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Is there any point doing Gen 4 with garbage flash, or is it just to tick the "Gen 4" box?
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Dec 13, 2021 22:46
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The main reason is for PS5 upgrades, it demands a PCIe4 drive but doesn't care how fast the drive actually is
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Dec 13, 2021 22:48
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notably that heatsink will not fit in a PS5 without some serious persuasion
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Dec 13, 2021 22:52
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Thanks Ants posted:Is there any point doing Gen 4 with garbage flash, or is it just to tick the "Gen 4" box? QLC is a good match for a Gen 4 controller when the use case fits within the SLC cache, which for most home users it should most of the time. But with TLC prices being what they are, I still struggle to recommend QLC M.2 drives personally, especially when most boards still have a limited number of M.2 and even more limited number of M.2 actually hung off the CPU. It makes more sense to me to spend extra on a faster but smaller all-rounder TLC boot drive for the one direct to CPU M.2 slot on most modern platforms. Then combo that with cheaper 2.5in SATA SSDs (like MX500s) for your storage, and 3.5in spinning rust in a NAS for backups. Obvi if those QLC drives start regularly falling to the point that the Rocket one was at, especially the larger capacity drives, maybe that will change.
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Dec 13, 2021 23:09
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Rinkles posted:notably that heatsink will not fit in a PS5 without some serious persuasion just leave the lil cradle open it's fine
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Dec 14, 2021 03:12
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CoolCab posted:just leave the lil cradle open it's fine yeah that may well be. sabrent actually came up with a heatsink that replaces that cover if you want something fancy in a different way. 
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Dec 14, 2021 03:23
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Crossposting a bit from the PC Part Picking Megathread, but two questions: 1). What are the better SSD review sites, if I wanted to punch in SKUs from Best Buy or whatever to see what's good, etc.? 2). Current Goon Recommendation is this guy: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/adata-xpg-s7-series-2tb-pcie-gen-3-x4-nvme-m-2-2280-internal-solid-state-drive/6423397.p?skuId=6423397 However, the Thread Favorite had been the WD Blue SN550; I don't see that anywhere on Best Buy in a 2TB flavor, but the Black SN750 is only $10 different than the above one: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/wd-wd_black-sn750-nvme-gaming-2tb-pcie-gen-3-x4-internal-solid-state-drive/6338991.p?skuId=6338991 Is the SN750 superior to the SN550? I used to know the difference between the WD model tiers based on the color designation, but that was a long, loooooong time ago in the era of spinning rust. Well, at least, I remember that back then the Black was the better one to buy before getting into datacenter-quality pricing. If it helps, I'm looking for an NVMe drive for someone as a Christmas present, hence why I'm cross-posting. Usage will be gaming, mostly large RPG type games.
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Dec 16, 2021 18:18
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WD blue is fine. As a gift, an enthusiast might appreciate the WD Black brand.
