Storage for new gaming PC

[oxrufiioxo]

I would stay away from HDD for anything but storing pictures or video files if gaming get at least a Sata SSD even if that means 1/4-1/2 the storage space..... I use WD Black 10TB for backup and even for that it's painful these days loading any modern game with an engine that streams which is the majority these days and you will see stutter.

 

[londiste]

Stay away from QLC based SSD's they are utter garbage for anything other than use as external backup drives. For OS or secondary games storage the lacking durability is unacceptable.

As long as you know what you are getting and it is a fit for the use case - why not? Speed deficiency is primarily about writes - and large writes at that - and endurance may not be a problem if it is not a write-heavy drive.

I have a 660p for games drive, 26 months and 27TB writes later I am quite happy with it. Reads are fast enough, slow writes seem to occur only when drive is really full or writing tens or hundreds of GB and no indication of any endurance issues so far. 2TB of this was ~160€ back then and I honestly cannot complain about the result.

 

[neatfeatguy]

I've got a 500GB 970 Evo that houses games I tend to be playing more often. Any other game I install on my 1TB WD Black. I've seen other suggest SSD and HD for storing games. If you're just installing a games to be installing them and load times aren't very important to you, put things on a HDD. Any game you want faster load times, put them on a SSD.

 

[yotano211]

For secondary storage that games will load from, this drive is all you need. It has the space you want and the performance that you will need.

Stay away from QLC based SSD's they are utter garbage for anything other than use as external backup drives. For OS or secondary games storage the lacking durability is unacceptable.

QLC drives are not that bad. Most users today don't transfer tons of data every day.

 

[MIRTAZAPINE]

For secondary storage that games will load from, this drive is all you need. It has the space you want and the performance that you will need.

Stay away from QLC based SSD's they are utter garbage for anything other than use as external backup drives. For OS or secondary games storage the lacking durability is unacceptable.

THIS! I'll stay away from QLC their not that good for OS drives versus even plain sata TLC drive. I had use a crucial P1 qlc as an OS drives things do starting get slow once the background writes get going that I find even plain old sata MX500 tlc drives are much more responsive to me. Frankly I find the jump to an m2 tlc ssd to not be much a perceptible difference than a very good sata ssd.

QLC drives as external thumbdrives are ok though but even I would avoid putting too valuable a data in them. I pull my data out of it when it started acting abit weird for my external. For a PC storage drive I don't find it too be a good tradeoff versus a CMR HDD for the high price you are paying.

 

[Chrispy_]

Stay away from QLC based SSD's they are utter garbage for anything other than use as external backup drives.

Not even sure they're good for that, especially Samsung who had the 840 and 840EVO fiasco where unpowered data retention was poor and pre-firmware fix, even powered data retention was bad for data that wasn't recently written. IIRC the problem was voltage drift between data states for TLC. QLC has even narrower voltage ranges per bit so along with the lower endurance is theoretically poorer unpowered data retention too.

Lots of users never got firmware updates (as the OEM-only drives weren't covered) so they had to resort to third-party tools like Diskfresh to keep their data intact over periods longer than a few months.

 

[newtekie1]

If you're buying an 870 QVO for your OS drive or one you will write to often....then its suboptimal performance will be highlighted often.

No it won't.

THIS! I'll stay away from QLC their not that good for OS drives versus even plain sata TLC drive. I had use a crucial P1 qlc as an OS drives things do starting get slow once the background writes get going that I find even plain old sata MX500 tlc drives are much more responsive to me. Frankly I find the jump to an m2 tlc ssd to not be much a perceptible difference than a very good sata ssd.

QLC drives as external thumbdrives are ok though but even I would avoid putting too valuable a data in them. I pull my data out of it when it started acting abit weird for my external. For a PC storage drive I don't find it too be a good tradeoff versus a CMR HDD for the high price you are paying.

The crucial P1 was plagued by firmware issues. That isn't how a good QLC drive should behave. The P2 was a much better drive and the Intel QLC drives are really good. Even the Samsung QVO drives larger than 1TB perform well, even when writing somewhat large data.

As for the longevity, you people really over estimate how much you write to your OS drives.

 

[ThaiTaffy]

As for the longevity, you people really over estimate how much you write to your OS drives.

I try not to write to any SSD I have a 10year old Corsair force SSD that's still pretty healthy as I've pointed out before move your temp folders and so on to a dedicated HDD then you really don't write on them at all, as a general user/gamer. Maybe if your editing video or something else that you regularly load a drive up then dump it when your project is over you might need more longevity.

 

[lexluthermiester]

I would stay away from HDD for anything but storing pictures or video files if gaming get at least a Sata SSD even if that means 1/4-1/2 the storage space..... I use WD Black 10TB for backup and even for that it's painful these days loading any modern game with an engine that streams which is the majority these days and you will see stutter.

Nonsense.

