Is it really that bad to buy DRAM-less SSDs?
Posted by EnigmaticReprise@reddit | buildapc | View on Reddit | 97 comments
I was just about to order a WD SN7100, which has a decently competitive price for 2TB drives in the current market, when I saw a recent Linus Tech Tips video calling on people to "please stop buying the wrong SSD", referring to SSDs without DRAM. The SN7100 was specifically shown in the video.
This will not be my boot drive (I have an SN850X for that) but rather, my gaming + media drive.
I'm not even super concerned about ultra fast performance (I'm coming off of 15 years of gaming from HDDs), but durability and reliability (mentioned in the video) are highly important to me.
Is it really that bad to buy DRAM-less in my case, or will I have nothing to worry about?
aragorn18@reddit
First, did you notice how that LTT video didn't include a single benchmark?
The SN7100 is a very good drive that will be more than enough performance for gaming and storage. https://www.techpowerup.com/review/wd-black-sn7100-2-tb/
Icynrvna@reddit
Best to stop watching those clowns and go for trusted reviewers.
Little-Equinox@reddit
The cache is both good and bad.
It's good for if the SSD itself isn't that fast, it's bad if you constantly deal with big data.
It's very very hard to benchmark.
And SSD benchmarks are rarely the ones to be trusted, because 1 test is good with testing max throughput, and the other is good at testing the SSD's latency. I had SSDs that use to be in the top 10 fastest, but for my work they were awfully slow because the constant big data throughput.
Typical-Split9803@reddit
A gamer will never ever even come close to a situation where they would enter benchmark territory. Neither does a normal user write such large amounts of data every day.
I understand that for your use-case, these things were relevant. But 90% of all pc users will never ever have to use an SSD at its limit.
DarthWeezy@reddit
Try installing two regularly sized games from nowadays (around 150 gigs total, give or take) and have 1 or 2 games receive patches. Congrats, you have successfully far exceeded the capabilities of a top DRAM-less SSD and your installation has slowed down to a crawl.
Very high capacity DRAM-less SSD are (were) attractive due to the much lower price, but let’s not pretend that they’ll breeze through the typical workload of a gamer trying to install a few of their games to get it going. Gamers are pretty much going to be the worst case scenario for such SSDs out of all casual desktop uses. But yeah, after installing a few games or one huge game at eventually less than HDD speeds, it’s smooth sailing for “read” and eventually for “write” too once the cache gets cleared.
pack_merrr@reddit
Someone correct me if I'm misunderstanding something, but a conservative estimate of write speed on an HDD is 100MB/s or 800Mb/s. That would be on the lower end, so it's not unreasonable to assume you could get away with downloading games at gigabit speeds before actually being bottlenecked at the speed a disc could write. In the past, I know I've also been bottlenecked by the speed that my CPU could unpack the files being downloaded before I ever saw my drive hit 100% usage.
So, I don't really think most people have fast enough Internet to make the speed at which DRAM-less drives write a concern, even in less-ideal scenarios. I think it's more valid to worry about things like page file usage on an OS drive, premature wearing of the drive, and other more intensive workloads like video editing. That being said, I've been using a DRAM-less OS drive on my main rig I use for all of my development work and a little gaming for awhile now and I think the performance I get is great, I don't think I'd notice an upgrade to my storage right now. I would definitely get a drive with DRAM all other things being the same knowing what I do about how they work, but every time I've been shopping for a drive the price difference didn't seem to be worth it, and that was even before drives skyrocketed in price.
motorolah@reddit
Some DRAM-less nvmes actually go slower than HDDs after a while
pack_merrr@reddit
Key word being "some"... I still think you're really overstating the "problem" when you say that though. A lot of decent ones using HMB will fall off down to speeds of like 200-300MB/s... so still double the speed of an HDD. And again, looking at gaming of casual use an HDD isn't impractical because of its write speeds, it's the read speeds. Most people literally woudnt notice the difference in downloading a game to a HDD or SSD because the bottleneck is probably going to be somewhere else like your Internet connection.
