Best SSD M.2 NVMe?

Hi, looking to buy 2x2Tb SSDs. Do you know which one is better and faster? Maybe there is upcoming SSD? Thanks.

 

https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/product/consumer/970evoplus/

And that is just their EVO line....

 

I know about Evo Plus, but 2Tb will be available in April I guess and I don't know how much it costs. Anything else?

 

You could get a regular EVO tomorrow if you are in the states....

 

@user54321, I’ll hold for a bit if it’s me. 970 EVO Plus at 2TB is really coming in next days and just about the same or cheaper than EVO


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My vote also goes for 970 EVO Plus. I'll be getting one as well.

 

If you want an MLC Drive ( 960/ 970 PRO are the best available), which unlike a TLC drive (EVO) can sustain large ransfers without dropping transfer rates because TLC drives actually need an SLC buffer (speed falls after saturation) to maintain high speeds which MLC drives don’t need. When TLC drives write speeds are advertised those or only buffer speeds, once the pseudo SLC cache is saturated you will hit the “real” TLC speeds which can be anywhere from 1/2 or below of rated speeds.

The 960 Pro comes in a 2TB variant but the 970 PRO only comes in a 1TB variant. Also when comparing the same generation drives MLC generally has higher endurance than a TLC drive, though a regular user would never deplete a TLC drive anytime soon.

Having said that I doubt you would deplete an EVOs SLC dynamic cache 6-78 GB (deducted from main storage) depending on available space on a 2 TB EVO. Unless you do lots of video exporting, large file transfers or enterprise stuff a good TLC drive like a 960/970 EVO or HP EX920 or some others will be good enough and probably cheaper. It won’t make a difference for gaming or regular use between MLC/TLC variants.

 

1) Samsung 960 PRO 2TB
2) Corsair MP510
3) Samsung 960 EVO Plus 2TB

See the benchmarks of the Corsair MP510, it has crazy low latency and solid 4K Random Read/Write performance which is the number one metric of performance that you will actually feel as a user or power user = https://www.anandtech.com/show/13438/the-corsair-force-mp510-ssd-review/5 and https://www.anandtech.com/show/13438/the-corsair-force-mp510-ssd-review/2

 

There's another drive with Phison controller BPX pro https://www.mydigitalssd.com/pcie-m2-ngff-ssd.php#80mm-bpx-pro-m2
They claim to use samsung NVMe drivers to achieve 3.5GB/s reads and 3GB/s writes. These are optimised for heavy writes 2TB ones are advertised to write 3000TBs of data.

 

For regular usage almost any decent SSD will suit the user well...however, as you may know not all SSD's are created equal.

I've only used Samsung, because simply they are the best, tested, proven and of quality. It's no secret.

I own a lot of different brands and in my years of shooting photography with heavy usage scenarios, this is my data: (YMMV of course.)

100% of my SanDisk SSD's, Flash Drives and microSD cards are dead.

100% of ADATA USB Flash Drives and SSD's are dead.

100% of anything that contained micron, high silicon, silicon motion, sandisk etc.. have all gone to dirt.

Until this day not one of my former colleagues that I know use anything, but Samsung. That speaks volume..

I've experienced first hand the dreadful nightmare of sandisk's crapping out and losing extremely important data during weddings, events etc... Many photographers that I know have experienced the same so they won't even use sandisk even if it was free.

I've recently bought a bunch of the newer crucial mx500 drives to put to the test and contrary to the suspicious incentive driven reviews online that try to compare it with Samsung 860 EVO, the mx500 is crap. The el cheapo controller is absolute rubbish and gets super hot, thus killing the transfer speeds.

What people don't realize is that the crucial drive has half of the endurance at nearly the same cost as the Samsung 860 EVO. Yet, people talk up the crucial when IMO it should NOT even be in the same sentence when talking about Samsung.

Basic math and common sense.

mx500 ~$50 with half the endurance.

860 EVO ~$50 with double the endurance.

This makes the mx500 not only inferior, but double the price for what you're getting.

Being a fanatic when it comes to SSD's, microSD's, USB flash drives and storage in general, I buy them like candy, mainly to test them for myself (real world stuff and not all this online misleading stuff) and to use for simple scratch drives...

