Kaarme:

I thought paying just in case is pretty normal in PC tech. And in fact quite a few other techs.

Not with something you do not need for PC to function properly. Especially when you can buy that something moment you need it. It is not One Slot kind of thing like CPU and now even GPU.

JOHN30011887:

Nah, iv got the 4tb Sabrent (tlc memory) for games only, plan to get another 4tb sabrent for games only (but would like bigger), and iv a 1tb samsung 970 evo nvme for os only, i plan to get a normal sata samsung ssd 4tb just for backup/music pics etc The price difference to me is so small between good quality 4tb sata and nvme that its better to just pay the small extra for faster nvme since my motherboard supports them fine.

Theres an 8TB for £1200. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sabrent-Rocket-Internal-Performance-SB-RKTQ-2TB/dp/B08957PT2K I'd wait a little longer. its not the best performing NVME either (R/W 3300/2900MB/s) but still trounces SATA.

nizzen:

Then buy more ssd's and put them in raid-0 🙂 This is how I'm getting larger ssd arrays. I don't care about the higher sequential read and write, only the larger space. [...]

Not recommended. A gaming machine usually isn't build to make use of RAID function. You will need a proper air flow for drives and either a dedicated RAID controller and/or a dedicated software raid solution. Speaking of which, since gaming pc's usually run Windows, Windows software raid solution isn't very comfortable and complicated to configure at the same time. I advice to use software raid solutions from linux and SAN distributed solutions instead. I assume that you're making use of the Fake-Raid function provided by the SATA-Controller or the M.2-Controller of your mainboard. This is not the conventional RAID that is used in enterprise solutions and is very unreliable. I wouldn'tadvice to make use of it even for home use. Given the fact that the mainboard controller drains performance from your CPU in order to build the RAID logics, you are also pretty much scrwed if the controller of your mainboard fails, which is likely to happen depending on the load you cause to access your logical RAID drive. In that case you will lose access to your data regardless if you have redudancy or not. Given the fact that mainboard controllers usually are very cheap, they tend to be unreliable and they also don't provide full utilization of RAID level benefits and performance gains from e.g. the stripe method given by RAID 0 or faster read-speeds due to mirrored data given by RAID 1.

nizzen:

Too bad for you, because all ssd's is pretty much raid-0 arrays of nand memory. So if you don't trust Raid-0, you are doomed to use something else than ssd's 😀 [...]

Excuse me? That's nonsense. SSDs and NAND memory is and works completely different from RAID, and there are not even similarities comparing both technologies... The only thing that matches is the sector/bits density from HDDs/SSDs and how they're accessed through RAID controllers. RAID is a redudant array of independent disks that exists to provide redudancy and enterprise grade gains from combining several physical drives into fewer logical drives while improving performance and mainly adding redudancy depending on RAID levels that are used. Since RAID 0 has absolutely no redundancy, it functions merely for improving performance with RAID level combinations such as RAID 10 or RAID 50, and logically distributing parity informations in even RAID 5 that originates from RAID 0's stripe method. RAID 0 alone is garbage, because it increases the chance of losing data when you have more drives that could potentially fail in one logical drive. Just one drive failure is enough to break all your files in there. RAID 0 exists because its logic is still relevant for the redundancy providing RAID levels.

Fox2232:

It is exactly as I wrote. That fancy game does not exist, yet. And it will take quite a few CPU cores to actually saturate decompression. Or Direct I/O. Paying just in case is pointless.

I tend to agree considering most of what we enthusiasts do is rate limited by random IO and that has not improved much if at all with these PCIe 4.0 devices. We are still looking at under 100MB/s for que depth 1 4K random IO and in this drives case its around 60 MB/s. This is where Intels Optane really shines hitting 450 MB/s at QD1 4K random io but it never became cheap. I'm sure some people have actual use cases for higher sequential IO but 90+% of use cases would never see a difference between a PCIe 3 or PCIe 4 NVMe drive.

Mufflore:

Theres an 8TB for £1200. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sabrent-Rocket-Internal-Performance-SB-RKTQ-2TB/dp/B08957PT2K I'd wait a little longer. its not the best performing NVME either (R/W 3300/2900MB/s) but still trounces SATA.

