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I'd be more concerned about the Steam games than the OS, but it depends on what type of games you play and your style of playing. Anything even vaguely AAA is 50+ gigs these days, even some indie-ish games are getting pretty big. OTOH if you play only one game at a time and uninstall when done, you should be fine. I'm very ADD about games & always have a bunch of stuff installed at once so 250 felt really cramped. The 500 will be better long-term value if your budget allows.
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Jul 3, 2018 05:08
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I'm on 256 GB for roughly 4-5 years and it is fine if you don't want to install more than a small handful of Steam games at a time. But to be honest, I really loving hate that I have to uninstall games the moment I wanna try a different one I just bought in the sale. I've been seriously thinking of just getting a bigger one because 256 is too small. Especially with SSD prices being much lower nowadays.
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Jul 3, 2018 08:36
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My old gaming desktop still has a 240 GB Intel 330, which is running fine and I just realized it's DRAMless (and it still shows 100% NAND flash health after a couple dozen TB of writes and 5+ years of use.) I keep WoT on the SSD along with the OS and haven't seen a reason to swap it out with anything else. (Other games are on HDDs.)Geemer posted:I'm on 256 GB for roughly 4-5 years and it is fine if you don't want to install more than a small handful of Steam games at a time. But to be honest, I really loving hate that I have to uninstall games the moment I wanna try a different one I just bought in the sale. If you are hurting for storage, you can pretty economically get the Inland 480 GB on Amazon for $75 right now, (it's a Centon C380, and has DRAM.) There was even a lightning deal on an Adata SU655 (DRAMless) 480 GB for ~$68 earlier in the morning. 
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Jul 3, 2018 08:47
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Atomizer posted:There was even a lightning deal on an Adata SU655 (DRAMless) 480 GB for ~$68 earlier in the morning. Some NAND fab is just going to have a convenient disaster soon isn't it.
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Jul 3, 2018 08:50
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Geemer posted:I'm on 256 GB for roughly 4-5 years and it is fine if you don't want to install more than a small handful of Steam games at a time. But to be honest, I really loving hate that I have to uninstall games the moment I wanna try a different one I just bought in the sale. You can use steammover or maybe the steam client (I haven't tried it myself but people say it's easy) to just move the game to your HD when you're taking a break. I agree that 500GB provides a good bit more breathing room, I'm at 320GB used without being very careful about disk usage. I didn't even realize XCOM2 was still on my SSD until I just looked because I haven't been too careful about space management in the last 3 years or so since I got it.
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Jul 3, 2018 09:00
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Palladium posted:Some NAND fab is just going to have a convenient disaster soon isn't it. Didn't SSD prices finally start to drop after the Chinese government went after the manufacturers for price fixing a few months ago? That, and it wouldn't surprise me if plummeting prices have plenty to do with manufacturers trying to clear out their previous-gen flash, planar stuff or for example Micron and those cheap 2 TB drives (with their older 32-layer TLC.) Rexxed posted:You can use steammover or maybe the steam client (I haven't tried it myself but people say it's easy) to just move the game to your HD when you're taking a break. I agree that 500GB provides a good bit more breathing room, I'm at 320GB used without being very careful about disk usage. I didn't even realize XCOM2 was still on my SSD until I just looked because I haven't been too careful about space management in the last 3 years or so since I got it. Steam Mover is pretty much obsolete now; you can easily move games within Steam itself like you said, you have the option within the properties page for any given game. Just create a new library on another medium first and then you'll be able to move content to it.
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Jul 3, 2018 11:14
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Atomizer posted:Didn't SSD prices finally start to drop after the Chinese government went after the manufacturers for price fixing a few months ago? that was specifically dram memory, not flash quote:That, and it wouldn't surprise me if plummeting prices have plenty to do with manufacturers trying to clear out their previous-gen flash, planar stuff or for example Micron and those cheap 2 TB drives (with their older 32-layer TLC.) It's probably a combination of things. Phones are a huge consumer of flash and those are very spiky in demand (seasonal and whenever new iphones come out). IIRC there were some new chinese fabs coming online that were going to focus on flash -- cheaper stuff for their domestic phone market not SSDs, but filling demand from below works. Closeout on old flash like you said. And just general the trend is getting cheaper $/gb all the time but sometimes it feels like it goes up because the mainline capacity is doubling.
