Sandisk WD Black SN8100 2TB SSD Review: The fastest overall consumer SSD ever made
Posted by bizude@reddit | hardware | View on Reddit | 127 comments
Posted by bizude@reddit | hardware | View on Reddit | 127 comments
reddit_equals_censor@reddit
it drops down to about 1 GB/s write speed.
what a lovely implementation. i love myself some 1 GB/s actual write speed pcie 5.0 ssd :D
how exciting.
when my shity samsung 980 pro has higher sustained write speeds (1.5-1.8 GB/s) than a pcie 5.0 "fastest overall" consumer ssd???
gotta have clickbait headlines i guess don't we tom's hardware?
___
did they just leave out any temperature testing graphs, despite talking about it????
well GREAT, except there is no temperature graph or mention beyond that.
so was that review written by someone who just forgets parts of the data to be included after mentioning testing of it?
was it written partially by ai?
did they miss a graph???
what's going on at tom's hardware?
exscape@reddit
Does it really, if you write as much data as in the review? And how often do you really do that?
Note how it writes at about 13000 MB/s for 50 seconds, then at 4000 MB/s for another about 52 seconds.
That's 634 GiB in 50 seconds, followed by another 203 GB in 52, for a total of 837 TiB written in 1 minute, 42 seconds.
How often do you really need to write more than 634 GB in a minute?
HellGate_fr@reddit
Cringe talking in GiB
exscape@reddit
So do you prefer using units almost nobody uses for written data (GB) or use GiB and call it GB?
HellGate_fr@reddit
Just use GB like normal people, stop being a slowflake
reddit_equals_censor@reddit
i guess i should have added size. you compared to the wrong 980 pro.
at least back then there was often a big performance difference, especially between the smallest and 2nd smallest version of an ssd.
the 1 TB 980 pro has the same slc cache size as the 500 GB version.
the 2 TB 980 pro has double the slc cache size as either of the ones above. so about 50 seconds of writing vs just 25 seconds.
and bigger difference is, that the 980 pro 500 GB drops down to 750 MB/s like you said. BUT the 1 TB and the 2 TB versions have double the sustained write speeds of 1.5 GB +.
and i was refering to those.
the lowest sized version of an ssd is rightfully pointed out by many to be avoided for this issue.
in modern times with higher capacities being the starting point this often is far less likely to be the case.
but the proper comparison would have been the 2 TB 980 pro, or the 1 TB 970 pro i guess.
____
now here is the biggest flaw in your calculation.
you don't use ssds empty.
you use ssds 80-95% full. one of my ssds is 92% full rightnow.
and when the ssds are close to full, then the slc cache shrinks MASSIVELY.
the wd drive is using ALL of its nand for slc caching when it is empty, which is a great feature to have, BUT it is absolutely not representative to how fast it writes, when it is almost full or at least vastly more full, because you can't use the whole drive as slc cache, when it is well... mostly full.
and i would argue, that tom's hardware should add graphs for 80 or 90% full ssd sustained write speeds.
that is actually how people use ssds and not empty.
___
overall you pay for an actual high end ssd, it is unacceptable, that it has lower sustained write speeds than consumer ssds from 7 years ago (970 pro 1 TB).
and it is certainly worth questioning if the ssd is designed to perform as well as it could, or if wd just didn't care what happens past the slc cache, because most reviewers don't test that anyways?
they certainly didn't with other models at all.
the wd black sn7100 2 TB drops to 0 in the test, which should mean, that they didn't care to put the tiniest effort into the firmware for the controller to prevent massive drops, especially drops to 0.
in fact we actually know, that it almost certainly is a firmware issue, because tom's hardware tested the prototype drive showing off the sm2508 controller, which the new wd drive uses:
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/KWL8o47s77YjJLCNrxTuLe.png
you can see, that the lowest drop is around 1.8 GB/s and a perfectly smooth line in either phase, that it is in.
no massive performance jitters, which are bad in comparison and being at 1.8 GB/s minimum, instead of 1 GB/s minimum on what should be a higher end ssd with the same controller than this prototype to show off the controller.
i hope we can both agree on, that western digital should put the tiniest bit of effort in the firmware to make ssds perform the best and based on 2 ssds from them we can see in the graphs, that they don't (sn8100 and sn7100)
exscape@reddit
Well, what can I say -- well said.
