Question Is going for a drive with DRAM worth the extra money?

[DefectedSOul]

basically the title. looking at upgrading my second PC to a M.2 for its storage drive (using a samsung 980 for a boot drive)
in my main PC ive got a 980 as a boot drive as well and a Crucial P3 plus 4tb as my game drive, without any problems. was going to get another Crucial P3 plus 4tb for it but now im seeing drives without dram is bad or nowhere as good as ones with and i found a WD Black SN850x 4tb for about a hundred dollars more and it does have DRAM from what i can find on it
they wont be used as boot drives (in my use case) just mainly for storage and gaming off of.

 

[Math Geek]

lack of dram is only an issue when transferring large amounts of data at one time. once the ram buffer fills, then things slow down a bit. other than that, there is no actual issue with the drives. def not worth an extra $100 for just a data drive.

i also recently went with a 4 tb Crucial P3+ and found it a great value for data storage or game drive.

the dram has nothing to do with reading from the drive which is all you are doing using it as a game drive once it is installed the first time.

i've yet to see a true compelling reason to avoid dram-less drives other than benchmark numbers which have been shown over and over to have nothing to do with real world use experiences.

 

[jojesa]

It will depend on how do you use the disk?
There will be zero improvement in gaming.
You will see a difference when transferring large files.

 

[hotaru.hino]

I have a DRAM-less SSD. I haven't seen anything different using it vs. any other one.

Actually I haven't seen any practical performance improvements since I've been using NVMe SSDs.

 

[Math Geek]

i noticed a difference when i got my first sata ssd vs the old spinning hdd's i had in the system.

since then i can't tell whether the sata ssd, the gen 3 or the gen 4 m.2 nvme ssd's are the one being used at the moment. i still have 2 old hdd's working and they are the only ones i can actually tell are being used.

other then reading benchmarks or some very specific workloads the home user won't ever ask for, there really is no real world difference between any of the ssd types out there

 

[DefectedSOul]

lack of dram is only an issue when transferring large amounts of data at one time. once the ram buffer fills, then things slow down a bit. other than that, there is no actual issue with the drives. def not worth an extra $100 for just a data drive.

i also recently went with a 4 tb Crucial P3+ and found it a great value for data storage or game drive.

the dram has nothing to do with reading from the drive which is all you are doing using it as a game drive once it is installed the first time.

i've yet to see a true compelling reason to avoid dram-less drives other than benchmark numbers which have been shown over and over to have nothing to do with real world use experiences.

awesome! thank you. also noticed both the Crucial and the WD both had a 5 year warranty om em so that makes me feel even more so confident in my purchase and my future purchase on another Crucial P3 plus 4tb

 

[Math Geek]

my only problem is that prices have come down enough that i keep buying and i don't really need any more space

got 2 4tb and a 2 tb 970 evo plus in my system now along with 2 tb sata ssd and a couple WD 4tb blue drives. every drive has a purpose, but may not need the full space for it's current use.

all i keep thinking is "i can upgrade the 2 tb to another 4 tb ...." like i need the full 20 tb i got now and should def go for more. lol


glad i could help

 

[DefectedSOul]

my only problem is that prices have come down enough that i keep buying and i don't really need any more space

got 2 4tb and a 2 tb 970 evo plus in my system now along with 2 tb sata ssd and a couple WD 4tb blue drives. every drive has a purpose, but may not need the full space for it's current use.

all i keep thinking is "i can upgrade the 2 tb to another 4 tb ...." like i need the full 20 tb i got now and should def go for more. lol


glad i could help

lol my end goal is to replace all my mechanical HDDs in my PCs and have them fully swapped over to a couple m.2 drives and get my NAS up and running for all my data ive been hording over all these years and i can horde so much more lol

 

[USAFRet]

lol my end goal is to replace all my mechanical HDDs in my PCs and have them fully swapped over to a couple m.2 drives and get my NAS up and running for all my data ive been hording over all these years and i can horde so much more lol

All my house systems have been solid state only for several years.

The 95+TB available in or attached to my NAS are all spinners.

 

[Math Geek]

i though about ditching all the spinners, but streaming media around the house does not take much so those will hang out for now until they die.

might move the 970 evo+ to a laptop i have with a 500gb ssd in it. then add in another 4 tb one in my main pc. maybe another sn850x as a new boot drive. who know as prices drop, might go with something else, all depends on price. got holiday sales coming soon enough, might get a good flash sale from it.