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.

[PopinFRESH]

Western Digital SN850X

Although, if you are doing a new build with a Ryzen 7X00X3D series, you'll have one M.2 on the motherboard that should be PCIe Gen5 x4 for an NVMe SSD. There should be some new PCIe5 SSD controller based options hitting the market soon as well.

The Phison E26 controller was shown late last year and several SSD models based on it from a variety of vendors were shown off at CES. Probably not something that will be in the consumer space by next month, however, might be worth keeping in mind and possibly look at getting one PCIe Gen4 SSD now, and then plan on getting a PCIe Gen5 SSD in a few months, and then move your Gen4 SSD to be your secondary storage.

Current PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSDs like the SN850X will have around 7GB/s sequential reads and 6.5GB/s sequential writes.

The PCIe Gen5 models noted above have around 12GB/s sequential reads and 10GB/s sequential writes.

Also, the SN850X is on sale right now directly from WD at a really good price per-capacity.

https://www.westerndigital.com/products/internal-drives/wd-black-sn850x-nvme-ssd#WDS200T2X0E

$189 for the 2TB model is really good

[Amuro0079]

Publicado originalmente por PopinFRESH:

Western Digital SN850X

Nice, only slightly slower than the 990 Pro. Amazon is currently doing 43% off on the 4TB variant with free shipping to my country, that's 200 USD cheaper than me buying it local.

[PopinFRESH]

Publicado originalmente por Amuro0079:

Publicado originalmente por PopinFRESH:

Western Digital SN850X

Nice, only slightly slower than the 990 Pro. Amazon is currently doing 43% off on the 4TB variant with free shipping to my country, that's 200 USD cheaper than me buying it local.

In most more in-depth storage benchmarks it actually beats out the 990 Pro. Mostly because of how much NAND WD has provisioned to function as an SLC cache.

[emoticorpse]

I would say anything except WD, but I'm guessing you really want WD.

What were you about to pay and for what size ssds?

[PopinFRESH]

Publicado originalmente por emoticorpse:

I would say anything except WD, but I'm guessing you really want WD.

What were you about to pay and for what size ssds?

Curious why anti-WD? Their SSDs are actually really good. I would have agreed with you back in their trash HDD days but since they've acquired Hitachi and SiliconSystems they've substantially improved.

[emoticorpse]

Publicado originalmente por PopinFRESH:

Publicado originalmente por emoticorpse:

I would say anything except WD, but I'm guessing you really want WD.

What were you about to pay and for what size ssds?

Curious why anti-WD? Their SSDs are actually really good. I would have agreed with you back in their trash HDD days but since they've acquired Hitachi and SiliconSystems they've substantially improved.

Thing is I did goof. I was in the process of editing my comment. I thought the 980 pros were WD and I guess in combination with your suggestion.

But I personally have had very bad experiences with WD. Must have been at least like 3 or 4 hdd's crapping themselves (some external some not). This was maybe like 10 years ago or more but since I've been exclusively using Seagate, they are all running fine still. I understand almost like a Corsair situation where when you sell so much product, you will inevitably have a higher failure reporting along with that, so maybe it was just a luck of the draw thing and I happened to get screwed everytime.

I just see it as a safer bet to go with something less popular. Since I'm next to a Microcenter the last SSD I got was an m.2 and it was an Inland brand. For the price I like it, still working good. I plan on getting them again even if on Amazon because I've tested the brand and they've given me a good experience.

I suppose I will consider checking out Western Digitals ssd's, since you mention it and maybe I am somewhat living in the past with those experiences.

For op, the 980 Pro's seem like a good idea. $180 for a 2 TB drive seems like a reasonable deal.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Some very good ones from Hynix and Sabrent as well

[Overseer]

Ignore those peak numbers. Those are useless garbage nobody needs here. Also Pro drives are intended for heavy use. No need for gaming. Literally just wasted money with zero benefit if you don't have a very specific write-heavy use case.
Reliability is also misleading with SSDs, because good luck if one drive fails. Which means backups are important.
Other than that just go for something with a good controller and good TBW. No QLC modules.

[Illusion of Progress]

Not to go against the above recommendation (to the contrary, I have a slight bias for Western Digital so the SN850X tempted me, but I decided to abstain for now), but the SK Hynix Gold P41 is almost $10 cheaper, and from what I find it tends to either compete well against, or even edge out, the SN850X. You couldn't go wrong with either, but IMO this makes it a potentially better deal.

