SSD without a caching system

[Kweeb]

if I pause the download How long before it goes back to normal speeds

[Illusion of Progress]

Very few SSDs don't have a faster cache. Do not confuse DRAM for cache; they are two separate things.

Different SSDs have different amounts of cache, and it's not always easy to find out how much cache a particular model has. Without knowing what model SSD you have for a start, we're making guesses to throw out numbers.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Help to also have a 2nd SSD and do the downloads to that so it doesn't lock up the C Drive

[Kweeb]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Illusion of Progress:

Very few SSDs don't have a faster cache. Do not confuse DRAM for cache; they are two separate things.

Different SSDs have different amounts of cache, and it's not always easy to find out how much cache a particular model has. Without knowing what model SSD you have for a start, we're making guesses to throw out numbers.

Crucial BX500 4TB 3D NAND SATA 2.5-Inch Internal SSD,

[Illusion of Progress]

You'd want to look the model up and see if any reviews cover how large the cache size is. Unfortunately, this isn't a commonly disclosed specification, and it's not always found in reviews either. Generally, cache size will be smaller and/or slower if the drive is lower end or of a lower capacity.

That's a QLC SATA SSD without DRAM so it's about the worst type of drive, especially if you'll be doing prolonged writing. Very few performance SATA SSDs are still on the market, and the few that remain (mostly the Western Digital Blue, Crucial MX500, Samsung Evo 860, and a few others) have been/are about to be discontinued, or are overpriced for what they are.

Does it have to be SATA? And what is the use case of the drive going to be?

For OS use, you'd want something performant. Avoid drives without DRAM if they are SATA for OS use.

For (most types of) storage or (most) games, a low end SATA is enough though.

[HIVEmind]

i stick with samsung
industries leader

[Kweeb]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Illusion of Progress:

You'd want to look the model up and see if any reviews cover how large the cache size is. Unfortunately, this isn't a commonly disclosed specification, and it's not always found in reviews either. Generally, cache size will be smaller and/or slower if the drive is lower end or of a lower capacity.

That's a QLC SATA SSD without DRAM so it's about the worst type of drive, especially if you'll be doing prolonged writing. Very few performance SATA SSDs are still on the market, and the few that remain (mostly the Western Digital Blue, Crucial MX500, Samsung Evo 860, and a few others) have been/are about to be discontinued, or are overpriced for what they are.

Does it have to be SATA? And what is the use case of the drive going to be?

For OS use, you'd want something performant. Avoid drives without DRAM if they are SATA for OS use.

For (most types of) storage or (most) games, a low end SATA is enough though.

Thanks for the info. Is it that much cheaper to produce an SSD without dram cache??? Prolonged writing makes this drive slower than an HDD... When updating games or installing new ones it fast forward the first 10/15 GB then it is slow as f***

[PopinFRESH]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Kweeb:

Diposting pertama kali oleh Illusion of Progress:

You'd want to look the model up and see if any reviews cover how large the cache size is. Unfortunately, this isn't a commonly disclosed specification, and it's not always found in reviews either. Generally, cache size will be smaller and/or slower if the drive is lower end or of a lower capacity.

That's a QLC SATA SSD without DRAM so it's about the worst type of drive, especially if you'll be doing prolonged writing. Very few performance SATA SSDs are still on the market, and the few that remain (mostly the Western Digital Blue, Crucial MX500, Samsung Evo 860, and a few others) have been/are about to be discontinued, or are overpriced for what they are.

Does it have to be SATA? And what is the use case of the drive going to be?

For OS use, you'd want something performant. Avoid drives without DRAM if they are SATA for OS use.

For (most types of) storage or (most) games, a low end SATA is enough though.

Thanks for the info. Is it that much cheaper to produce an SSD without dram cache??? Prolonged writing makes this drive slower than an HDD... When updating games or installing new ones it fast forward the first 10/15 GB then it is slow as f***

The behavior is because it has a small portion of the NAND that they treat like it is a lower bit-per-cell so it is faster and used as the cache. What you're seeing makes sense as they are likely using around 1% of the NAND for caching which would be about 40GB at the top-end.

You are talking about large sustained writes which drives like this ♥♥♥♥ at because when the cache is filled you are then writing directly to the higher bit-per-cell NAND that is much slower. Secondly, it is a SATA SSD so it will be limited by the throughput of SATA3 which is only going to be around 600MB/s which is why manufactures aren't going to worry about putting higher speed NAND on drives like this because it will be limited by the interface.

If your motherboard has an M.2 drive that supports NVMe it would be worth it to get a reasonably decent M.2 NVMe SSD as they will have much higher sustained write performance. You can get a WD_BLACK 1TB SN850X for around $90 or a 2TB for around $150 and those will be substantially faster.

Also, just so you're aware how Steam works it downloads very highly compressed files in large file chunks and then decompresses them which is highly dependent upon both your disk IO and CPU performance for decompression. So to be sure you are actually talking about your disk being the limitation look at the download graph as you will see the bars are showing you your bandwidth (download speed) and then you will see the green line which is showing you your disk performance. So you may be noticing that behavior and not your disk being much slower after some period of sustained writes.

Install CPUz[www.cpuid.com]; then run the validation and post the link here so people can see a more complete picture of your hardware specs to better help you figure out if it'd be worth upgrading / adding a different disk.