Question Importance of SSDs with DRAM in 2025?

[NeoGunHero]

Hello,

I'm looking for a cheap, affordable 1TB NVME drive. I currently have a WD Blue SN550 1TB, which although is not the fastest drive ever, is speedy enough for me.

However, my main issue with this drive, is that whenever I try to download something that is maybe ~30GB or more, my download speed is CRIPPLED to a eye-watering 1MB/s max.
I have read countless posts across the web stating this is due to being a DRAM-less drive, whenever downloading something large it fills up the cache, causing it to have very low write speeds.

So, in my hunt for a new SSD, I have placed a huge importance on getting a drive with DRAM inside. However, most 1TB DRAM drives seem to be closer to $100, while DRAM-less ones are a bit closer to $50. I am wanting good bang for buck, and want to be able to download as much as I want without ever having my speeds crippled.

So my question is, how important is it to have a drive that has DRAM inside? My drive is years old, so the tech has assuredly gotten better over the years, but I don't want to run into this issue ever again since it is so incredibly annoying.

Are there any good DRAM-less drives that could handle a 100GB download without any issue? For context, my internet maxes at 45MB/s, and again on my current drive it cripples to 1MB/s if the download file is too large.

Please correct me if I got anything wrong, and I will post my specs below if that helps. Thanks!

Spoiler: PC Specs

GPU: Zotac RTX 2060 6GB AMP
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5700X @ 3.4GHz
Mobo: Gigabyte AORUS Gaming 5 X470
RAM: TeamGroup DDR4 32GB @ 3600MHz
Storage: WD Blue 1TB NVME M2 SSD, Crucial MX500 1TB SATA M2 SSD, Samsung 870 EVO 500GB SATA SSD
PSU: EVGA 80+ Bronze 600W
Mouse: Razer DeathAdder v2
Keyboard: Corsair K95 RGB Platinum w/Cherry MX Brown
Audio: HyperX Cloud Alpha

 

[Bob.B]

The original question seems to be about "downloading" the game, rather than playing the game

And I'm having a real hard time seeing the drive type being an issue if downloading from Steam.

True but then the op wondered about the effect of caching while gaming.

 

[NeoGunHero]

I will leave then”solution” at this for now. Disabling Write Cache allowed the WD Blue SN570 to sustain my full download speed, while keeping it on makes it suffer as the cache seems to fill up quickly. I can’t attest for how long this will be the case, but I was able to download a 55GB game without issue by doing this, so for now it works. Moving forward I will disable it only when download large games, and keep it on after. A temporary fix to a perhaps flawed drive.

It’s a bit of a bugbear, but something I can live with, and have for the past two years using this drive. I’ve mainly used my SATA and SATA M2 drives for games, as the speeds are plenty fast enough for me and they don’t have this issue of slowing down download speeds on large games.

What prompted this entire thing was me wanting to do a clean reinstall of Windows 11 and wanting a proper fast reliable drive to keep it on. I knew the WD drive was faster than my other two, but suffered this major issue. Looking into new drives, they’re not exactly worth the cost to me as I have plenty of storage and plenty of speed, just with this one small caveat. I’m getting close, maybe a year or two, to doing a full new build, so at that time I can look into a better drive, or if one of these fails on me.

 

[cruisetung]

So disabling the write cache suggestion did solve the problem.

https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/importance-of-ssds-with-dram-in-2025.3883121/post-23511420

 

[NeoGunHero]

So disabling the write cache suggestion did solve the problem.

https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/importance-of-ssds-with-dram-in-2025.3883121/post-23511420

Marked as solved. Thanks for all the help everyone!

 

[Bob.B]

I will leave then”solution” at this for now. Disabling Write Cache allowed the WD Blue SN570 to sustain my full download speed, while keeping it on makes it suffer as the cache seems to fill up quickly. I can’t attest for how long this will be the case, but I was able to download a 55GB game without issue by doing this, so for now it works. Moving forward I will disable it only when download large games, and keep it on after. A temporary fix to a perhaps flawed drive.

It’s a bit of a bugbear, but something I can live with, and have for the past two years using this drive. I’ve mainly used my SATA and SATA M2 drives for games, as the speeds are plenty fast enough for me and they don’t have this issue of slowing down download speeds on large games.

What prompted this entire thing was me wanting to do a clean reinstall of Windows 11 and wanting a proper fast reliable drive to keep it on. I knew the WD drive was faster than my other two, but suffered this major issue. Looking into new drives, they’re not exactly worth the cost to me as I have plenty of storage and plenty of speed, just with this one small caveat. I’m getting close, maybe a year or two, to doing a full new build, so at that time I can look into a better drive, or if one of these fails on me.

With cache enabled and running a large download monitor the ssd temps to see if your tripping a thermal.

 

[NeoGunHero]

With cache enabled and running a large download monitor the ssd temps to see if your tripping a thermal.

I'll give it a shot next time I can. I know that with heavy/extended gaming, my drives can hit around 50c, so I wonder if it's worse when downloading. I have a good feeling this is not the case at all, but it won't hurt to try.