Best/Cost effective NVME for fast read speeds.

[Lord Flashheart]

Hi all.
I am looking for a 1TB nvme for my machine.
The motherboard is ASUS B550-E. It will be in the PCIE slot closest to the CPU, so pcie 4.0.

I want the fastest sustained read speeds for least cost.
High IOPS - not fussed.
TBW - not fussed.


The purpose:
A cache drive for my games. I am using primocache software & have been using it for years.
They are all stored on my NAS(truenas scale) , aout 6.5TB presently through ISCSI. It is working well.
It will be a read only cache so upon failure, then no data is lost.
With the games on the NAS with snapshots, and backed up are not too worried about data loss there.


Oh and for those who care: https://www.romexsoftware.com/en-us/primo-cache/

It seems at last games are now using direct storage a lot more. Primocache is compatible with direct storage which is great.

So in short I want the fastest (Pcie 4) Nvme for the least amount of money.

Useful feedback is appreciated.

Thanks








LAME ANSWERS LIKE JUST MOVE GAMES AROUND OR NOT USING THE NAS - NOT APPRECIATED.

[Ralf]

Lord Flashheart lähetti viestin:

Kue8all lähetti viestin:

Lexar NM790 1tb, 7400 MB/s read, 6500 MB/s write and around $93 or $98 with an integrated heat shield on Amazon.

I have been using it as my game drive and it is an excellent drive for the money.

It seems to be new, or local retailers do not stock it.
The lexar NQ790 is on ebay for a decent price.

Thnaks for the info

Say no to QLC drives. I would go with 990 Pro, SN850X, KC3000/Fury Renegade or NM790 if money is an issue.

[Kobs]

Lord Flashheart lähetti viestin:

Kobs lähetti viestin:

There are 4TB NVMe M2 drive... but for cheap... I don't think so

This is the one I bought for gaming

Crucial P3 Plus 2TB PCIe Gen4 3D NAND NVMe M.2 SSD

Why exactly would I waste money on a 2TB or 4TB?

I don't know I'd say prices.... 1TB is $72 and the 2TB is $119... why would anyone say no to one more TB at $47
https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-Plus-PCIe-NAND-5000MB/dp/B0B25ML2FH/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?crid=3V0LVYI1HTTYQ&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.gWMHeuGH9Xo9dYAxoHB7wAZLUzSJfXEGdDoa6dQiq_f7W2OsEVi0aHQ_NnaBFpNYKNJOUO1j7bHExOxzs5utaIOczJAD4Vx7hdCZ9GIRMQ_iEEF1Zta7VzcNetHFbqDjjuVj-KyH35QMH1tB-2IhLhhKbboOm9uGkflBthY8woGUnO-w0gjWvrSkzaN9pWBPjHEr9ZF6biZ-FVR8kakQFuJGck5vJhhqxJoXhN06T7E.vvYvZlQr_EN6C8Tu4gUHb_blXrMRH8AzNt_nyFeYWFY&dib_tag=se&keywords=Crucial%2BP3%2BPlus&qid=1719842190&sprefix=crucial%2Bp3%2Bplus%2Caps%2C82&sr=8-1-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9hdGY&th=1

[Tonepoet]

Bit of a shame O.P. unsubscribed, the Samsung 990 Evo[www.amazon.com] is on sale for 47% off and it'll probably put any of the other drives to shame. Granted it's more expensive than any of the others so far, but only by $5 more than the W.D. drive I mentioned and he already reports liking the Samsung he likes. Oh well, too late now. v_v

'course 64 is already at the limit of what I might presently consider cost-effective anyway and I have no clue what his budget is.

I don't know I'd say prices.... 1TB is $72 and the 2TB is $119... why would anyone say no to one more TB at $47

He's planning to use it as cache to improve the performance of other drives, so there's a preference for speed of read/write operations since that's going to be happening frequently, and he doesn't plan on using it for long term storage. Making the cache too large might even be detrimental given that seek times might increase.

Similarly you might be sending files back and forth a lot if you're say, a video editor in a place like Linus Media Group, but not necessarily keeping them on your personal workstation once you're done with them. In that case you need a drive that's big enough to work with the files, but not really much bigger than that because you're not going to be accumulating data, and you'd prioritize speed to facilitate faster file transfers. Get a video in, edit it, send it out, delete it, repeat twenty times a day.

Speed has value to it. If you're not prioritizing speed, then I already showed there are at least a couple of 1tb drives that cost $58 each right now, which is half the capacity at half the price.

And honestly, you want to buy smaller drives as much as possible, because the tech just depreciates so quickly that the longer you can wait for new storage, the more your money will be stretched for the next upgrade. My Performa 6116 C.D. had a 256 megabyte hard drive in it, which was plenty of space back then.

Andrius227 lähetti viestin:

Im not trying to be rude. Im just wondering why you are going the long way to fix a simple problem. Literally trying to reinvent a bike. How do i store more games? Simple solution: more internal storage. Your solution: external storage? Seems weird to me.

Unless i am misunderstanding something here.

I doubt he's going to answer, so at the strong risk of sounding silly, I'll proffer some hypothesis.

S.A.T.A. is quite slow by today's standards. You can have 10 gigabit ethernet (even though that motherboard only supports 2.5 gigabit ethernet with the on-board chip), and U.S.B. 3.2 also supports 10 gigabit per second transfer, and that's on the lower end of the totem pole regarding connectivity. P.C.I.E., including occulink, thunderbolt and U.S.B. 4 are much faster. If we had Sata Ⅳ, that would probably be along the lines of 12 gigabits per second, but we don't. The most we got was S.A.T.A. Ⅲ before they basically threw in the towel to P.C.I.E. drives, and Sata Ⅲ only supported 6 gigabit per second transfer speeds.

Also, the only 8 gig S.A.T.A. S.S.D. I see is $650. 4 terabyte drives are only $200 each, and four 2tb drives might cost somewhere along the lines of $112[www.amazon.com]? so you can maybe see how combining multiple drives into one volume might be useful, and a N.A.S. can do that so you can start to see how that might be useful I suppose.

Granted, the same thing could be accomplished through R.A.I.D. I suppose but with a N.A.S., any computer connected to the network can share that same steam folder without needing to redownload the games. Plus it could hypothetically be used as a subscription cloud gaming service alternative while you're out and about with a gaming laptop or a steam deck.

Granted, perhaps similar access could be made if you just leave your gaming computer on, but for one thing it's possibly consuming 104 watts at idle[www.techpowerup.com], and one might worry about leaving an expensive P.C. on all of the time. At best it's putting electrical wear on the components, and at worst maybe somebody knocks it down into a bathtub and shorts it out or something.

If I said something dumb, I don't use a N.A.S. myself, but I really don't see much difference in using a N.A.S. to store your games or to store your videos to be honest, and needing to redownload 6.5 terabytes of data sounds like a pain. Seems to me as if there is a usage case though.