Of course there's a situation where a DRAM cache matters, I'm just saying let's be honest about when that is and for what reasons. Also, when comparing SSDs it's not just DRAM vs no DRAM. Quality controllers, dies, drivers and warranties all matter a lot more to the average person I think, not all SSDs are created equally and DRAM isn't the only differentiator.
WingerRules@reddit
They did with PS5. For a long time only a small number of SSDs on the market was fast enough for the PS5.
NightWolf098@reddit
The SSDs the PS5 uses are slower than market standard full speed Gen 4, what? It needs 5GB/s, every Gen 4 drive worth its salt pushes 7GB/s. It was an artificial software limitation put in by Sony.
Little-Equinox@reddit
The PS5 required SSD is wrong spec list, you don't need a very fast SSD in terms of big data, you need a low latency SSD.
An Intel Optane SSD for example would be completely fine for a PS5, even though it has lower max Mbps, it has much lower latency(lower latency is better) what the PS5 needs.
pythonic_dude@reddit
That was gatekeeping by Sony, not a technical limitation.
Little-Equinox@reddit
I was trying to explain that benchmark numbers and Linus not showing benchmark numbers doesn't mean 1 to be trusted over the other 😅
DOE_ZELF_NORMAAL@reddit
Because benchmarks on this is pointless and misinterpreted. Most gamers will never ever come to the point where it would effect them. Those who deal with huge amount of data will understand and get the correct ssd.
ForgottenCrafts@reddit
I think the NAND type will be more important. Just don’t buy any QLC drives.
AD1SAN0@reddit
Can you elaborate?
ProfSnipe@reddit
It's slower and it wears out faster. You can Google how they work and you'll see why qlc isn't very liked.
it goes SLC>MLC>TLC>QLC. Ideally you should go for a TLC at least, and if you can afford it, MLC.
SLC is out of the question as it's mostly made for enterprise and it's obscenely expensive, even before the storage prices shoot up.
ValuableJello9505@reddit
Isn’t the last MLC consumer drive from like 2017?
PirateGaming@reddit
Samsung 970 pro was the last popular/notable example
AD1SAN0@reddit
Tbh it just depends imo as every drive is different. I’ve seen many drives with QLC and 1200 tbw with 2 tb variants, that’s sufficient for majority of people.
ForgottenCrafts@reddit
TBW is not a reliable metric. It has more to do with warranty. I’ve seen my fair share of dead QLC drives after only MONTHS.
Falkenmond79@reddit
Well there are construction defects with every product. I’ve seen SLC and MLC drives fail after months or a year, too. Especially in heavy use. That says nothing about the general reliability of the drive. MTB is another useful metric. Which is pretty much the same for all drives these days.
Falkenmond79@reddit
It is. The average System drive has about 10-15gb written daily, with some spikes while installing a game or application. That will last for decades, even with a QLC drive. Also for gaming it’s a non-issue. Storage for movies or music even less.
The only time it’s really an issue is if you do a lot of video editing and stuff like that. And even then the drive will probably last 10 years at the least.
I’m tired of people parroting these tech tubers that always go on forever about worst case scenarios, just to cover their asses. Jayz2cents is a refreshing exception, but he is annoying sometimes for other reasons. Though he’s been doing some better videos lately, especially about older games. 🙂
For the average gaming Pc I can say a few things with confidence:
9800x3d and 5080? Good 750W PSU is more than enough. NVME heatsinks? Unless you constantly shift 100gb+ from one drive to another, absolutely unnecessary. Nice to have and they don’t hurt, but you really get no benefit.
PCIe 5.0? Every benchmark from the last 10 years shows us even with PCIe a gen older you lose at most 10% performance. It’s not the end of the world.
Nvme bandwidth is pretty moot. No one can make real use of 13gb/s unless your whole system is geared for it. And who really cares unless you have a storage server that is heavily used? When transferring a game from one drive to another, which is the most data transfer I do as a gamer, do I really care if it takes 25 sec or 35?
