Question Any reason not to use Crucial P3 NVMEs in a Gen 3 board? They are suspiciously cheaper than others.

[Cyber_Akuma]

I have a Gigabyte Z490 Aorus Pro AX board, it has three M.2 NVME slots. The first one is Gen 4 but is also normally disabled completely unless you install a 11th gen CPU in it, which I did (Doing this also converts the 3.0 X16 PCIe slot intended for the GPU into a 4.0 slot).

The other two M.2 slots are Gen 3.

I already got a 1TB Samsung 980 Pro for the Gen 4 slot to load my OS and most of my main applications on.

I was looking for an affordable 4TB NVME for my games however (my previous system that I will be transferring the games from used up almost all of it's 2TB for games), and maybe also an affordable 2TB NVME for the third slot to use for some other tasks that I wanted faster access than my HDDs with/physically separate it from my main storage but still don't need blazing higher-end NVME speeds for.

I have been waiting a while, when I first saw 4TB NVMEs they were around $600, not surprising. But nowadays some of them are getting cheap, very cheap. Thing is... I am getting suspicious as how some supposed name brand ones are significantly cheaper than the others.

The Crucial P3 models keep coming up in my searches, so much so that I started tracking their prices on camelcamelcamel, as well as the P3 Plus which from my understanding is basically a PCIe 4.0 version of the P3 (Totally not confusing calling a Gen 4 model a P3 Plus instead of a P4...).

Gen 3:
https://camelcamelcamel.com/product/B0B25MJ1YT?active=price_amazon
https://camelcamelcamel.com/product/B0B25P44CL?active=price_amazon

Gen 4:
https://camelcamelcamel.com/product/B0B25ML2FH?active=price_amazon
https://camelcamelcamel.com/product/B0B25M8FXX?active=price_amazon

The Gen 3 4TB drive is constantly under $200, sometimes going around $160, while 4TB models from just about anyone else seem to be around the $400 mark except for the REALLY budget brands like Silicon Power or ones I had absolutely never heard of like Leven. (And strangely, Samsung STILL seems to not have a 4TB one somehow when others are making up to 8TB now...)

I know that some of those $300-400 drives are PCIe 4.0, but not all, and even the 4.0 P3 Plus is around $220 or so on average, sometimes falling below.

Are these drives just that much worse than the others to warrant them being so much cheaper? Would getting the 4.0 variants make any difference whatsoever if I am going to be plugging them into a 3.0 slot?

Even more confusing, there is apparently a better model line, the P5 (which you would think was PCIe 5.0, but nope, they also have 3.0 and a Plus 4.0 variant, who names these things?). The 2TB P5 Plus drives seem to cost around the same as the supposedly lower-end P3 Plus, so I am even more confused there.... and to top it all off, they don't seem to have any 4TB drives in the P5 or P5 Plus model lineup.

I am getting lost on what is what and what their differences are at this point. I am just trying to find an affordable 4TB NVME (preferably under $200) that will be exclusively used to store my games and possibly a second 2tb one (Preferably under $100) for a few other applications I wanted to test out, on a board that will already be using it's only M.2 Gen 4 slot for the OS NVME and the other two M.2 slots are PCIe 3.0.

 

[Aeacus]

Are these drives just that much worse than the others to warrant them being so much cheaper?

Pretty much. Those Crucial drives, at best, have mediocre performance. Also, they have poor reliability;
P3 review: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/crucial-p3-ssd-review
P3 plus review: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/crucial-p3-plus-ssd-review-capacity-on-the-cheap

and to top it all off, they don't seem to have any 4TB drives in the P5 or P5 Plus model lineup.

True.

I think it would be pointless to link these reviews, since you wouldn't consider them either way, right?

I am just trying to find an affordable 4TB NVME (preferably under $200)

Under 200 bucks, you have 3 choices. Two of them you've already covered (Crucial and Leven). 3rd is TeamGroup MP34,
pcpp: https://pcpartpicker.com/product/FZ...2-2280-nvme-solid-state-drive-tm8fp4004t0c101
review: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/team-group-mp34-nvme-ssd,6181.html

Oh, Leven JPR600 review: https://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/leven-jpr600-2tb-ssd-review,1.html

Samsung STILL seems to not have a 4TB one somehow when others are making up to 8TB now...)

Samsung has very high standards when it comes to SSDs. Hence why Samsung drives are the best out there. If Samsung isn't happy with the performance of 4TB version, they aren't going to release sub-standard product.

and possibly a second 2tb one (Preferably under $100)

For that, there is one and only: Samsung 970 Evo Plus 2TB;
pcpp: https://pcpartpicker.com/product/Fv...b-m2-2280-nvme-solid-state-drive-mz-v7s2t0bam

My current OS drive is 970 Evo Plus 2TB, while i also have 960 Evo and 870 Evo. Oh, my 2nd PC also has 980, alongside 870 Evo.
Can't argue with the performance and reliability of Samsung drives.

 

[cocoadragon]

Oh i wish i got here sooner. The reason the P3 is so cheap is that it doesnt have DRAM. when its cache is full it writes slow as a dog. HOWEVER. That only comes in effect if trying to use it as a boot drive or tranferring massive files. Using it as a secondary drive to access games/movies/music or photos is quite an optimal usage. Using the 970 to boot and hold say your main game and then the P3 for the rest of your library is the best case usage. That or combining it with optane/opal drive which acts as a cache.