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Dec 16, 2021 18:45
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Zarin posted:Is the SN750 superior to the SN550? I used to know the difference between the WD model tiers based on the color designation, but that was a long, loooooong time ago in the era of spinning rust. Well, at least, I remember that back then the Black was the better one to buy before getting into datacenter-quality pricing. Which drive you should pick depends on price and use-case. For reviews, there are lots of good review sites but most try to spin them by comparing it against similarly classed drives. They also don't always update when manufacturers decide to change flash etc in the same model drive. There's too many drives using the same controller/flash to really keep up with every single model. For gaming, almost everything is fine. It's only when you get into editing/recording 4k video or 60fps/120fps 1080p/1440p or some other serious workload type use cases that you start to run into the hardware limits of some of the cheaper drives. I'd recommend checking reddit's buildapcsales because they list sales and people are very upfront about what a drive is and isn't there. I wouldn't pay more than $90 or so for most 1TB m2 drives and $180-$190 is a good price for 2tb drives. You can get drives a bit cheaper if you really wait to snipe deals, but this is not exactly sales season given it's so close to the holidays. $200 for an SN750 2TB is a decent price for the drive. WD has dropped SN750 price a lot with SN850 out and stiff competition from Hynix and others. SN750 doesn't really have much of a benefit with most current games, but at a $10 price difference I'd brain-off grab the 750 unless the person is the type to replace entire computers frequently and not bring something like that with them to a new build. Then I'd buy them a $80-$90 1TB drive. You just missed Best Buy's "trade in any sd card, thumb drive, or hard drive and get 15% off WD/sandisk products" promotion for an extra $30 off. Khorne fucked around with this message at 19:29 on Dec 16, 2021 |
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Dec 16, 2021 19:00
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Zarin posted:Crossposting a bit from the PC Part Picking Megathread, but two questions: Techpowerup is pretty comprehensive and reviews a lot of stuff, though I have quibbles with the lack of error bars especially on their SSD tests. Toms hardware is fine. The traditional review sites have been kinda decimated by youtube. Zarin posted:2). Current Goon Recommendation is this guy: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/adata-xpg-s7-series-2tb-pcie-gen-3-x4-nvme-m-2-2280-internal-solid-state-drive/6423397.p?skuId=6423397 I'm not sure why that S7 is a highly recommended drive, are you sure there's not confusion with the S70? The S7 seems to be a pretty standard Gen3 drive -- possibly just a rebrand of the XPG 8100. It's fine, but I don't see much reason that it's an obvious pick. The S70 is a new gen4 drive and a clear leader for price/performance at 2TB. The WD SN750 is superior to the SN550, especially now because the SN550 has been kinda downgraded. The Adata S7 and WD SN750 should perform pretty much the same for a normal user. Personally, with only $10 difference between all three drives on a $200 purchase, I think I might take the WD SN750 just for the better brand quality. Adata isn't terrible or anything, but as a present for someone else I might consider reliability and easy warranty to be worth a tenbux. quote:If it helps, I'm looking for an NVMe drive for someone as a Christmas present, hence why I'm cross-posting. Usage will be gaming, mostly large RPG type games. For gaming, there currently isn't much benefit from high-speed NVMe drives. Even the slower ones like the SN550 will be near-identical in load times etc, because they're fast enough to shift the bottleneck to the CPU. The only question is how fast games on PC will start to take advantage of ultra-fast storage, now that the consoles have it. I think it will still be several years before PC games do this, and RPGs tend not to be on the cutting edge of technology so they'll probably be even longer.
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Dec 16, 2021 19:10
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CopperHound posted:WD blue is fine. As a gift, an enthusiast might appreciate the WD Black brand. Appreciate the feedback! Yeah, I guess I was just checking to see if WD Black was Not Good for some reason. Klyith posted:Techpowerup is pretty comprehensive and reviews a lot of stuff, though I have quibbles with the lack of error bars especially on their SSD tests. Toms hardware is fine. The traditional review sites have been kinda decimated by youtube. Perfect, thanks! Klyith posted:I'm not sure why that S7 is a highly recommended drive, are you sure there's not confusion with the S70? The S7 seems to be a pretty standard Gen3 drive -- possibly just a rebrand of the XPG 8100. It's fine, but I don't see much reason that it's an obvious pick. The S70 is a new gen4 drive and a clear leader for price/performance at 2TB. I'm not sure it was "highly recommended", but it was suggested; I think mostly because it's an older computer (3-ish years) and doesn't necessarily need a Gen4. I think that item is probably the best price/known brand on Best Buy right now, and my parameters were "available at Best Buy" so that's probably why it got picked. Klyith posted:The WD SN750 is superior to the SN550, especially now because the SN550 has been kinda downgraded. The Adata S7 and WD SN750 should perform pretty much the same for a normal user. Great info, thanks! Khorne posted:WD took the SN550, a previously really solid drive that I would have 100% recommended, and started manufacturing it with inferior components earlier this year. So you're going to find reviews calling it good but surprise, they did typical anti-consumer practice that many of the drive manufacturers are participating in these days. Due to that alone I'd avoid the SN550. With that said, it's still about equal with the sn750 in gaming and most casual use. I hate the business practice not necessarily the "new" SN550. drat, that's unfortunate. Khorne posted:$200 for an SN750 2TB is a decent price for the drive. WD has dropped SN750 price a lot with SN850 out and stiff competition from Hynix and others. SN750 doesn't really have much of a benefit with most current games, but at a $10 price difference I'd brain-off grab the 750 unless the person is the type to replace entire computers frequently and not bring something like that with them to a new build. Then I'd buy them a $80-$90 1TB drive. Perfect, thanks! I'm expecting this drive will be with 'em for many years to come. We typically try and get as much life out of our stuff as we can.
