500gb or 1tb m2. SSD Recommendation?

Have a dell xps 15 9550 laptop. It originally had a 1tb 2.5 inch 7200 rpm hard drive and 32gb m.2 ssd that came a long with it. I went to repair shop years ago and had them remove the 1tb 2.5 inch hard drive and put in an old 250gb 2.5 inch samsung ssd in it.



I want to have both this 250gb 2.5 inch ssd removed and the 32gb m.2 replaced because that way, i can put in a bigger battery in my laptop. Current laptop has 3 cell 56wh battery and want to get a 97wh battery.



I have had this laptop for few years.



Looking at amazon, they have tons of different m.2 ssd.


Samsung 970 evo
https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-970-...words=m.2+ssd&qid=1565031930&s=gateway&sr=8-3

samsung ssd860 evo
https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-860-...ords=m.2+ssd&qid=1565031930&s=gateway&sr=8-13

crucial mx500
https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-MX50...d=1565031930&s=gateway&sr=8-7#customerReviews

WD Blue 3d
https://www.amazon.com/Blue-NAND-1T...words=m.2+ssd&qid=1565031930&s=gateway&sr=8-6


Is the samsung 970 evo the best one? Why is the crucial and the wd blue so cheap when you compare the 500gb and 1tb prices to the samsung evos? Is the wd blue ssd much slower? Tons of more reviews on the wd blue ssd and most seem to be very good.

 

Look up Adata SX8200 Pro. Ive been looking into getting a new ssd and the Adata has some pretty decent specs and right for the money. If you want to go all out, look at the Seagate Firecuda 510.

 

Because Samsung 970 EVO is a NVMe type SSD while the others you've listed are SATA based SSDs. Since you're going to sacrifice your secondary storage for a bigger battery then go no less than a 1tb drive. Personally there are no difference in terms of performance between SATA and NVMe drives besides benchmarks and file transfers but you mind go with the Samsung 970 EVO or a similar cheaper brand NVMe drive as their prices continues to fall.

 

Hi there. Well i want more space because that way it can be futureproof. Do you agree on this? Thus might as well get a 1tb ssd even though a 500gb ssd will be more than good enough?

 

Get this if you want a 1TB NVMe drive: https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-Rocket-Internal-Performance-SB-ROCKET-1TB/dp/B07LGF54XR

And if you do buy that, make sure you register it on the Sabrent website after receiving it to extend the warranty to 5 years.

 

As it so happens I found a 500gb Samsung 970 Evo for cheap on the Facebook market place so that worked out but yeah if you are future proofing then go with a 1tb. I would suggest the firecuda 510. Pricy but super fast and worth the extrA

 

SX8200 Pro, PM981, PM961, Any of the Evo or Pro 9xx series, EX920, if you're looking for a more budget SSD, MP510, P1, SX6000, I'd avoid the 660p as it's QLC, but its still a decent drive on its own.

 

I'd go with the Sabrent Rocket, 1TB or 2TB model. The value is just too good vs spending more when the 2TB is around $250 and the 1TB is barely $100.

 

Just go for a decent nvme like the sx8200 pro. Its the same price as an over priced sata from samsung for the same capacity. In terms of what you genuinely wont notice as being's here have pointed out, you might as well go for the intel 660p which has the highest capacity to price on the market currently, and its nvme.

 

But the 660P is relatively slow, and is QLC.

 

I have the 660p 2TB edition, with the 24GB SLC cache. The only time it was slow on me is when I was copying the partition image to it. Otherwise it works at the rated 1800 speeds. It's a good drive for OS and running games from. And was only $179.99.

 

Yes thats exactly what I mean, relatively slow compared to other NVME drive's. I still think its a good drive, and I run a 512GB model in my desktop, its just slightly over half the speeds of Samsung's top tier drives, or around a 2/3 of a good NVME drive

 

Okay i just googled all of those m.2 ssds you all recommended.


