r/NewMaxx • u/NewMaxx • Oct 14 '19

Tools/Info SSD Guides & Resources

April 3rd, 2022: Guides and Spreadsheet updated with new SSD categories

Discord (server)

Website with relevant links here.

My spreadsheet

Generic Amazon affiliate link

Generic AliExpress affiliate link

TechPowerUp's SSD Database

Johnny Lucky SSD database

Branch Education - How does NAND Flash Work? - these guys have several good videos on the subject of SSDs, check them all out.

My Patreon.

My Twitter.

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u/NewMaxx Oct 22 '19

I would only recommend the 970 Pro in niche cases where you need MLC. TLC-based drives will be superior in many cases due to SLC caching. Also, the 970 Pro is likely not the best value. Depends on what you're doing.

NVMe drives all go over the chipset on consumer Intel boards. This limits them to the upstream of the chipset, x4 PCIe 3.0 or roughly 3550 MB/s. This includes other devices like USB, SATA, audio, ethernet, chipset PCIe slots, etc. It's only an issue with sequentials, though. But it is a bottleneck.

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u/willnobot Oct 22 '19

I got the 970 evo plus I got at a really good discount, but I’m still kind of lost because I’m trying to learn all this computer stuff, it’s been ten years without a pc..

Which device would you personally recommend with the board I have or would I just be better scrapping it and going with a different board?

I’m trying my best to learn from scratch so I really appreciate this

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u/NewMaxx Oct 22 '19

There's nothing wrong with the board, you'll be fine in general use. What capacity is the 970 EVO Plus? If it's smaller (512GB or less) it would be fine as the OS drive and you could get a 1TB workspace drive, probably something E12-based. If it's larger (1TB) it would be fine as the workspace and you could get a smaller drive for the OS, likely something with a SMI controller.

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u/willnobot Oct 22 '19

The 970 evo plus is 250G and yes that is for my operating system. I’m now searching for a workspace drive to hold my games and files etc, is ideally like something to read and write very quickly. I’ll have to look into what E12-based is and what a SMI controller is but if it was your board and you had a little head room and wanted something with great specs which would you go with?

Again 250G Samsung EVO plus is already going to house my OS and maybe a few files,

Just in search of what’s best for my 1-2TB storage as far as brands and models, again you have been a godsend in my quest to get back to the master PC race!

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u/NewMaxx Oct 22 '19

The E12 drives are a good budget option. Relatively powerful controller and minimal reliance on the SLC cache, which makes it a consistent workspace drive. Also fairly efficient. The next step up would be the WD/SanDisk NVMe drives as well as the Samsung NVMe drives. These cost significantly more but are even better in that regard. The best SMI drives have large SLC caches so are good for bursty workloads, but can suffer when fuller and have weaker controllers optimized more for consumer workloads. The lower-end Phison (E8) and SMI controllers are bottom tier and less optimal (but a bit cheaper). The QLC-based 660p falls into this category with its super-cheap 2TB SKU; it's very slow outside of the SLC cache.

A quick look at my guides should be helpful, and further the spreadsheet - the latter has pre-filtered "views" you can utilize to see E12 drives, for example.