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Dec 16, 2021 19:37
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your motherboard only supports gen 3. do not buy a gen 4 drive.
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Dec 16, 2021 22:23
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it's not a matter of needing it, your motherboard can only read at maximum gen 3 speeds. they're backwards compatible of course but they will perform no better than a gen 3 drive.
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Dec 16, 2021 22:24
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CoolCab posted:it's not a matter of needing it, your motherboard can only read at maximum gen 3 speeds. they're backwards compatible of course but they will perform no better than a gen 3 drive. Are Gen3 drives available for much less than $100/TB? I guess I don't even know where I'd look for something like that. I did already order the SN750, but if that was a mistake I'm sure I can just return it immediately before I even leave the store. I want to say that was the best price I saw at BestBuy pretty much across the board, and I'm really only interested in 2TB+ for this purchase. It is ENTIRELY possible I'm missing something here, and if I can save $50 or something by getting something a little older that will still cap out the motherboard, then I'm not above doing that either.
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Dec 16, 2021 22:33
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Nope that's not a problem, the SN750 (and the other drives you had been talking about) are all gen3. I dunno why CoolCab was so vehement about something that was not really an issue.. The only gen4 drive that's been discussed is the one I mentioned, the adata XPG S70. Which is $250 for 2TB.
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Dec 16, 2021 22:35
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Zarin posted:Are Gen3 drives available for much less than $100/TB? I guess I don't even know where I'd look for something like that. think that's a gen 3 drive, the wd black SN750 that's gen 4 is called the SE edition i think? they were clearancing a lot of the gen 3 drives and you could get them cheaper (particularly since the PS5 needs gen 4 and is driving up demand) but so long as the price was right it's not like there's a significant downside, and in theory you could be future proofing.
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Dec 16, 2021 22:36
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CoolCab posted:think that's a gen 3 drive, the wd black SN750 that's gen 4 is called the SE edition i think? they were clearancing a lot of the gen 3 drives and you could get them cheaper (particularly since the PS5 needs gen 4 and is driving up demand) but so long as the price was right it's not like there's a significant downside, and in theory you could be future proofing. The SN750 SE is only available at 1TB and below. And the price has settled down to pretty much the same as other gen3 TLC drives, $100/1TB. Because the SE, despite having the gen4 interface, doesn't actually have sustained performance higher than a normal gen3 drive. (It's dramless, so the gen4 connection is probably a minor help for tasks that are worse for dramless drives. But average users shouldn't even care because dramless makes zero difference to desktop apps and games.) edit to be more explicit: At the moment, a SN750 SE is still a totally acceptable choice for gen3 users. But Zarin can ignore this while looking at 2TB drives Klyith fucked around with this message at 22:46 on Dec 16, 2021 |
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Dec 16, 2021 22:44
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I recommended the S7 on the basis that it was affordable and available at the one store Zarin said they could shop for this at, and I did so just because I wanted one drive to point Zarin to since it seemed like they were overthinking this purchase. But now I see that overthinking has ballooned out and spilled over to a whole new thread  So here's the deal: it really doesn't matter what drive you get as long as it meets some decent baseline specs and it isn't made by a total nobody. The use case for this drive is very undemanding and the performance difference between all of these drive options at Gen 3 are just a few percent. S7, SN750, SN570, P5, 970 Evo Plus Mega... I like the Intel 670p these days because it's cheap now and has a generous SLC cache, but at the end of the day, it's all gonna be the same for someone who just wants a fast game drive. The SN750 is a fine choice, so Zarin can stop worrying about it now they've pulled the trigger on a purchase. 
