What are good alternatives to the 990 Pro?

[Amuro0079]

Was originally planning on getting two 990 Pro SSD's next month for a complete new build (waiting on the X3D chips) next month, but with all the rapid health degradation reports I'm not sure about the 990 Pro anymore. I haven't built for quite a while now so would really like some recommendations for SSDs? I'm planning on going all NVMe in this build, maybe 2TB + 1TB. Fast and reliable is all I care, money isn't an issue.

[DeadBeat]

If money isn't a concern Firecuda 530.

[Illusion of Progress]

The Nintendo Guy původně napsal:

Illusion of Progress původně napsal:

It wouldn't be fine if you have a use case for higher sequential speeds.

If you don't (which many people probably don't), you're still passing on the similarly priced but still better SN850X or P41.

And I hope you're talking about the 980 Pro. The vanilla 980 is a DRAM-less budget drive that is more comparable to the NVME Western Digital Blue SN550/570 (not the SATA ones) and isn't even in the same conversation as the above drives.

I actually still have the box of the ssd lying on my table.
It just says "SSD 980" It says absolutely nothing about "pro"

Yeah that's the vanilla 980. Nothing wrong with it, by the way. I just thought you were suggesting the 980 Pro and with the other two drives being at the same price, I feel they'd be better choices.

But the regular 980 probably isn't something the OP would want to consider if they were originally considering the 990 Pro. Two very, very different drives. The 980 Pro is at least in that discussion, being a premium drive. The vanilla 980 is not. Like if someone was asking for RTX 4080 alternatives, you wouldn't suggest a RTX 3060 Ti or something. Sure it's fine, but it's not going to measure up to anyone looking for RTX 4080 performance.

Bad 💀 Motha původně napsal:

Anyways, take your pick, they are all very good.

Samsung 980 / 980 PRO
WD SN850X
Sabrent Rocket
SK Hynix Platinum P41

One of these things is not like the others.

[plat]

Having used both the 980 and 980 Pro, not to mention the Western Digital Black,, I respectfully say:: the 980 is not in the same class. It is a mid-class nvm-e and my WD Black out-performed it via Crystal Disk Mark.

Here is another chart illustrating the differences.

https://premiumbuilds.com/comparisons/samsung-980-vs-980-pro/

In lieu of the 990 Pro which is what OP was remarking on, I suggested the 980 Pro, which has been on the market for a few years now and is stable. The 990 Pro doesn't seem ready for prime time yet--there is serious degradation of Health after only a couple of months--less?

Someone I follow on Twitter--his personal experience with the 990 Pro and he's not alone. So, maybe give it a good 6 months (or more, depending) and monitor consumer reports on it.

https://twitter.com/fanboynz/status/1618543362864467969

Edit: possibly for current users, Samsung may resort to pushing out firmware updates, similar to what it did with the initial batches of 980 Pro/s. For me, the first two failed, the third worked but the drive became corrupt soon thereafter. Me personally, I will not jump on the "me first" train after this experience.

[Illusion of Progress]

Speaking of firmware updates, I recall my old Crucial MX100 had an apparent issue where after so many reads (or writes) the drive would get stuck in read-only mode prematurely, and a firmware update supposedly addressed it. I remember updating the firmware on it for that reason (I became aware of the possibility of the issue before I had reached that point but updated it regardless).

plat původně napsal:

Having used both the 980 and 980 Pro, not to mention the Western Digital Black,, I respectfully say:: the 980 is not in the same class. It is a mid-class nvm-e and my WD Black out-performed it via Crystal Disk Mark.

As far as NVMe drives go, more entry level IMO, like the Western Digital Blue SN 550/570. It doesn't even have DRAM (though for NVMe drives this isn't as big of a disabling factor like it was for SATA ones back in the day, but it still illustrates the point). Samsung knew what they were doing in giving them similar names and having the 980 Pro, being a stellar drive, make the non-Pro come off as close to though who didn't know better.

The 970 Evo is probably more of a mid class example (the Plus possibly being upper mid-tier).

The 970 Pro/980 Pro is more premium (though not as fast compared to current offerings).

Of course the Western Digital Black outperformed a 980 non-Pro; that's more a premium drive (though I'm not sure which one you're referring to, as the older SN 750 was a bit... disappointing in a way, but it's still above a 980).

[plat]

Illusion of Progress původně napsal:

The 970 Evo is probably more of a mid class example (the Plus possibly being upper mid-tier).