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Jul 3, 2018 11:55
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Klyith posted:that was specifically dram memory, not flash But DRAM prices are still ridiculously high, while NAND flash mercifully plummeted! I got 32 GB of DDR4 SO-DIMMs a couple of years ago for about half of what they're going for right now! Gah!!! Damnit China, why can't you do anything right! 
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Jul 3, 2018 19:00
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Okay, the M.2 SSD thing is driving me nuts. Just to clarify before I pull the trigger on some purchases: This: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16813145035 Has three M.2 slots. If I'm reading this correctly, two of them are M.2/SATA slots, which means plugging in a SSD there disables some SATA channels. The third one is listed as PCIe only, so would that mean it doesn't disable SATA? Effectively, if I stuck a 970 EVO into that third slot, would I still have six SATA channels to play with?
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Jul 4, 2018 19:17
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The 970 EVO connects to the PCI-Express bus so regardless of where it's installed it won't affect your SATA ports. Some M.2 drives do connect to SATA though, those are the ones that disable your regular SATA ports.
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Jul 4, 2018 19:31
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Great. That's what I thought, but I'm still at caveman-beating-on-rock stage when it comes to this particular tech so I wanted to verify before I spent money. 
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Jul 4, 2018 19:32
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I also believe that if you did theoretically plug three NVMe M.2 drives in there, they'd *share* your spare PCIe lanes' bandwidth. Not that it'd ever be noticeable.
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Jul 4, 2018 20:00
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The 1tb crucial mx500 is 182 right now on Amazon
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Jul 4, 2018 21:28
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Lockback posted:The 1tb crucial mx500 is 182 right now on Amazon gently caress what I paid for my 1TB 970 just a few months ago. 
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Jul 4, 2018 23:05
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Lockback posted:The 1tb crucial mx500 is 182 right now on Amazon Yup, the SATA 2.5" version. M.2 version is still $267 or so
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Jul 5, 2018 00:00
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Binary Badger posted:Yup, the SATA 2.5" version. M.2 version is still $267 or so This makes me feel better.
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Jul 5, 2018 00:36
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Binary Badger posted:Yup, the SATA 2.5" version. M.2 version is still $267 or so Yeah sorry I this is not the nvme so not comparable to a 970.
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Jul 5, 2018 00:44
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Does the Samsung 860 EVO have this DRAM stuff? And there's been a few mentions of it in the OP, but how much difference is there between something with DRAM and without? It sounds like something optional for SSDs, but highly recommended.
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Jul 5, 2018 02:41
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Level Slide posted:Does the Samsung 860 EVO have this DRAM stuff? And there's been a few mentions of it in the OP, but how much difference is there between something with DRAM and without? It sounds like something optional for SSDs, but highly recommended. Yes, all(to my knowledge) high/medium-end SSD’s have DRAM, and a lot of lower-end SSD’s as well. Since the DRAM is used as a buffer, eliminating it makes for a much slower drive. In the past, only most poo poo-tastic no-name/OEM drives were DRAM-less, but there’s a new generation of controllers that can run without DRAM and are only kinda lousy, rather than being complete dumpster fires. I can’t envision a situation where an informed consumer would even consider a DRAM-less SSD, since falling prices mean that you only save a few dollars between a decent budget drive and an utter piece of poo poo.
