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owls or something
Jul 7, 2003

Eh, the 1100 is around $290... I think the extra ~$50 or so for the MX500 is worth it since it has 5 year warranty instead of 3 years and I don't need to deal with 3rd party sellers.

Thanks for letting me bounce ideas off you sir!

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Klyith
Aug 3, 2007

GBS Pledge Week

owls or something posted:

Where is a good place to buy the 1100 that isn't 3rd party sellers on Amazon or Ebay?

It's always gonna be 3rd party sellers since that drive isn't sold to retail. Everything on the market came off the back of a truck from business direct sale overstock.

Lockback
Sep 3, 2006

All days are nights to see till I see thee; and nights bright days when dreams do show me thee.

Shredder posted:

Yeah, just a home gaming/streaming PC OS drive. I still put all my games on spinning disk, but I guess that might change if I had 1TB of SSD space.

EDIT: The 860 Evo 1TB SATA seems fine, after doing more research it seems nvme would be wasted on me. I'll just hold out a month for black friday deals. Thanks!

Here is a good price on a great SSD for $150
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01N1862SW/

Probably comparable to what you'll find on Black Friday if you want to be a little impatient, unless you had your heart set on the M.2 for factor.

Klyith
Aug 3, 2007

GBS Pledge Week

Lockback posted:

Here is a good price on a great SSD for $150
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01N1862SW/

Probably comparable to what you'll find on Black Friday if you want to be a little impatient, unless you had your heart set on the M.2 for factor.

WD Blue 3D is also 150 and is a much more recent drive with 3d nand.

I'm not sure that black friday won't be even cheaper, ssds are really cratering.

DrDork
Dec 29, 2003
commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

owls or something posted:

edit: I mean I know it's probably unlikely I'd ever get close to either drives TBW rating, so maybe I should just go for the Sammy?

Unless you're doing almost constant write cycles (like, your job is to process UHD videos all day), you will never exhaust the TBW on even a 256GB drive, let alone a 2TB drive.

The few times reviewers have bothered to actually test TBWs, they've found them all to be hilariously conservative, too. The 250GB version of the 840 Evo lasted out till something like 800TBW, with many others getting similar results. Those were MLC/TLC setups, so QLC chips should get somewhat less endurance, but still.

Atomizer
Jun 24, 2007



Yeah you're probably not going to wear out an SSD unless you're trying, you have terrible habits (i.e. frequent writes on a nearly-full drive,) or if you have a legitimately heavy workload like SSD caching for a huge RAID or something like that.

I'm actually trying to wear out old, low-capacity (e.g. 16 & 32 GB) SSDs by using them as a read cache for gaming HDDs with PrimoCache; I'll let you know if this ever happens!

Palladium
May 8, 2012

Very Good
✔️✔️✔️✔️

DrDork posted:

Unless you're doing almost constant write cycles (like, your job is to process UHD videos all day), you will never exhaust the TBW on even a 256GB drive, let alone a 2TB drive.

The few times reviewers have bothered to actually test TBWs, they've found them all to be hilariously conservative, too. The 250GB version of the 840 Evo lasted out till something like 800TBW, with many others getting similar results. Those were MLC/TLC setups, so QLC chips should get somewhat less endurance, but still.

The 840 Evo also has the worst practical endurance in a retail SSD since it uses the smallest planar TLC has the suckiest charge retention. The current breed of 3D NAND drives have much larger cells which will boost write endurance by leaps and bounds.

BIG HEADLINE
Jun 13, 2006

"Stand back, Ottawan ruffian, or face my lumens!"

Palladium posted:

The 840 Evo also has the worst practical endurance in a retail SSD since it uses the smallest planar TLC has the suckiest charge retention. The current breed of 3D NAND drives have much larger cells which will boost write endurance by leaps and bounds.

Yeah, there's a reason my current system is using a 750GB 840 EVO as the Steam/game drive and Windows is still on an ancient Intel 730 MLC SSD. When this build becomes my parents computer in a month or two, I'm cloning the boot over to a 500GB MX500 and retiring the Intel. I'll keep the EVO in there for them as a substitute for spinning rust.