Ram speed. 6000MT is the sweet spot for amd ryzen CPUs. Anything below that is fine, though, too. You won’t lose more than at most 5% fps even with 4800MT.
Of course we all want to minmax our systems. But at the current prices, it’s perfectly viable to save hundreds of bucks for 5-10% performance loss, if that. Especially with the ram speeds it’s probably more 2-3%.
karmapopsicle@reddit
15GB a day translates to 200+ years for 1200TBW. It's really a non-issue.
Any half decent DRAMless drive these days will have HMB anyway which effectively solves the issue for most general use cases.
That_Lad_Chad@reddit
I agree that QLC is a complete throw
nuenoxnyx@reddit
DRAM is worthless for 99.9% of regular users. Don't fall for the marketing and up selling. Any regular SSD is already lightning fast and any reliable model will already last longer than you will need (your next upgrade in 2 to 10 years).
motorolah@reddit
Just updating something on Steam can make a DRAMless SSD basically start stalling, so no even the average joe will feel the difference
Apprehensive-Read989@reddit
I disagree. My main gaming PC uses a SLC DRAM NVMe (Mushkin Vortex) and my travel gaming PC uses a QLC DRAMless NVMe (Crucial P3) and I don't notice the difference between them for my gaming related usage. I'm sure there are some small differences in load times and download/install times, but it's not anything I notice. I don't doubt that if I actually benchmarked it I'd see it, but that's pointless to me, if it's not noticeable from a normal use perspective then I don't really care.
motorolah@reddit
Load times yes there would be no difference, but i really doubt it has minimal impact on writes. Particularly if the drive was nearly full. Now i am not saying it is unusable or anything, and obviously depending on the update process it might write less or more and the issue might not crop up but for the majority of recent titles on Steam the write speeds will plummet after a while
pack_merrr@reddit
I think you have a different issue if you experience that, that's definitely not normal
WingerRules@reddit
I have 2 SK Hynx P41 SSDs that are gen 7000mb transfer speed and have dram, and a Crucial T510 SSD that has a transfer rate of 11,000 but no dram. Which one should I be installing games and which one should I be installing OS to?
motorolah@reddit
The boot drive should be on one of the drives with DRAM, and the other two just use as normal storage
Typical-Split9803@reddit
There's a difference between a racing cyclist who spends his entire time in the mountains and needs a carbonfibre bike and a commuter who has a citybike and goes for a leisure uphill ride twice every 6 months. Do you understand my simile?
motorolah@reddit
Everyone updates games on Steam or other launchers, do you think writing data for more than 5 minutes straight is some kind of enteprise-level workload?
KingBasten@reddit
yes I'm ordering that carbonfibre bike rn
lazyhustlermusic@reddit
If you have even a moderate write workload you'll be wishing for that DRAM pretty quickly.
nuenoxnyx@reddit
Unless you mean "moderate" as in moderate workload for a data center or "moderate" as in you're one of the 0.01% who regularly transfers 100+GB files everyday, then no you won't.
Regular users do not have any need for sustained write, which is dealing with huge or long operations.
lazyhustlermusic@reddit
My man even just installing warzone is like 150 GB
It’s 2026 not 2007
nuenoxnyx@reddit
Are you installing warzone every few hours?
I'm actually curious to see what the effective difference in time is in installing huge games between DRAM and DRAMless SSD. 20 mins vs 30 mins? or 20 vs 25?
lazyhustlermusic@reddit
I feel like you're intentionally being obtuse, I just feel it's silly to lose write performance after 15GB or so. You can EASILY outpace the difference in time against cost.
nuenoxnyx@reddit
Aren't you? by dodging the question of how often you actually have a massive sustained write operation?
If you have the money to pay more for DRAM SSDs for marginal benefits, that's great for you. This thread is about whether DRAMless SSDs are bad, which is answered.
lazyhustlermusic@reddit
I'm not the one blowing the situation out of proportion.
