Best budget M.2 PCIe 4.0 SSD with DRAM? (4TB)
Posted by Bankies@reddit | buildapc | View on Reddit | 7 comments
Hey y’all, looking to upgrade my boot drive as it is the only slot on my motherboard for an M.2 SSD. The motherboard is an AM4 and want to upgrade the stock 1TB SSD boot drive to a 4TB.
So far, I’m nearly sold on buying a Fanxiang S770; I bought one two years ago to put into my PS5 and it worked flawlessly and reads/writes well above 6500mbs. Probably was overkill for the console, but want the same power with DRAM cache instead of HMB for my PC’s boot drive. Name brands have hovered around ~$120-150 for 2TB, and well above $230-250 for a 4TB that I’m looking for.
I compared the Fanxiang S880 and S770 together and the S880 is HMB with significantly slower read/write speeds.
TL;DR Is there anything better or cheaper on the market than the Fanxiang S770 4TB for under $200? With the ebay sale, I can buy from them direct for under $198.
No name brand can match that price/performance and I trust Fanxiang well. All other SSDs I’ve seen that come close either have NO DRAM or are much slower.
Thanks!
Cer_Visia@reddit
The cheapest 4 TB drive with DRAM cache would probably be the Acer Predator GM7000, Verbatim Vi7000, or TeamGroup G70 Pro (all with the IG5236 controller), or the Kioxia Exceria Heatsink.
Bankies@reddit (OP)
Terrific response, I’ll look into these and get back to you. I assume these are in the sub-$200 range?
Cer_Visia@reddit
Probably not.
ratshack@reddit
I’m curious as to why you “…trust Fanxiang well.”
Bankies@reddit (OP)
Well, if you read the post, I’ve bought this exact model M.2 SSD before and it performs faster than over half of the market of equivalent SSDs. I’ve had Fanxiang for 2-3 years now and its my best performing SSD in all of my devices.
aragorn18@reddit
Are you sure that your workloads benefit from having a DRAM cache. HMB on NVMe drives is usually fast enough that the performance difference is so tiny that you'll never notice it in real-world performance.
Bankies@reddit (OP)
Based off of the research I’ve done, i know most have gone DRAM-less and seem happy to advertise it; I’ve also noticed significantly slower read/write. This card seems to have DRAM and is cheaper than some name brands at a higher price and slower speed - just observations I’m making