K8.0
Feb 26, 2004

Her Majesty's 56th Regiment of Foot
I would like to know the actual number of SSDs under consumer workloads that have ever failed for reasons other than controller failure or external damage. The number has got to be stunningly small. Even the absolute shittiest NAND flash is absurdly reliable.

LRADIKAL
Jun 10, 2001

Fun Shoe
Change the OP to "THEY ARE MORE RELIABLE THAN HARD DRIVES- ALSO BACK UP YOUR poo poo IN THE FIRST PLACE"

The first half might actually be a decent idea.

BIG HEADLINE
Jun 13, 2006

"Stand back, Ottawan ruffian, or face my lumens!"
More like:

SSD Thread: OCZ Can't Hurt You Anymore, Stop Being a Storage Luddite and Get Some TLC

Previa_fun
Nov 10, 2004

I bought a prebuilt system this summer that came with a single HDD, and I'm looking to upgrade to an SSD. Really all I do is play games and browse the web; in that use case is an m.2 drive really worth it over a SATA drive? I'm looking at 1tb drives if it makes a difference. It'd be an OS boot drive plus a few games, media would be kept on the HDD.

Atomizer
Jun 24, 2007



Previa_fun posted:

I bought a prebuilt system this summer that came with a single HDD, and I'm looking to upgrade to an SSD. Really all I do is play games and browse the web; in that use case is an m.2 drive really worth it over a SATA drive? I'm looking at 1tb drives if it makes a difference.

First of all, m.2 and SATA are not mutually exclusive. If you have NVMe-compatible slots then that's another story, but even then you don't need NVMe over a SATA drive because literally anything will be an upgrade over the current HDD. If you have free space/slots/ports for any kind of drive then I'd suggest the most cost-effective SSD; for 1 TB-class $150 and under would be a good deal, and you can generally find any of the MX500, WD Blue (or its Sandisk version,) even an Adata SU800 would be fine (anything with DRAM is good for the OS.)

isndl
May 2, 2012
I WON A CONTEST IN TG AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS CUSTOM TITLE
M.2 is the form factor, you need to confirm that your prebuilt actually has a M.2 slot before even considering buying one. Assuming it does, check to see whether it supports M.2 SATA or M.2 NVMe or both.

The SATA protocol is perfectly acceptable for your use case, yes. Prices are falling so if you can snag a NVMe drive at the same price (and your prebuilt can use it) you might as well, but I don't believe it's worth a premium over SATA.

If you have no idea just buy a 2.5" SATA SSD and that should replace your current drive perfectly with no issues.

isndl fucked around with this message at 08:34 on Oct 25, 2018

BIG HEADLINE
Jun 13, 2006

"Stand back, Ottawan ruffian, or face my lumens!"
Okay storage gurus, what's the "too good to be true" part about the stellar IOPS numbers (seriously, those are nearly Optane levels) on the 960GB Corsair MP510, and why doesn't it extend to the 1920GB SKU?

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/corsair-force-mp510-ssd,5848.html

I think I want to go with a 500GB NVMe (or this 960GB if there's no hidden caveat) plus an SATA M.2 just to cut down on leads. I honestly don't even need the SATA M.2, either - I've got a 1TB 850 EVO I've been sitting on for two years now (a Black Friday impulse buy since I could stack promos and got it for ~$190) which will be my Steam/game drive, and a 2TB WD Se spinner that's quiet as a church mouse and still warrantied until 2020, I think.

BIG HEADLINE fucked around with this message at 08:46 on Oct 25, 2018

Previa_fun
Nov 10, 2004


isndl posted:

More advice

The mobo is an MSI B360M and from what I understand it supports m.2 NVMe, but from what you guys have said I'll just look for the best Gb/$$ ratio and probably get that. I don't need blazing speed, I just want fast boot times into Windows and short load times.

Are there any brands or models to definitely avoid these days?

Previa_fun fucked around with this message at 08:57 on Oct 25, 2018

Previa_fun
Nov 10, 2004

Quote isn't edit. :downs:

BIG HEADLINE
Jun 13, 2006

"Stand back, Ottawan ruffian, or face my lumens!"