The 970 Pro/980 Pro is more premium (though not as fast compared to current offerings).

Of course the Western Digital Black outperformed a 980 non-Pro; that's more a premium drive (though I'm not sure which one you're referring to, as the older SN 750 was a bit... disappointing in a way, but it's still above a 980).

I had to dig my Western Digital nvm-e out of this big box--not very nice treatment there but anyway--yes! it's an sn750. It started to wear out a bit more quickly than I'd expected so it's replaced with what is now my Windows 11 drive--the Samsung 970 EVO Plus. This has been more durable for me, for sure.

I'd say the 970 is better than the 980 also. But, going by the stated sequential reads (about 2900 +mb/sec) in the above article, I thought the 980 mid-class-ish but you're right, the 970 EVO Plus is better still.

The thing is, though,this is "older" stuff and some don't want older tech in their new machines.

[Illusion of Progress]

Yeah, raw sequential speed isn't the be-all, end-all to determining how good a drive is. The 980 was more of a replacement to the 970 Evo so they're both somewhat the same thing from Samsung's standpoint, but the 970 Evo leaned more towards a firm mid-range drive (especially after the Plus version) and the 980 leans more towards budget than mid-tier (partly due to lacking DRAM, but despite this, it performs well considering that fact).

Western Digital's older Black SSDs left something to be desired (I'm fairly sure the SN750 lost some benchmarks to the Blue SN550 and/or 570, though it was still actually a better drive than them). They weren't "bad" drives by any means (though I'm not sure if wearing out fast should be normal for that particular drive since I'm thinking from a past discussion you don't write to yours too much), but Western Digital was pricing them almost like they competed with the better alternatives when they didn't quite do so, at least the Blacks (the Blues on the other hand were rather unremarkable but priced VERY well, which made them some of the best budget drives you could get). The SN850 was a changing point for them as far as having excellent performance to back up the asking price, and I hope to see them continue to compete well.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Are more people seeing these NVME drives wear rather quickly? Like is this a normal trend?

Here I have plenty of SATA SSDs and even the Samsung 850 EVO ones I got back shortly after their initial release still going very strong. Most of them used 24/7 for well over 5+ years and yet still sitting at 97 or 98 % life left. And that's also after well over 100+ TB written to each drive

[Illusion of Progress]

I'm interested in seeing the screenshots for 100 TB+ written and still 97%+ health left, not that I find it impossible or anything, but I imagine most drives would be lower than that by that point. So yes, drives with less endurance and/or more written will wear quickly and not stay at 100%.

Though I'm not sure why people worry so often about that health percentage so much (unless it IS at a faster than normal rate) because in most circumstances, it's not something that warrants worrying about, but it seems many people treat it as though it's bad if it's not near 100%. I'd say if it's staying near 100%, you either have a high endurance drive, or you're not writing to it much (in which case you definitely shouldn't even need to ever worry about this aspect of SSDs).

[PopinFRESH]

Illusion of Progress původně napsal:

I'm interested in seeing the screenshots for 100 TB+ written and still 97%+ health left, not that I find it impossible or anything, but I imagine most drives would be lower than that by that point. So yes, drives with less endurance and/or more written will wear quickly and not stay at 100%.

Though I'm not sure why people worry so often about that health percentage so much (unless it IS at a faster than normal rate) because in most circumstances, it's not something that warrants worrying about, but it seems many people treat it as though it's bad if it's not near 100%. I'd say if it's staying near 100%, you either have a high endurance drive, or you're not writing to it much (in which case you definitely shouldn't even need to ever worry about this aspect of SSDs).

^ Ditto on the "screen shots or it didn't happen". I'll call BS on this.

Samsung 850 Evo has a TBW of between 75TB - 300TB depending on capacity

Samsung původně napsal:

TBW (250 GB: 75 TBW; 500 GB/1 TB: 150 TBW, 2/4 TB: 300 TBW)

So at the best case if Bad Motha is referring to the 2TB or 4TB model then they would be at 66% life left. The % life left isn't something that is actually testing the quality of the NAND and will somehow vary, it is doing some simple math based on the raw amount of writes to NAND, the rated P/E cycles, and the wear leveling algorithm / write amplification factor.

[Komarimaru]

Unless Crystal Info is bugged, I've 32TB of writes and only 99% health status.
https://i.imgur.com/6MhxOzt.png
So, 97% health doesn't sound uncommon for Samsung drives if at 100tb written.

