Question Which is best SSD for my needs?

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dpriest

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Dec 30, 2008
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Hi all, I have an x399 Threadripper build that I am wanting to upgrade storage if it makes sense. I am not a gamer. I acquire a lot of media online and do some post processing and then move it to my NAS. I am currently using a 2TB WD Black drive for this. I like the longevity/ reliability but it is so slowww. Given that my system supports PCIe Gen. 3, not sure if it's better to get an NVME Gen. 4, Gen 3 or SATA SSD. I want something not only that will be as fast as possible but also something with good longevity that won't break the bank. I have been looking at the Samsung 980 Pro, 970 and 870 evo. Additionally, I intend to hold on to my system as long as possible but Microsoft might limit that with future OS not supporting my MOBO.

Thoughts?
 
You want "as fast as possible"................

Not sure how literally you mean that.

I assume you will sooner or later have a gen 4 or gen 5 motherboard. Given that, you may (or may not) want to get something beyond a gen 3 drive in anticipation of that time frame.

"good longevity" is about as crapshooty as you can get.

Given a list of plausible candidates, you'd rather have good luck than whatever can be gained by the 33rd hour of research on the best choice.

Some people get antsy about suitability of SSDs for very long term treasured data storage. Don't know how you feel about that.

Are you driven more by spec sheets, benchmarks, or anecdotes? Wondering generally what might cause you to say "I made a BIG mistake".
 
Last edited:
Lafong said:
You want "as fast as possible"................

Not sure how literally you mean that.

I assume you will sooner or later have a gen 4 or gen 5 motherboard. Given that, you may (or may not) want to get something beyond a gen 3 drive in anticipation of that time frame.

"good longevity" is about as crapshooty as you can get.

Given a list of plausible candidates, you'd rather have good luck than whatever can be gained by the 33rd hour of research on the best choice.

Some people get antsy about suitability of SSDs for very long term treasured data storage. Don't know how you feel about that.
Click to expand...
I would not be using this drive for long term storage. I will be writing media to the drive, doing some post processing and then moving it to my NAS for long term storage. Anything I get is going to be much faster than my HDD.
 
It really depends on your budget. The 980 Pro is about 30 dollars more than the 970 Evo Plus for the 1TB size. The 970 Evo Plus reaches around 900MB/s, while the 980 Pro is around 1500MB/s in terms of sequential write speeds. The 970 Evo Plus is actually cheaper than the 870 Evo, so unless you have a limited number of NVME slots, I would skip on the 870 entirely. It really depends if you want to get the 980 Pro for its Gen 4 compatibility, or if you are okay with sticking with older drives.
 
OK;

Offhand, I probably wouldn't make a big distinction between SATA, NVMe, 2.5 inch. I suppose NVMe would have the most impressive spec sheets, particularly gen 4....if future motherboards are a consideration.

Maybe you couldn't live with yourself unless you chose a drive that had X benchmark rather than 90 percent of X.

Don't know how price-sensitive you are.
 
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I was reading that the 980 Pro is cheaper than the 970 Pro because the 980 Pro has a shorter warranty, shorter longevity and cheaper components, essentially degraded from the 970 Pro. The 970 Plus is significantly cheaper than the 970 Pro and 980 Pro. What I'm looking for really is longevity.

I will be replacing one of the 500GB m.2 drives with this new one.
 
I can't recall the details, but there was an uproar a few months back about some Samsung drive.....some variant of the 980 or 990? I think it was supposedly resolved with new firmware??

How many TB per year do you anticipate writing to the drive?? Probably wouldn't much matter as the TBW ratings are of little value. Unless you have an extremely unusual 1% use case.

I assume you are fully onboard the Samsung train to the exclusion of other brands. Not a problem.

If you have bad luck on the longevity issue, you will likely spend some time and frustration in customer service hell. Regardless of your choice. Defend yourself by crossing your fingers.
 
If you are essentially treating this as a cache drive. Get yourself an enterprise drive and a SAS controller. Take your motherboard out of the equation.

There are enterprise grade M.2 SSDs as well from the likes of Intel and Samsung, basically they add a flash chip for parity and capacitors for power loss situations.

You could also look at PCIe (not M2). Being older, a lot of them used MLC flash which is more resilient then the TLC flash used in most drives today.

You might also be able to find new old stock SATA MLC drives from the mid 2010s. Though you would be looking at 512GB max size.

