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Hello there tech savvy people,
I'm having an itching question that needs to be answered satisfactory by a storage tech expert.

Main question : Does more SSD writing speed worth it at all?

Here's a random example;
Sata 3 Samsung 860 QVO 1TB

Advertised Read Speed : 550MB/s
Advertised Write Speed : 520MB/a

But in reality so many people are reporting that, on SSDs with this speed range, write speed go down drastically.
Even down to 120-130MB/s (Which is even slower than a Sata HDD in some cases)

on the other hand;
NVMe M.2 Corsair MP510 240GB
Advertised Read Speed : 3100MB/s
Advertised Write Speed : 1050MB/a

  1. Will this minimum 2x improvement on PCI-e SSD write speed go down aswell? What does the reports say?
  2. Which is actually PRACTICALLY worth: putting my money into writing speed? or read speed?
  3. There are PCI-e SSD models that give +3000MB/s read speed but 520MB/s write speed aswell. What's the reason and practical use for this option?
  4. What are the main reasons for Sata 3 SSD low write speed? And what are the known fixes?
Because I feel like I'll be fine if I can get a Sata SSD work on ADVERTISED speeds, So I can put money into the SIZE of storage, rather than speed that I might not actually need.


Also I have this bad boy on my radar: (But I'm contemplating if It actually worth buying)
NVMe M.2 Samsung 970 EVO Plus 250GB
Advertised Read Speed : 3500MB/a
Advertised Write Speed : 2300MB/s


Please guide me with facts and actual reports,
Keep in mind that I will be using this machine for multi channel audio production & video editing & rendering. Using large VST files and working on large Video files
I have 2x8GB of DDR4 3200MHz RAM
Motherboard will be MSI B450-A PRO or MSI B450M PRO-M2


Thank you for reading through:)
 
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I wouldn't recommend QLC SSDs (Intel 660p or Samsung QVO) for anything except secondary drives.

What country are you in?

For your use case, yes, the greater read/write capabilities of an NVMe SSD is worth it compared to what you'd get from a SATA one, but price has to be taken into consideration. I certainly wouldn't recommend a 250GB SSD for your usage. We should be able to find a happy medium between performance and capacity for your budget.
 

popatim

Titan
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Since you will be working with large files, the QLC drives may not be for you.

You may already be aware that they use a portion of the unused flash in SLC mode as a high speed buffer and once the buffer is full you drop to native speeds (hence the 'slow as a hard drive' reports)

Reads are not an issue; the buffer only affects writes. How large will your files be?
And why such a small SSD? If your files will actually be on another drive then that is the one that will be impacting your speeds.
 
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R1 owner

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Apr 10, 2017
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Since you will be working with large files, the QLC drives may not be for you.

You may already be aware that they use a portion of the unused flash in SLC mode as a high speed buffer and once the buffer is full you drop to native speeds (hence the 'slow as a hard drive' reports)

Yeah I don't want that. I wasn't aware. It appears that there are new terms that I need to learn about such as slc mlc tlc qlc..


How large will your files be?
And why such a small SSD?
The singular files are minimum 3-9GB each, In total, files vary between 300 - 400 GB (I delete some after finishing working on them)
Then I need an SSD about 500GB that is consistent in write & read speeds.
But there are so many options and I'm quite confused.
 
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R1 owner

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Apr 10, 2017
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I wouldn't recommend QLC SSDs (Intel 660p or Samsung QVO) for anything except secondary drives.

What country are you in?

For your use case, yes, the greater read/write capabilities of an NVMe SSD is worth it compared to what you'd get from a SATA one, but price has to be taken into consideration. I certainly wouldn't recommend a 250GB SSD for your usage. We should be able to find a happy medium between performance and capacity for your budget.

Thank you for your response,

Living in Turkey, which has an outrageous conversion rate (1USD = 6TRY)
So I'm trying to be as conservative as I can, but I'm not really going to buy something that is below my expectations and requirements just because it's cheaper.

It appears I don't really need space more than 500GB, on an SSD, maybe I can even manage 250GB, but windows takes a lot of space so I don't really know. Safer bet is 500GB,
If the drive has consistent quality, I'll go for it. (referring to write speed drops. I don't really want that trouble)

I can swap files that I will be working on with my 2TB storage to my SSD that is not a problem.
 

Endre

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I own a “bad boy” like that as my OS drive, partition C (Samsung 970 EVO Plus 250GB).
Before that I had as my OS boot drive the Kingston HyperX Predator 240GB SATA3 (560MB/s read, 520MB/s write).

My conclusion after months of usage is that you will “feel” the speed in everything that you’ll do:
Installing programs, copying large files, loading programs, internet usage, boot time etc.
Everything is more “snappy”.
Buying it it’s good business.
 
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