Dr. Video Games 0031 fucked around with this message at 23:22 on Dec 16, 2021 |
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Dec 16, 2021 23:18
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Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:I recommended the S7 on the basis that it was affordable and available at the one store Zarin said they could shop for this at, and I did so just because I wanted one drive to point Zarin to since it seemed like they were overthinking this purchase. But now I see that overthinking has ballooned out and spilled over to a whole new thread Overthinking things is what I do best! I really do appreciate your recommendation, though, and I hope that came out in my posts - I gave you some pretty tight parameters and you gave me a perfectly fine rec! I just have more familiarity with WD, so if that drive is only $10 more and not inferior in any way, well . . .  You actually bring up an interesting point, though - I NEVER buy presents for Christmas, really. My wife and I just get stuff when we want it. Now that we have a kiddo, we've been doing Actual Christmas Stuff and she said she got me something, so I felt like I needed to hurry up and get her something. Which, speed is NOT my forte, as I . . . like to overthink things, I guess! So I really do appreciate all your responses last night; it definitely narrowed the list down to two, which was real helpful  Edit: Usually I spend a crazy amount of time doing research before I buy just about ANYTHING (unless it's buying the exact same thing after the one I was using wears out) so having to do this on a schedule was, uh, stressful haha
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Dec 16, 2021 23:38
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How much does DRAM actually matter for the fairly average use case of gaming/spreadsheet/documents/hobby video editing + encoding? Because going by buildapacsales, it seems mighty important. But I'm on an SN750 and can't really say I've ever noticed anything... certainly no hitching or stuttering which is what I'd assume DRAM would be there to prevent.
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Dec 17, 2021 05:05
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From what I understand, it's much more important for SATA drives.
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Dec 17, 2021 05:13
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Shrimp or Shrimps posted:How much does DRAM actually matter for the fairly average use case of gaming/spreadsheet/documents/hobby video editing + encoding? In NVMe SSDs it doesn't really matter at all for regular home usage. People like to cite poor write performance, but drives like the SN750 have very respectable sustained write performance despite the lack of DRAM:  The SN750 starts out at 3500MB/s for 14GB until it exhausts its SLC cache, at which point it maintains a steady 1600MB/s. This is pretty good performance. Apparently write performance suffers without DRAM when using the SATA protocol, but something about the NVMe protocol makes it not a big deal? I have no idea about the specifics. I would pay more attention to SLC cache and sustained write performance on modern SSDs instead. Dr. Video Games 0031 fucked around with this message at 06:28 on Dec 17, 2021 |
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Dec 17, 2021 06:06
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Rinkles posted:From what I understand, it's much more important for SATA drives. yes, and i also think it really only matters matters when you're moving around very large files. someone cleverer than me can explain it on a technical level but when the drive has to do a very big write or maybe any transfer i can't remember, it will perform at the advertised speed for the first part of the operation and then slow down dramatically and stay there for the entire remainder of the write/maybe read. on SATA SSDs it can wind up even going slower than some HDDs at this stage, and it's also influenced by the total capacity of the drive so moving big files on smaller drives causes the problem to trigger sooner, and having the drive near capacity can also have an impact i think.
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Dec 17, 2021 06:08
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For a given product line, SLS cache usually scales with capacity, right? So does that mean a 2TB model would have longer peak speeds than the 1TB model (of the same line)?