The intel ssd 660p is only 95 dollars plus tax for 1tb

The sabrent 1tb rocket is 110 dollars plus tax for 1tb

The adata sx8200 pro is 150 dollars plus tax for 1tb



The one i was looking at Samsung 970 Evo is 170 dollars plus tax for 1tb


The samsung one has the most reviews of all. The other ones, there seems to be lot of issues with it from lot of buyers. I mean the sx8200 pro and samsung evo there is only 20 dollar price difference. The other ones, 660p, sabrent its a much bigger price difference. The ones i posted in my original post the WD cost 110 plus tax.


But in terms of speed, samsung evo is fastest of all? From fastest to slowest, which is it from that list and the WD Blue 3D Nand SSD?


Also, I mentioned i want to future proof this for a long time. Someone say then get the 1tb m.2 ssd then. Now the other thing is from the samsung ssd 250gb that i have, i had it for a long time already, it hasn't had problems. So if thats the case, is it better to pay more to stick with a premium brand? Thus the last thing i want is spend a bit over $110 plus tax for the other brands... then it later on has issues... whereas the samsung 970 evo, probably has lesser issues?

 

The 970 is the best out of all of the ones above, SX8200 is slower but still great, Sabrent seems to be a tad slower and no clue about reliability, 660p is the worst in all categories, 1800MBs reads give or take, QLC, and it's pretty slow once the cache runs out. It's still decent but definitely the budget option, I'd spend the little more for the Sabrent, or spend it all on the 970

 

In terms of performance, 970 EVO > Sabrent Rocket > SX8200 Pro > 660p

 

SX8200 should be faster

 

It’s not, at least in a heavy test like The Destroyer: https://www.anandtech.com/show/14331/the-team-group-mp34-512gb-ssd-review/3

The MP510, P34A80, MP34, and Aorus RGB are the same Phison/Toshiba drive as the Sabrent Rocket with different firmware and factory overprovisioning. The SX8200 Pro 1TB performs similar to the 512GB Phison/Toshiba drives, while the 1TB Phison/Toshiba drives are ahead.

 

At this rate, going all SSD on a new build is going to be pretty affordable from now on.
I don't see SSDs shooting up in pricing any time soon.

 

Just copied a couple of game installs off a 960 EVO over to my 660p @ 1.3GB/s. 1800 may be "slow" for other NVMe drives, but it's still 3x faster than SATA3 SSD's. Also the Samsung EVO drives have that high fast speed on reads. On writes, it only writes fast in a burst for a couple of seconds, and then drops down to about 800 MB/s or so. If you want that fast speed all the time, you need to get the PRO model, which is even more expensive.

So stop picking on the 660p. I picked the 2tb model because it has the biggest SLC cache. (24GB)

 

My PowerSpec 1710 came with a 960 EVO 250GB and a Hitachi 1TB HDD. I added a 960 EVO 500GB to the 2nd m.2 when I bought it. Now, that 500GB replaced the 250GB one, and installed the 660p 2tb in the 2nd m.2, and replaced the Hitachi HDD with a Samsung EVO 860 1TB.

SSD's are great for prolonging battery life.

 

I have nothing against the 660p, it's just the worst SSD that he mentioned out of the 4. It's still decent, and yes it's arguably faster than SATA SSD's, which is nice, but it's relatively slow once the cache runs out and its QLC.

 

Your Next SSD Might Be Slower (Thanks to QLC Flash)

So Should You Avoid QLC?
You should definitely avoid QLC drives with 512 GB (and less, once it becomes cheaper to produce), as they don’t make much sense. You’ll fill them up much quicker, and the cache will be smaller when it’s full, making it considerably slower. Plus, they’re currently not much cheaper than the alternatives.

Despite its shortcomings, QLC flash isn’t too much of an issue when you look at the higher capacity drives. The 2 TB model of the 660p features a minimum of 24 GB of cache when it’s filled up. It’s still QLC flash, but it’s an acceptable trade-off for a cheap 2 TB SSD that operates really fast most of the time.