Though I disagree with one point: while most people use SSDs 80%+ full, if performance is crucial, you really shouldn't. Anyone who needs these high, sustained speeds should probably buy bigger SSDs and keep them closer to a recommended usage level. That said, I'd love to see reviews that perform more real-world testing regarding write speeds.
I have a SN850 myself and I'm not happy with it at all. It seems to have a firmware issue (that I've seen others report) where older data (i.e. data written a few months ago) offers FAR lower read performance than more recent data. It looks like this.
The dotted red lines are where I use dd to rewrite the entire drive with the same data, thus refreshing the NAND cells. The more recent fix (2025-04-13) is because the data files I use to test were themselves rewritten.
reddit_equals_censor@reddit
just to be clear, we're talking about the "sn850" with no additional letter at the end? as wd makes a bunch with different letters thrown around at the end.
do you know if it also effects the sn850x set of drives?
but either way,
you might find this forum post interesting and relevant:
https://forum.acelab.eu.com/viewtopic.php?t=8735
this is about the famous samsung 840 evo, which has broken nand, that would empty itself out very quickly when not powered on.
and it would become TERRIBLY slow to read older data from, as the controller is busy dealing with error corrections of corrupted data and stuff.
so maybe the sn850 has shity nand and wd doesn't give a shit about it, because it isn't "that bad" and that is why older files see some slow down.
and it is of course worth understanding, that wd would always ALWAYS deny, that an issue exists, at least until lawsuits come in, which won't happen in this case, or the thread of lawsuits becomes big enough, which also won't happen.
btw samsung never fixed the issue with the 840 evo, because the ONLY way to fix it was a refund or a replacement with 850 evo drives or 840 pro drives, which were free from any such issues, but why take responsibility for pushing broken hardware to customers, when you can just NOT do that and instead the drives will just periodically burn a bunch of nand endurance on refreshing cells to keep them fresh enough to still be readable at an acceptable speed.
but you have thought about a problem here, an ssd without power certainly won't be refreshing any cells, which means YES, the ssd will start emptying itself out in 4 months or less already as the link i linked to points out happened to them.
the ssd's nand is just losing charge, it is a hardware flaw it REQUIRES recall and replacement and samsung NEVER DID DO ONE!
and yes this means, that lots of people lost data due to this of course, because a few months of no power is common for lots of users.
even if your case isn't a very small version of what the 840 evo is, i guess it is a good story to learn about none the less, because it shows, that the ssd companies are evil and will not take responsibility for pushing broken garbage down people's throats with PREDICTED data loss from it.
wd knew, that the submarined smr drives in the wd red lineup will cause data loss for a bunch of people, just as much as wd knew, that not doing a recall for the 840 evo will cause lots of data loss to people. they just don't give a shit.
maybe they even like the idea of burning user data, because of how evil their decisions are, who knows.
__
but yeah story about the 840 evo and possible explanation on why reads slow down for you.
exscape@reddit
Yeah, I believe the issue is the same as for the 840 EVO, with flash that loses integrity and error correction causes the slowdown. I have the plain SN850 (1 TB).
Interestingly both my dad and my brother had 840 EVOs. Bad luck with SSDs might run in the family. On the other hand, no dead SSDs yet in 15 years, so there's that to counter it.
LucAltaiR@reddit
Are you comparing the same data set?