But sure, I pulled the stats off of my OS drive, 61874 GB across 23519 hours. That's what about 63 GB/day? Not even intensive usage patterns.
We can also do the math, let's say you wait 2 minutes a day on your drive across, how about 300 days a year. I feel you'd agree that's a conservative number. You mentioned a lifespan of 2-10 years, let's go with another conservative number of four years. 40 whole hours.
How much is an entire workweek worth to you?
YouCallWeShouldWhat@reddit
lmfao. you'd have to push upward of 500gb before DRAM would be a factor whatsoever. your speed would dip after \~500gb for like 30 minutes, at most. it is such a complete non-issue for the average person.
lazyhustlermusic@reddit
Objectively false
KingBasten@reddit
now that you put it that way i see your point
falcinelli22@reddit
For normal use and gaming 100%. I noticed a big difference when I was running them in my server in a ZFS pool, DRAMless was significantly slower.
laffer1@reddit
Wd had firmware problems with the previous gen on zfs. No idea how the new model is with that.
It’s not as good of a drive but for consumer uses it usually doesn’t matter beyond reliability (write endurance wise)
Most people barely use their drives and get 5 years on beater models. Power uses should run away
gormagion@reddit
Just before this whole dumpster fire with the prices started, I got 2 SSDs. They're both WD Blue SN5000. One is 1TB, the other 2TB. I placed 1TB as my boot drive, and 2TB as drive for light video editing, music production and some games. Neither has DRAM cache. Gen4, though my 2TB is limited to Gen3 due to Prime motherboard (Prime B550-Plus). Never noticed any slowdowns in normal work.
Coming from Kingston A400 480GB 3.5" SSD as boot drive.
I have no complaints whatsoever.
I think you'll be more than fine with SN7100.
TT_207@reddit
Honestly never been a question for me.. but one thing I feel anyone will truly notice is bad thermal throttling behaviour. If you can find a graph of temperature Vs read/write speed that's a really good idea. Several occasions I've been held up by overheating drives.
kongnico@reddit
LTT is crap for anything serious. It can be fun but honestly, their writers have no clue, and Linus thinks he has, but hasnt touched used a piece of sub 1000 dollars hardware for years. For anything except heavy data swapping you probably wont notice too much of a difference and you definitely wont notice 100 dollars of difference.
Sinister_Crayon@reddit
Always remember that LTT is about entertainment second, information a distant third; making money is goal #1. I say this with all love for the content they put out and I do enjoy some of their stuff, but I do not consider them a trusted source of technical information.
DRAM-less SSD's are fine. The underlying storage tech is far more important for longevity and speed than whether it has DRAM or not:
The controllers also make a big difference; the SN7100 actually has a good controller and you'll get really good performance out of it so long as you understand the limits of the underlying tech.
One place DRAM on a controller does help is when assembling blocks prior to writing to the flash, the DRAM can be used rather than streaming data directly to the flash. This does reduce write wear particularly for aborted writes (which happen). Having DRAM can also provide a small amount of cache, but you're better off upping your local PC's memory than worrying about DRAM on the SSD.
Here's one other hint about SSD performance; particularly if you're running a DRAM-less TLC or QLC drive then if you're using it for "sacrificial" content like a Steam library you can turn off buffer flushing in Windows for that disk and then you have just worked around one of the main areas where DRAM can help; in writes. Yes, there's a risk there that you could lose or corrupt data if the machine loses power while writing, but particularly for data you can re-download does it really matter?
boglim_destroyer@reddit
LTT is made for people who desperately think or want to appear smart but aren’t. It sucks and it’s made to draw your attention and make money. Stop listening to him. The average person will not notice any difference if their SSD has dram or not.
Demented-Cap-Murica@reddit
It could be a little slower than an equivalent drive with DRAM, but honestly, day to day, you probably won’t notice a difference.