 

The point I was getting at is that as long as I don't go over my 24GB cache, it's faster at writes than my 960 EVO. So I don't get the slow part of your argument. (Yes, I know the cache is writing to the QLC at a slow rate, but then again the EVO has a NAND cache too and when you overrun that it can crawl as well)

 

Hey all well it seems like most people seem to agree the 970 is best one of all. And the 660p seems to have the least good remarks from ppl on this thread. The thing is for me, i want this ssd to be futureproof for a long time... thus i dont want to pay a cheaper price and then either it has a higher probability of going bad... but most importantly... if its slow and then i go... why did i not pay more for the 870 evo. Also i don't want an issue where i go... okay now im running out of space with my 500gb which probably would not happen for a long time. But 1tb would be more than enough forever i think.


Again, i would like to use my xps 15 9550 for many more years. I had this laptop for a bit under 3 years already. Thus based on this, don't even bother spending a bit less for that sabrent or adata right? It would be either $60+ or $20+ dollars less.


Here is the other thing though. My current laptop that uses a 250gb ssd... is there a way to find out which ssd brand and model i have without opening up my laptop? Im pretty certain this 250gb ssd came from a sager laptop that i bought years ago... but that sager laptop went bad and didn't work, so the ssd got removed from it. I think its a samsung 250gb ssd... but im not sure. Also would you almost 100% this ssd is a sata drive since this ssd is around 5 plus years old? A few years before that, i bought a 250gb samsung ssd off amazon as well. So i have like 2 of these 2.5 inch 250gb ssd. But im not 100% sure if this 250gb ssd was the one i bought over 6+ years ago or it was the one that came with my sager 5+ years ago. I do have the other 250gb samsung ssd that i have but i just leave it in the closet.


Wouldn't this mean my 2.5 inch samsung ssd im using now is a SATA drive? But to me, my laptop is very fast. Booting up and eveything is fast. So you are saying that all those ssds listed are going to be faster than the one i have now that is either 5+ or 6+ years old? Or not because its a samsung ssd.


The other thing is would you say my laptop is future proof with its processor? Its an i5-6300 hq. Thus its a few years old. But its a quad core processor... even though its an i5 and not i7. And its not one of those u processors from back then.


But this i5-6300hq is probably good for many years to come right?

 

6300HQ will be fine for web browsing for atleast a couple of years, even dual cores from the 2nd and 3rd generation of CPUs are still doing fine, I was able to use a P8400 to use a couple of tabs just the other day.

As for the SSD, if you want the best, its simply the Samsung. If you dont want to spend that much, you should decided between the Adata and Sabrent. You can use HWinfo to see your current SSD and what brand it is.

 

When you say dual cores from 2nd and 3rd generation, can you give me like examples? Such as like 4510u processor? Like example of a 2nd and 3rd generation processor?


Well my i5-6300hq is pretty fast. I recall back when i bought it, there was option of i7-6700hq but i went with the 6300hq because of price. But is the i7-6700hq much more than the one i have or not that much? Back then i read as long as its quad core, which the i5-6300hq is... i went with that.


So you are saying processors like the i7-8750H that is out now. that would be good for at least double the years of the i5-6300hq?

 

Samsung Magician will ID all your drives, as well as CrystalDiskInfo

 

For most people, using a notebook, the Intel 660p 2TB model with OP'ing of at least 33% is the only option if you want a fast experience with the longest battery runtimes.

Pure speed is useless if it cuts battery life by half an hour or more and gets less actual work done.

 

What SSD “cuts battery life by half an hour or more” compared to another SSD?

 

I believe he was referring to me referring to the 970

 

Perf/W is much higher on the 970 EVO than the 660p

 

I'm sorry but the 660P is a terrible value at its price point compared to other TLC drives that are priced maybe $50-70 higher for 2TB. 1/2 to full drive performance will also be worse once you get past empty drive tests, not to mention the much worse write endurance which for most people will be ok I guess but I'd still go for a TLC over a QLC for the extra leeway in case you end up doing a lot of video editing/exports or something of the sort where you end up doing a lot of writes/transfers. The 660P will drop to like 100MB/s after very long writes, uncommon for normal use and not too terrible vs HDDs but still much worse than a TLC drive.