Neither of them truly compete with the Samsung 990 Pro AFAIK, as that's a newer PCI Express 5.0 drive and sort of sits on its own for now, but if you're not really looking to utilize it in a way the raw sequential speed of it will come into play, the difference between it and either of these two others will be more mute, and in that case I'd say skipping on paying the Samsung tax is an easy choice (especially with the Health issues, but even ignoring that).

[PopinFRESH]

Publicado originalmente por emoticorpse:

Publicado originalmente por PopinFRESH:

Curious why anti-WD? Their SSDs are actually really good. I would have agreed with you back in their trash HDD days but since they've acquired Hitachi and SiliconSystems they've substantially improved.

Thing is I did goof. I was in the process of editing my comment. I thought the 980 pros were WD and I guess in combination with your suggestion.

But I personally have had very bad experiences with WD. Must have been at least like 3 or 4 hdd's crapping themselves (some external some not). This was maybe like 10 years ago or more but since I've been exclusively using Seagate, they are all running fine still. I understand almost like a Corsair situation where when you sell so much product, you will inevitably have a higher failure reporting along with that, so maybe it was just a luck of the draw thing and I happened to get screwed everytime.

I just see it as a safer bet to go with something less popular. Since I'm next to a Microcenter the last SSD I got was an m.2 and it was an Inland brand. For the price I like it, still working good. I plan on getting them again even if on Amazon because I've tested the brand and they've given me a good experience.

I suppose I will consider checking out Western Digitals ssd's, since you mention it and maybe I am somewhat living in the past with those experiences.

For op, the 980 Pro's seem like a good idea. $180 for a 2 TB drive seems like a reasonable deal.

Yeah, again I'd agree with you regarding their HDDs from back then. They were hot garbage. Since their acquisition of Hitachi that side of the business has significantly improved and they acquired SiliconSystems when they entered the SSD space. They've also acquired SanDisk so they have some very good talent now on the flash storage side of things.

I'd also note that WD's customer service and warranty process has been substantially improved since 10 years ago.

Regarding Inland, that is Microcenter's white label brand for SSDs. They are usually just white labeled Phison stock reference models.

[PopinFRESH]

Publicado originalmente por Illusion of Progress:

Not to go against the above recommendation (to the contrary, I have a slight bias for Western Digital so the SN850X tempted me, but I decided to abstain for now), but the SK Hynix Gold P41 is almost $10 cheaper, and from what I find it tends to either compete well against, or even edge out, the SN850X. You couldn't go wrong with either, but IMO this makes it a potentially better deal.

Neither of them truly compete with the Samsung 990 Pro AFAIK, as that's a newer PCI Express 5.0 drive and sort of sits on its own for now, but if you're not really looking to utilize it in a way the raw sequential speed of it will come into play, the difference between it and either of these two others will be more mute, and in that case I'd say skipping on paying the Samsung tax is an easy choice (especially with the Health issues, but even ignoring that).

The 990 Pro isn't a PCIe Gen5 drive.

https://image.semiconductor.samsung.com/image/samsung/p6/semiconductor/products/consumer-storage/internal-ssd/990-pro/01-990-of-pc-overview%402x.png

It is PCIe Gen4 just like the SN850X and Gold P41. In short synthetic tests it beats out both of the latter, however, in more real-world storage bench marks the SN850X will perform more consistently at a higher throughput and IOPS.

[Overseer]

Also here is a quick list for some orientation:
https://linustechtips.com/topic/1092033-ssd-tier-list/

[Illusion of Progress]

Publicado originalmente por PopinFRESH:

The 990 Pro isn't a PCIe Gen5 drive.

https://image.semiconductor.samsung.com/image/samsung/p6/semiconductor/products/consumer-storage/internal-ssd/990-pro/01-990-of-pc-overview%402x.png

It is PCIe Gen4 just like the SN850X and Gold P41. In short synthetic tests it beats out both of the latter, however, in more real-world storage bench marks the SN850X will perform more consistently at a higher throughput and IOPS.

Oh, thanks for the correction. Now I'm wondering why I was thinking it was PCI Express 5.0 drive to begin with?

Anyway, I'm going a bit off of memory, but from what I remember, the SN850X has the largest cache and a slightly higher burst, but I think there were things the P41 did better, like maybe better performance once NAND entered the equation or something? I think it has slightly higher IOPS too (whether or not this matters in practice I can't say, since this is already crazy high on the SN850X too). I just recall my order of preference being P41 > SN850X > 980 Pro but they're all close-ish (I admit a slight bias towards Western Digital and a slight bias against Samsung however, so take that for what it's worth, but I still think the SN850, let alone the X variant at least, are objectively better than the 980 Pro anyway).

