[SOLVED] Best Gaming SSD

[ThatSourMelon]

So, I've run out of storage. 500gb wasn't enough for me, but I think another 1tb would be more than enough. Here is my current build: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/ThatSourMelon/saved/ I guess I'm looking for a gaming SSD, my budget is $150, but anything cheaper than that would be nice too. I don't really know a lot about picking out an SSD, but I read somewhere you want one with ~1000mb of cache, and those are expensive, do I really need that much for gaming? Also, my motherboard has an M.2 slot, but I don't remember getting a screw for that, or does the SSD come with the screw? Do NVME's go in the M.2 slot too? Just, what is a good gaming SSD for the price?

 

[USAFRet]

Crucial MX500
1TB - $115
https://www.newegg.com/crucial-mx500-1tb/p/N82E16820156174

 

[popatim]

BestBuy has the Wd Blue 1tb ssd for $100. The Mx500 is the better of the two and probably worth the $15.

M2 is just a slot and which type of drive you can put in there depends on how the motherbd manufacturer wired it. M2 was designed to have Sata and PCIe lanes (for nvme drives) wired to it but the manufacturers can wire it to their liking. So check your motherbd specs to see which type of M2 drive your slot supports and if any Sata ports get disabled if you use it.

 

[ThatSourMelon]

BestBuy has the Wd Blue 1tb ssd for $100. The Mx500 is the better of the two and probably worth the $15.

M2 is just a slot and which type of drive you can put in there depends on how the motherbd manufacturer wired it. M2 was designed to have Sata and PCIe lanes (for nvme drives) wired to it but the manufacturers can wire it to their liking. So check your motherbd specs to see which type of M2 drive your slot supports and if any Sata ports get disabled if you use it.

I know this is kind of still an old thread, but I’ve held off buying an SSD, and the Samsung 870 QVO recently came out at around the same price as the Crucial MX500, I think it’s slightly faster but I can’t find any info on how much cache it has, is it a better deal than the MX500?

 

[popatim]

The Mx500 is the better of the two drives.

If you write large files then avoid the QVO drives altogether. Once you've filled the SLC cache you'll end up writing slower then a harddrive (80MB/s) . The QVO has a dynamic Slc from 6 to 42Gb.

The Mx500 also has a dynamic SLC cache depending on the size free space but if you manage to fill it then you still retain decent speed thanks to its TLC Flash (400MB/s)

 

[cryoburner]

The 870 QVO uses slower QLC flash memory. QLC has a very low native write speed, though under most typical usage scenarios that will be hidden by a much faster SLC cache, which temporarily holds written data until it can be stored in its permanent location. On the 1TB 870 QVO, that cache size can be up to 42GB. If you write more than that to the drive within a short period of time, sequential write performance drops from around 500 MB/s, down to just 80 MB/s, until the drive gets a chance to clear the cache and recover.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/15887/the-samsung-870-qvo-1tb-4tb-ssd-review-qlc-refreshed/2

The MX500 doesn't use this cheaper QLC flash memory, so it's able to maintain its full sequential write speed near 500 GB/s without having performance drop during very large writes. As for when you might encounter such a scenario on a gaming system, it's possible that such a slowdown could occur when installing or updating a large game that extracts all its files at once, or when copying over a game directory from another drive.

As far as load time performance in games goes, all of these drives should perform relatively similar, as they are all limited by the SATA interface, which limits maximum sequential throughput to around 500 MB/s. Judging by the benchmarks listed in that review though, it looks like the 870 performs worse as the drive becomes more full, while the MX500 performs about the same either way. At a similar price, I would absolutely take the MX500 over the 870 QVO. The MX500 is more comparable to Samsung's EVO drives, while the QVO drives are somewhat more budget-focused offerings.

Edit: If this sounds similar to Popotim's post, it's because I wrote it a couple hours ago, but had to head out for a bit before getting a chance to read it over before posting. : P