I wish LTT had talked more about some of the nuances that could make DRAM-less SSDs more desirable, like the fact that DRAM-less SSDs tend to have a lower power draw than their DRAM counterparts (although the power draw varies significantly based on a number of things like NAND/controller, PCIe generation, etc)
lobehold@reddit
DRAM-less is only an issue if you use an external enclosure, or use it on Macs.
Sleddoggamer@reddit
I think their video for for engagement and accounting for new builders, paired with their own experience as a professional.
I got my brother a wd_black sn850x as his first SDD just before the prices exploded because I felt like i can trust it to keep going and move inti a fresh build whenever he decides to retire what I built him, but for his second drive I didn't even intend to get him a NVME and ended uo just getting him a HDD when prices got too bad. I think in a non-professional setting, the sn7100 is actually the better SDD as its newer, faster, and more energy efficient, especially if its only the other storage and won't be taking constant rewrites
Kestrel-Transmission@reddit
I saw the same 2tb drive on sale for £200 (down from £370), and dram or not, the right deal at the right time makes all the difference.
Even if big read-write processes tanked 80% of your overall speed, the slow down will be functionality invisible if you're coming from HDD gaming. He'll I'm coming from a 9 year old 850 evo SSD and it'll be an upgrade for me too.
Power draw will be slightly lower too, in case thermal throttling is an issue.
xyeahtony@reddit
it's not a big deal unless you're transferring multi-GB files all the time. I always take tech advice from tech-youtubers with a grain of salt because they're always going to shun affordable options for the best specs.
knexfan0011@reddit
I don't think it's necessarily that they shun affordable options, they just have different priorities that they can't entirely remove from their content. Many people working for a youtube channel will have experience with video editing, which is a very demanding task that absolutely benefits from better hardware (including SSDs), especially when you're working with the output of professional cameras.
Most people don't edit videos professionally, so they shouldn't care about something just because it helps edit videos more smoothly.
hereforpewdiephy@reddit
Yeah I recently got one and arrived at the same conclusion
games do not utilise max speed on ssds
jhaluska@reddit
I've found they fall into 3 categories.
The trick is find the you tuber who shares the same values.
Amissandahit@reddit
I have a dramless crucial p3 and its good enough. Theres probably a difference but dramless is fast enough as it is
deep8787@reddit
Nah, my NVMes dont have cache and its fine, even for a boot drive.
Arrin_Snyders@reddit
While I'm not exactly an expert to be able to comment on the exact technical aspects of it I do have 5 SSDs across two computers of various types, levels of quality and ages, so I maybe can add some info about how they happen to look just from the perspective of daily use. I'll only focus on the ones that seem relevant.
My current best SSD is a 1 TB TeamGroup MP34 SSD that has a DDR3 cache. I bought it a few years back and in looking for an SSD I encountered the exact same problems Linus was talking about in terms of figuring out which had a DRAM cache and which didn't. After a lot of searching I settled on that one as based on benchmarks the fact that the DRAM cache was DDR 3 didn't really affect it's performance and it was cheaper than the next best thing with a DDR4 cache. I moved my Windows 10 from the 120 GB Samsung 850 SSD and its performance has been more than enough for me. It's not the fastest out there, but it does the job well and I can download large files quickly with only my or the source's bandwidth acting as a limitation (I have 500 mbps internet). I used it both as a system drive and to install games.
About a year after that I wanted to also fully transition to SSD storage so I looked for a replacement for my 1 TB HDD. Since this one wouldn't be a system drive I was more interested in space than speed or chache, but still wanted it to be an NVMe. I went with the ADATA Legend 800 2 TB which does not have a DRAM cache but does have HMB. I intended it to use this only for general storage and for some smaller older games, but wound up installing not just relatively large live service games that had frequent updates but also an entire OS. Last year I decided to see if I could switch to Linux and since the ADATA one had more available free space I installed it Kubuntu there as a dual boot system. For almost 6 months now I have been daily driving my PC pretty much exclusively from the Linux partition that is on the DRAM-less SSD and playing much the same frequently updated live service games as before (Wuthering Waves and Honkai Star Rail). I'm sure that if I were to benchmark everything I would see a difference, but in terms of subjective experience both drives feel about the same.