Tweaktown review has the SN8100 as leading in literally every metric. Compared to both PCIE-5 and PCIE-4.
reddit_equals_censor@reddit
the graph to look at in the tom's hardware review:
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/cQcY7nFsNJVHZoKo28VBwG.png
actual sustained write testing. you see drops down to roughly 1 GB/s write speed, which is honestly disgusting for a pci-e 5 ssd.
on a quick look and please correct me if i'm wrong here, tweaktown didn't do any sustained write test at all. as in actually write to see the fall off when it happens and how low it goes.
and that test is absolutely essential, because 1GB/s is bad, but how about 80 MB/s? which is what some qlc garbage gets to at sustained writes.
a reasonable sustained write speed should be 4 GB/s i'd say.
and at bare minimum 2 GB/s to be acceptable.
again my 980 pro garbage drive has 1.5 GB/s minimum.
a new ssd, which also claims to be super high performance dropping significantly lower than my 980 pro garbage is absurd.
i suggest to look at ssd and hdd btw (see smr scams re-write tests are required there to expose that scam properly) reviews, that have sustained write tests, because again 1 GB/s is terribly bad for a 1 pci-e 5 ssd, but we got 80 MB/s ssds and we also got drops to 0 (as shown the graph) by ssds once they transition phases. the micro 4600 2 TB ssd for example drops to what seems to be 0 MB/s.
and the wd black sn7100 does the exact same. dropping to 0 MB/s for a transition period.
so you are
1: looking for high sustained write speeds for the worst scenario
2: don't have any massive drops and be consistent. no drops to 0 MB/s lol or big drops compared to the sustained.
Tommy7373@reddit
If you need to write more than 1TB of data in under 100 seconds to a single 2TB drive regularly, i think consumer/prosumer QLC drives are not an ideal choice. There's no real world uses for those kind of sustained 10+GB/s speed levels besides copying data to and from other pcie5x4 ssds or benchmarks, which is where you would see the pSLC cache clearing and causing dips below 4GB/s as the drive empties the cache in the background. The drive does recover around 10 minutes to the 4GB/s once the cache is emptied.
reddit_equals_censor@reddit
oh i see, you are living in fantasy world, where the fully empty drive slc cache behavior, which almost fills all of the nand in the slc cache way is how it would work when it is 90 or 95% full...
well if you wanna join reality instead, then guess what over here in reality the real amount of slc cache and period before it shits itself in the case of the sn8100 ssd is way WAY shorter, because it has to be, because of how slc caching works.
copying data to and from an 80% full ssd. oh i guess it takes vastly longer than it should.....
and hey how about the drops to 0 MB/s seen in 2 ssds in the graph, will they show up as a freeze of the application? how does it get handled? also sth to think about.
this also implies, that there is an acceptable use of qlc nand in consumer drivers.
there is NOT. how do we know that there is not? oh idk we can check ssd pricing.
which is hard though, because there are based on geizhals 0 pcie 5.0 x4 ssds with qlc nand.
all are tlc.
why are they all tlc? because qlc is garbage, that in consumer level drives gets used to pocket the small reduction in production costs and fool consumers with fake speed claims.
qlc garbage may actually not be cheaper than tlc nand at this point or it just doesn't matter, because the cheapest dram-less insults you can find, that are 2280 ssds are tlc and not qlc insults.
of course we are assuming, that you actually get the nand, that the spec sheet claims though!
just btw the cheapest qlc m.2 2280 ssd, that comes up is the sn3000 wd green ssd, which is an excellent meme of 250 TB tbw :D
going backwards from the 850 evo days of tbw is truly impressive on its own.
but whatever.
the point is, that NO ONE should buy qlc ssds.
they are sold at higher prices and wouldn't even be worth it, if they were a small bit lower.
AND the nand will shit itself vastly quicker than tlc nand or mlc nand of course.
you are moving what i actually talked about.
i didn't say or expect the sustain to sustain 10+ GB/s write speeds for the whole drive.
no one said that.
i said:
which is very very reasonable.
we had sustained 2 GB/s write speeds in consumer targeted ssds since 2018 (970 pro):
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/fAPbKRzqSURe4nH5jZ2ya7.png
expecting at least no regression after 7 years of ssd development is less the barest minimum one should expect.
seeing drops down to 1 GB/s in sustained writes for people who buy high end ssds can indeed effect their work or whatever they are doing with the ssds.
again, please put it the proper comparison. 7 years after the 970 pro and almost 5 years after the 980 pro came out, this new high end ssd from sandisk/wd performs worse in sustained writes than both of them.
that is crazy and unacceptable.
doscomputer@reddit
neither of the charts you posted are related to this at all
Well the thing is, your second chart has no time scale. So it really could be as simple as in the same amount of time, despite the drop in transferspeed, because of the 14gb/s in the first half of the test the transfer rate is still way above that 970 pro. The transfer speed of the 8100 is literally 7x that of your 970 pro for an entire 1tb of data transfer.
tecedu@reddit
Tom’s hardware always has had different results compared to other reviewers. But yeah the figures look consistent with their past figures.
