Cheapest nvme drive with a dram cache?

[eqalidan]

I kind of want to get a 4tb drive to use for games, I also have need/use of very fast file transferring given I have a 200gb database that gets manual backups (this way I don't have a borked database backup and then the backup is also screwed)

my only problem is its kind of hard to find cheap drives and find out if they have any dram or not on them, I dont really need the most reliable drive from the most trusted brands, that would be nice dotn get me wrong, but im looking for as cheap as I can get as dense as I can get.

[spicy little monkey]

Originally posted by Ralf:

Originally posted by 🦊Λℚ𝓤ΛƑΛᗯҜᔕ🦊:

The only thing DRAM-less NVME drives are good for is storage or infrequently used apps or games. Never for a system drive. That would be a big mistake.

Hey man, I got told that some of the fastest Gen4 drives are DRAM-less and NVMe drives are already so fast that it makes DRAM useless.

That last bit is not true like at all

[🦊Λℚ𝓤ΛƑΛᗯҜᔕ🦊]

Originally posted by Ralf:

Originally posted by 🦊Λℚ𝓤ΛƑΛᗯҜᔕ🦊:

The only thing DRAM-less NVME drives are good for is storage or infrequently used apps or games. Never for a system drive. That would be a big mistake.

Hey man, I got told that some of the fastest Gen4 drives are DRAM-less and NVMe drives are already so fast that it makes DRAM useless.

In the experience I listed above both examples were using PCI-Express 4.0 NVME drives. One with DRAM and one without. DRAM on NVME drives definitely does make a quite large difference in their performance.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Honestly, even though a Crucial P3 Plus doesn't have DRAM its performance is still extremely good bang for buck.

[🦊Λℚ𝓤ΛƑΛᗯҜᔕ🦊]

Originally posted by Bad 💀 Motha:

Honestly, even though a Crucial P3 Plus doesn't have DRAM its performance is still extremely good bang for buck.

The whole point though is this: Once someone experiences a DRAM'less NVME drive and then tries one with DRAM on it they will never want to use a normal DRAM'less NVME drive ever again.

The same goes for SATA SSD's: Once someone experiences a system running on a NVME Drive with DRAM as the system drive they will never want to go back to SATA SSD's again for any reason. The general performance of the system is that much better.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

I kinda disagree unless you really are that dam picky. NVME drives generally don't help in running games any better for the most part. They are way over hyped. Now if you doing professional work like constantly video editing and such yes they can make a huge difference in that regard. Or large amounts of files copying from one drive to another sure. Otherwise not so much.

But yea if it was a cheaper SATA SSD without DRAM that can hurt performance quite a bit

[🦊Λℚ𝓤ΛƑΛᗯҜᔕ🦊]

Originally posted by Bad 💀 Motha:

I kinda disagree unless you really are that dam picky. NVME drives generally don't help in running games any better for the most part. They are way over hyped. Now if you doing professional work like constantly video editing and such yes they can make a huge difference in that regard. Or large amounts of files copying from one drive to another sure. Otherwise not so much.

But yea if it was a cheaper SATA SSD without DRAM that can hurt performance quite a bit

I think that perhaps you're following along with the testing by "internet personalities" with your comment and how people on YouTube tested the load times in games only (no other testing) and then they claim NVME isn't faster than SATA SSD for that situation. And that's true. For that situation. But what most people don't test is all sorts of other system stuff. I'll try to explain:

Copying a lot of files from one place on the drive to another place on the same drive = NVME is significantly faster than SATA SSD's.
Verifying the contents of an installed game in steam = NVME is lots faster than SATA again.
Installing a game from disk (Like if someone downloaded a 40~80 GB installer for a game from GOG onto their system and then ran the installer) = again NVME would be quite a lot faster than SATA SSD's there too.

It's the IOPS or I/O instructions per second where NVME drives really shine, like in those situations I described above. Some NVME drives can get up to hundreds of thousands of IOPS (800K IOPS write for example in top-spec PCIE-4.0 ones and 1.6 million IOPS in some of the new PCIE-5.0 NVME drives) in some of the more advanced ones where as even the fastest SATA SSD's usually top out around 100K IOPS for reads and 90K IOPS for writes.

Besides all of that there are actually new games being released already that actually list NVME drives as a requirement to install them. No NVME drive = Can't play those games.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

If you read what I actually said. I said they are better used for Professional needs; such as Video Editing and if you do alot of drive to drive file copying.

For even a Pro Gamer and 90% of consumers using a PC; they won't see any real world differences between a very good SATA SSD vs a majority of those NVME SSDs.

Again this comes down to needs and budget. You can't just sit back and say...
"Well that time has passed, every PC User should have a high end PCIE 4.0 or 5.0 NVME SSD; all DRAM-less NVME SSDs are pointless and all SATA drives are too slow."

That's just not how you help people at all. People can go look at benchmarks and such all day long but most consumers have zero idea of how those translate into using the PC day to day.

I'm not saying your knowledge and data are wrong. But you have to account for who you are recommended such hardware to. It's not your money to spend. But yes it doesn't hurt to fill people in on "Hey if you go spending your money for cheap drives, you going end up just wasting it and the end result being a bad user experience with your PC in general."