Now, based on what I said so far you might conclude that Linus was exaggerating, but I have one more story to share.
I also build a lower spec (Ryzen 3 3100, 16 GB DDR4 RAM, Nvidia GT 740) secondary PC who's main purpose was to remote in to my main PC while I was visiting relatives. As such I gave it the 1 TB HDD I mentioned before but I wanted an SSD for the OS drive since I knew from my old laptop that Windows 10 didn't work well from an HDD. For this one I went with a truly bottom tier Silicon Power Ace A55 256 GB SATA SSD which at the time cost less than 20 Euros and has neither a DRAM cache nor HMB. As an OS drive it seemed to work about as well as the NVMe ones in my main PC, but at one point I almost upgraded the PC with a proper GPU to be able to run some games locally. While that didn't wind up happening because the GPU I bought arrived defective I did pre-install one of the live service games on the SSD itself, and the experience was terrible. For the duration of the download and install process my PC was basically unusable. Actions would have delays of 20-30 seconds with everything basically frozen in between. Now, I expect it would be a lot less dramatic if the OS was on a separate drive, but odds are that even so it would probably throttle large downloads and installs to some degree. Whether it would really be noticeable in that situation is up for debate, but I'm not really able to test it.
In terms of drive health the MP 34 is at 99% health after 3 years of daily use and the Legend 800 is still at 100% after two years based on Crystaldiskinfo, and I have had zero issues with my data so far. The only one that is older than those is the Samsung one I mentioned earlier, but that one is currently installed but unused. It did serve me well for about 7 years though with no issues.
So, as my conclusion, an NVMe SSD with HMB seems perfectly fine even for a main OS drive, but the ones that have no cache at all can still throttle speed in some situations and are probably only well suited for running the OS, operations with smaller files and media storage. But the WD Black one you have should be more than adequate for what you intend it for.
All that said I do see the overall point that Linus is making. I know from experience that figuring out which drives have a DRAM cache and which don't is a major pain, as sellers rarely list it unless the manufacturer spec sheet does, and those very often don't say anything at all about it. Coupled with confusing naming schemes it can make it very easy to pay more for less than you were expecting. And while for gaming and general use it doesn't seem to matter all that much (at least from my experience) for someone who might be trying to get one for an editing PC on a budget or something with similar demands it can be an issue.
edcboye@reddit
I don't notice any difference in most of my use. Game transfer took a little bit longer off of my nvme than if it had a cache but in daily use no difference. Same with downloading new games directly onto it, my WiFi was the bottleneck not the drive. It hardly makes a difference to me especially with no professional use I don't need immediate transfers I can just let it do it's thing in the background and it doesn't take that long, transferred about 150gb yesterday and not sure how long it took but it was done after my YouTube video finished.
Even if it had a cache my file transfers would have just filled it up immediately and slowed down regardless. Any small file this isn't an issue anyway.
2raysdiver@reddit
DRAM is great for writing data, but it doesn't help with reading as much as people would have you think. Most people would not be able to tell the difference. If you are a data center or you do large data transfers on a regular basis, then DRAM will help. For the average home computer, no difference. We built my son's PC with a gen 3 m.2 with no DRAM. It boots in 11 seconds. I have a high end gen 4 m.2 with 2GB DRAM. It boots in 11 seconds. Time to load the same games is also pretty much equivalent as far as we can tell. Yes, my benchmark numbers in CrystalDiskMark are significantly higher than his. Other than that, you can't tell the difference.
Billy2352@reddit
The only issue I have came across with my Dram-less storage drive is when downloading games on steam the download would stop/start and take ages. I cured it by turning off disk caching for that drive in windows settings. Otherwise read/right values are on par with other drives and it's still 100% healthy according to smart after 2-3 years
definitlyitsbutter@reddit
Then watch the video? Media literacy?
