I found a 2 TB M.2 NVMe SSD going for $189.99 on Newegg with a promo coupon which seems like a pretty acceptable deal and a good way to go all SSD without the need for a Hard Drive (except external Hard Drives that can serve as storage and backup).
I was wondering if there is any catch to using an M.2 NVMe SSD with QLC technology. I heard in terms of reliability it is a downgrade from TLC but will that effect me from using my OS for things like gaming or other normal usage?
The 660p is fine, and an incredible value. It isn’t a fast SSD, nowhere near most NVMe drives, but it’s aight. Wear is much lower than TLC but not such that you’d ever notice in normal usage.
That said, I wouldn’t buy one for another year. QLC is very new and I’m still feeling burns from OCZ poison many years ago. I’m convervative with SSDs.
I see. And TLC SSD prices are a bit out of realm for 2 TB.
I could resort to SATA SSDs but if I am paying a similar price for much lower speeds, what’s the point?
Another option is for me to just wait until I can afford a new laptop to replace the one I currently use since I need something that won’t crash on me when I am using Linux. Preferably a 2-in-1.
It’s just with the 2-in-1s I was looking have only have a single M.2 slot so I figured I may as well get a large SSD with it. Wish there was 2 M.2 slots or 1 M.2 and 1 2.5" though but it’s not a deal breaker.
Yes, I would personally go for a 1TB TLC NVMe SSD instead. That is quite a lot of space for a laptop if you aren’t storing a ton of movies and whatnot.
That said, I’m sure the 660p is fine. Intel was one of the OG SSD manufacturers. I’m just not sure enough to buy one myself.
Idk, my 1 TB HDD is 2/3rds full already and my SATA SSD has a couple of hundred gigabytes on it already out of 500 GB. I suppose I could try emptying the stuff a bit but most of it is games (some of it being other software and things of course).
I don’t think 1 TB would carry me for very long. Depends on what my next laptop is, my current one would be no problem since I have a Hard Drive to complement it with for additional storage, but if I only have a single M.2…
Well if you’re a digital hoarder, either slap yourself with a rolled-up newspaper whenever you keep old crap or just grab the 2TB 660p.
Yeah, I could shave a few GBs off probably if I stored some my videos elsewhere AND if I got rid of those ISO files of Linux distros that I keep floating around. The games take up the bulk of the space still.
That’s a hell of a lot of games. Most people don’t actively play more than 1-2 at a time, and maybe you keep a couple F2P MMOs around like I do, ESO, Guild Wars 2, but the rest of the crap just admit to yourself you’re never going to play them and toss in the bin.
Funny enough, that’s not all of my games. Most of the Steam games I haven’t bothered downloading because I have no plans on playing them soon if ever. Then again, I got Witcher 3 taking up a lot of space including DLC, I have a few other games that take up 20 GB, some only take up 500 MB of course and don’t make a difference.
I should just delete any extra ISO files I have and move the video files off the HDD and SSD to save some space and see how that goes. If I can spare 100 GB more than I already have on a Hard Drive, that would make a big difference between needing a 2 TB SSD and being content with a 1 TB SSD.
Besides, I haven’t got too many new games as of late.
from what ive read the higher the cell level the lower the lifespan. this isnt pure fact there’s difference in quality of parts and controller ect.
Yes, that’s right. QLC can handle a lot less writes than TLC, but it’s rated for 200TB of writes, which doesn’t seem like a lot, but when you think about it, that’s a hell of a lot-- if you write a whopping 100GB/day that’s 5 years of endurance. And you don’t write 100GB/day unless you use it for enterprise work or editing large videos. It simply isn’t meant for that.
Perhaps you could get an external hdd and use the steam backup feature to save the games (iso’s too) to it?
Then restoring the game from hdd would be quicker than just downloading it again?
If that’s true then QLC should be fine then, because I don’t write 100 GBs/day often.
I could entertain the idea of building a NAS for storing videos and games that I don’t need “immediate” access to but that’s for another time.
NAS is fine for video but you don’t want to use it for games unless you setup iSCSI and… it’s just not worth it.
True, although I meant that I should at least use it as backup and not for like main storage due to potential latency issues, etc.
Why would you need to backup games? Just download them again from Steam, unless your internet is slow or transfer-limited or something.
Yeah, that’s probably not the brightest idea I came up with. For videos, music, pictures and ebooks a NAS would work wonders.
You’d probably benefit from primocache to cache hard disk reads to the ssd instead, uses nowhere near as much ssd capacity as just using the ssd natively and has 90% of the read speed if configured right.
Unless you’re regularly transferring files, the speed won’t be interface bound, it’ll be limited by low queue depth performance.