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Jul 5, 2018 03:09
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Level Slide posted:Does the Samsung 860 EVO have this DRAM stuff? The ones that don't have cache are the cheapest value models, like the WD Green, and possibly some models of enterprise drives (the type where it's made by a major brand but there's no info about them on the internet because they're only supposed to be sold to OEMs). don't buy enterprise drives unless you know what you're getting quote:And there's been a few mentions of it in the OP, but how much difference is there between something with DRAM and without? DRAM cache is the same thing as main memory on your PC: super-fast memory that improves response time but is not permanent. There is a big performance benefit to having it in pretty much all applications that care about performance. The things that don't need cache are single-thread sustained read and write of bulk data. quote:It sounds like something optional for SSDs, but highly recommended. It's optional for SSDs because flash is kinda fast enough to get away without it. Old HDs also have ram cache but for them it's non-optional. The price difference is usually not large, especially on larger sizes of SSD. The dram memory they stick in these things ranges from 1/2 a GB to a couple GB, which is not a major cost for a $200 1TB drive. For your OS drive, you really want cache. The OS drive often generates lots of little writes that can be packaged up in cache to a combined operation. Where you could skip it: if you were going all-SSD, a second drive for games and media wouldn't care about being slower and cacheless.
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Jul 5, 2018 03:14
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I think the plan right now is to get the 250gb Samsung 860 EVO only for the OS. The Steam games were a very definite Maybe, and I'd survive with only having one or two games installed at a time. If I ever commit to the Steam archival life, then I'll grab a second SSD. For now I just need something that'll start my computer up, and will hopefully last longer than my last OS drive.
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Jul 5, 2018 04:47
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Ynglaur posted:This makes me feel better.
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Jul 5, 2018 07:01
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Anime Schoolgirl posted:the m.2 version is actually $200 on amazon regularly. m.2 SATA drives are a dumb investment and a trap for the ill-informed enthusiast consumer
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Jul 5, 2018 07:36
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Klyith posted:m.2 SATA drives are a dumb investment and a trap for the ill-informed enthusiast consumer They can be turned back into a wired SATA drive for the cost of $5-20, depending on how nice you want the adapter or if you want one with a 2.5" form factor. Other than that, M.2 drives of any stripe are two less leads in your case.
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Jul 5, 2018 08:19
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Klyith posted:m.2 SATA drives are a dumb investment and a trap for the ill-informed enthusiast consumer For the informed consumers, you can use SATA m.2 SSDs in small USB enclosures that are slightly longer than an normal USB thumb drive. Giving you the speed of an SSD in a slightly larger USB flash drive format. I bought a laptop last month that had a 128GB SATA SSD in it and replaced it with a 1TB WD Black and put the 128 in said enclosure. Can transfer files around on the drive at 200+ MB/s speeds. For dimensions of said enclosure, 4.23" L, 1.25" W, 0.41" H 
SlayVus fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Jul 5, 2018 |
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Jul 5, 2018 19:38
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You can do the same with USB adapters for mSATA drives; that's a handy way to re-purpose the less-capacious SSDs that were shipped in older laptops as cache for a main HDD. Although, I recently realized that putting them in 2.5" enclosures/adapters instead makes for an easy way to get a decent boot drive for a CloudReady installation or whatever lightweight Linux distro you'd prefer for a secondary/guest/whatever PC.
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Jul 6, 2018 00:06
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Klyith posted:m.2 SATA drives are a dumb investment and a trap for the ill-informed enthusiast consumer This might be the dumbest take
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Jul 6, 2018 00:13
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Cat Army 
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They need to standardize an area of motherboards where nvme drives are fitted on the underside, so that motherboard trays can include a cutout. Taking the board out of my old itx system to fit nvme was a pain in the rear end.
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Jul 6, 2018 00:45
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The Iron Rose posted:This might be the dumbest take Yeah, I mean, I have a laptop that has 2x m.2 slots - and that's it, no 2.5" bays even! If m.2 drives are "a trap" (whatever that's supposed to mean) then what kind of internal storage am I supposed to use?!? To clarify, one slot is SATA/NVMe and one is SATA only; the former came pre-populated with an NVMe drive and then I added an SATA one in the 2nd slot for more storage as that was my only "option" (i.e. there weren't any options.) If the m.2 SATA part is the problem, well realistically it's non-negotiable for a lot of [older] systems; they can't really be a "trap" if there's no other choice. Other than that I agree that SATA is a bottleneck for SSD performance if that's what he was getting at, but it's not really an issue for most users since any SSD will be an upgrade over an HDD boot drive, most users won't notice the difference with an NVMe drive, and we're currently dealing with manufacturers who still sell complete systems without SSDs, so we're not even over that hump yet! GRINDCORE MEGGIDO posted:They need to standardize an area of motherboards where nvme drives are fitted on the underside, so that motherboard trays can include a cutout. I haven't build a desktop in so long that I was actually surprised to see that mobo linked a few posts ago; it's the first time I'd seen the m.2 slots scattered around a board, and it really seems like they crammed them in wherever there was space. With dual-slot PCIe cards installed I'd imagine it's a pain in the rear end to access the m.2 slots underneath. Anyways, my gaming desktop is several years old at this point, but it has an mSATA slot on the back side that I can't reach without disassembling the whole thing, and it's a custom SFF system so it's more of a hassle than it's worth at this point, and I totally agree that having standardized access through the chassis is a great idea.