To move non important files around I'm currently using my 2TB crucial mx500 and 2TB Samsung EVO 860. The ADATA drives that I were using were just too slow. I will never buy SanDisk again as the integrity of the chips are very poor. It's a pity because the WD Black m.2 drives seem pretty promising, but for the price one can easily land an EVO or Pro.

Just because a drive can put out nice read/write numbers doesn't mean that the quality of the chip itself is good. This is what a lot of people fail to see... the marketing hype.

What matters are the real world performance and longevity. Not some quick tests that these online reviewers put up that ultimately leads to misrepresenting a product as being good when they are not. *cough* crucial..

For all my OS drives I'm using Samsung 970 PRO's, 970 EVO's, 960 PRO's, 960 EVO's and varies PM and SM series NVMe drives.

I'll probably pick up the new Samsung QVO (QLC) drives for giggles as they'll be perfect for console drives. Right now I have a 2TB crucial mx500 in the PS4 Pro.

Within the industry there is a saying how Samsung's TLC is on par with most others MLC when it comes to quality and integrity of the mem chips and controller. There is no doubt that many in the professional realm would even trust and take Samsung's QLC over other el cheapo TLC any day. (A prime example is the upcoming EVO Plus that's TLC, which outperforms many MLC's.)

As for the QVO, for just a little more though one could land an EVO, however I foresee the QVO drives going on major sale to capture the budget minded consumer base... Therefore, with these big price drops on their QLC drives, it'll really make the value shine for the money...

I'm waiting for the 2TB 970 EVO Plus and those would be perfect for your 2TBx2TB set up @user54321 ...

@Vasudev The BPX Pro's only have a 3 year warranty. I'd be interested to test them out still...

 

@iunlock Samsung has it's track own record of fails e.g. 840 EVO and buggy 960 Pro firmware. I have a Samsung CM871a in my laptop, but only because I couldn't fit a good old Wave mSATA MLC drive with an m.2-mSATA adapter inside. My next microSD card will deinitely be Samsung though - feedback for them is overwhelmingly better than for other brands.

 

Oh absolutely. With the nature of electronics in general the existence of failure rates is inevitable. I still have a 840 EVO and it's still kicking. The 960 Pro I have in my desktop only has the m.2 driver installed itself, as I don't use magician etc... My emphasis is on the importance of real world usage and not putting too much stock into these online reviews that try to make it sound an inferior product is on par with the best of the best. It's very misleading, which is why I buy many brands for myself to actually test it with my heavy usage. I'm always open to the new tech goodies and always on the look out to keep tabs on what's out there...

 

Never had an issue with the numerous Crucial (Micron) or Samsung drives I’ve used. The MX500 however was competition for the EVO 850 not the 860 series, endurance difference is down to newer generation NAND. True Samsung controllers are a bit better and the 860 is only priced a few dollars higher but to play devils advocate I’ve seen the MX500 and Micron 1100 (2 TB) on steep sale prices on occasion in which case would be a better buy at the time. Highly doubt the average user would ever burn through the endurance rating of even the older gen MX500. My MX100s are still in use after 5 years...Infact testing by sime sites a few years ago already showed the NAND in most SSDs can survive much longer than “rated”. Samsung is the best but Micron/Cruicial isn’t terrible and their controllers decent seen them in enterprise environment as well without issue.


Reviewers like Anandtech, some enterprise test sites and some others actually do in depth reviews that detail various performance aspects including power usage etc, so you should probably use sites like that rather than one with 2-3 sequential tests

You just seem to have terrible luck with drives. FYI these are all TLC drives including the MX500/860/970 EVO, if you really want sustained performance and highest endurance people buy MLC drives ie 850/860 PRO or 960/970 PRO as these don’t need any SLC caching to meet advertised performance, because you burn through that your writing to TLC NAND directly and performance drops like a rock. For the average user and gamer or even so called self declared power user (most really aren’t) TLC is just fine and they would never notice the difference.