Not defending the drive but looking at the graph it looks like it could be fixed with firmware issue because even the worst gen 5 QLC drives nowadays go above those speeds. Unless they have really really shitty flash.
As for comparison with Samsung, we are never getting that back again. I’ve only seen other enterprise drives beat those samsungs in long sustained writes.
HatefulAbandon@reddit
Let’s also not forget when Western Digital quietly gutted some of their SSDs DRAM cache without saying a word. Same model name, no warning and a huge hit to performance. It was basically a downgrade sold as the same product.
The newer (inferior) version was a lot slower in real world use especially during sustained write tasks. It was a big drop in performance and was scummy coming from a well known brand.
reddit_equals_censor@reddit
are you sure, that this was about ssd's dram cache?
i haven't heard of ssd makers cutting dram cache (amount i assume?), but downgrading controllers and downgrading nand MASSIVELY.
if you got a link to the dram specific downgrade by wd, then please link it to me.
if you are sure, that it was dram, then please say so as well, even if you can't find a link, because then i might go look myself.
___
and ssd makers are trying to scam you left and right. selling "5 GB/s" ssds, that drop to 80 MB/s.
wd also goes further in the hdd market as you probably know, because smr (shingled magnetic recording) harddrives are vastly more broken even. getting 1 second latency spikes and drops below 10 MB/s in sustained write speeds.
the storage industry is a bunch of scammers trying to squeeze the public as much as possible.
and that sucks.
HatefulAbandon@reddit
You are right. I remembered it wrong. Check the edit on my previous comment.
Cheeze_It@reddit
How are the endurance levels? Dog shit right?
jwbeee@reddit
The manufacturer claims 600x device writes (i.e. 1200TBW on the 2TB model)
gnexuser2424@reddit
that's very low for a 2TB model! and only 600TBW on the 1TB Model. Seagate is even higher than that!
imaginary_num6er@reddit
I don’t trust anything made by Sandisk. There are multiple reviews of Sandisk memory sticks failing and even companies like Canon warn customers against using Sandisk drives
cheese61292@reddit
This is the same "Western Digital" SSD design team as last year. SanDisk and Western Digital split the company in two, where the HDD business all went back to WD while the flash memory business is now under the SanDisk name.
Effectively for the consumer, nothing has changed right now.
Strazdas1@reddit
the same WD design team that had drives wiping themselves due to mismatch with windows data structure?
cheese61292@reddit
I'm not sure what this "gatcha" moment is. Yes it's that same team which also issued a firmware correction to fix this issue. It should be noted that this issue with HMB only came up due to a Windows update.
Regardless; every major SSD maker has had bad firmware. Samsung, Intel, and Micron/Crucial have had similar problems in the past which were corrected by a firmware update.
Strazdas1@reddit
The "gatcha" is that they arent exactly known for reliable products to begin with.
chchom22@reddit
Who is? Starting my first build in 15 years
Strazdas1@reddit
Basically most manufacturers had fuckups recently and you should do your research before buying storage. There is no "safe" bet.
cheese61292@reddit
Except all of the other drives they made which were not affected by that bug. A bug that was corrected and solved.
Strazdas1@reddit
A bug that cause data loss for customers, which is a big reliability issue for data storage products.
cheese61292@reddit
By your standards; Solidigm (P41), Seagate (FireCuda 530), Samsung (980 Pro), and Crucial (MX500) should not be trusted as there have been data loss bugs that have occurred on all of them.
Strazdas1@reddit
They should certainly be taking cautiously, yes.
Bloodshoot111@reddit
So in other words, every sad manufacturer on the market? Everything else is just rebranded from these.
