Question Which is the better M.2 SSD - - - Lexar NM790 NVMe 2TB or Kingston NV3 PCIe 4.0 NVMe 2TB ?

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Daniel Youssef

Daniel Youssef

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May 24, 2013
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I currently have a PCIE gen 3 XPG S11 512GB NVME, which I currently run my OS on, and I also had a really old SSD SATA of 256GB, which I tend to replace with a NVME gen 4 SSD. So within my budget and my country, these two choices were within my budget range. Kindly note the Kingstone is slightly cheaper (10$ or so cheaper) than the Lexar but I was hesitant to make a choice due to a couple of things I saw when researching and these are the points that got me worried if I should go with Kingstone or not

1. TBW of Kingston 2TB is around 640 (which some say is kind of low?). And a 3-year warranty limit, which some say resembles the durability of an SSD, and having kind of a 3-year is somewhat not the best?

2. I dont really know Lexar as a brand that much; I have only seen it in the past couple of years coming up but I dont know anyone (that I know of) that has this brand SSD and I don't know really much if it is any good, has good reputation, is reliable...etc (please help me out if you know more about it?)



Note: My usage is mainly gaming; maybe some coding and stuff related to work, but nothing related to rendering or heavy usage.
 
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I would pay very little attention to the TBW. It would be a factor only if you exceeded 640 TB writes within the 3 year warranty period. The chances of that are virtually zero unless you have some unexplained weird situation where you would write 200 plus TB per year. More likely you would write 20 or less.

Any drive or brand can drop dead at any minute, regardless of TBW. If you have a bad experience, it's not likely to be TBW-related.

But if you can't stop worrying about it, get the one with highest TBW.

Lexar brand? I don't follow the brand. You might be able to find some horrifying reviews of it....only to then find out you can find horrifying reviews of Kingston.

Do you pay a lot of attention to benchmarks? If yes, maybe go with the best benchmark, regardless of whether you'd notice the difference in day to day use.

Do either or both of those drives have DRAM? That might be a deciding point.
 
In normal consumer use, TBW is pretty irrelevant.

The Kingston has a TBW of 640TB.

In all of your previous SSDs, have you ever gotten even a little bit close to that? Ever?


I've been using SSDs exclusively for a decade.
All of my current and previous SSD don't add up to 640TB.
 
Lafong said:
I would pay very little attention to the TBW. It would be a factor only if you exceeded 640 TB writes within the 3 year warranty period. The chances of that are virtually zero unless you have some unexplained weird situation where you would write 200 plus TB per year. More likely you would write 20 or less.

Any drive or brand can drop dead at any minute, regardless of TBW. If you have a bad experience, it's not likely to be TBW-related.

But if you can't stop worrying about it, get the one with highest TBW.

Lexar brand? I don't follow the brand. You might be able to find some horrifying reviews of it....only to then find out you can find horrifying reviews of Kingston.

Do you pay a lot of attention to benchmarks? If yes, maybe go with the best benchmark, regardless of whether you'd notice the difference in day to day use.

Do either or both of those drives have DRAM? That might be a deciding point.
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Do you pay a lot of attention to benchmarks? Not necessarily my deciding factor, my knowledge in Nvme SSDs are quite limited, so basically the read and writes are the only thing that I usually see, the thing is the difference in read and writes between gen 3 and 4 is twice the speed for gen4, but I have seen some tests it doesnt really show any noticeable difference in gaming (loading screens, shaders ...etc). So mainly you could say I'm looking for the most reliable or something that has good performance and usually tends to stay many years (if nothing goes out of the ordinary)

Do either or both of those drives have DRAM? No, both are DRAM-less
USAFRet said:
In normal consumer use, TBW is pretty irrelevant.

The Kingston has a TBW of 640TB.

In all of your previous SSDs, have you ever gotten even a little bit close to that? Ever?


I've been using SSDs exclusively for a decade.
All of my current and previous SSD don't add up to 640TB.
Click to expand...
Good point; no, of course not. Not even close, for sure.

But this gives the question, if TBW doesn't matter (I don't care really about that number), why does this have a lower years of warranty? (some say that indicates that the SSD is not as reliable?)
Which should I go for here really if both are sort of similar, based off of brand or known to be more reliable or more performant?
 
Daniel Youssef said:
Good point; no, of course not. Not even close, for sure.

But this gives the question, if TBW doesn't matter (I don't care really about that number), why does this have a lower years of warranty? (some say that indicates that the SSD is not as reliable?)
Which should I go for here really if both are sort of similar, based off of brand or known to be more reliable or more performant?
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The years is far more important.

But what is REALLY important is keeping a good backup routine.
The warranty only gives you a new drive. The data on it is your responsibility.


Personally, Kingston is on my No Buy list. From actions they did years and years ago. Sending good SSDs out for review, getting good reviews, and then changing the parts. Which resulted in slower performance. But keeping the same SKU and telling no one.

In light of all the other SSD brands, I just avoid them.
 
