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SSD Brands

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BT63
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SSD Brands

#420630

Postby BT63 » June 18th, 2021, 10:07 pm

Lockdown consequences mean my household is using computers a lot more, whether for work, study, social or gaming.

In total, we have about a dozen computers in our household and I soon want to upgrade a few more of them to SSD.
I don't want to spend a large amount of money but equally I don't want to buy poor quality SSDs. So I need to find some respectable mid-market products.

The computers don't need huge amounts of storage so I can keep costs down somewhat by fitting SSDs of around 200-250GB.

I looked at an auction site offing good used SSDs but the prices aren't sufficiently below the cost of a new one to justify.

What do the members think of these more budget-friendly options?

Kingston (A400)
Lexar (NS100)
PNY (CS900)
Integral (V series 2)
Other?

Thanks for any thoughts.

GrahamPlatt
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Re: SSD Brands

#420634

Postby GrahamPlatt » June 18th, 2021, 10:18 pm

Crucial. £39 for 250GB SSD, £42 for 500GB: https://www.amazon.co.uk/crucial-ssd/s?k=crucial+ssd

BT63
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Re: SSD Brands

#420637

Postby BT63 » June 18th, 2021, 10:30 pm

GrahamPlatt wrote:Crucial.


Out of interest, why Crucial (and why not Kingston/PNY/Integral/Lexar)?

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Re: SSD Brands

#420640

Postby GrahamPlatt » June 18th, 2021, 10:38 pm

BT63 wrote:
GrahamPlatt wrote:Crucial.


Out of interest, why Crucial (and why not Kingston/PNY/Integral/Lexar)?


I’m a bit nerdy in this respect. Crucial tends to have the better reputation.

https://youtu.be/EXLfErPEYiw

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Re: SSD Brands

#420644

Postby mc2fool » June 18th, 2021, 11:02 pm

Well I bought a PNY CS900 240GB SSD for my old laptop from PC World in February 2018 and it died after 11 months -- and unlike HDDs which usually give some hints that they're on the way out (slowness, errors, occasional blue screen, etc) SSDs die suddenly and totally. I wrote it up at the time at viewtopic.php?t=15539

I took it back to PC World and got a refund, which I used to buy a Samsung EVO 250GB SSD. That was in January 2019 and it worked fine in my old laptop until about a month ago, when I decided to replace the laptop (9 years old, hinges broken, touchpad mouse buttons sticking, fan on it's way out) with a new one that already has an M.2 SSD built in, so I've pulled the Samsung EVO out of the old laptop and am just keeping it as a spare.

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Re: SSD Brands

#420645

Postby BobbyD » June 18th, 2021, 11:07 pm

With SSD's its as much about timing and offers as anything else. You'll often find 'better' cheaper if you keep your eyes open. Samsung, Crucial and WD would be my favourites list, and Crucial are currently considerably cheaper.

Crucial BX500 are fine for anything where data is just going to be copied on to it once and sit there(photo libraries, game drives...), but MX500 are worth the difference for boot drives. The difference is currently so small I defaulted to MX when picking up a cheap 500GB drive last week.

480GB BX500: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07G3KGYZQ? ... e=ogi&th=1

500GB MX500: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Crucial-MX500- ... a8f78beebe

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Re: SSD Brands

#420653

Postby Breelander » June 18th, 2021, 11:37 pm

BT63 wrote:What do the members think of these more budget-friendly options?


What you need to know is that the original SSD's contained a single bit (or level) per cell (SLC), but later design held two, three or even four bits per cell. (Multi-level cell - 2,3 or 4 bit MLC)). You also need to know that it's writing to a cell wears it out.

Obviously the more bits that each cell holds, the cheaper the device can be made. The downside is that with less cells in total, wear levelling (spreading the writes between the cells) to prolong device life is less effective the more bits each cell holds.

SSD endurance is specified by the manufacturer as the Total Bytes that can be Written to the SSD before errors would be expected to appear (TBW).

