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.

[↑↑↓↓←→←→BASelect]

Fastest nvme is not going to be cheap. Cheap and fast don't go hand in hand.

[N3tRunn3r]

latest, of course

NVMe PCIe M.2

Look at Crucial, they are awesome and highly reliable, also cost efficient
https://www.crucial.com/

their website also precisely scans your system to offer their best products for hardware upgrades!

for example last year i wanted to buff my older laptop with latest possible tech for it. i compared various hardware of various brands for about a week. my conclusion was to buy RAM and SSDs by Crucial. Gone to their website i let it scan my hardware for potential fitting upgrades, and it exactly showed me that hardware i was comparing for days before.

highly recommended !!


this also would interest you ::

Difference between SLC, MLC, TLC and 3D NAND in USB flash drives, SSDs and Memory cards

https://www.kingston.com/en/blog/pc-performance/difference-between-slc-mlc-tlc-3d-nand

[Kobs]

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

[_I_]

and nvme pci-e 4 or 5, are not always fast
they do that to save on pci-e lanes to be used for other devices
but that only helps when all devices can use the later pci-e gens

https://pcpartpicker.com/products/internal-hard-drive/benchmarks/?benchmark=seq50#sort=-seqwrite50&page=1

[Tonepoet]

There seems to always be a few 1 terabyte hard drives on sale in the $57-$65 price range, so I souldn’t necessarily pay much more than that, and honestly I’d just normally pick out the cheapest one given how quickly storage media depreciates. The retailers seem to rotate these so that they can deplete all of their stock, rather than that.

This is the present list of drives on P.C. part picker in the 67 and under price bracket[pcpartpicker.com].

Adata Legend 800: $67 3500/2800 transfer speed[www.amazon.com]
TEAMGROUP MP44Q Superb1TB SLC Cache Gen 4x4 7500/6200 transfer speed[www.newegg.com] $65
Patriot P400 Low Power Consumption S.S.D. P400P1TBM28H 1TB:[www.amazon.com] $65[ Seq Read up to 7000, Write up to 4800.
Patriot P400 Lite Seq. Read 3500, seq. Write 2700: $65[www.amazon.com]
Silicon Power UD90:[www.amazon.com] Seq read 5000 per second, write up to 4800 per second $65
Klevv Cras C910[www.amazon.com]: 5000 read 4800 write: $65
Team Group MP44L[www.newegg.com]: Read 5000, write 4000. $65 w/ 8 gig. Free thumb drive promo from newegg
Western Digital 1TB WD Blue SN580: 4150 read/write,[www.amazon.com] $65
Leven [url]Leven JPS800[www.amazon.com]: Read 5000 Write 4400 $60
Silicon Power UD85[www.amaon.com] Read 3600 write 2800.
Kingston NV2[www.amazon.com] 2800 read/ 3500 write $58

I must admit, I’m feeling much rather too lazy and disinterested for this task to check who’s just writing the maximum theoretical transfer speed of P.C.I.E. 4.0 and who’s writing their honest number, or who’s writing in megabits and who’s writing in megabytes, and who’s advertising a terabyte as being 1000 megabytes or 1024 megabytes if that even matters to you. I’m also absolutely not researching D.R.A.M. cache, because honestly, screw that. I'm not going to worry about it on P.C.I.E. drives.

However based on the numbers I’d suppose with the regular Patriot P400 and the Teamgroup MP44Q are the best performers presently in the price range, out of the candidates P.C. Part Picker listed, which makes me feel as if I just wasted my time jotting down notes for all of the others. Nevertheless, I'd probably suggest looking into those two on review websites.

But really, wouldn't it just be better to use a R.A.M. disk for this anyway?

[Lord Flashheart]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Tonepoet:

There seems to always be a few 1 terabyte hard drives on sale in the $57-$65 price range, so I souldn’t necessarily pay much more than that, and honestly I’d just normally pick out the cheapest one given how quickly storage media depreciates. The retailers seem to rotate these so that they can deplete all of their stock, rather than that.

This is the present list of drives on P.C. part picker in the 67 and under price bracket[pcpartpicker.com].

Adata Legend 800: $67 3500/2800 transfer speed[www.amazon.com]
TEAMGROUP MP44Q Superb1TB SLC Cache Gen 4x4 7500/6200 transfer speed[www.newegg.com] $65
Patriot P400 Low Power Consumption S.S.D. P400P1TBM28H 1TB:[www.amazon.com] $65[ Seq Read up to 7000, Write up to 4800.
Patriot P400 Lite Seq. Read 3500, seq. Write 2700: $65[www.amazon.com]
Silicon Power UD90:[www.amazon.com] Seq read 5000 per second, write up to 4800 per second $65
Klevv Cras C910[www.amazon.com]: 5000 read 4800 write: $65
Team Group MP44L[www.newegg.com]: Read 5000, write 4000. $65 w/ 8 gig. Free thumb drive promo from newegg
Western Digital 1TB WD Blue SN580: 4150 read/write,[www.amazon.com] $65
Leven [url]Leven JPS800[www.amazon.com]: Read 5000 Write 4400 $60
Silicon Power UD85[www.amaon.com] Read 3600 write 2800.
Kingston NV2[www.amazon.com] 2800 read/ 3500 write $58