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USAFRet said:
The years is far more important.

But what is REALLY important is keeping a good backup routine.
The warranty only gives you a new drive. The data on it is your responsibility.


Personally, Kingston is on my No Buy list. From actions they did years and years ago. Sending good SSDs out for review, getting good reviews, and then changing the parts. Which resulted in slower performance. But keeping the same SKU and telling no one.

In light of all the other SSD brands, I just avoid them.
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I have heard about this on a review about it, said the exact same thing and they did the same for the NV2. If that is a bad thing (since I may end up with a piece that may be less performant) what are your thoughts on Lexar as a brand or if you know about the specific model NM790 ?

Edit: based off of this, meaning Lexar wins by default since it has the higher warranty? 5 years?
 
Daniel Youssef said:
I have heard about this on a review about it, said the exact same thing and they did the same for the NV2. If that is a bad thing (since I may end up with a piece that may be less performant) what are your thoughts on Lexar as a brand or if you know about the specific model NM790 ?

Edit: based off of this, meaning Lexar wins by default since it has the higher warranty? 5 years?
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Why only those 2 brands?
 
USAFRet said:
Why only those 2 brands?
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To be honest, they kind of fall under the intermediate SSD budget-y type? I didnt really want to spend an extra 50 or 100 bucks for samsung and go over the board with an extraordinary SSD that may as well not give me any noticeable performance or at-least in my use case since I'm using this for gaming mainly and some moderate workload.

both fall for me around 141.7$ for Kingston and 151.8$ for Lexar
 
USAFRet said:
What are Samsung prices in your market?
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Samsung 990 EVO 2TB is 182$
Samsung 990 Pro 2TB is 186$
Samsung 980 Pro 2TB is 182$
Corsair MP600 GS 2TB is 202$

There's also SN850 WD which is cheapest of them all. 121$
USAFRet said:
Regarding the Kingston shadiness:
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme...itching-cheaper-components-after-good-reviews

ADATA
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/adata-and-other-ssd-makers-swapping-parts
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I was not aware ADATA Also did that, as I happen to come across the XPG S70 Blade which had the same price as the Lexar. Now makes me think twice about it
 
Daniel Youssef said:
Samsung 990 EVO 2TB is 182$
Samsung 990 Pro 2TB is 186$
Samsung 980 Pro 2TB is 182$
Corsair MP600 GS 2TB is 202$

There's also SN850 WD which is cheapest of them all. 121$

I was not aware ADATA Also did that, as I happen to come across the XPG S70 Blade which had the same price as the Lexar. Now makes me think twice about it
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Of those, the WD SN850.
 
USAFRet said:
Of those, the WD SN850.
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Hmm, I was considering it, but it seems to have sequential read/writes that are way lower than all the other gen 4 SSDs so I was very skeptical about it. Also, what is the difference between the blue and the black or are these related only to specific models?
 
USAFRet said:
Link to the specific one your you're looking at?
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The SN580 (its 580, sorry for confusing it with 850) https://www.westerndigital.com/en-il/products/internal-drives/wd-blue-sn580-nvme-ssd?sku=WDS200T3B0E

And an example of black WD SSD https://www.westerndigital.com/en-il/products/internal-drives/wd-black-sn770-nvme-ssd


EDIT: Sorry I forgot to ask you, you mentioned that ADATA and Kingston are examples of companies that change parts of SSDs, but what about Lexar? would you happen to know if this is any good as a brand? or if it is reliable as an SSD?
 
USAFRet said:
Ah, the 580.
Yes, that is older tech.
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Considering the price differences between the previous, and re-considering this is an older tech. What do you think would be the next choice to go with?
Lafong said:
Blues can be DRAMless......check. Maybe not all, but mine is.

I have a black 770 also. Dramless. I don't regret it at all.
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It is DRAMLess as well as both of the mentioned SSDs.
 
Daniel Youssef said:
That's great. Do you have any opinion regarding Lexar and their SSDs? if they are reliable or even a well-known brand..etc ? I would very much appreciate it if you could tell me.
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I've never used or owned one.
But it is a well known brand, and likely to stand by any warranty action.

Given the price of the Samsungs, and the Kingston NoBuy list...Lexar wins by default.
 
Daniel Youssef said:
Given that it has lower read and write speeds than any of the Gen4 SSDs I have seen, shouldn't that be a problem or what actually matters regarding this matter?
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I don't know why I didn't ask earlier....but what motherboard is this on?

In reality though, you'd not likely see any difference.
The Read/Write speeds that are published are for big globs of sequential data. THat is not what the data is most of the time.
 
USAFRet said:
I don't know why I didn't ask earlier....but what motherboard is this on?

In reality though, you'd not likely see any difference.
The Read/Write speeds that are published are for big globs of sequential data. THat is not what the data is most of the time.
Click to expand...
Motherboard B550-F Asus Rog Strix

You mean games do not use that type of data or for sequential read/writes?

Also you mentioned that 580 is an Old tech? could you please tell me in which way?
 
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