Honestly the companies that make the actual flash are mainly Micron (was joint venture with Intel till recent split) , Samsung, Toshiba (joint venture Sandisk—>WD) these guys have 99.5% of market and maybe two or three more minor ones have the remaining 0.5% . The rest source NAND from these guys, ie BPX, ADATA etc and rebrand. So even if you hate Sandisk or Micron you more than likely used/using tablets or phones using their NAND anyway.

 

Yes indeed. I'm very familiar with the nitty gritty on the SSD's and industry. You've laid it out very well as to what part goes to what, which I already knew. I use MLC based drives (Samsung Pro line) for my OS drive in all my systems.

As for the 2-3 sequential tests, that's not how I measure what is good and what is not as I've clearly emphasized. I buy these drives for myself so that I can put them to the test.

Rather than having terrible luck, it is more so that my usage habits are not that of an average user so it's a given that my mileage is on the high end. Perhaps what's terrible are the quality of the drives from the brands that I've mentioned as proven so in my case.

The info that I am sharing is rare to obtain, unless one does really put miles on a SSD, so like with you and the crucial it goes to show that even with above avg usage, ssd's can last.. but we all know that already.

Regarding the prices, I've actually obtained the 860 EVO cheaper than the crucial mx500 on several occasions. The point in my previous post was how it has half the endurance at virtually the same price of a superior drive. So which one is the better buy? See my point? Why on earth would anyone buy a crucial mx500 that is inferior?

Have you seen the extreme ssd tests where they wrote into the petabytes? Guess who came wayyyy on top and this was in the 840-850 era mind you ...

Show me something better with a track record to match and I'll be among the first to buy it. Intel has something up their sleeves if they get off their rear end and launch it already lol.

 

I wa quoting the same extreme SSD tests, where the 840 and others lasted way beyond ratings. I also mentioned the Sammy’s are better but I’ve seen the Microns especially 2TBs priced way below in sales ie (less than $200 for the 2TB 1100) which made them better buys at times especially last year before the NAND price drops. If similarly priced as I’ve seen currently of course the 860 is preferred even if priced a little higher, but if getting the 2TB 1100 for less than $200 (sale) vs the 860 at ~$300, I’d say go for the 1100.

Plus as I said I’ve seen Microns in heavy use corporate environments (Database). They’re not “crap” is all I’m saying. I see them as pretty reliable.

 

There is a clear difference between consumer line and enterprise grade memory. The OP was asking about a 2TB m.2 NVMe SSD's and wanting to RAID, so I kept it within the realm of consumer line SSD's. However, you're now talking about enterprise grade stuff, which is a whole different animal.

With the 2TB drives and for the average consumer, of course it will suit them just fine for their needs. I'm well aware of the sales as I track them daily. The 2TB $200 micron during BF was a steal and that ended up right into the xbox where it would serve it well.

I guess the main point here that I'm trying to make is that "Not all SSD's, memory chips, controllers, integrity of the chipset, quality control, etc... are not created equal."

A 2TB crucial drive containing consumer grade micron and (crap->) silicon motion controller that overheats is not equal to a 2TB Samsung 860 EVO with a far superior controller and memory chips.

Therefore, we'll have to agree to disagree... the inferior products are not just as reliable.

To each his own...

 

I don’t disagree, I guess I mistook it as you saying everything Micron/Crucia sucks. That’s on me.

Also in your experience with MX500 I wonder if part of the reason for the performance drop is also actually due to a lower pseudo SLC cache size. Samsung I believe allocates dynamically more than the base pseudo SLC cache depending on free space.

 

No worries mate.

I'm using the 2TB crucial mx500 and 2TB 860 EVO side by side daily ...

 

add 1 more to the samsung ssd squad... they are the gold standard & have been for years now

 

The HP MX950 looks (on paper and review, at any rate) quite impressive, particularly for the price (<$400 for 2TB).

 

Thanks for the replies. I've checked the BPX Pro - looks great but not available to buy. Still waiting for 970 Evo Plus, I know it must be in April, maybe somebody knows when exactly? I think the Pros are expensive, even the old 960.

 

OK, I found BPX Pro on Amazon, price and specs are not bad, what do you think - get this one and save money or better to wait for Samsung? What ectually difference between this and Evo Plus?