I don't listen to all those YouTuber folks cause they are getting paid to make those videos. I've been doing this myself for a living since the early 90's. I take the time to do real-world tests of my own for the most part. I output over 1000 PC builds per year now since the early 2000s

[🦊Λℚ𝓤ΛƑΛᗯҜᔕ🦊]

Originally posted by Bad 💀 Motha:

I output over 1000 PC builds per year now since the early 2000s

If that is true what you wrote then you should already know that the cost of NVME drives is very cheap now. We could get a Samsung 970 Evo Plus 500GB NVME drive with DRAM cache for $30 brand new today. Yes it's a PCI-Express 3.0 drive but despite that it will still out-perform all SATA SSD's (even the new ones, even 3D V-Cache ones) by a significant margin.

The prices have come down to a point now where there is no excuse or reason to not use a NVME SSD with DRAM on it for the main system drive in every new computer being built today and going forwards.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

500GB are too small, I usually only would buy such a drive if a customer requests it. Or if they are ordering a Laptop that already comes with that.

In Desktops the lowest I install now is 1TB as I can get NVME PCIE 4.0 1TB SSDs for around $40 now. Such as ones offered by MSI, PNY, TeamGroup, WD.

500/512GB NVME PCIE 4.0 w/ DRAM are around $29

[🦊Λℚ𝓤ΛƑΛᗯҜᔕ🦊]

Originally posted by Bad 💀 Motha:

500GB are too small, I usually only would buy such a drive if a customer requests it. Or if they are ordering a Laptop that already comes with that.

In Desktops the lowest I install now is 1TB as I can get NVME PCIE 4.0 1TB SSDs for around $40 now. Such as ones offered by MSI, PNY, TeamGroup, WD.

500/512GB NVME PCIE 4.0 w/ DRAM are around $29

It depends on what someone is doing with their computer. If it's going to be for an elderly parent or grandparent that only wants to browse facebook or play web games then even a 256GB drive would be fine for them. I have my second computer that has survived with a 256GB NVME drive for the system drive for 5 years now and it has no issues with anything.

Anyway, $30 for a system drive is cheap enough. You just explained it yourself: There's no reason to ever use anything other than a NVME drive for the system drive in a computer now going forwards. All new computers should have that at a bare minimum now.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

I have to look at things from my costs and also the cost to the consumer. It barely makes sense to go below 1TB SSDs now unless somehow there is a super good deal on me getting them cheaper or something like that. Most of my customers would easily take the 1TB over the 500GB to avoid upgrading later when we're only talking maybe 20-30 difference between these two drive sizes in general. Especially in a Laptop where your upgrade options are extremely limited and it's not like we can just take that price difference and upgrade the GPU or something. I make some profits but I don't go at this like DELL would and charge you $100 difference to go from 500GB to 1TB

[A&A]

Originally posted by 🦊Λℚ𝓤ΛƑΛᗯҜᔕ🦊:

I have NVME drives with DRAM on them and a cheap 256GB NVME drive in a $400 laptop that my mother bought a few years ago that doesn't have DRAM in it. In the drive without DRAM it frequently gets overloaded (showing 100% active time in task manager in windows 10) in her laptop just from trivial things like:
opening chrome = overloaded for 30 seconds.

I don't understand how opening Google Chrome with a NVME DRAM-less SSD will cause overload for 30s.

I have a Kingston SA400S37240G, generally the cheapest 250GB drive from the local store, connected via SATA II (Yes, you heard me right) and I have no such problems.

[🦊Λℚ𝓤ΛƑΛᗯҜᔕ🦊]

Originally posted by A&A ✠:

I don't understand how opening Google Chrome with a NVME DRAM-less SSD will cause overload for 30s.

I have a Kingston SA400S37240G, generally the cheapest 250GB drive from the local store, connected via SATA II (Yes, you heard me right) and I have no such problems.

Then you clearly haven't opened chrome with 40~60 saved tabs that were open from last session and watched them all try to load in.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Originally posted by 🦊Λℚ𝓤ΛƑΛᗯҜᔕ🦊:

Originally posted by A&A ✠:

I don't understand how opening Google Chrome with a NVME DRAM-less SSD will cause overload for 30s.

I have a Kingston SA400S37240G, generally the cheapest 250GB drive from the local store, connected via SATA II (Yes, you heard me right) and I have no such problems.

Then you clearly haven't opened chrome with 40~60 saved tabs that were open from last session and watched them all try to load in.

My old SATA SSD wouldn't have an issue doing that. If anything that has more to do with internet speed then anything. Plus that is also alot to load into RAM in a very quick instance, so yea it's going to take a little bit of time.

But yea I wasn't suggesting people use DRAM-less NVME or SATA SSDs to house the OS & Apps; that would be rather foolish. Unless something like a SATA SSD is the PCs only option. Like an older Desktop or Laptop that lacks NVME.

Also from my understanding, the latest versions of Chrome won't load the data for all those tabs. It puts the other tabs in a sleep mode until clicked into.

[A&A]

40-60 tabs?!
Now that explains everything. A $400 laptop means at least it has 8GB of RAM and I wouldn't be surprised if they load into the RAM and then write to the SSD again as swap.