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Dec 17, 2021 06:15
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Rinkles posted:For a given product line, SLS cache usually scales with capacity, right? So does that mean a 2TB model would have longer peak speeds than the 1TB model (of the same line)? Usually, though SLC cache can also scale with free space, though I don't know if that's strictly linear or what.
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Dec 17, 2021 06:28
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Shrimp or Shrimps posted:How much does DRAM actually matter for the fairly average use case of gaming/spreadsheet/documents/hobby video editing + encoding? Very little. On a SSD the DRAM's main job is to hold the mapping table, which is the thing all SSDs use for "this data is at this physical location" (since they aren't a 1:1 physical:data address like a HDD). Any caching of data is extremely secondary -- afaik modern SSDs can blast data from or into the flash chips fast enough that it's not needed. Dramless drives have trouble with random writes and mixed read/write tasks. Desktop user tasks just don't do that, even video editing. Random writes are just not a thing at all. Mixed read/write tends to be on tasks where NVMe storage isn't the bottleneck -- encoding video or decrypting a steam pre-load for example. (Also both of those are pretty sequential.) When they completely fall over and die is very much on server style workloads. Server databases are highly random and do lots of small writes. I believe AI ML training can also be trouble but it's not something I'm super familiar with. The thing is, the benchmarks that show the biggest differences between drives are the ones with highly random mixed read/write, because that is very hard on any drive. Even in a selection of drives that all have DRAM, that's where you'll get clear separation between the best and the average. So that's why people on reddits or wherever will say that it's very important, they can point at a graph where the good drive is good and the dramless drive is way low... The context of "but do you do anything represented in that graph?" isn't a thing that most other PC components have. Klyith fucked around with this message at 06:38 on Dec 17, 2021 |
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Dec 17, 2021 06:35
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I'm filling up my drives trying out Gamepass. At what point should I start worrying about the remaining free space affecting speeds? I'm mostly using my main OS drive for this, a 2TB SN550 (according to the firmware number, from before the stealth downgrade). Right now it has 700GB remaining.
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Dec 19, 2021 02:33
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Rinkles posted:I'm filling up my drives trying out Gamepass. At what point should I start worrying about the remaining free space affecting speeds? You should worry about free space affecting write amplification when you have like 2-3x the free space as your average large write. For someone that plays video games, it's good to be aware that patches may involve re-writing large files (even a small 100mb patch could make changes to a 20GB file and require 20GB of write). Bad write amplification can both slow your drive way down and cause it to use up it's media wearout / overprovision space long before it otherwise should. You should worry about the general performance loss that SSDs have from being full when it's noticeable. Currently, for a desktop user with a decent NVMe drive, that's probably never. It's like, even if your drive is chock full and has terrible 50% performance loss from it, it's still faster than a sata drive. And you probably wouldn't notice if I broke into your house and replaced your SN550 with a sata SSD.
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Dec 19, 2021 05:24
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Neat, thanks
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Dec 19, 2021 05:35
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I recently got a Lenovo x13 gen 2 AMD laptop and was hoping to replace the SSD it came with for a better one. I think I've been using a Samsung 840 Evo (maybe pro?) on my old laptop since 2013 or so and haven't had many problems other than chronic lack of storage space which is easily solved by getting a bigger one this time. Are Samsung SSDs still reliable or should I be looking for something else?
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Dec 20, 2021 22:17
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yellowyams posted:I recently got a Lenovo x13 gen 2 AMD laptop and was hoping to replace the SSD it came with for a better one. I think I've been using a Samsung 840 Evo (maybe pro?) on my old laptop since 2013 or so and haven't had many problems other than chronic lack of storage space which is easily solved by getting a bigger one this time. Are Samsung SSDs still reliable or should I be looking for something else? Samsung SSDs are still reliable. Samsung prices are now significantly higher than comparable, equally reliable drives from other major brands. Back when you got your 840 Evo it was a non-decision to get Samsung because they were both as good or better than everyone else, and selling their drives for great prices. For example, I'd have a hard time telling anyone to get a 1TB Samsung 980 (non-Pro) when there are a whole lot of equally good drives for $20 less, and better drives for the same money. What drive size are you looking at, and do you have any particular requirements?