As long as you know what you are getting and it is a fit for the use case - why not?

Garbage is garbage. QLC, even most recent stuff is only fit for incidental use-case-scenarios, not mainstream use.

QLC drives are not that bad.

Yes, they are.

Most users today don't transfer tons of data every day.

QLC P/E cycle limits are measure in the mid-hundreds even with the BEST brands. Not acceptable for OS or main access drive usage scenario's.

Not even sure they're good for that, especially Samsung who had the 840 and 840EVO fiasco where unpowered data retention was poor and pre-firmware fix, even powered data retention was bad for data that wasn't recently written. IIRC the problem was voltage drift between data states for TLC. QLC has even narrower voltage ranges per bit so along with the lower endurance is theoretically poorer unpowered data retention too.

Yeah, there's also this.

The P2 was a much better drive and the Intel QLC drives are really good. Even the Samsung QVO drives larger than 1TB perform well, even when writing somewhat large data.

Better, yes. Better is not always good. Samsung QLC is still trash, Micron QLC is a bit better but still poor and Intel is in that same class.


People, QLC is UTTER GARBAGE. Don't use it! Using it is asking for problems at a later date. If you want to gamble with your system, go right ahead, just don't say you weren't warned..

 

[londiste]

As for the longevity, you people really over estimate how much you write to your OS drives.

Even moreso, people tend to overestimate how much they write on non-OS drives. OP here stated he is looking for secondary storage for older games and large files.

@lexluthermiester has a good point about data retention though. This is somewhat of an unknown for SSDs. Leaving an SSD unpowered for months has certain risk. They should be fine when powered.

 

[cst1992]

People, QLC is UTTER GARBAGE

I'd rather stick with HDDs here. Even the Black variant of WD which has 160MB/s transfer speed is cheaper per gigabyte than the Samsung 870 QVO which reportedly has 150.
Regardless of speed - if QLC is unreliable then it's outta here.

 

[newtekie1]

QLC P/E cycle limits are measure in the mid-hundreds even with the BEST brands. Not acceptable for OS or main access drive usage scenario's.

The estimated write life of QLC drives is in the hundreds or even thousands of TB's. GTFO with this P/E cycle limit bull, you aren't writing to a single cell constantly. The 2TB Samsung 870 QVO is rated for 720TB of written data. That's way more than any OS drive will ever see under normal use in 10 years. And storage drives tend to be written to even less.

Better, yes. Better is not always good. Samsung QLC is still trash, Micron QLC is a bit better but still poor and Intel is in that same class.


People, QLC is UTTER GARBAGE. Don't use it! Using it is asking for problems at a later date. If you want to gamble with your system, go right ahead, just don't say you weren't warned..

You're basing this on basically nothing. What makes it trash? You're perceived unreliability, even though the QLC is still likely to outlive every other part of the computer? The slow write performance that is still pretty damn fast?

I'd rather stick with HDDs here. Even the Black variant of WD which has 160MB/s transfer speed is cheaper per gigabyte than the Samsung 870 QVO which reportedly has 150.
Regardless of speed

The 2TB+ 870 Evo write speed AFTER the 80GB SLC cache is used up, drops to 190MB/s. How often are you writing more than 80GB to your secondary drive from a source that is significantly faster than 190MB/s? The QVO is still miles faster than any HDD when reading though, remember that. The slow limitation of QLC is only for large sustained writes, it does not affect reading from the drive at all or even random small writes.

if QLC is unreliable then it's outta here.

There is nothing to say it is unreliable. It's just the "sky is falling" people that see lower P/E cycles and assume the drives are unreliable. Samsung wouldn't be warrantying the drives for 720TB+ of data written if the drives couldn't reliably handle that amount of written data. Of course, that itself is an insane amount of data to write to a 2TB drive anyway.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Even the Black variant of WD which has 160MB/s transfer speed is cheaper per gigabyte

The Blue vs Black is really the question then. If you want to afford the Black then go that way as it will not let you down. But if you're on a budget, that WD Blue drive is a good performer.

 

[80-watt Hamster]

The WD Blue are cheap enough that you could put two in RAID1. The write performance hit wouldn't be a big deal for this use case, and the bonus read speed could be noticeable.

Or go with one of the QLC drives. Wear leveling should be sufficient to let it keep on trucking for what you're asking of it, even if it's as bad as Lex says. I'd personally go RAID1 in your situation, though.

 

[lexluthermiester]

The estimated write life of QLC drives is in the hundreds or even thousands of TB's.

TB's written is BS marketing jargon. Cell P/E cycles are the defining metric and the only one I care about.

You're basing this on basically nothing.

Incorrect. Those statements are based on actual endurance testing that I have done. When I test 10 QLC based drives at a time and ALL 10 fail inside of 1 year, I call that unacceptable and I call the drives and QLC technology garbage.

