- Oct 5, 2002
- 509
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In the system I am setting up from cannibalized parts of my old half-dead rig I really REALLY want to ditch the old two SSDs in RAID0 setup for a single NVME that will become a dedicated game drive.
This was a pipe dream until a few months ago as these were 1TB SSDs and almost past 80% full, so I would need a 4TB NVME if I wanted space for newer games than that old 2TB RAID0. But now prices have started plummeting and it doesn't seem so impossible anymore.
Looking at NVME prices, 1TB and 2TB from *most* brands aren't that big a difference if you get a super-cheap model that's QVC and has no DRAM, or a DRAM model with TLC. A 2TB DRAM-less QVC drive from Crucial for example is about $75 while one with DRAM and TLC from Samsung of all people is $80 (The ports would be 3.0 so 4.0 versions don't matter for me).
4TB however is a completely different story. The 4TB models are around $170-200 for DRAM-less QVC, 3.0 or 4.0... but the models I can find with DRAM and that use TLC are around $300. Also, many of the higher-end models seem to even lack a 4TB version? (Like Crucial's higher-end P5 line instead of the P3, or ANYTHING Samsung of all people). Considering that consumer 8TB NVMEs came out about 1-2 years ago and some of the lower-end brands have $150 4TB NVMEs, I am surprised that 4TB seems to still be not that available with higher-end brand/models. Also, the price difference for a DRAM/TLC model vs one without is rather massive compared to 2TB models.
Only ones I could find that had it and were not close to $300 were brands with..... less than reputable reputations like Silicon Power or Kingston.
How much would this matter though? I know that it's more ideal for a drive that one would be performing a lot of writes to, such as an OS drive, but I also heard that speeds can drop to absurdly slower-than-hdd levels on DRAMless QVC drives if you write too much.... and with many games hitting 100-200GB nowadays I don't want installs to take forever... especially for games that seem to have a 20GB update twice a week or something. Also having these would increase longevity, but by how much? If I am deleting 100-200GB games and installing new ones now and then would it be enough to make a difference?
Is there even a NVME that is QVC but has DRAM? Or a DRAM-less NVME that is TLC? Or do these generally come together?
This was a pipe dream until a few months ago as these were 1TB SSDs and almost past 80% full, so I would need a 4TB NVME if I wanted space for newer games than that old 2TB RAID0. But now prices have started plummeting and it doesn't seem so impossible anymore.
Looking at NVME prices, 1TB and 2TB from *most* brands aren't that big a difference if you get a super-cheap model that's QVC and has no DRAM, or a DRAM model with TLC. A 2TB DRAM-less QVC drive from Crucial for example is about $75 while one with DRAM and TLC from Samsung of all people is $80 (The ports would be 3.0 so 4.0 versions don't matter for me).
4TB however is a completely different story. The 4TB models are around $170-200 for DRAM-less QVC, 3.0 or 4.0... but the models I can find with DRAM and that use TLC are around $300. Also, many of the higher-end models seem to even lack a 4TB version? (Like Crucial's higher-end P5 line instead of the P3, or ANYTHING Samsung of all people). Considering that consumer 8TB NVMEs came out about 1-2 years ago and some of the lower-end brands have $150 4TB NVMEs, I am surprised that 4TB seems to still be not that available with higher-end brand/models. Also, the price difference for a DRAM/TLC model vs one without is rather massive compared to 2TB models.
Only ones I could find that had it and were not close to $300 were brands with..... less than reputable reputations like Silicon Power or Kingston.
How much would this matter though? I know that it's more ideal for a drive that one would be performing a lot of writes to, such as an OS drive, but I also heard that speeds can drop to absurdly slower-than-hdd levels on DRAMless QVC drives if you write too much.... and with many games hitting 100-200GB nowadays I don't want installs to take forever... especially for games that seem to have a 20GB update twice a week or something. Also having these would increase longevity, but by how much? If I am deleting 100-200GB games and installing new ones now and then would it be enough to make a difference?
Is there even a NVME that is QVC but has DRAM? Or a DRAM-less NVME that is TLC? Or do these generally come together?
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