Previa_fun posted:

The mobo is an MSI B360M and from what I understand it supports m.2 NVMe, but from what you guys have said I'll just look for the best Gb/$$ ratio and probably get that.

Are there any brands or models to definitely avoid these days?

Pretty much all SSDs nowadays don't suck. Even ADATA makes a well-reviewed and regarded NVMe drive, and five years ago I wouldn't have put one of their drives in a "grandma" PC.

Crucial, Samsung, Western Digital (now that they've had ample time to finish the acquisition and absorption of Sandisk)...they're all decent. Just have a bias for drives that advertise 3D NAND. Also, if you'll be using this drive on a PC without a battery backup, my suggestion would be the Crucial MX500 as it's one of the only consumer-level drives out there with power outage protection built in. If a drive has a five year warranty, you're likely fine - if it's got a three year warranty, that means it probably carries a lower TBW (TeraBytes Written) rating and could fail sooner, but people have done tests, and even poo poo/average-grade SSDs have pretty stellar longevity.

After-quoted edit: if an SSD costs less than $60, maybe don't make it the one thing in your system that makes your computer work. This DQs some good ~250GB drives, but honestly, it wouldn't shock me if you don't start seeing those get phased out the same way ~120GB have been by all the first-tier names - 500GB is more than enough for Windows 10 (and whatever ends up following it), whereas 250GB might be pushing it.

BIG HEADLINE fucked around with this message at 10:38 on Oct 25, 2018

Previa_fun
Nov 10, 2004

BIG HEADLINE posted:

Pretty much all SSDs nowadays don't suck. Even ADATA makes a well-reviewed and regarded NVMe drive, and five years ago I wouldn't have put one of their drives in a "grandma" PC.

Crucial, Samsung, Western Digital (now that they've had ample time to finish the acquisition and absorption of Sandisk)...they're all decent. Just have a bias for drives that advertise 3D NAND. Also, if you'll be using this drive on a PC without a battery backup, my suggestion would be the Crucial MX500 as it's one of the only consumer-level drives out there with power outage protection built in. If a drive has a five year warranty, you're likely fine - if it's got a three year warranty, that means it probably carries a lower TBW (TeraBytes Written) rating and could fail sooner, but people have done tests, and even poo poo/average-grade SSDs have pretty stellar longevity.

The Crucial MX500 looks like a good deal, thanks!

DrDork
Dec 29, 2003
commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

BIG HEADLINE posted:

Okay storage gurus, what's the "too good to be true" part about the stellar IOPS numbers (seriously, those are nearly Optane levels) on the 960GB Corsair MP510, and why doesn't it extend to the 1920GB SKU?

Arguably, nothing. The Phison E12 is a pretty excellent chip, and its spec sheets do say it can get up to 600k IOPs. I think th MP510 might be one of the first ones to actually reach market with it.

As for the speed difference between the 960 and the 1920GB versions, I can only speculate that it's a difference in the performance of the NAND chips due to density: both versions use 4 NAND chips (two on each side), so the 1920GB version is using chips twice as dense, and as with most other forms of memory, going dense vs wide usually has speed penalties.

Palladium
May 8, 2012

Very Good
✔️✔️✔️✔️

Previa_fun posted:

The Crucial MX500 looks like a good deal, thanks!

Keep an eye out for discounts on the Adata SX8200 NVMe, the 512GB/1TB versions can be found for just $20 more than the equivalent MX500.

DrDork
Dec 29, 2003
commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

Palladium posted:

Keep an eye out for discounts on the Adata SX8200 NVMe, the 512GB/1TB versions can be found for just $20 more than the equivalent MX500.

Yeah, I picked up the 1TB NVMe SX8200 for $175 on Rakuten a few weeks back. Their shipping isn't as fast as Amazon, but no tax and great discounts make up for it. It was a nice upgrade from my 1TB 840 Evo, though I did not count on the difficulties in cloning my Windows install over, made more obnoxious by the 840 being 1,000GB and the SX8200 being 960GB.

