New boot drive - sanity check before I buy

[Zerileous]

I'm looking for a decent deal on a 2TB boot drive. I'm putting this into a Gen3 system (in sig) and upgrading from M.2 sata - so speed is not important. I know to look for DRAM and TLC but not much else.

I'm also going to be enabling TPM and installing Win11 (doing this over the winter break so it doesn't interfere with classes). I don't necessarily need the drive NOW but my storage is on the full side and I will need to be re-installing Windows at some point (it's been the same install for over 5 years, so with 10 going EOL I might as well start fresh). I figure I might as well do them both at the same time. Also, my current boot drive (Crucial MX500) is down to 63% remaining.

I think the WD SN850x fits the bill at $125

Cheaper drives like the T-Force G50, WD SN770, Samsung 990and Corsair MP600 don't seem to have DRAM.

The Crucial T500 seems like overkill at $146

*gets on soap box* This is just a frustrating market because I shouldn't have to read reviews to find out if the drive has a cache or not, that should be a simple spec. If people want the optimum performance at a certain task, then reviews are appropriate, but if I just want a utilitarian component that meets a couple of simple specs, there shouldn't be all this smoke and mirrors.

p.s. Gen 3 1tb is going to stay in the second M.2 slot off the PCH, and the existing boot drive is either going into an internal sata enclosure or an external USB drive enclosure. I'm willing to change my strategy on this for a good reason.

 

[JLK03F150]

I think the WD SN850x fits the bill at $125

IMO that's a great choice.

 

[mackerel]

SN850X is a solid choice.

Going DRAM-less on NVMe isn't as bad as it was during SATA era, since they can make use of Host Managed Buffer. Using a little system ram instead. Maybe more interesting if balancing cost and capacity. Certainly for high performance I'd still get a DRAM SSD regardless.

 

[Zerileous]

SN850X is a solid choice.

Going DRAM-less on NVMe isn't as bad as it was during SATA era, since they can make use of Host Managed Buffer. Using a little system ram instead. Maybe more interesting if balancing cost and capacity. Certainly for high performance I'd still get a DRAM SSD regardless.

I suppose the higher the bandwidth (i.e. PCIe Gen 4 vs 3) the less noticeable it is. Either way I'm willing to pay $10 or $15 for a cache. If it was $50 I'd think twice about how much it mattered for sure.

Edit: when I first saw HMB listed as a cache, I did a double take thinking it was HBM on a SSD

 

[Kenrou]

Tom's Hardware on the MP600 - "Most SSD makers implement a pseudo-SLC cache buffer, which is a fast area of SLC-programmed flash that absorbs incoming data. Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the pSLC cache and into the "native" TLC or QLC flash.", apparently does ~370gb before slowing.

I thought all m.2 had some sort of DRAM cache like SSD's, good to know what to look for from now on

 

[mackerel]

When we talk of DRAM on any SSDs it is used for metadata to allow the controller to do its stuff more efficiently. It isn't used to store user data.

 

[Zerileous]

I had no idea I thought it was a write buffer as well.

 

[Zerileous]

Edit: went ahead and ordered the SN850x. Thanks for all the feedback!