Storage SSD - Samsung 860 Evo vs Crucial MX500 vs Intel 660p

[AllOutPotato]

Hi everyone, I'm putting together a new build and am trying to decide on a storage drive. I'll be using a 500GB Samsung 970 Evo Plus as my boot drive, but would like to have a 2TB SSD for storage. My top choices currently are the 860 Evo ($300), MX500 ($235), and 660p ($210).

860 Evo seems great for performance but not sure if the price premium is worth it compared to the others.
MX500 seems like a decent compromise?
660p seems nice for a cheap NVMe but I've heard there are issues with longevity as well as significant slowdowns as capacity fills? Would it perform better than the other two options?

Thanks for any input!

[r.linder]

660p is fine. You shouldn't fill an SSD's capacity anyway as it does affect performance a small bit, especially if it's an OS drive to begin with.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

You don't need to spend the extra getting an NVME ssd type just for general storage.

If you can get like a Samsung 970 EVO for os and apps. Then get 1TB sata ssd for games. For downloads, videos, pictures and storing other files, get a 2tb or larger 7200rpm hdd

[Kaihekoa]

Don't rely on "hearing" yada yada from random people that don't know what they are talking about. Go read a review instead. The concern with the QLC flash in the 660p is it has less write durability than other flash technology; however, Intel warranties the 660p 2TB for five years and 400 TBW. If you're using it for a game drive, you'll never come close to exceeding the rated durability. I have a 1TB Samsung 960 Evo that I've been using for everything including lots of games for nearly two years and it hasn't reached 15 TBW. I like having a large SSD for games to reduce load times and would go with the Intel 660p 2TB. If you're in the US, it's on sale now for $185 from Newegg: https://slickdeals.net/f/13068814-2tb-intel-660p-pcie-ssd-185-free-s-h?src=frontpage

[Autumn_]

Postat inițial de Kaihekoa:

Don't rely on "hearing" yada yada from random people that don't know what they are talking about. Go read a review instead. The concern with the QLC flash in the 660p is it has less write durability than other flash technology; however, Intel warranties the 660p 2TB for five years and 400 TBW. If you're using it for a game drive, you'll never come close to exceeding the rated durability. I have a 1TB Samsung 960 Evo that I've been using for everything including lots of games for nearly two years and it hasn't reached 15 TBW. I like having a large SSD for games to reduce load times and would go with the Intel 660p 2TB. If you're in the US, it's on sale now for $185 from Newegg: https://slickdeals.net/f/13068814-2tb-intel-660p-pcie-ssd-185-free-s-h?src=frontpage

Aye, it would only really apply if you're using it for constant video editing or the likes.

And, OP, all SSDs slow down when they're getting close to being full.

Also, you wouldn't really notice loading time improvements with an NVMe over a SATA SSD, maybe half a second, tops.
However, if you can get it cheaper, I don't see why not. Better for less.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

It's not a problem really if you did need to fill a drive for the short term, just don't leave it near full all the time. For an OS drive especially you will want a good 32-40gb free at all times to allow room for things like Win10 feature updates.

It should just be common sense on any drive that has active installs of os, apps, games on it. As a good chunk of large space will be needed free to make room for updating things

[h_LordEC[no-VC]]

FYI- you can get an Adata SU800 2TB from Rakuten for ~$180USD.
https://www.rakuten.com/shop/adata/product/ASU800SS-2TT-C/

They used to sell a Micron 1100 2TB for <$200 but haven't seen it stocked and on sale in awhile.

[nullable]

Postat inițial de AllOutPotato:

660p seems nice for a cheap NVMe but I've heard there are issues with longevity as well as significant slowdowns as capacity fills? Would it perform better than the other two options?

Thanks for any input!

The short answer is yes, the 660p would perform better. It's an NVMe drive and is going to be 2x-3x faster as a result than any SATA drive. That being said, running a 970 evo, 660p and a 850 evo, I don't really notice much difference most of the time. They're all pretty much just fast enough.

What people are quibbling over, with "longevity", is TBW, Terabytes Written, which the 660p is a little on the low side compared to the 860 evo. However, you sit down and do the math and you have to write huge amounts of data every day, without fail, for years before you hit the TBW stated in the warranty and that's not even the actual write limit for the drive...

So let's take the 1TB 660p, with a 200TBW. 200TB = 200,000GB. Let's say you write 100GB a day, ever day, without fail. Not a real world scenario any normal user would ever come close to, but it would take 2000 days, or ~5.47 years to hit 200TBW. Real world usage is going to be much lower, no where near 100GB a day for 2,000 days straight.

And 200TBW isn't a hard number, 201TBW and all drives are dead, it's just the warranty value, and in most of the SSD torture tests I've seen a SSD can often write 1.5-3x the TBW stated in the warranty.

I mean most of the time when people start worrying over write limits it's right before they start grossly overestimating how much data they write to disk. Do the math, track how much data you write over months or whatever and you'll learn exactly one thing: It's nothing worth worrying about and hasn't been for most of this decade.

[OLDMAN🎅]

I have a Crucial MX100
Crucial MX100 512GB-$200
12,945 User benchmarks, average bench 87%
356GB free (System drive)
Firmware: MU03
SusWrite @10s intervals: 428 403 409 421 416 412 MB/s
Performing as expected (45th percentile)

106% Outstanding

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Crucial 960Gb sata ssd on sale for limited time for $96 usd

[Autumn_]

Postat inițial de Bad 💀 Motha:

Crucial 960Gb sata ssd on sale for limited time for $96 usd

For 2TB?

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Idk, look it up. Sorry I don't have time atm to go looking this up for folks

[Autumn_]

Postat inițial de Bad 💀 Motha:

Idk, look it up. Sorry I don't have time atm to go looking this up for folks

It's cool man.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Look up on pcpartpicker, newegg, amazon

[Autumn_]

Postat inițial de Bad 💀 Motha:

Look up on pcpartpicker, newegg, amazon

Couldn't find it, did see a 1TB for 100 quid though. And not much more for a 1TB NVMe.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Like I said, the 960Gb was on sale cheap