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Jul 6, 2018 00:58
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GRINDCORE MEGGIDO posted:They need to standardize an area of motherboards where nvme drives are fitted on the underside, so that motherboard trays can include a cutout. I agree with you, but after failing to get people on board with standardizing BTX, PSU orientation, cooler mounting, ram interference, what EATX means, mitx vs mitx thin, right angle SATA, and SATA express, and oh my loving god front panel connectors what the flying gently caress dudes its 2018!!!... im pretty pessimistic we will get our wish. 
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Jul 6, 2018 02:35
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Cygni posted:I agree with you, but after failing to get people on board with standardizing BTX, PSU orientation, cooler mounting, ram interference, what EATX means, mitx vs mitx thin, right angle SATA, and SATA express, and oh my loving god front panel connectors what the flying gently caress dudes its 2018!!!... im pretty pessimistic we will get our wish. I really really wanted BTX at the time. It seemed like such a neat solution to CPU cooling, with the cooling module.
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Jul 6, 2018 02:52
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Klyith posted:m.2 SATA drives are a dumb investment and a trap for the ill-informed enthusiast consumer Except not, because -let's be clear here- even sata 3 is basically enough for the vast majority of home users
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Jul 6, 2018 11:33
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I have an eight year old laptop that I'm looking to put an SSD in. I only use it, at most, once a week to follow forums and chat rooms when I'm watching sports, and maybe every three months if I have a train journey. Web browsing and writing would be its most intense use. I know the cheap SSDs are generally recommended against, but Libre Writer files don't take up much room. I'm thinking about getting a sub €40 120gb SSD for it, are the Kingston A400s and WD Greens really to be avoided even in this scenario?
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Jul 6, 2018 11:42
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You'll have larger risk of data loss, and performance might not be as good as a higher-end SSD can deliver, but most likely still better than any platter disk can deliver. If you aren't keeping any important data on the machine, I'd say go for it. If you do keep important files (you're writing things?) you should bring an external drive or USB stick to back up to.
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Jul 6, 2018 12:10
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nielsm posted:You'll have larger risk of data loss, and performance might not be as good as a higher-end SSD can deliver, but most likely still better than any platter disk can deliver. If you aren't keeping any important data on the machine, I'd say go for it. I'd argue you should back up your data no matter how new of a laptop or high-end your SSD is 120GB drives are so cheap these days (people almost give them away used), I'd go for it
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Jul 6, 2018 12:36
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I recently tested a WD Black NVMe 512GB drive. Goddamn thing throttles after about 15-20 seconds of continuous writes.
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Jul 6, 2018 16:23
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pads and pennies?
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Jul 6, 2018 16:51
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Seamonster posted:pads and pennies? Yeah, ima stick something to that sucker.
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Jul 6, 2018 17:59
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redeyes posted:Yeah, ima stick something to that sucker. Not the cheapest, but you get to pick ~colors~! 
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Jul 7, 2018 02:10
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Samsung 860 Evo arrived, and my computer still can't register it no matter which SATA cable I use, and no matter which slot I plug to on the motherboard. Strangely enough, it can still pick up the storage drive when I plug it in using either of the cables. It's a great thing I have another cable coming in tomorrow, and I'm going to have this new thing installed eventually, but I must have encountered the most specific circumstances where my mobo just won't play nice at all with SSDs.
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Jul 7, 2018 05:17
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