Just depends on what you want to spend.
 
I just ordered the 970 EVO Plus on Amazon for $79.99. Can't beat that for price. Both the 980 Pro and 970 EVO Plus come with 5 year warranty. Anything will be faster than my WD Black HDD.
 
dpriest said:
I was reading that the 980 Pro is cheaper than the 970 Pro because the 980 Pro has a shorter warranty, shorter longevity and cheaper components, essentially degraded from the 970 Pro.
Click to expand...
The warranty for both the 980 Pro and the 970 Pro are 5 years.
The TBW numbers differ. But, contrary to the opinion of many, that TBW number is pie in the sky. It is highly unlikely a regular consumer will get close to that number before the warranty ages out. Or ever.

As far as speed...copying to and from, the speed of the operation is dictated by the slowest device in the chain.
Copying to your NAS, for instance...the speed relies on the drives in the NAS and your LAN connection.
You could have the fastest drive on the planet, but if it is writing to an HDD...all you will ever get is HDD speed.
 
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On second thought, cancelled my order for the 970 EVO Plus because someone else recommended the Crucial P3 Plus 2TB Gen. 4 for the same price. He was saying that the older 970 EVO Plus are not the same as the new ones being made, that it's like a bait and switch by Samsung and the P3 Plus outperforms on all levels. I assume the longevity will be similar. Eventhough Samsung uses TLC and the P3 has QLC, it shows as being faster.

In terms of speed, I installed a 10GB card on my PC and on the NAS. I have 7200 Iron Wolf Drives on my NAS.

Thoughts?
 
I like the samsung ssd devices because of the quality.
Most other sellers just assemble the devices from available controllers and nand chips.
Intel and samsung are 2 who make all of their own parts.
Most of what you do will be random and so sequential speed differences between sata and pcie makes little difference.
The one thing you can do to help performance and endurance is to buy a larger 2tb drive.
Since you have a m.2 slot capable of pcie3 speeds, I would consider a 2tb samsung 970 EVO plus for $90
www.newegg.com

SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS M.2 2280 2TB PCIe Internal SSD - Newegg.com

Buy SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS M.2 2280 2TB PCIe Gen 3.0 x4, NVMe 1.3 V-NAND Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) MZ-V7S2T0B/AM with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!
www.newegg.com www.newegg.com
Or an Intel 2tb 670P for $85:
www.newegg.com

Intel 670p Series M.2 2280 2TB PCIe 3.0 x4, NVMe 3D4 QLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) SSDPEKNU020TZX1 - Newegg.com

Buy Intel 670p Series M.2 2280 2TB PCIe 3.0 x4, NVMe 3D4 QLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) SSDPEKNU020TZX1 with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!
www.newegg.com www.newegg.com
 
I found this regarding Samsung switching controllers. When downloading files to the drive, the largest the individual file size will not exceed 100GB. I could simultaneously write a few of these files. Then I process the files which writes another copy to the drive. After the post processing, I move it to my NAS. A lot of the time the drive will be empty or only have very little data on it. Not sure if I'm overthinking this or not.
https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterra...ung_970_evo_plus_ssd_hardware_revisions_does/
 
I have a P3 Plus 1TB as an OS drive, not been that long, but so far so good. I often recommend it and the P5 Plus.

Sabrent boasts some of the highest MTBF, so I have that in my gaming rig to see how it goes. Rocket 4 Plus I think, whichever the PCIe 4.0 one is.
 
dpriest said:
I found this regarding Samsung switching controllers. When downloading files to the drive, the largest the individual file size will not exceed 100GB. I could simultaneously write a few of these files. Then I process the files which writes another copy to the drive. After the post processing, I move it to my NAS. A lot of the time the drive will be empty or only have very little data on it. Not sure if I'm overthinking this or not.
Click to expand...
And for that workflow, you'll find that the drive matters MUCH less than you think.

Copying to and from this NVMe depends on the performance of the other drive.

And during the processing and saving out to the drive...matters almost none.

A while ago, I did a test of this.

Corel VideoStudio.
2x 5 minute videos from my quadrotor.
Merge them into one 10 minute vid, with a transition and some color/exposure correction.
Rendering and saving out to various SSD types.
980 Pro, Intel 660p, various SATA III.

Virtually no difference in time.
136WL16.jpg


The CPU/RAM/GPU is doing all the heavy lifting here.
 
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