Strazdas1@reddit
if every manufacturer fucks up badly, then yes every manufacturer should be taken with caution. Someone else doing things badly too does not excuse you doing things badly.
imaginary_num6er@reddit
Are you sure? We never know how the former WD staff reacted to the divestment and they may have stayed with WD or quit instead.
cheese61292@reddit
Just for a timeline; October 2023 is when Western Digital officially announced their plans to spin off SanDisk into it's own entity and move all of their flash-based storage over to that entity. Since then we've seen the release of the WD Blue SN5000, WD Black SN7100, and this new WD Black SN8100 release. That doesn't include other releases in their SN Red and SN Green lines that also happened since this announcement.
So far, all of these drives have been solid and their SSD Business has continued as expected. The only thing that's really changed for consumers has just been the website. Before when I would want to look up the SN850X, I would go to the Western Digital website. Now it is the SanDisk website.
russia_delenda_est@reddit
Bruh funniest comment i have seen in a while lmao
__laughing__@reddit
I think the main issue is that a LOT of sandsk products from online retailers are fakes
crab_quiche@reddit
They have had a ton of reliability issues. I’m sure fakes are some of the issues, but there are a bunch of horror stories online about legit drives wiping themselves and portable drives literally falling apart. I’ve also heard from some former SanDisk engineers that at one point they stopped/reduced burn-in testing, which let a lot of defective flash out into the wild.
dankhorse25@reddit
Most of us don't want faster SSDs, they are already fast enough. We want cheaper SSDs.
Bloodshoot111@reddit
What do you mean cheaper? I really feel old now my first SSD was a Corsair Force GT with 250 g for 300 bucks and that was still a Sata
Gippy_@reddit
$550 for 4TB is insanity considering 1 year ago the SN850X 4TB was $230.
capybooya@reddit
Yeah I know this just released, but it still has a major price premium over the (almost as fast) Samsung 9100 Pro.
SEI_JAKU@reddit
The 4TB SN8100 is almost the same price as the 8TB SN850X! Gen 5 isn't worth that, man.
Kougar@reddit
The latest greatest always has a price premium. You can still buy the SN850X at $580 for 8TB.
MrDunkingDeutschman@reddit
That 8TB premium is still baffling to me. I understand it's technically more challenging to fit everything onto a 2280 board but 25-30% per TB more challenging?
I'm not buying that.
Culbrelai@reddit
The 8tb drives are still just worse than enterprise drives. In most aspects. You can buy a 15.6tb enterprise drive used on Ebay for $1000 or so, get higher density, use 4 less pcie lanes, and get massively higher endurance for the same or less than two 8tb consumer shitters.
M.2 drives are a scam
freeone3000@reddit
If you’re okay with 13ms seek times and 800MB/s reads sure
Culbrelai@reddit
Lmao. Here’s an example. kioxia CD6-R
5,500 MB/s read, 4,000 MB/s write.
Consumer SSDs are a losing proposition. That is SUSTAINED write as well, none of this 1 GB/s slowdown garbage
https://americas.kioxia.com/content/dam/kioxia/shared/business/ssd/data-center-ssd/asset/productbrief/dSSD-CD6-R-product-brief.pdf
https://www.ebay.com/itm/387939416322?_trkparms=amclksrc%3DITM%26aid%3D777008%26algo%3DPERSONAL.TOPIC%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20240315132637%26meid%3Da9547cbe4e63472abbafaae28deca905%26pid%3D102055%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D1%26mehot%3Dpp%26itm%3D387939416322%26pmt%3D1%26noa%3D1%26pg%3D4375194%26algv%3DRecentlyViewedItemsMobileV2WithMLRPboosterAndUpdatedFeaturesImageDedupe_BP%26brand%3DKIOXIA&_trksid=p4375194.c102055.m146925&_trkparms=parentrq%3A1aee106f1970a1ef435cb1abfffff8ac%7Cpageci%3A06eaf8f6-3c5e-11f0-80b7-6e31d58908b8%7Ciid%3A1%7Cvlpname%3Avlp_homepage
freeone3000@reddit
So first, that’s a thousand dollars, and second, absolutely uses pci-e lanes, so I literally have no clue what you are talking about.
