SSD Price Discussion

Yeah I know. Still debating internally lol. Most of the ones on sale either on eBay or elsewhere are from Lenovo laptops. These OEM SSDs do not benefit from Samsung drivers for their retail consumer products like the 960 drive. You’ll need to get Lenovo drivers, which I won’t allowed to be installed on my system.

But then again they’re cheaper due to TLC NAND.

SSD prices seem to go crazy with RAM atm. NAND shortage? Even the 3yo 950 pro 512GB is fetching $500 on eBay right now.

 

MH seems not to know

Why won't sammy drivers work?

I just got a 960 500 evo. I figured fuck it. I cant be bothered cheaping out only to buy a bigger one later. Vimes' boots theory.

What are you looking for? Mine's just an OS drive with boring usage patterns.

 

Never used an aftermarket OEM SSD before so I can’t comment much. The consensus from what I’ve read from all reviews of the PM981 is that this drive is optimised for certain system builders aka big PC brands, therefore OEM drivers will be customised for the device. Sure Samsung stock NVMe driver will work but perhaps the drive might not reach full potential?

I’m after a fast SSD only for Win boot, near instant program launch and some intense gaming. The Pro looks like a better choice than EVO from my flawless exp with 950.

 

Only issue with the pm and sm drives are the drivers...
Also, the Samsung software didn't recognise them like it does with the evo and pro versions...

 

Agreed, when it comes to enterprise use. On a consumer level though, I can't see U.2 taking off at all. One of the big advantages of M.2 from a consumer point of view, apart from the speed of NVME of course, is the compact format and lack of cables. U.2 cannot compete with that for normal consumer or prosumer use.

 

Except you're missing the point, U2 is here to stay. You said it would crash and burn.

M2 and U2 serve different interests.

 

Yeah I should have qualified that, my bad. I guess I'm basing part of my decision on the basis of Asus' apparent decision to get behind U.2 on their HEDT boards, when IMHO they would have been better adding extra M.2 rather than even bothering with U.2.

Horses for courses. A 13 x1 slot mining board is great for mining, but not much use for anything else.

Server boards of course are also pretty specifically targeted, and yes, U.2 makes sense for them. On a HEDT board though, IMO they certainly will crash and burn, just as Sata Express did.

TBH, it still mystifies me why any modern boards even have Sata Express, given that pretty much nobody ever uses it, and the same applies to U.2 on HEDT boards.

 

You're forgetting that Asus also make workstation motherboards, I use one and use the TPM functionality, a xeon processor and ECC ram, LSI SAS hba and almost every pcie slot.

I would use U2 over M2 given the option, even if only for the safe hotswap capability that U2 brings.

My main desktop workstation runs 8 vms and bulk transfer is always a problem for people dealing with large files needing to be moved quickly.

Hot swap nvme SSD will allow people to move TBs of content between devices quickly, something wireless can't do and without the financial overheads of 10G/40G networking.

 

No, I'm not forgetting that Asus make workstation boards too. We are comparing apples and oranges here. I'm saying that U.2 will not fly amongst HEDT buyers. Yes, I generalised too much in my original post on this subject, but I stand by my opinion that U.2 is for a completely separate market than M.2 is, and the market most discussed in here is HEDT, which market IMO U.2 will die an early death. This is already evidenced by the almost complete lack of U.2 provision on HEDT boards apart from some Asus boards.

 

When I first asked ... I'd not really noticed it was U2 on the MSI board here. But then I was considering Evga with this feature.

^ This FTW. M2 is too fiddly with my bad eyesight these days. U2 & I can unplug like a ssd 2.5. Then no pci-e drive stuck out in pci-e lanes area.

 

somewhat off-topic but given the last few posts; SSD's are making 10G networks at home worth looking at for the enthusiast/prosumer level.
surely the price of this networking gear is going to start to drop now that mobos are coming out with 5G and 10G ports natively ?
so why would a home user need a hotswap ssd if the network is upto the job ?

 

I’m not sure. I think there is a solid future for something like U.2, including in the HEDT space. Soon enough capacities will exceed the M.2 form factor, and the larger form factor of U.2 seems like the next logical step.

 

Yeah I don't know... Is there still only that Intel drive with the U.2 connector?

 

sneakernet.

With a 128GB usb3 SanDisk extreme key I can do 160MB/s. When copying 100+GB of content, this starts to feel slow by comparison. Suddenly we're back to the go outside and have a cigarette days of computing while waiting for something to complete.

 

But if the copy speed is limited by the drive/storage medium and not the network, there isnt a need right ?
Datacentre activities i get, but homeuser ?

 

My USB does ~400MB/sec. My desktop does 3.5/2.0GB/sec. My work laptop does 2.3/1.6GB/sec

 

Yep ... 32GB Corsair USB drive does over 300MB's when I'm copying stuff. Basically your budget SSD speeds there.
The real pain is doing re-image of my drives ... getting on the OC sooner. The OS's are broken quite often if you are unstable in a benchmark.
That's slow usb sticks in the bin, basic ssd's transfer the OS ISO's to the much faster M2/U2?pci-e drives.

 

Please post some feedback/review

 

Rejoice. The new SS 970 Pro is here. Any one selling their kidneys?
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-970-pro-ssd-review,5572-2.html

 

Some bargain 960pro surely will surface.