[SOLVED] Kingston A400 (250GB) or Samsung 870 EVO (250GB)

Hi,
I have been looking for an good SSD for some. Also, this is my first time moving from a hard disk to an SSD. It turns out there are no many options available in local shops except for these two,
  • Kingston A400 250GB (2-Years Warranty)
  • Samsung 870 EVO 250GB (3-Years Warranty)

First of all my intention to upgrade to an SSD is because I'm having hard time building projects and compiling them, to do so I have to wait a very long time, and sometimes it leads to crash the whole system if I try to do something else. I suspect this is because of a higher number of IOPS and poor random read/write performance of the HDD I'm using. (Please correct me if I'm wrong.)

The thing that concerns me about buying either one of these is whether the DRAM cache playing any major role in my use case.

870 EVO with DRAM is two times the price of A400 in the shop that I'm looking for. So it worth paying some extra for DRAM or will I be okay with A400.
I'm also concern about the durability and compatibility for the following hardware.

  • Ryzen 5 2600
  • A320M PRO VD/S V2 MSI
  • 2x4GB RAM 2133MHz
  • Seagate HDD 1TB (ST1000DM010)
  • Seagate HDD 500GB (ST500LT012)
  • 400W PSU
(I will mix the SSD with these two HDDs)

Any help with this would be appreciated.

Thank you.
 
Solution
i would get the Samsung mainly as they are better ssd, the fact they offer 3 year warranty compared to 2 means they at least trust it will last that long, and probably longer still. I have a 250gb 840 that is 5 years old and still works like the 1st day I got it.

Cache means it doesn't slow down when transferring data compared to a drive without one. That is likely worth the difference if you getting it to speed up work. Some cache less ssd are slower than hdd.

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
i would get the Samsung mainly as they are better ssd, the fact they offer 3 year warranty compared to 2 means they at least trust it will last that long, and probably longer still. I have a 250gb 840 that is 5 years old and still works like the 1st day I got it.

Cache means it doesn't slow down when transferring data compared to a drive without one. That is likely worth the difference if you getting it to speed up work. Some cache less ssd are slower than hdd.
 
Solution
Will go for Samsung 870 EVO without thinking. Samsung EVO drives are good overall performers plus have quite long lifespan. Still have 8 years old Samsung 840 SSD around working as Windows system drive. And a dozen of 5-6 years old Samsung 850 EVO and 860 EVO drives without any complaints about them.

Can't say how long Kingston A400 will live. There was reports about them dying in a week or two.
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
I have seen articles where they say the amount of time it would take an average user to wear out an ssd is longer than the drive size will be useful. So you not going to be using the drive by time it wears out.

Off course, you get what you pay for and those reports aren't based on cache less SSD that didn't exist at the time. I don't know what wear would be like on them
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
I have seen articles where they say the amount of time it would take an average user to wear out an ssd is longer than the drive size will be useful. So you not going to be using the drive by time it wears out.

Off course, you get what you pay for and those reports aren't based on cache less SSD that didn't exist at the time. I don't know what wear would be like on them
It's not the TBW wear that is the issue. All the rest of the circuitry comes into play.
The one SSD I've had die was not even at 10% of its TBW warranty number. It died of other reasons.
 
Corner cutting by using bad controller and neutering RAM buffer make SSD life noticeably shorter. Mentioned Kingston A400 are dying exactly due to that. Plus Kingston was caught in using worse quality memory chips in next batches after their promotional batch sent to reviewers.
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
Plus Kingston was caught in using worse quality memory chips in next batches after their promotional batch sent to reviewers.
That is so sneaky. More companies should be like LG who when asked by 1 reviewer if they minded that he buy the TV from a local store, they insisted. Its a sign they treat everyone the same and aren't there to con costumers.