LightShadow@reddit
He was implying to get 16 TB you'd have to use two M2 slots so 2x 4 PCIe lanes when you could save 4 lanes by getting a single 15.x TB drive for cheaper than two consumer sticks.
Culbrelai@reddit
Did you not read what I said? Jesus. Get some glasses.
I said that two 8tb consumer shitter m.2s are more expensive or equal to one enterprise drive and that TWO consumer drives will use two m.2 slots, two pcie x4 lanes for a total of 8 used.
This one will only use four. More density per x4 lanes.
aliniazi@reddit
Bro thinks they aren't PCIe drives if they aren't using M.2 😭
upvotesthenrages@reddit
I don't think M.2 was really targeting the market of people looking for 15TB+ storage units though.
Kougar@reddit
HDD vendors have done it since HDDs were invented, the highest capacity option always became its own price premium.
At least with M.2 drives 8TB isn't really much of a premium anymore, $0.07 cents per GB was typical for a TLC drive with a DRAM buffer. 4TB drives are just reaching $0.06, ignoring all the random chinese offbrands, QLC junk, and cacheless models.
FinancialRip2008@reddit
i remember reading about how there was a surplus of storage in the market last year and how they were selling at a loss as a result. bought 2 4tb drives in response. they're midrange crucial sata drives and were ~180$ each.
...i still haven't figured out a great use for 8tb of fast-ish storage, but it's neat to see my speculation have some sort of reward.
YNWA_1213@reddit
Raid-1 2.5/5gb NAS?
FinancialRip2008@reddit
i already have a raid-1 2.5/5gb nas using 17tb hdds and an optane drive for caching.
currently they're holding most of my steam library for no particular reason. lol
YNWA_1213@reddit
You could set up these as a raid-0 scratch disk on a 10gb connection that backs up hourly to that NAS?
FinancialRip2008@reddit
yup! exactly lol
bitNine@reddit
I came from a 4 year old SSD I paid $200 for, to the 9100 I paid $550 for, and literally increased performance more than 10x, and capacity by 4x. Worth every penny.
PXLShoot3r@reddit
Still want to throw myself off a bridge for not buying the 4tb at around 230.
Stingray88@reddit
I bought 6 for all flash NAS. It’s incredible
UnexpectedFisting@reddit
Is that really enough for a NAS? Do you just use that for personal storage? I assume you aren’t running a media server off that like plex
MC_chrome@reddit
NAS's come in all shapes, sizes, and capacities.....there is not one storage capacity that denotates what is and is not a NAS
UnexpectedFisting@reddit
Blasphemy, if my Nas doesn’t have at least 6 bays it isn’t a Nas /s
FinancialRip2008@reddit
i know /s, but this thinking scared me off NASs for many years, and i legit need one cuz work. 2 years ago i built a SFF with 2 hdds (and an ssd ofc), an i3, and basic dgpu and it's like the backup/htpc dream machine. it was really cheap too, especially since it'll be useful for a long time.
is it a nas? who cares; i think a lot of homes could benefit from that sort of machine.
Stingray88@reddit
Yeah it's about 15TB usable, plenty of storage for myself and my wife.
I do have it setup with Plex and the arrs, but I don't see the need to hoard. If ad-free versions of TV/Movies/Music/Books are available for free/purchase, I prefer to get them from their rightsholders for the price they charge. If ad-free versions are not* available however, I will acquire them on my own. This is how I vote with my wallet... I'm willing to pay for stuff, I just won't watch ads!
anapoe@reddit
Are you still planning on using plex with it going to a paid model?
Stingray88@reddit
Yes, I don't really use any of the paid features. I only use it to watch movies/TV on my AppleTV. I don't really use it out of the home... and if I did, I could just use my VPN to put myself on my home network.
add_more_chili@reddit
I got a 4TB drive for $180 some 18 months ago or something. Crazy to see that despite seeing higher speeds in flash storage, the storage capacities hasn't really changed and they're more expensive to boot.