DrDork fucked around with this message at 16:34 on Oct 25, 2018

BobHoward
Feb 13, 2012

The only thing white people deserve is a bullet to their empty skull

DrDork posted:

As for the speed difference between the 960 and the 1920GB versions, I can only speculate that it's a difference in the performance of the NAND chips due to density: both versions use 4 NAND chips (two on each side), so the 1920GB version is using chips twice as dense, and as with most other forms of memory, going dense vs wide usually has speed penalties.

Fyi NAND "chips" are actually multi-die assemblies, so the number of NAND packages on the board doesn't tell you how many NAND die are attached. There could be a density difference, or there could be twice as many die per package.

DrDork
Dec 29, 2003
commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

BobHoward posted:

Fyi NAND "chips" are actually multi-die assemblies, so the number of NAND packages on the board doesn't tell you how many NAND die are attached. There could be a density difference, or there could be twice as many die per package.

You are correct, but seeing as there is a stated drop in performance moving from 1TB to 2TB while the number of packages remains constant, it's reasonable to assume they're using more dense assemblies to reach the higher size, rather than just filling out unused package space (or some combination of both).

MREBoy
Mar 14, 2005

MREs - They're whats for breakfast, lunch AND dinner !
Ordering via Google Express app on phone + APPSAVE25 promo code = Samsung 860 EVO 500 GB in 2.5 inch format (model MZ-76E500B/AM) for $74.16 (including $9 in tax, free shipping). Code good til Halloween apparently, sold by Fry's Electronics.

BIG HEADLINE
Jun 13, 2006

"Stand back, Ottawan ruffian, or face my lumens!"

MREBoy posted:

Ordering via Google Express app on phone + APPSAVE25 promo code = Samsung 860 EVO 500 GB in 2.5 inch format (model MZ-76E500B/AM) for $74.16 (including $9 in tax, free shipping). Code good til Halloween apparently, sold by Fry's Electronics.

Well, you just gave me the jolt I needed to go from a 280mm AIO to a 360mm, so thanks for that.

There was a 20% off FALLSAVINGS coupon pre-applied, so I gather that could be used on another item, but you have to use another email/login. Just got 20% off a G502 HERO, and *no place* has that discounted yet.

BIG HEADLINE fucked around with this message at 04:18 on Oct 29, 2018

CatelynIsAZombie
Nov 16, 2006

I can't wait to bomb DO-DON-GOES!
I'm going to replace my 1tb spinning system drive with an SSD sometime between now and black friday. Should I go with an equivalently sized 860 EVO or is 500gb enough when I already have a large storage drive and can keep using my current system drive for games or whatever? The fact that 1tb is only double the cost right now makes it fairly appealing to go with the higher capacity.

Bob Morales
Aug 18, 2006


Just wear the fucking mask, Bob

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!

500gb drives are like $80 now but 1TB will probably be about the same on Black Friday. Go for broke

BIG HEADLINE
Jun 13, 2006

"Stand back, Ottawan ruffian, or face my lumens!"
Keep an eye on r/BuildAPCSales, too - there's a Twitter feed that's easier to follow than the page. I don't know exactly why, but when Reddit 'fixed' something, they got rid of the categories, which makes navigating the list all the more complicated and frustrating.

Atomizer
Jun 24, 2007



BIG HEADLINE posted:

Keep an eye on r/BuildAPCSales, too - there's a Twitter feed that's easier to follow than the page. I don't know exactly why, but when Reddit 'fixed' something, they got rid of the categories, which makes navigating the list all the more complicated and frustrating.

I just sort it by "new," there aren't that many new deals added per day.

alex314
Nov 22, 2007

Thanks for the Twitter tip. There's even Euro variant!

codo27
Apr 21, 2008

Jesus those (canadian) prices



Any justification whatsoever for the respective jumps between the 3?

DrDork
Dec 29, 2003
commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

codo27 posted:

Any justification whatsoever for the respective jumps between the 3?

860 -> 970 is a generational leap. The 860 is internally a SATA drive, while the 970 is NVMe, meaning it gets substantially better max performance numbers. Whether those are relevant to you is a separate question.

970 Evo -> 970 Pro is a market segment shift. The Evo is intended for normal consumers, the Pro for businesses/servers/etc, so it uses 2-bit MLC instead of the Evo's 3-bit MLC flash, meaning it will have substantially longer total write endurance (about double). Write endurance for a normal user is completely meaningless, though, because it will take a normal consumer decades to wear out a modern 1TB SSD.