Get a MyDigital BPX Pro 1920 GB for $230, 1920GB Inland (Micro Center's brand) for $235, 2TB Sabrent Rocket for $250 (seen it for ~$200 a while back) or sometimes I've seen the Corsair MP500 for around $230-240.

As for Samsung, EVO+ is replacing the EVO and that one can sustain above 1GB/s on long writes after pseudo SLC buffer is over. And if you really want to compare either Samsung or any of the other TLC drives to a 660p do a 1/2 drive full test and see what happens..... Same goes for low end TLC drives (controller wise) like the EX950 (A weak Silicon Motion controller like the 660p) vs 970 EVO/MP500.

 

WD Black or Blue, Samsung (all), Adata XPG series are all worst in real-world battery life on notebooks than the Intel 660p is. With the 660p sometimes even giving a more responsive system too. Numbers, spec's and scores don't mean anything if they don't carry through to actual workloads and workflows.

 

If all you're doing is running 'The Destroyer' benchmark, sure it is. Not reflected in any way on a mobile system in the actual workloads though where maximum data rates don't necessarily mean lowest power consumption, overall.

 

Yeah, that might be so based on your limitations. But I have never found any SSD worthy of using without OP'ing by at least 25% and consider 33% OP'ing my personal minimum for sustained performance over time.

A 2TB nominal SSD is just a 1.25TB (at best) SSD for me in a notebook. At worst, it is closer to 750GB when used in my desktop workstations as a dedicated cache drive (Temp, Scratch Disk, etc.).

The 'price' for an SSD to run to its full potential is not merely the 'cost' of the drive... Never has been, never will be.

 

destroyer benchmark is like queue depth of 5-6 which is unrealistic to consumer. even anadtech's "light" benchmark runs at around 3-4 QD.

majority of consumer runs at most QD 1-2 like 95% of the time. i'd say buy the cheapest known brand SSD and just go on with your normal day tasks and be fine for yrs.

 

The same OP values are applied on Seagate Enterprise SSD. A 8TB with OP for sustained write speed and much endurance at 6.xx TB.
I wonder if you're behind their FW design!

 

That’s not true. Almost 3/4 of The Destroyer is at QD 1-2.

 

For me, the 2tb 660p is being utilized for game installs, which it is currently half full. Since I am not using it for large file editing, who cares! It works, and works well, and uses less power to boot.

 

that is the issue, the individual tests yes at only QD1/2, say for example me running VLC for watching a video, but if 3-4 VLC ran at the same time, it is QD4-8.

some of the tests are likely ran at the same time to reduce time, which is a mistake. now as far as i remember it use to be like that back 4-5 yrs ago, if they fixed it since then it is QD1-2. we can actually figure this out pretty easily by looking at optane storage review of the same tests light/destroyer.

optane when mixed read/write 80/20 or 70/30 doesnt lose performance like flash cells due to optane is technically a type of memory? so flash you'll get say 700 MB/s when read/write active at same time while optane remains at 1900 MB/s.

when doing destroyer test we just need to look at performance of optane vs flash. if flash is within half the performance then we know something is maybe inconsistent.

theres also a lot going into it. sequential R/W and random R/W, if sequential for blocksize over 64kb is considered as multiple QD due to window nature is 64 i think unless specified in raid. also we have no idea if these tests are done with read only, then write only, if so it is very unrealistic.

 

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9009/ocz-vector-180-240gb-480gb-960gb-ssd-review/4

“Most of the workloads are run independently in the trace, but obviously there are various operations (such as backups) in the background.”

 

that review soooo old rofl ocz vector.

also prob run in windows, any bg stuff become additional queue.

