[SOLVED] Does brand matter?

[NoPuhi]

Ive been looking to upgrade to an SSD as my current HDD, after 7+ years of use is showing signs of aging. Its slow to load, startup, even running 2 things at once feels like its suffocating at times.
Since my rig is old, ill have to get an SSD with a SATA interface. Ive been eyeing the Seagate BarraCuda 120 1TB. The case looks pretty cool but more importantly, Seagate offers some software tools that support linux, which im currently using as my OS (Pop_OS!).

Unfortunately, the only shop in my country that sold it, pulled it off their shop. I inquired and they said its unlikely they'll be getting any more shipments.

So now that i have to find something else, im wondering is there any point in worrying about brand names? For a casual user that's looking for a snappy experience and quick load times in games, is there a noticeable quality difference between your Western Digitals, Samsungs, Kingstons...
Or should i just focus on the specs and price?

 

[USAFRet]

What use will this drive be for?


Brands?
Samsung, Crucial, Sandisk, Intel, WD. Seagate is probably "OK".
Avoid anything else.

 

[Dj0gany]

Look for a SSD with DRAM, they are priced similarly to the ones that dont have it, but offer a better performance.

 

[rocktalkrock]

Here is a useful SSD flowchart provided by NewMaxx on reddit.

https://ssd.borecraft.com/SSD_Buying_Guide.pdf

 

[NoPuhi]

What use will this drive be for?

The drive is going to be running my OS, gaming and just casual usage. I don't do a whole lot of media editing, I don't store much documents/pictures/videos/music on my PC.

 

[sonofjesse]

Any SSD will be better than an HD, that I have seen.

Building a family build on a budget, I got a 20 dollars silcon power 128GB drive 3-4 years ago, and its zippy and been running with zero issues.

If choices were limited, I would be less worried about brand, and happy with an SSD upgrade compared to a HDD. DRAM would be a bonus if it has that.

 

[Colif]

some ssd without dram are just as slow as hdd so aim for one with dram. NO point getting it otherwise

 

[Karadjgne]

You'll find that most places will pull the 120-128Gb SSDs. They are too much effort to use for boot disks as they require constant effort to make sure not much else gets loaded there. You'll find 250-256Gb versions are the minimum now. 1Tb are getting to be the norm because they'll handle all the OS requirements, all the OS addins like Adobe and Office, and a bunch of games. There are games out there that include DLC's and reach over 100Gb. Ppl aren't wanting to slap those on their storage HDD.

 

[Colif]

You'll find 250-256Gb versions are the minimum now. 1

and there was much rejoicing

As trying to run win 10 on anything less is possible but its too much hassle making sure you have enough spare space for updates.

how much you use depends on what you use PC for.
I have that 1tb drive and with most of the file types you mentioned, still have 686gb free.
+ my hdd has a few games on it , not that you can tell. 59gb of games on a 3tb hdd doesn't make much of a dent
depends what types of games you play. not all of us want first person shooters or care about graphics really. They only getting bigger to make them prettier, not adding more playable content. Soon games look like movies, maybe they get back to making them fun then.

 

[Karadjgne]

Lol. Try Skyrim. Heavily modded of course. That's adding a ton of stuff just to improve the looks as the default toons look like something the cat threw back out. Not to mention the 3x dlc's content and all the bug fixes and add on adventure mods tailored to your pleasure.

You can run through the actual main quest game in 11 hrs or so. If you actually do the other quests, and the side quests, and even the off-quests or additional mod content, we'll let's just say I've got 1500+ hours and not yet gotten 1/4 of what I've gotten around to doing yet.

Playable content? I've never seen nor heard of anyone actually finishing the entire game completely, and some mods like a couple of the better companion mods, actually add a month of additional questing. And that's not including building your own home (without cheating) which takes forever if you have to go farm the materials or coin to buy them with.

 

[Colif]

lets not go off topic here. I never liked Skyram anyway.

 

[Karadjgne]

It's a gray area. My Skyrim is over 60Gb inludung all the Steam files etc. So just that one game would soak up any+ space a 120Gb ssd would have after installing OS. With some of the cheaper drives out there you really don't want to take them over half full or they start slowing down drastically. And definitely do not want to fill them.

Just saying Op should get the biggest he can justify spending on, but at the same time make sure it's a quality product, not a cheap knockoff.