Otherwise, the price jumps look about right: In the US the 860 is ~$180, the 970 Evo ~$270, and the 970 Pro ~$400. If you're price-sensitive and only planning on playing games and such, the 860 is probably sufficient for you.

However, it may be worth your while to watch something like SlickDeals or one of the various parts-building Reddits/threads for deals; there are several non-Samsung SSD manufacturers now that put out solidly comparable products for much better prices. I grabbed one of ADATA's XPG SX8200 1TB drives a week or so ago for $175, which has performance comparable to the 970 Evo, but at substantially lower costs.

Volguus
Mar 3, 2009
The price jump looks about right. The price, however, doesn't. 180 USD is about 240CAD, so asking for 300 CAD is just highway robbery. Just yesterday I saw on pc-canada.com a banner advertising price increases coming November 1st due to the tariffs? Wait, what tariffs? The ones between the US and China? What does that has to do with us? If anything, canadian prices should be even more competitive than american ones since we do not impose those tariffs on chinese products.
But, alas, it doesn't seem to be the case.

codo27
Apr 21, 2008

Its clear that a lot of people take pride in shaving off every penny possible in a build, but I go all out. I oughta take a look at whats been written to my 840 over the last 5 years, its always been used sparingly and hardly ever went over half full. But I'm going with the 970 evo and adding a WD blue 2tb m.2 as well, no spinners at all this time. Unreal to think where its gone, my 840 was somewhere around 350 or 400 when I got it for a 500gb back then. I also run a 3tb hdd with most of my steam library and a 500gb junk drive for downloads. Boot time is one of the biggest things bothering me right now. I mean obviously its not terrible but I want as close to instant as possible.

GRINDCORE MEGGIDO
Feb 28, 1985


codo27 posted:

Its clear that a lot of people take pride in shaving off every penny possible in a build, but I go all out.

I don't go all out due to diminishing returns. I'd get the Evo drive too.

...... Unless I saw a deal on an XPG SX8200.

GRINDCORE MEGGIDO fucked around with this message at 16:02 on Oct 30, 2018

orcane
Jun 13, 2012

Fun Shoe
This obsession with boot times has always been weird to me, when we're comparing systems below the 1 minute mark. Like, everyone was so amazed how much faster Windows 8/10 boots (with fast boot on) than other systems, and now we're talking another few seconds less due to having a NVMe drive or a slightly faster SATA SSD - even if the boot process takes a minute, how often do you reboot your computer that this is a thing people worry about?

DrDork
Dec 29, 2003
commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness
For a desktop it's just a nice little convenience feature, really. Mostly I use Sleep rather than shutting it down, so even with a "slow" drive it wakes up in a matter of a few seconds. For laptops it can be more of an issue, though, since especially on systems that don't get great battery life, being able to leverage hibernation to maximize time between charges is useful, and then you're talking multiple boots a day, potentially.

But yeah, honestly there's not a huge practical difference between SATA and NVMe drives in every day use, but with the sales that get run on non-Samsung options, the price premium can be pretty small. Especially with Black Friday coming up shortly, there's no reason to pay full price for a drive unless you need it right this minute.

Atomizer
Jun 24, 2007



orcane posted:

This obsession with boot times has always been weird to me, when we're comparing systems below the 1 minute mark. Like, everyone was so amazed how much faster Windows 8/10 boots (with fast boot on) than other systems, and now we're talking another few seconds less due to having a NVMe drive or a slightly faster SATA SSD - even if the boot process takes a minute, how often do you reboot your computer that this is a thing people worry about?

The NVMe boost is definitely not meaningful for most users. That being said, I think part of the obsession is because some of us not-so-fondly remember the pre-SSD days, and now SSDs feel like such a revelation. It's similar to any other technology that sees some revolutionary improvement.

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priznat
Jul 7, 2009

Let's get drunk and kiss each other all night.
I remember when the best way to speed up the boot was hit escape while it was testing the 8MB of RAM or whatever :haw:

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