And I'm surprised at the negative opinions of Western Digital from a decade back, considering (at least in my mind) that was around the time Seagate was probably at one of their lowest points in PR. They had some disastrous early 2 TB and 3 TB drives, and this was with the infamous 7200.11 in recent memory. Maybe it's just me but it seemed like every time I went to buy a drive, Seagate was having another bad PR issue. Like when I was looking to buy a 2 TB to 4 TB drive, I skipped the Seagate 3 TB because it had SUCH a bad reputation, it was literally selling for like 50% less than any other option and had a ton of bad Newegg reviews. Seemed like one of those "if it's THAT much cheaper, there has to be a reason" (I actually ended up with a 5 TB instead since it was on sale for around the same price as the 4 TB version). But yeah, H.G.S.T. was underrated so obtaining them helped. Speaking of that, pretty sure the "new" 8 TB Blues are H.G.S.T. now and not native Western Digital stuff.

Western Digital was slow to break into the SSD market though. Their early stuff was... okay, not awful, but just okay, but priced like it was better than okay. Their current top models are still priced that way, but are now actually good enough tow arrant it. And the NVMe Blues are among some of the best value drives IMO.

[emoticorpse]

Publicado originalmente por Illusion of Progress:

Publicado originalmente por PopinFRESH:

The 990 Pro isn't a PCIe Gen5 drive.

https://image.semiconductor.samsung.com/image/samsung/p6/semiconductor/products/consumer-storage/internal-ssd/990-pro/01-990-of-pc-overview%402x.png

It is PCIe Gen4 just like the SN850X and Gold P41. In short synthetic tests it beats out both of the latter, however, in more real-world storage bench marks the SN850X will perform more consistently at a higher throughput and IOPS.

Oh, thanks for the correction. Now I'm wondering why I was thinking it was PCI Express 5.0 drive to begin with?

Anyway, I'm going a bit off of memory, but from what I remember, the SN850X has the largest cache and a slightly higher burst, but I think there were things the P41 did better, like maybe better performance once NAND entered the equation or something? I think it has slightly higher IOPS too (whether or not this matters in practice I can't say, since this is already crazy high on the SN850X too). I just recall my order of preference being P41 > SN850X > 980 Pro but they're all close-ish (I admit a slight bias towards Western Digital and a slight bias against Samsung however, so take that for what it's worth, but I still think the SN850, let alone the X variant at least, are objectively better than the 980 Pro anyway).

And I'm surprised at the negative opinions of Western Digital from a decade back, considering (at least in my mind) that was around the time Seagate was probably at one of their lowest points in PR. They had some disastrous early 2 TB and 3 TB drives, and this was with the infamous 7200.11 in recent memory. Maybe it's just me but it seemed like every time I went to buy a drive, Seagate was having another bad PR issue. Like when I was looking to buy a 2 TB to 4 TB drive, I skipped the Seagate 3 TB because it had SUCH a bad reputation, it was literally selling for like 50% less than any other option and had a ton of bad Newegg reviews. Seemed like one of those "if it's THAT much cheaper, there has to be a reason" (I actually ended up with a 5 TB instead since it was on sale for around the same price as the 4 TB version). But yeah, H.G.S.T. was underrated so obtaining them helped. Speaking of that, pretty sure the "new" 8 TB Blues are H.G.S.T. now and not native Western Digital stuff.

Western Digital was slow to break into the SSD market though. Their early stuff was... okay, not awful, but just okay, but priced like it was better than okay. Their current top models are still priced that way, but are now actually good enough tow arrant it. And the NVMe Blues are among some of the best value drives IMO.

I remember everybody slamming Seagate and treating them as a laughing stock like they were Maxtor or something (maybe Seagate acquiring them had something to do with this?). This is one reason why I take public opinion with a grain of salt. The way I'm talking about WD now is how everybody was talking about Seagate back then and most users didn't even use Seagates I don't think. They just defended WD's reputation from what I could tell. I knew better. I had experienced WD vs Seagate and WD was the one to fail on me. That's where my opinion came from. Before those failed drives though I pretty much favored WD just like everyone else. I remember things for a long time, man. I don't know why I'm like that. I'll hold a grudge for a LONGGG time.

Now I don't remember if I had used Seagates 2/3 tb drives because basically I would have been using 4 TB drives back then just like I'm on 8 TB's now.

[PopinFRESH]

Publicado originalmente por emoticorpse:

... because basically I would have been using 4 TB drives back then just like I'm on 8 TB's now.

Pssshhhs... 8TB... You better get up into the 4x Seagate Exos X20 20TB in a RAID10.