 

The 'non-real-worldliness' of the Anandtech tests is that all the natural pauses of the real software they're trying to emulate are mostly removed. So much for real-world.

 

i have been following kristian vatto for awhile and his reviews i'd say he is pretty good but i'd take allyn from pcper, chris from tweaktown when comes to indepth analysis. allyn would go into details and break it down where as chris knows a lot just doesnt write it in his review cause its for mass consumers, those guys know a lot.

 

No, I'm not.

But it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see the sustained, over time, improvements that OP'ing can do.

When I noticed this aspect of SSD's performance envelope is when I finally built a workstation that truly and completely beat out my old vRaptor (8 to 10, 10K RPM 1TB HDD's, not in RAID0) set up so many years ago.

Before that, SSD's were just expensive junk.

Even today, in my workflows and in any client whose notebook or desktop I decide to 'tune' for them (whose workflows are very different from mine...), OP'ing the SSD brings new life into their systems. Easily worth the loss of mere storage (even a few hundred GB's) for the trade of increased sustained, performance over time. And easily worth saving the cost of a new system or even a larger SSD that will perform at the same level very quickly with no OP'ing at all.

 

Okay i looked through all the replies. Seems like since i want futureproof, best to go with the samsung evo and 1tb ssd right?

 

A Phison E12 controller based drive like the Corsair MP510 would be good enough. At 1TB some of the E12 drives are with $10-20 of 660P and should be better battery and life wise. For 2 TB you’d be looking at around $230 with the MyDigital SSD BPX, occasionally you may get the Sabrent Rocket for less. Some of these drives have had pretty decent price reductions on occasion so you may get them for less depending on retailer.

 

Yeah there's nothing like future-proofing nowadays because new products are released every 6 months or a year!
Writes heavy tasks go for Samsung Pro or like @Aivxtla suggested go for Phison E12 based drives.

 

Yeah, I got the 1TB Sabrent Rocket, I recommend it too, it's great! It's basically a budget 970 Evo Plus, not quite as fast but nearly, and it's super cheap, cheaper or the same price as 1TB SATA SSD's here in the UK when I bought it (which is why it was a no brainer to buy this one) - 970 Evo Plus was twice the price if I remember!

 

Reading your posts on this thread I can't see how you picked 1TB and EVO as 'future-proof'?

You're removing the old drives to add battery capacity, so battery life is important. Therefore: 660p.

You will never have enough storage, no matter what capacity you buy today. Therefore 1TB nominal capacity which is closer to ~931GB actual capacity is also a bad choice, IMO. The 2TB models with OP'ing today and the foreseeable future not only offer higher sustained performance over time but when storage capacity becomes important in the not-too-distant future, you can simply expand the capacity as needed too. For less than the price of a 1TB EVO Plus, you can get that in an Intel 660p 2TB model and have more performance, longevity, and options further down the road than you can with the more power-hungry options (including the EVO and EVO Plus models).

While the i5 based notebook you have isn't ideal for maximizing every other aspect of this platform, the Intel 660p 2TB model is still easily recommended for your setup and needs.

Simply format it to a full 1024GB capacity and enjoy the speed as long as you can fit your workflows and workloads within that capacity. When not if, you need more capacity in the future, simply expand the capacity as needed to the full ~1862GB capacity on tap. Sure, you may see things slow down then if you're hammering the storage subsystem at that time. But it will be your choice to make too (and you can always expand to less than the full capacity and still see OP'ing gains too).

With an SSD, more capacity = more performance. Buy the biggest you can afford (always; if performance is paramount).

With higher capacity, OP'ing by 25% or more (I recommend 33%) will ensure you get the highest possible real-world performance from your SSD, sustained, over time, almost no matter how you use it.

The Intel 660p gives the real-world performance that is effectively equivalent to competitors models. Where it excels is how it is able to extend battery life and also being more affordable too, usually having double the capacity for less $$$ than an EVO 1TB model.

Don't get caught up in the 'scores', it is not what makes a system balanced, nor, future-proof for your needs.