I must admit, I’m feeling much rather too lazy and disinterested for this task to check who’s just writing the maximum theoretical transfer speed of P.C.I.E. 4.0 and who’s writing their honest number, or who’s writing in megabits and who’s writing in megabytes, and who’s advertising a terabyte as being 1000 megabytes or 1024 megabytes if that even matters to you. I’m also absolutely not researching D.R.A.M. cache, because honestly, screw that. I'm not going to worry about it on P.C.I.E. drives.

However based on the numbers I’d suppose with the regular Patriot P400 and the Teamgroup MP44Q are the best performers presently in the price range, out of the candidates P.C. Part Picker listed, which makes me feel as if I just wasted my time jotting down notes for all of the others. Nevertheless, I'd probably suggest looking into those two on review websites.

But really, wouldn't it just be better to use a R.A.M. disk for this anyway?

A 1TB RAM disk as a cache. Not really practical or cost effective. Also it wont be persistent.

Thanks for the info anyway.
Presently I am using a 1/2 TB sansung 980 as a cache drive.
It does the job I want, but not great.
That will have the window 11 OS, when I upgrade from 10 shortly.

A very fast 1TB I will use for the cache drive on the PC instead. Direct Storage is the reason to upgrade - more games using it, and needs windows 11 to work well.
Oh and the out of warranty ADATA SX8200 256GB with windows 10 will be the cache drive in the NAS - it is called an L2arc.

I will look through the suggestions you gave.

[Lord Flashheart]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Kobs:

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?

[Kue8all]

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.

[Lord Flashheart]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Kue8all:

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

[Andrius227]

But why? Be a man and get an 8tb ssd that will fit all your games on the pc itself. Dont even need nvme because it makes no difference and sata is cheaper (8tb).

I personally have 3x8tb dedicated exclusively to steam games. I have hundreds of games installed and i never have to worry about storage. I do also have 3 nas units but i would never store my games there.

[Phénomènes Mystiques]

You are going to have to pay big money to get fastest speeds, OP.

Also cannot go cheap here because of supply and demand.

If you cannot (or are not willing to) pay the highest price for the best, then you are not ready for the best yet.

[Lord Flashheart]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Andrius227:

But why? Be a man and get an 8tb ssd that will fit all your games on the pc itself. Dont even need nvme because it makes no difference and sata is cheaper (8tb).

I personally have 3x8tb dedicated exclusively to steam games. I have hundreds of games installed and i never have to worry about storage. I do also have 3 nas units but i would never store my games there.

I wish to refer you to the final line of my post.

It is OK. My expectation of the steam fooums are rock bottom as it is.

[Tonepoet]

I wouldn't really be too fussed about a heatsink. You can buy aftermarket heatsinks anywhere from $4 for a two pack of metal plates to $10 for something looking rather beefy or with a tiny little fan. $65+10 is 75, so it may just be cheaper to add your own when compared to buying a more expensive drive, and it can be transferred from drive to drive.

In fact, if you haven't tried already, adding a heat sink to your existing S.S.D. might be something worth trying first since it's cheaper.


Plus if we're looking at spending potentially $100~, then the Western Digital WD BLACK SN770[www.amazon.com] at a list price of $90 deserves a bit of a shot, esp. since it's just about $75 on Amazon right now. I normally just don't check above $65, which is why I didn't note it previously.

Just to make it convenient for you, here's a list of Tom's Hardware reviews though.

• W.D. Black SN770[www.tomshardware.com]
  
• T.G. MP44L[www.tomshardware.com]
  
• Lexar NM790[www.tomshardware.com]
  
• Patriot P400[www.tomshardware.com]
  
• Crucial P3 Plus[www.tomshardware.com]

Keep in mind that these are multi-page reviews and all of the interesting benchmarking stuff starts on page 2.

Glossing over the data, I am personally thinking this is largely a contest between the Teamgroup drive and the W.D. drive. Team Group's offering performs admirably for the price, but you get a pretty good perf. uplift from the upgrade to the SN770.

[Lord Flashheart]

Thanks to those with useful feedback.
Others...... not so much gratitude.

I am unsubscribing from it now & leaving the post now, as I now have some useful info.

[Andrius227]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Lord Flashheart:

Ursprungligen skrivet av Andrius227:

But why? Be a man and get an 8tb ssd that will fit all your games on the pc itself. Dont even need nvme because it makes no difference and sata is cheaper (8tb).

I personally have 3x8tb dedicated exclusively to steam games. I have hundreds of games installed and i never have to worry about storage. I do also have 3 nas units but i would never store my games there.

I wish to refer you to the final line of my post.

It is OK. My expectation of the steam fooums are rock bottom as it is.

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.