Yeah i saw that one but its qlc memory, im not into that at all, for me its tlc or better and yeah am in no rush atm, will wait till end of this year most likly to see what happens 🙂

nizzen:

Looks like 980pro isn't very PRO compared to WD Black Sn850

in past samsung PRO SSD is about extra endurance rather extra performance 970 pro is 2x endurance 970evo at same size , right ? but their 980PRO model position is kinda messy its rated-endurance is same to 970evo (1TB = 600TBW , 970PRO 1tb is 1200TBW) not sure if it only warranty terms or not

slyphnier:

in past samsung PRO SSD is about extra endurance rather extra performance 970 pro is 2x endurance 970evo at same size , right ? but their 980PRO model position is kinda messy its rated-endurance is same to 970evo (1TB = 600TBW , 970PRO 1tb is 1200TBW) not sure if it only warranty terms or not

Yeah there really is no "pro" line anymore other than in name.

angelgraves13:

As they add more levels of cache, there's less need for more endurance as performance is more important. You'll likely upgrade to another drive by the time you start encountering any errors, so endurance is pointless today.

case by case, for end-user such gamer probably is, but not everyone and thats why EVO & PRO segment different, EVO should fit for most people, as they most likely wont used up ssds endurance within 5years but if like u saying, what for those enterprise SSD with high endurance rating ? u might say servers is different than pc, well yeah pc usage can also different from one use to another such workstation that doing high write, those will still get benefit from higher endurance or even need it cache as by its function, only storing some of the bits, it wont cache everything u dump into ur SSD for example 1TB 970 evo SLC cache is 6GB dedicated and 36GB dynamic? cmiiw it shave some writes, but if u writing like 200GB+ data everyday (rendering, movie editing), or transfer/download tons of data, it still doing many writes to nand in most case with SSDs, you start encountering errors when u reach rated-endurance and thats why the warranty terms which is 5years (for samsung SSDs) or rated-endurance (TBW) in this part its not so different to traditional HDD

angelgraves13:

The average user will never use 200GB a day, let alone 50GB a day or even a week. Going by that logic, you'll be on a different SSD in 5 years time or a completely new technology by then. Don't worry about endurance too much, unless you're working in enterprise.

I would easily reach 50 gb a week, daily ? No not often. On the other hand in general in this forum most of us are definitely not average users 😛 so worries about endurance if there is a place for em to be realistic it is here ! About me now i would feel just fine with a qlc drive for a steam library but i will avoid it for os drive .

slyphnier:

in past samsung PRO SSD is about extra endurance rather extra performance 970 pro is 2x endurance 970evo at same size , right ? but their 980PRO model position is kinda messy its rated-endurance is same to 970evo (1TB = 600TBW , 970PRO 1tb is 1200TBW) not sure if it only warranty terms or not

Endurance is one of the main reason why Samsung will always be superior to the competition. Samsung's VNAND technology is the most advanced in the whole market. Unlike all other companies endurance TBW values, Samsung's based vNAND SSDs tend to reach more than 3x the warranted TBW. For example the Samsung 960 PRO even reached more than 10 times of what it was originally warranted to reach. There are tests and videos about it. I am certain that they managed to improve this with their newest standard even further, so they could reach such values fairly easy using TLC instead of MLC (with the 980 Pro). Let's say they only managed reach half of it given the use of TLC instead of MLC, the TBW of the 980 Pro 1TB model with 600TB would still mean that you can de facto write as much as more than 3PB without any issues. You will never have this durability and endurance with any other brand other than Samsung. Not even Micron or WD was capable of reaching this much with their products in the tests I have seen. Which is why, at least for my personal opinion, Samsung quite leads a monopoly with their storage cell and controller technology at this point. People just don't talk much about it. In our company we only use Samsung SSDs, we never recommend anything else as long as there is a fair amount of budget available that is. Here are some sources for you, unfortunately they're not in English language though: https://www.heise.de/select/ct/2017/1/1483369302343280 Heise-Online from Germany tested the competition, they're a very reputable and relatable IT magazine in Germany. In this test even the Samsung EVOs were - by far - better than any of the competition. [youtube=SGiHuO2DxGU] Those Guys from YouTube also tested a Samsung 860 Pro, they managed to overwrite 7 PB of data into the SSD over a long term test, while their system also crashed several times due to power shortages etc. the SSD still shows a 100% good standing with Crystadisk Info and it operates normally without issues whatsoever. Samsung's PRO series really are something else. As for Samsung, I think you can fairly ignore TBW values. Durability and endurance in terms of chip, controller and storage cell technology and quality they're using is far above that level.