the MX300 525GB that I tested and now recommend it instead of the 850 EVO since the price/GB is better with the 850 PRO being the next to buy.

[Anniemoose98]

1 minute ago, ARikozuM said:

No. Artificial benchmarks are hitting the drive much harder (especially at deeper queues) than any normal user would. I haven't found any issues with the MX300 525GB that I tested and now recommend it instead of the 850 EVO since the price/GB is better with the 850 PRO being the next to buy.

Alright, sweet. So, I'm assuming that you also find NVMe not a worthwhile upgrade? The Crucial will save me money (and that will fund new headphones - my poor HD500s have seen much better days), so I really like that option, unless someone has any serious qualms with it.

[ARikozuM]

3 minutes ago, Anniemoose98 said:

Alright, sweet. So, I'm assuming that you also find NVMe not a worthwhile upgrade? The Crucial will save me money (and that will fund new headphones - my poor HD500s have seen much better days), so I really like that option, unless someone has any serious qualms with it.

I like and use NVMe (950 PRO 256GB) but Photoshop is very unlikely to take advantage of the extra bandwidth and queue depth enhancements that come with it. I would take the SATA SSD and the headphones over a sole NVMe drive.

[Anniemoose98]

1 minute ago, ARikozuM said:

I like and use NVMe (950 PRO 256GB) but Photoshop is very unlikely to take advantage of the extra bandwidth and queue depth enhancements that come with it. I would take the SATA SSD and the headphones over a sole NVMe drive.

Perfect. Thanks, mate! This made life much easier than I thought it would be.

[Mira Yurizaki]

3 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

I like and use NVMe (950 PRO 256GB) but Photoshop is very unlikely to take advantage of the extra bandwidth and queue depth enhancements that come with it. I would take the SATA SSD and the headphones over a sole NVMe drive.

Even if it did, I'd rather take the extra capacity to store more things that would see an immediate benefit.

[ARikozuM]

2 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Even if it did, I'd rather take the extra capacity to store more things that would see an immediate benefit.

Most Adobe suite users would have an extra drive for storage after projects are completed.

[SeanAngelo]

32 minutes ago, Anniemoose98 said:

To be fair, it will be mostly games / programs. I have a rather large Steam library, and only have a few games + Windows on my 250GB. I just don't want to run out of space and continue to get frustrating out of room errors. A quick look shows that my library alone takes up 332.9GB of storage.

If you can fork out for a 1TB 960 EVO M.2 SSD then I say go for it.

[Anniemoose98]

21 minutes ago, SeanAngelo said:

If you can fork out for a 1TB 960 EVO M.2 SSD then I say go for it.

 

30 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

Most Adobe suite users would have an extra drive for storage after projects are completed.

 

33 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Even if it did, I'd rather take the extra capacity to store more things that would see an immediate benefit.

Or should I just get a 500GB 960Evo or something of that size? I realized that I included games that I don't have installed or play often in that 300GB mark, so it is really probably closer to 150GB of actual games.

[ARikozuM]

7 minutes ago, Anniemoose98 said:

 

 

Or should I just get a 500GB 960Evo or something of that size? I realized that I included games that I don't have installed or play often in that 300GB mark, so it is really probably closer to 150GB of actual games.

The only games that may benefit from NVMe, at least as far as I've seen, are open-world RPG's where loading models and landscape is done as needed and not in advance. More space is usually better in my opinion and if you can afford the 960 EVO 1TB as @SeanAngelo suggested, go for it, but I would still suggest the SATA since you can also get headphones with the savings.

[SeanAngelo]

13 minutes ago, Anniemoose98 said:

 

 

Or should I just get a 500GB 960Evo or something of that size? I realized that I included games that I don't have installed or play often in that 300GB mark, so it is really probably closer to 150GB of actual games.

if you think 500GB is enough for your needs then that's for you to decide. Nothing wrong with getting a 1TB model though, more space in the future if needed.