I don't care for all the speed these days, just want a huge drive that can read/write at 2GB/s, has decent number of write cycles, and is inexpensive.
chefchef97@reddit
It'll come back around some day, no worries
-Deadlocked-@reddit
Obviously. This is gen 5. ~15Gb/s lol. We're seeing exponential improvements in storage tech within years atm. Ofc the new tech is at the beginning more expensive
BringerOfNuance@reddit
PC users when a brand newer technology is more expensive than older technology:
I swear I have read the exact same comment for like 10 years on every single tech advancement without fail
Gippy_@reddit
Lemme guess, you think the Nvidia 50-series is good too. OK
BringerOfNuance@reddit
The supply, driver issues, lack of vram and dishonesty are entirely NVidia’s fault. If we only look at the technology itself and nothing else and they’re selling at msrp (in my country they are) then yes the 50 series is good. But there’s diminishing returns and no other industry is as spoiled as hardware when it comes to large progress in a short time. So when progress slows down (as it is happening with nvidia gpus) people feel angry and disappointed. However if you’re getting into it brand new then it’s wonderful. I had a gtx 650 before I upgraded to a RTX 4060 and I hadn’t bothered with looking into hardware at all before I upgraded my system. So for me as an outsider looking in I couldn’t believe that I could get something that’s 9.6 times more performance for only 300$ or 3 times the launch price of a GTX 650.
Plazmatic@reddit
Where in the world did you get this idea from?
BringerOfNuance@reddit
It’s faster than the 40 series for the same cost.
Plazmatic@reddit
At the same cost? No.
BringerOfNuance@reddit
They’re seen both 300$
no6969el@reddit
Yeah but then gen 6...
BringerOfNuance@reddit
Why get gen 7 when gen 6 is so much cheaper? xD
Mediocre_Asparagus17@reddit
Gen 4 vs 5…
Metalligod666@reddit
I just bought a 990 evo plus PCIe 5.0 x2 4tb for $240 this weekend
Mediocre_Asparagus17@reddit
5x2 is the same as 4x4
Metalligod666@reddit
ahh makes sense
scatch25@reddit
I just want optane back =(
wanescotting@reddit
Intel really…and I mean REALLY missed an opportunity with Optane.
Sequential transfer speeds have their place but latency & 4k random is still king.
Imagine a pcie 5.0 Optane drive…
tecedu@reddit
They should bring it back as a cache directly on ssd. Like 128gb optane cache on 16tb qlc would be amazing
bizude@reddit (OP)
Say it again!
seatux@reddit
Or at least 128gb or smaller options. 256 is mega overkill for installs like TrueNAS.
kuddlesworth9419@reddit
I would like a really fast drive just for Windows, Linux and some programs. Don't need 1TB or 500GB just for that.
Tgrove88@reddit
Get a 118gb p1600x
https://www.reddit.com/r/intel/s/0bIeRgsAqr
seatux@reddit
I actually would just buy the 1TB, but only use 500GB or so and let the drive controller use the excess space for overprovisioning.
kuddlesworth9419@reddit
Why would you need 50% of the drive for over provisioning?
seatux@reddit
Reliability? Its getting harder to find a decent 500gb SSD that is not some no name brand, so either use only what you need from 1tb or use it all and enjoy the free space.
kuddlesworth9419@reddit
Have SSD's gone down in reliability or something? I'm still using a Samsung 840 Evo 500GB for a boot drive. I have 112TB written to it. It spends a lot of it's time maxed out in capacity as well.
violet_sakura@reddit
The SSDs in my 5 year old pc are still 99% health, it's not really a thing to worry about for normal use unless you are writing hundreds of GB everyday or mining crypto. Of course, failures can still happen with any brand, its still best to have multiple backups of important stuff regardless you are using HDD or SSD.
NonameideaonlyF@reddit
How do you over provision a drives 50% of the capacity (1TB SN850X NVMe)?
CataclysmZA@reddit
IIRC, you can still adjust the ratio for over-provisioning in Samsung Magician, but only on certain drives. You can also do this for enterprise hardware.
Our friend here likely just partitions the SSD in half and leaves the other half of the storage unallocated. Or you can partition it fully but only fill it up halfway.