Typically a 3-bit MLC SSD will have a TBW of 300TB for a 500GB drive, or 150TBW for a 250GB one and will carry a 5 year guarantee. 4-bit MLC SSDs of the same capacity will typically have TBW figures of 150TBW and 75TBW respectively and a 3 year guarantee.

Relative endurance of the drives you listed:
Kingston (A400) - 480GB drive: 160TBW, 3/yr (specs)
Lexar (NS100) - 512GB drive: 256TBW (specs)
PNY (CS900) - 480GB drive: 150 TBW (specs)
Integral (V series 2) - 480GB drive: 160TBW (specs)

As for others to consider,

The Samsung EVO is well respected. A 3-bit MLC device, 5 year guarantee or 300TBW for the 500GB drive.
https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/m ... er/870evo/

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Re: SSD Brands

#420664

Postby sloth » June 19th, 2021, 1:30 am


GeoffF100
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Re: SSD Brands

#420679

Postby GeoffF100 » June 19th, 2021, 8:30 am

Samsung and Crucial seem to have the best reputation. I have a 120 GB Kingston A400 in the machine that I use most of the time. It had a rating for the amount of data that could be written to it before it went kaput, unlike the cheaper ones. No problems. Widely sold and relatively cheap. I have a much older SanDisk SSD in another machine. Again, no problems.

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Re: SSD Brands

#420684

Postby Redmires » June 19th, 2021, 9:06 am

sloth wrote:Here's a useful review of SSDs: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/be ... ,3891.html


And here's an excellent guide to SSD's from the excellent 'Explaining Computers' channel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXLfErPEYiw

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Re: SSD Brands

#420694

Postby Infrasonic » June 19th, 2021, 10:02 am

The big three in RAM and NAND manufacturing are Samsung, Micron (Crucial and Ballsitix brands, Lexar 2006-2017) and S K Hynix.
That's 90% of the market.
More fabrication plants are being built in the USA currently which should help with supply lines for future pinch point scenarios like Covid.

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Re: SSD Brands

#420701

Postby Infrasonic » June 19th, 2021, 10:37 am

I've got Samsung (500GB T5 USB SSD), Sandisk (Ultra 3D SSD) and USB flash drives, Crucial MX500 (1TB).

I had one failure just outside of the three year warranty on a 120GB Sandisk ultra drive - Western Digital replaced it FOC with the higher capacity and quality Ultra 3D, paid postage both ways and it was one of the best customer experiences I've ever had.
All my HDD's are WD too (not by design just they seem to be popular with OEM's).

I've also put the cheap Kingston A400's in as boot drives on low use machines for friends. I'm not particularly impressed with the performance/wear rates on them so wouldn't use at all in a higher spec or heavily used scenario.

For the average web browser/light office docs user you won't really see much real world difference between a decent SATA DRAM/SLC cache SSD and an all singing all dancing PCIe 4 NVME M.2 drive with GB's of read/write throughput.
If you're a gamer or video/photo editor then they can be worth the extra cost.

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Re: SSD Brands

#420717

Postby BT63 » June 19th, 2021, 12:18 pm

Infrasonic wrote:....I've also put the cheap Kingston A400's in as boot drives on low use machines for friends. I'm not particularly impressed with the performance/wear rates on them so wouldn't use at all in a higher spec or heavily used scenario.....


Can you be more specific regarding poor performance/wear of the Kingston?

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Re: SSD Brands

#420718

Postby GrahamPlatt » June 19th, 2021, 12:38 pm

Well I have no experience of Kingston’s SSDs, but bought one of their SD cards whilst on holiday once (for camera), which failed inside the week. All snaps gone. OK, maybe a “one off”, but I would hesitate over an SSD.