Why It's weird that 990 Pro is reporting much lower at much less.

[PopinFRESH]

Komarimaru původně napsal:

Unless Crystal Info is bugged, I've 32TB of writes and only 99% health status.
https://i.imgur.com/6MhxOzt.png
So, 97% health doesn't sound uncommon for Samsung drives if at 100tb written.

Why It's weird that 990 Pro is reporting much lower at much less.

Check it in Samsung Magician

Also, 970 Evo endurance rating for your 1TB model is 600TBW

Samsung původně napsal:

TBW for 970 EVO: 150 TBW for 250GB model, 300 TBW for 500GB model, 600 TBW for 1TB model, 1,200 TBW for 2TB model

The "% health" in Crystal Disk Info isn't what is actually being done by SMART on the SSD.

From your screen shot it looks like it is incorrectly using the SMART attribute 0x05 as "percentage used". That attribute is actually the Reallocated Sector Count.

The math Samsung is using is this:

Total Bytes Written (TBW) = (Physical Capacity * NAND PE Cycles) / (Write Amplification Factor * Wear Leveling Factor)

The attributes relevant to this for the 970 Evo are 177 and 241

IIRC on the 970 Evo attribute 202 is a computed % life left and the normalized value decrements from 100 -> 0.

[Illusion of Progress]

I'm not sure how that number is rounded. That might not seem important but when extrapolating, it can be. For example, 99% could be as "low" as 98.51% (presuming it rounds to the nearest whole number) or as "low" as 98.1% (presuming no rounding and only reflecting a number once it reaches it), or even as "low" as 99.9% (rounding to nearest lower number). Does anyone know how that number is rounded?

When my drive was around low 30-some TB written, I was at 97% or 98% on mine IIRC. But you can't extrapolate just based on your use and because the brand (of all things) matches. I'm fairly sure mine stayed around 97% for a while, then wasn't at 96% long, going to the 95% it's at now rather quickly. It's possible I wrote more to it in a short time but either way, the number isn't necessarily linear with time (and possibly, nor with the amount written?).

Something else I'm noticing is that nobody else who's posted theirs has the total NAND written field but mine does? Either that or my slightly out of date version shows it and newer versions label NAND writes as the old total writes? Because it's sort of the NAND writes that are the important one I thought. 100 TB+ over 5+ years is... well it's not nothing, but it's not super heavy use either, so I'm wondering how much of that was NAND writes as well.

[Komarimaru]

PopinFRESH původně napsal:

Komarimaru původně napsal:

Unless Crystal Info is bugged, I've 32TB of writes and only 99% health status.
https://i.imgur.com/6MhxOzt.png
So, 97% health doesn't sound uncommon for Samsung drives if at 100tb written.

Why It's weird that 990 Pro is reporting much lower at much less.

Check it in Samsung Magician

Also, 970 Evo endurance rating for your 1TB model is 600TBW

Samsung původně napsal:

TBW for 970 EVO: 150 TBW for 250GB model, 300 TBW for 500GB model, 600 TBW for 1TB model, 1,200 TBW for 2TB model

The "% health" in Crystal Disk Info isn't what is actually being done by SMART on the SSD.

It doesn't display a percentage. Just says Good, 31.5TB written.

[Illusion of Progress]

PopinFRESH původně napsal:

The "% health" in Crystal Disk Info isn't what is actually being done by SMART on the SSD.

Now I'm more interested in how meaningless that number can be because it seems to be reflecting a much higher health % than I should expect. My particular drive seems to have an endurance rating of 400 TB, so at just nearly 50 TB written (to NAND), I should expect around a 12.5% drop as opposed to the 5% drop CrystalDiskInfo shows.

I already knew the number was far from exact, but it seems almost meaningless to use for this purpose? I suspected it might not necessarily be linear which I'm presuming is the case and is what's throwing things off?

[PopinFRESH]

Komarimaru původně napsal:

PopinFRESH původně napsal:

Check it in Samsung Magician

Also, 970 Evo endurance rating for your 1TB model is 600TBW



The "% health" in Crystal Disk Info isn't what is actually being done by SMART on the SSD.

It doesn't display a percentage. Just says Good, 31.5TB written.

Select Drive Details for the drive in the left menu, then click on the S.M.A.R.T. button on the top right. This should show you the actual SMART attributes table