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Dec 20, 2021 23:22
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Yeah no, I wouldn't save $20 bux just to not buy Samsung.
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Dec 21, 2021 00:11
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Klyith posted:Samsung SSDs are still reliable. Samsung prices are now significantly higher than comparable, equally reliable drives from other major brands. Back when you got your 840 Evo it was a non-decision to get Samsung because they were both as good or better than everyone else, and selling their drives for great prices. I was thinking of getting a 1TB or 2TB because of how much of a problem storage space has been for me, probably leaning more towards the 1TB though. I'm a little bit tech-illiterate so I'm not actually sure what I should be focused on, but I think I would probably prioritize quality over price since this is going to be my main computer for the foreseeable future, though I'd like it to be reasonably affordable if possible. I think it uses M.2 but I'm not sure how to check.
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Dec 21, 2021 00:24
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yellowyams posted:I was thinking of getting a 1TB or 2TB because of how much of a problem storage space has been for me, probably leaning more towards the 1TB though. For a laptop, the adata XPG SX8200 Pro is quite good for power efficiency and is currently $100, pretty good for that drive. Adata isn't a premium brand name but they're fine as far as reliability and such. An even better drive if you like battery life is the SK Hynix P31, but it's not a major difference for $20. If you're a road warrior who wants every minute of battery life possible it's the most power-efficient drive around though. SK Hynix is a good choice even though you might know the name -- they're one of the big 3 companies that make flash memory but only recently started selling their own drives. I don't see much at 2TB right now that leaps out and says "big sale, grab this!". That same adata drive in 2TB is $200 so 2x the price, which is a fair deal for 2TB drives. (Often the price/GB is slightly higher for big drives.) yellowyams posted:I'm a little bit tech-illiterate so I'm not actually sure what I should be focused on, but I think I would probably prioritize quality over price since this is going to be my main computer for the foreseeable future, though I'd like it to be reasonably affordable if possible. I think it uses M.2 but I'm not sure how to check. Yes, it uses a M.2 slot for storage, but also specifically a PCIe-only M.2 slot. This means you can only use a NVMe m.2 drive, not a sata one. (M.2 is really only the physical spec for the slot, and drives using it can be NVMe or sata.) The thinkpad x13 is apparently pretty easy to open by laptop standards. Not a ton of how-to videos on youtube yet though -- this review shows opening it up but that's the intel version and the AMD one will have stuff in different locations.
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Dec 21, 2021 03:12
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I would wait until the week between Christmas and New Year's to buy anything. Lots of stores like to capitalize on giftcards and cramming last minute revenue into their Q4 sheets. Also, pretty sure the SX8200 Pro got a "made it cheaper" revision.
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Dec 21, 2021 03:29
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BIG HEADLINE posted:Also, pretty sure the SX8200 Pro got a "made it cheaper" revision. Yeah the current version isn't quite as fast in benchmarks as it was in that review, but afaik it's still TLC flash and should be good with power. (Since the cheaper controller runs at a slower clockspeed, I can't imagine it using more power.) Still a decent laptop choice, thought the SK Hynic is even better. Unless Yellowyams has some specific performance needs the speed difference is completely unimportant.
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Dec 21, 2021 04:14
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Is there an easy, clean way of getting rid of Windows system files without resorting to formatting the drive? (obviously, this would be for secondary drives, not the OS drive)
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Dec 22, 2021 00:00
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Rinkles posted:Is there an easy, clean way of getting rid of Windows system files without resorting to formatting the drive? (obviously, this would be for secondary drives, not the OS drive) No.
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Dec 22, 2021 00:02
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Load a Linux live USB and delete to your heart's content.
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Dec 22, 2021 00:07
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Wipe the drive, restore from backups
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Dec 22, 2021 00:51
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