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Re: SSD Brands

#420723

Postby BT63 » June 19th, 2021, 12:58 pm

Breelander wrote:Relative endurance of the drives you listed:
Kingston (A400) - 480GB drive: 160TBW, 3/yr (specs)
Lexar (NS100) - 512GB drive: 256TBW (specs)
PNY (CS900) - 480GB drive: 150 TBW (specs)
Integral (V series 2) - 480GB drive: 160TBW (specs)

As for others to consider,

The Samsung EVO is well respected. A 3-bit MLC device, 5 year guarantee or 300TBW for the 500GB drive.
https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/m ... er/870evo/


Of those I listed, the TBW of the Lexar stands out as being significantly more than the others. On the face of it, that might be the one to consider as they're all available at similar prices.

I have a 1TB Samsung 860 EVO in my main computer which runs for about 100 hours per week.

The computers I am planning to upgrade only run for about 20 hours per week. They mostly have older operating systems and they are used for programs or games which won't run in Windows 10, or where I fear that a future Windows 10 update might 'break' the program/app.

I don't mind splashing out £££ on a Samsung for my main computer (or the wife's) but I don't want to spend premium money on light-use, second-line computers, hence looking at Kingston/Lexar/PNY/Integral which seem to be mid-range (or am I wrong?).

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Re: SSD Brands

#420844

Postby Breelander » June 20th, 2021, 2:56 am

BT63 wrote:Of those I listed, the TBW of the Lexar stands out as being significantly more than the others. On the face of it, that might be the one to consider as they're all available at similar prices.



None of those you listed give the bits per cell in their specs, but an educated guess would be that the Lexar's TBW figure is consistent with using 3-bit MLC, while all the others are tyipical of a 4-bit MLC device. On that basis the Lexar would be my choice from your list too.

The prices of Lexar and Samsung are not that different. A quick look on Amazon finds the 256GB Lexar NS100 at £31.33 and the Samsung 250GB 870 EVO at £40.99.

Lexar: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lexar-NS100-2- ... QXQ6N?th=1
Samsung: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-Factor ... 43D78&th=1

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Re: SSD Brands

#420993

Postby BT63 » June 20th, 2021, 6:23 pm

Thanks for the replies - many were interesting and thought provoking.

This afternoon I bought a Lexar 128GB to try in one computer which has 80GB at the moment and isn't even half full, so 128GB should be plenty for it.

I'll continue considering my options for the other computers.

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Re: SSD Brands

#421270

Postby Infrasonic » June 21st, 2021, 8:35 pm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K07sEM6y4Uc

Bait & switch is a common deception technique that's as old as time itself, but usually it's only seen being done by bad actors. What if I told you that this is happening today, right now, on sites like Amazon and Newegg, with some of the best selling SSDs?

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Re: SSD Brands

#421273

Postby BT63 » June 21st, 2021, 9:08 pm

Infrasonic wrote:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K07sEM6y4Uc

Bait & switch is a common deception technique that's as old as time itself, but usually it's only seen being done by bad actors. What if I told you that this is happening today, right now, on sites like Amazon and Newegg, with some of the best selling SSDs?


So the message there is to stick with the likes of Samsung who are more likely to retain the original specification rather than progressively substitute cheaper internal components to keep costs down and profit margins up.

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Re: SSD Brands

#421279

Postby Infrasonic » June 21st, 2021, 9:21 pm

BT63 wrote:
Infrasonic wrote:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K07sEM6y4Uc

Bait & switch is a common deception technique that's as old as time itself, but usually it's only seen being done by bad actors. What if I told you that this is happening today, right now, on sites like Amazon and Newegg, with some of the best selling SSDs?


So the message there is to stick with the likes of Samsung who are more likely to retain the original specification rather than progressively substitute cheaper internal components to keep costs down and profit margins up.


Any of the better brands mentioned upthread that manufacture their own DRAM / NAND will tend to be more consistent with component specs as they are already vertically integrated. So as I mentioned I have Samsung, Sandisk (Western Digital) and Crucial (Micron) all of whom have their own manufacturing capability. You'll get 5 year guarantees with the better SSD's versus 3 for the cheaper DRAM less ones too. Keep your eyes peeled on HDUK and other alert sites and even now you can still get the better drives at a decent discount. (I recently got my 1TB MX500 for under £80 from Amazon.)


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