Question Which SSD should I buy?

[MTGmike]

I tried searching for similar questions but didn't have much luck. I'm looking for a new SSD for my gaming rig and I'm not sure which one to buy. I already have a Samsung EVO 850 250GB that has my OS and few games on it (I'm very happy with it buy have limited experience). I have two crappy old 500GB HDD's that most of my games and random stuff are stored on. I'm looking to buy another SSD primarily to install games on. Whatever I buy has to come from BestBuy as I prefer to support local brick and mortar stores. I'm looking at one of the following. I am currently leaning towards the EVO 860 500GB but am open minded and would appreciate any input.

Samsung 860 EVO 500GB

Sandisk Ultra 1.024GB

PNY CS1311 480GB

Samsung 970 EVO Plus 500GB m.2

I initially wanted to keep my budget under $100 but if the slightly higher options I listed are truley justifiable then I am willing to spend the extra money. I'm also open to drives I didn't list so feel free to make suggestions. Also, please don't just name a drive an move on. I would really like to know why you prefer the drive you list.

Thank you all in advance for your advise. I don't know what I would do without this community.

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

Specs?

 

[Zephyl]

The 860 EVO is a fine choice if you have to stay within $100, but if you have room to splurge, the Sandisk Ultra 1TB is great if you want more storage (and more reliability with Sandisk, in my experience) and the 970 EVO is great if you want EVEN FASTER speeds, that is if your motherboard supports m.2.

 

[MTGmike]

The 860 EVO is a fine choice if you have to stay within $100, but if you have room to splurge, the Sandisk Ultra 1TB is great if you want more storage (and more reliability with Sandisk, in my experience) and the 970 EVO is great if you want EVEN FASTER speeds, that is if your motherboard supports m.2.

My mother board is a MSI Z170A Gaming Pro so it does support the m.2.
Is the speed of the Sandisk comparable to the 850EVO that I currently have? If it is, I def willing to spend the money for the extra storage.
Is the speed increase of the 970 enough to justify half the capacity compared to the Sandisk or the additional price compared to the 860EVO?

I guess those are really the questions I should have asked.

Rig:
MSI Z170A Gaming Pro
Intel Core I5-6600K 3.5Ghz
16GB Corsair Vengeance DDR4 2666
EVGA Geforce GTX1070
Samsung 850EVO 250GB SSD
2 old 500GB HDDs
Thermaltake 750W Smart Pro RGB 750W

 

[Bearmann]

It depends on how much room you need. Personally, I wouldn't consider the PNY. Here is the Sandisk 1 TB 3D compared to your current 250 Gb Samsung EVO: https://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/2193?vs=2328 Large drives usually perform better than smaller drives and potentially last longer since each cell is accessed fewer times for a given amount of data per day.

Although the 970 Samsung EVO Plus will be much faster than all the other SATA SSD drives, you'll probably only notice the difference when you write a large game to the drive. Load times will only improve by about a second because the bottleneck is the CPU processing the data, not getting the data off of the drive. Game play will be unaffected. (I'm not a gamer, so someone correct me if I am wrong) At that same link you can you can change the SSD to the 970 EVO Plus to compare it to the Sandisk 3D 1 TB.

So my vote goes to the Sandisk 1 TB.

 

[MTGmike]

It depends on how much room you need. Personally, I wouldn't consider the PNY. Here is the Sandisk 1 TB 3D compared to your current 250 Gb Samsung EVO: https://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/2193?vs=2328 Large drives usually perform better than smaller drives and potentially last longer since each cell is accessed fewer times for a given amount of data per day.

Although the 970 Samsung EVO Plus will be much faster than all the other SATA SSD drives, you'll probably only notice the difference when you write a large game to the drive. Load times will only improve by about a second because the bottleneck is the CPU processing the data, not getting the data off of the drive. Game play will be unaffected. (I'm not a gamer, so someone correct me if I am wrong) At that same link you can you can change the SSD to the 970 EVO Plus to compare it to the Sandisk 3D 1 TB.

So my vote goes to the Sandisk 1 TB.

Thank you Bearmann.

I was wondering if the speed increase of the 970 EVO would offer any legit advantage. I don't think its worth it in my case. I think the double capacity of the Sandisk is more meaningful to me than the increase in speed I will see from the 970 EVO on my rig.

Can anyone make an argument to the contrary or does that sound accurate?

 

[USAFRet]

Can anyone make an argument to the contrary or does that sound accurate?

"I'm looking to buy another SSD primarily to install games on. "
A SATA III drive. That use does not warrant the speed and price of an NVMe drive like the 970 EVO.

The Samsung 850/860, or the SanDisk Ultra II, or the Crucial MX500.
I have some of all 3.