If you load up a disk defragmenting tool on an SSD and analyse a partition, you'll see that things just get put wherever by the controller with no thought to keeping data clumped together on contiguous blocks. This way the NAND cells tend to wear out evenly over time.
seatux@reddit
I only know the Samsung Magician has a page in there for setting up over provisioning.
These days its all automatic, so its why never to fill the SSD over 80% or something to allow the thing space for wear levelling.
Tgrove88@reddit
Get a 118gb p1600x
https://www.reddit.com/r/intel/s/0bIeRgsAqr
starcube@reddit
I like how they left out the Samsung 9100 Pro, because it would leave it in the dust.
bizude@reddit (OP)
Is it really that good?!
Reactor-Licker@reddit
No, the TweakTown review, which does have the 9100 Pro, shows it matching at best and slower overall than the SN8100.
Regular_Tomorrow6192@reddit
Got this for my SSF system and it’s been great. The power efficiency makes it basically impossible to overheat with just the motherboard heatsink even in a tiny system.
wordswillneverhurtme@reddit
Idc for speed though. I want cheap 4TB or more sticks
Lincolns_Revenge@reddit
Seems like everyone (myself included) has been saying this for a couple of years. I think there's demand, but evidently they either can't or don't want to make slower 4TB and 8TB drives for less money.
upvotesthenrages@reddit
Tons of slower off-brand versions that are slower.
Usually they have far less cache, but for budget storage they're fine.
Lincolns_Revenge@reddit
I guess I'm hoping for more like 150 USD or lower for 4TB, which I've never seen. I thought maybe by 2025 we might be there with some kind of solid state drive.
I guess this deal from a couple of weeks ago is the closest I've ever seen: https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapcsales/comments/1kl2wss/ssd_silicon_power_us75_4tb_nvme_189/
upvotesthenrages@reddit
Aliexpress has a ton of them for under $150.
Though I imagine part of the price problem, if you're American, is your president & congress.
exscape@reddit
Are they actually 4 TB, though? There are sooo many fake USB sticks and SSDs on AliExpress, that report a certain size to the OS but has less storage, and overwrites it like a circular buffer.
So can buy a 4 TB SSD that can store 32 GB before it starts silently overwriting data.
wordswillneverhurtme@reddit
Fr. Buying memory from there is a gamble.
Strazdas1@reddit
most premium brands have no cache at all nowadays. Its all SLC caching which does not work on near-full drives anyway.
DNosnibor@reddit
Oh, so that's how Sandisk is going to transition back to branding their SSDs with their own name rather than WD now that they've split. Just include both brands for a while haha.
red286@reddit
This shit is just getting confusing now.
I have a bunch of SanDisk Professional external hard drives in-stock manufactured by WD, and a bunch of WD Black SN8100s manufactured by SanDisk.
BookPlacementProblem@reddit
And now you can have a Sandisk WD Black manufactured by Sandisk.
MrDunkingDeutschman@reddit
With the SN770 and SN850X selling like hot cakes it would have been negligent to abandon that branding.
Ryrynz@reddit
Got a couple of SN770s, goated drives.
seatux@reddit
The support is confusing too, I have been buying WD SSDs and support is by Sandisk. Nice they allow the same WD Support account for both brands tho.
Hifihedgehog@reddit
Microsoft Apple LinPadroid Plus
HatefulAbandon@reddit
Never forget when Western Digital quietly gutted some of their SSDs DRAM cache without saying a word. Same model name, no warning and a huge hit to performance. It was basically a downgrade sold as the same product.
The newer (inferior) version was a lot slower in real world use especially during sustained write tasks. It was a big drop in performance and was scummy coming from a well known brand.
dogen12@reddit
Why do they say ever made as if it contributes any meaning? Obviously the current fastest is going to be the fastest ever made 99% of the time.
alexandreracine@reddit
Sandisk or WD? Annoying.
Deciheximal144@reddit
It's Sandisk's two-letter alphabet pick. 🤣
burninator34@reddit
SM2508 controller (4x ARM R8 and 1x M0 cores).
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