Dramless SSD is totally fine as second ssd, exspecially games where you dont rewrite data that often, so great for your usecase.
Its a bit like SMR harddrives. They work fine, until a special usecase ( like a NAS resilver) hits their limitations and the cut corners hit you in the face.
Dramless are cheaper, not so snappy, less expected lifetime, slower when filled, slower when big amounts of data get written. But as a second drive for games and stuff totally fine.
A lot of the LTT video criticises manufacturers for not being transparent anymore and having confusing names and lineups, as dram can have a huge impact in certain workloads. Its again like the SMR debacle WD had some years ago, where a lot of drives (even prosumer ones) were sold with that tech without disclosing it and being a okay drive in one workload scenario reaching advertised speeds and beeing a total disaster in others.
John_Mat8882@reddit
Sn7100, lexar nm790 are all dramless but the HMB works so well you can't breakt them up even with loads that would put to their knees other dramless SSDs.
I've tried to have a windows cumulative update install ongoing, + steam download from fiber internet + me copying over from another nvme a large game install on either drive while them being the windows drive, all happening at the same moment and no hiccups or anything happened.
Go happy with those.
JayPag@reddit
Stop watching ans trusting LTT, it is entertainment and not serious tech info. You got all the correct info in this thread already.
But please don't use an SSD as a media storage drive, that's where HDDs shine.
bikecatpcje@reddit
Sata ssds yes
For nvme, not so much
GreenManStrolling@reddit
I'm using 7100 as my boot drive right now. For ssd function, dram is needed, whether the ram is on the ssd or on the pc.
darkandark@reddit
For gaming and media, a DRAM-less drive is perfectly fine. Infrequent writes and very frequent reads. That kind of work load is perfect for DRAM-less.
DRAM-less does suck major ass, only if you fill that sucker up often and with big BIG writes. Like hundreds of GBs at a time. Its horrible for drives that are commonly used to hold lots of data like RAW video footage or big files that keep transferring in and out. And they perform horrible for large sustained writes, esp when over 50% of the drive is filled.
formosan1986@reddit
I was worried like you were at first. Then I got one and felt absolutely no difference between my laptop without DRAM cache and my desktop with DRAM cache.
AmazingSugar1@reddit
its fine as long as you're not using it as a boot drive
RossGoode@reddit
I am currently using a sn7100 TB on am4 platform. I have had zero performance issues and highly recommend it, I also had the same question as you a while back.
HawkManHawk@reddit
For gaming and media that will be a perfect, since it will spend most of it's time reading versus writing any large amounts.
I personally wouldn't use a dram-less drive for a boot drive though.
lemon07r@reddit
No, a lot of the newer or higher end ones are really good. It only truly matters if you want to put it in an external closure.
Fixitwithducttape42@reddit
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/wd-black-sn7100-2-tb/6.html
Someone else linked the review on it, but I am pointing to a particular page on the SLC cache. DRAM drives will have full write speed throughout the drive. DRAMLess drives have SLC cache where it has a set amount of space it can write at a high speed than drop down to a lower speed.
The 2tb model has 648gb of SLC cache which is quite big. And when it depleted it dropped down to 800MB/s write speed and averaged a little higher.
For read speeds you are unaffected. The whole notion you need DRAM in a SSD has been blown out of proportion for a long time, especially with NVME drives that are typically faster when it runs out of SLC cache. In real world use the vast majority of people who really benefit from DRAM, especially gamers as our use case is fairly easy on SSD.
Frexxia@reddit
I have two Crucial P3 Plus drives, and when the cache is exhausted they're slower than a hard drive. Not a bug issue unless I'm copying very large files, but I wish I'd spent a bit more instead.
