Anyway, don't get me wrong. I take your advice into account, believe me. However,
When I pay more for something, I want more. So far, from the review of the 990 Pro, I saw no reason why I should pick the 990 Pro over the Adata S70 (by the way, just a reminder, I am NOT buying Adata S70. I am showing S70 because it has the exact same controller as the local SSD that I found).
The 990 Pro promised 6.9GB/s write speed, but only achieved 6.2GB/s max write speed. The S70 only promised 6.4GB/s, but reached 6.8GB/s.
The S70 has an almost 3 times bigger SLC cache than the 990 Pro.
The S70 has higher TBW than the 990 Pro.
The 990 Pro has better random speed than the S70, but I expect that, since the former is more expensive.
Does this sound like "the best" to you?
This would be fine if the 990 Pro didn't cost a premium, but it does, around 50% more.
And as another person mentioned, the drive isn't free of major problems despite the premium price tag.
This has always been my problem with Samsung SSDs, and why I have almost no desire to buy any of Samsung SSDs.
You asked for an advice and i gave it to you. If 990 Pro is too expensive for you, 970 Evo Plus is also a very solid choice. Cheaper too.
In terms of read/write speeds, you can not tell a diff between PCI-E 3.0 and PCI-E 4.0 drives, despite the theoretical bandwidth being double. Only place where you can tell a diff, is in drive benchmarks (you'll get higher score).
When it comes to drives, you'll see biggest diff coming from 3.5" HDD to 2.5" SSD. There, diff in loading times is easily measured in seconds, where 2.5" SSD can be up to 10x faster than 3.5" HDD (7200 RPM) even more so if HDD is 5400 RPM.
Small diff can be seen when coming from 2.5" SATA SSD to M.2 NVMe (PCI-E 3.0) SSD. There, diff at best, is 1-2 seconds. Some see the diff, some don't.
And as i said above, diff between PCI-E 3.0 and PCI-E 4.0 can't be seen, since it's in milliseconds, if even that.
So, it's up to you if you want to have bigger numbers, without 0 real world difference.
As far as brand goes, that's individual taste. But i prefer to use a brand who has great reputation and who's hardware has been tried, tested and proven to be reliable.
So, lets take Samsung and Adata as comparison.
Founded in 1969, Samsung is household name when it comes to SSDs. On top of that, Samsung is also an OEM, who specializes in research and manufacture of everything to do with flash NAND, among other ventures Samsung does. Samsung is world's #1 flash NAND brand, holding top position since 2003.
Founded in 2001, Adata is a brand who also manufacturers flash NAND, being biggest competitor to Samsung. And since Adata can't compete with Samsung when it comes to performance/reliability, they do the 2nd best thing - cheap price. Hence why Adata products are more appealing than Samsung products, because they are cheaper.
Thing is, if Adata cheap products are as good (or better) than more expensive Samsung drives, Samsung would've been out of business long time ago. Since why pay more for same, right? Yet, Samsung is going strong and is #1 in world at many aspects. So.... how come?
🤔
My personal experience:
Like i said, i have many Samsung drives in use, between my PCs. Those include: 2.5" Samsung 850 Evo (500GB), 2.5" Samsung 860 Evo (500GB), 2x 2.5" Samsung 870 Evo (1TB), 2x 2.5" Samsung 870 Evo (2TB), Samsung 960 Evo (500GB), Samsung 970 Evo Plus (2TB), Samsung 980 (1TB). And my phone is also Samsung, Galaxy A52S 5G.
Besides the drives, i also like Samsung Data Migration Tool, that i can use to easily clone over my stuff, from old drives to new Samsung drives. And also Samsung Magician, to keep tabs on my Samsung drives (firmware updates, temps, drive benchmarks etc).
I also once did buy Adata USB thumb drive, since i needed one. Thing died within a year, spewing data corruption errors and what not. Threw it away and that was the last time i looked towards cheap brand. Went with Kingston USB thumb drive next, which still is working perfectly, 4+ years later. If a brand can't even make a simple device reliable, then i won't be spending my money on a far important hardware within same brand.
Before i dedicated myself to Samsung SSDs, i was using Western Digital HDDs and based on good review of Crucial MX500 SSD (
link), i also bought it, in 1TB size. Sure, MX500, at that time, had almost equal performance to Samsung 850 Evo, while costing considerably less. So, decided to give it a try.
What the review doesn't tell, is that when you fill up MX500,
it will bog down, considerably. Found it out the hard way, by myself. Proof here:
link (my UserBenchmark run from that time, with MX500 having 186 GB free). Then again, i payed far less for MX500 than Samsung 850 Evo, at that time, costed. So, lesson learned and i went with Samsung drive next. With Samsung drive, there weren't (and still hasn't been) any such terrible bog downs when drive is filled, as i had with far cheaper drive.
Hence why, i, personally, prefer Samsung drives. Sure, Samsung costs more but that's the inherit nature of all hardware; if you want to have good and cheap drive, you have to buy two drives - the cheap one and the good one. I did buy a cheap drive, learned my lesson and now, i'm buying good drives.
Like i said earlier, your money and your data. If you don't want to pay premium for Samsung drive, go with the local (no-name) SSD you found. In the end, your data lives there and it's up to you to decide, how valuable your data is for you.
I, personally, care a lot about my data and thus, am willing to pay top dollar for the best reliability there is. I also have several backups (both online and offline), just in case the drive(s) should die.
I'd understand having "the best", if the use cases were actually going to be exercising it. But the only use case I can think of where having "the best" NVMe SSD would shine is a data center.
But if getting "the best" helps you sleep at night, who am I to judge?
It's common for people to get far better hardware than what they actually use it for. This is especially true with GPUs. A lot of people are buying far beefier and expensive GPUs than they actually "need".
E.g for 1080p gaming, which GPU you'd buy?
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