ssd What kind of SSD should I get?

[cyanit]

Hello LTT community!

 

since a year I'm thinking about getting an SSD.

I'm not planning to upgrade my platform during 2018, so I´ll stick to my ASRock Z97 Pro4, which (to my knowledge) does not fully support Nvme, but PCIe storage via M.2.

Currently, I've got a 2TB Seagate SSHD which was okay, but I'm running out of storage and the programs I use frequently take a really long to start, so maybe its time for a fresh install and boot drive.

 

What I use frequently

- Image editing software (Affinity Photo & Designer) + image archive (raw, png, )

- Video recording and editing (OBS for recording)

- Digital audio workstation (Bitwig Studio 2) + sample & VST library

- IDE (Visual Studio 2017)

- Office

 

Gaming is a thing for me too, I'm playing mostly open world/RPG stuff, where an SSD makes sense too.

 

What I think I need

- fast reading speed for audio production (loading sample libraries & big project files) and image editing (RAW loading, big project files)

- durable SSD because I'm moving a lot of data frequently

- decent write speed

 

in other words: an all-around solution.

 

What I was thinking about

I've got an HDD for dumping all my photos, videos and music, so I could get a 250GB (or 500GB?) SSD for my system and frequently used programs. 

 

space calculation

Spoiler

30GB - Windows

30GB - Visual Studio

_2GB - Affinity

50GB - Image Archive

12GB - Bitwig Studio + Soundlibraries

20GB - Samples

50GB - VST´s

= 194GB

 

+ _7GB for hibernating

+ 15GB for current projects

+ _xGB for windows updates

= 220GB --> 30GB free space

 

side question: is this enough free space? (obviously not to run any games off the SSD, but windows needs a buffer to operate, dosen´t it?)

 

2

But which one?

Type

- TLC

- MLC

- Samsung V-NAND

- 3D-Nand

 

I know what TLC and MLC are, but these new names for flash-memory architectures are growing faster than my knowledge...

Is it just the same thing named differently for better marketing?

 

SATA III 
- Crucial MX300 (2,5")

- Samsung  MZ-76E250B/EU 860 EVO (2,5")

- WD Blue (2,5")

- WD Blue SATA (M.2)

PCIe M.2

- WD Black PCIe 

- Samsung MZ-N6E250BW 860 EVO

 

price is almost irrelevant because they all cost about the same amount of money in Germany.

 

So what do you think is the best one of those?

Or maybe you know another affordable (m.2) SSD?

 

So thank you for reading and responding,

Leo

[Cyracus]

The long and the short of it, a good sata 3 ssd should give you a bigger capacity for the cost and your work should be just as fast as if you had nvme raid 0. AFAIK the ones you listed are all fine

[mihailc]

Since you're doing loads of editing, I recommend Samsung, because it has more TBW.

Let's compare with Crucial 275GB drive: 80TB (Total Bytes Written) (TBW), equal to 43GB per day for 5 years

versus

Samsung 250 GB drive: 150 TBW, equals 84GB per day 5 years.

Hence, buying 860 EVO  brings you more benefit, for the work you're doing. Plus, it's the freshest product with all the latest tech.

[SupaKomputa]

I used crucial MX300 275gb for the same purpose as yours.

Its a 3d nand (tlc) similar tech as samsung vnand.

So it suppose to last longer than traditional TLC and cheaper.

Cannot suggest the durability as i only used it for 1 year.

Installed every adobe suites and other productivity app, still have 60gb of spaces left.

The leftover space sometimes used as a scratch disk, never full btw.

I put all my files in separate hdd. And especially games, never installed on the boot drive, waste of space.

 

If you have the money, i suggest get the champion which is samsung 960 nvme, because why not?

With SSD more capacity = more bandwidth.

So a 512gb would be 50-80% faster than 256gb.

 

[lttUser1234]

1 hour ago, cyanit said:

Is it just the same thing named differently for better marketing?

 

Not really. The newer NVMEs from Samsung are considerably faster than a SATA SSD or even a SATA PCI-E M.2. I would go with a Samsung NVME M.2 PCI-E 4x and then if you need additional storage get a ordinary 2.5 inch SSD. My favorite brand is Crucial because they actually make the memory chips in the drive compared to other manufacturers who use third party parts. Crucial's current SSD is the MX500 up to 2 TB.

[SupaKomputa]

4 minutes ago, lttUser1234 said:

Not really. The newer NVMEs from Samsung are considerably faster than a SATA SSD or even a SATA PCI-E M.2. I would go with a Samsung NVME M.2 PCI-E 4x and then if you need additional storage get a ordinary 2.5 inch SSD. My favorite brand is Crucial because they actually make the memory chips in the drive compared to other manufacturers who use third party parts. Crucial's current SSD is the MX500 up to 2 TB.

Yeah Crucial is a first party maker, its a brand under Micron which produced the chip itself.

Samsung, Sandisk, SKHynix (hyundai) and Toshiba also a 1st party maker of nand chip.

All other brand used their chip in the ssd.

[meenmeen1103]

A 256gb 950 pro will saturate your pcie gen 2 m.2 slot so a 512 would be pointless speed-wise. I'd say a 500gb 850 evo would be more than enough

[cyanit]

okay, after your comments and Bitwit´s video I decided to go for a 500GB MX500. Almost double the capacity for half the price compared to a M.2 one.

thanks a lot for responding, have a nice day