AirRookie@reddit
I have 1 Crucial P3 Plus 4TB ssd, when I transfer my steam files to it the performance dropped to 90mb/s which is slower than a hdd, also I didn’t realize the ssd uses QLC technology and is dram-less after I got the ssd
nguyenlucky@reddit
It's a non-issue for most people because of HMB.
Unless you decide to put it in a non-TB/USB 4 enclosure or PS5, which then makes HMB useless and amplifies the DRAMless disadvantages.
dweller_12@reddit
DRAM cache is an old trope from back in the days of SATA SSDs and relatively low bus speeds. Modern high end NVMe support HMB which kinda makes a DRAM cache irrelevant.
goodnames679@reddit
It made a pretty notable difference back then. It was not always super visible in terms of real-world performance, but was in terms of drive lifespan (which was miserable back in those days, so any assistance was a godsend)
HMB is a nice workaround that does mean you don't strictly need DRAM anymore. You can get excellent performance without it still, and the lifespan of drives is dramatically better than it used to be in the early days of SSDs. Having DRAM in your SSD is nice if you can afford one that includes it, but it's far from a necessity these days.
Jaken_sensei@reddit
I have a Samsung 980 with no drama and a 980 pro which does have dram. I can't really tell the difference when moving files around, opening applications, games etc..
Powerful_Physics1780@reddit
I'm using an gen3 nvme drive and storing games on an old m.2 sata mode drive. Works fine on my system. For normies, probably won't notice the difference.
SushiBump@reddit
Pepsi Challenge that the average PC user will never notice the difference between Gen 3, 4, 5, dram, dramless ssd's in daily nonprofessional use.
Curun@reddit
DRAM drives work better for gaming as noted. Tend to have better lifespan.
But its not the end of the world. You probably wont notice
Beneficial-Ranger238@reddit
The 7100 supposedly outperforms the 850x. I have a couple of them, I’m only using 1 of them currently and I’ve noticed nothing. The more telling thing is there is no performance difference between it and the gen3 drive it replaced. I knew that and the reality was I had some gen 3 drives in machines that were gen 4 capable and I had a gen 4 in a machine that was only Gen 3 so my goal was to just get the right drive into the right slot, not look for any performance gain.
maxgeek@reddit
With current prices I wouldn’t be too picky.
michaelfrieze@reddit
It depends on the drive. Some of the new Samsung DRAM-less drives are actually quite good.
1Fyzix@reddit
I have SN850X as OS drive and sn580 (dramless) as games drive, running basically flawless.
That_Lad_Chad@reddit
There is a significant difference for sequential/sustained loads. DRAMless drives basically have no benefit over drives with DRAM other than potentially power draw, which is marginal.
A DRAMless drive is typically lower tier in general. The sustained speed difference is significant and should never be used for a boot drive unless absolutely necessary. If you do heavy work in things like Premier, Resolve, etc a DRAMless drive will kill your working speed.
However, just for games and stuff, it should be fine, but the write time for the games will be longer. DRAMless drives are essentially objectively worse though. Right now in the current market, its a take what you can get thing. DRAM drives are crazy expensive.
Jathulioh@reddit
Do you have any data/benchmarks to show the difference?
Reddity65@reddit
DRAM-less SSDs primarily suffer in write performance. More specifically, extended write performance.
It's a nice to have, especially if you edit video off of it, but as a gaming drive, you can get away without it.
natflade@reddit
It really doesn’t matter especially for a home pc boot drive or not. If you make your living using your pc to work on critically important project than yes get a dram ssd, otherwise its fine
SagittaryX@reddit
For non boot drive I see no problem, and with HMB support and TLC NAND it's a totally fine drive.
No-Head-633@reddit
IMO it’s not that big of deal if you have enough system memory, as that’s how DRAM less SSDs work is they just use the system memory to store the lookup table thingy. Could it make a slow/low end system like an 11th gen i3 laptop a little faster to have a DRAM cache, maybe negligibly, but any modern desktop not any real difference in my experience. I buy SN770’s like crazy because I used to get them super cheap and they work great in all my devices.