You're perceived unreliability, even though the QLC is still likely to outlive every other part of the computer?

That is a statement of pure fantasy..

 

[yotano211]

I'd rather stick with HDDs here. Even the Black variant of WD which has 160MB/s transfer speed is cheaper per gigabyte than the Samsung 870 QVO which reportedly has 150.
Regardless of speed - if QLC is unreliable then it's outta here.

Its 150mb/s when the SLC runs out. When the 870 qvo is runnng normally, it will run at 500-550mb/s, the limit of a SATA connection.

The 2TB+ 870 Evo write speed AFTER the 80GB SLC cache is used up, drops to 190MB/s. How often are you writing more than 80GB to your secondary drive from a source that is significantly faster than 190MB/s? The QVO is still miles faster than any HDD when reading though, remember that. The slow limitation of QLC is only for large sustained writes, it does not affect reading from the drive at all or even random small writes.

My 870 qvo tops out at 150-155mb/s when the SLC cache runs out, I have the 8tb version. I dont mind the slower speeds when the SLC runs out, I use it for movie/show storage.

 

[sam_86314]

I have a couple of 1TB MX500s and a 1TB SanDisk Ultra NVMe as my storage drives. The MX500s are in a striped storage space, and I want to get more to expand it. The array does 1100MB/s read and 1000MB/s write.

I tend to avoid QLC as I find that I do a lot of writing to my drives, hell I was even hesitant to switch to exclusively SSDs for that reason. After seeing improvements in real-world use (game load times, moving files to/from my server over 10GbE), I'd say it was totally worth it.

If you were to go the striped storage space/RAID 0 route, be sure to keep regular backups of your array.

 

[cst1992]

Everyone calm down please.

Write performance is not critical in this case. So I could basically go for a WD Blue and not really care. Yes, it'll take some time to initially transfer the data but after that I won't even notice.

QVO is not so cheap as to consider it in place of a HDD. It's 3x the price of the Blue/Seagate and 1.5x the price of the Black. I am expecting a drop in the price of the MX500(as posted above, I strongly believe it's overpriced right now), so if I think I need it, I'll just spend the extra and get the MX500.

As for the 870 Evo and the 970 Evo Plus M.2 drive, they just seem like bad value for this use case.

 

[Toothless]

I'd look at Toshiba HDDs. 150mb/s average for my 5TBs and you can get quite a bit storage for a good deal.

Not sure the hate on HDDs. I get people don't want to wait but is three seconds really going to ruin your day.

 

[Bomby569]

I can't play on hdd's anymore and i have a very good one. better get yourself an ssd, doesn't need to be anything fancy, a mx500 is enough, you won't notice any difference to anything better just for gaming.

I had all my gaming on a 1tb MX500 and another 250gb 860 evo, but decided to sell them for a nvme just for less cables, because you won't notice any difference in gaming.

 

[MIRTAZAPINE]

Just to add for OP. HDD that is 8TB and below is shingled hdd rather than conventional hdd for brands like seagate especially. WD hdd 8TB and above is still CMR drives. Shingled drives perform rather poor for read/write operation at the same time when the cache is exhausted. I am not not sure how a game would influence shingled drives though I never play games from a shingled drive. You maybe better just going for purely sata ssd if getting HDD 8TB CMR above is not possible.

 

[newtekie1]

Write performance is not critical in this case. So I could basically go for a WD Blue and not really care. Yes, it'll take some time to initially transfer the data but after that I won't even notice.

I wouldn't go with the WD Blue HDD just because I don't find them reliable at all. I've had far too many die on me. But I wouldn't go with any desktop HDD, I'd get an enterprise/NAS drive. Either a seagate Exos or Ironwolf or WD Red Pro(don't get the WD Red non-Pro drives, they are SMR).

QVO is not so cheap as to consider it in place of a HDD. It's 3x the price of the Blue/Seagate and 1.5x the price of the Black. I am expecting a drop in the price of the MX500(as posted above, I strongly believe it's overpriced right now), so if I think I need it, I'll just spend the extra and get the MX500.

I wouldn't consider it in place of HDDs, but I'd consider it in place of other SSDs if the price is right. The problem with QVO is it isn't cheap enough most of the time as you said. A MX500 would definitely be a better choice if the price is somewhat close.

 

[claes]

Just to add for OP. HDD that is 8TB and below is shingled hdd rather than conventional hdd for brands like seagate especially. WD hdd 8TB and above is still CMR drives. Shingled drives perform rather poor for read/write operation at the same time when the cache is exhausted. I am not not sure how a game would influence shingled drives though I never play games from a shingled drive. You maybe better just going for purely sata ssd if getting HDD 8TB CMR above is not possible.

Not all <8TB drives are SMR, but some are. Last I checked none of the WD blacks are shingled.

(Also, the problem with SMR drives is that they slow down when writing over blocks that have previously been written to, not caching)

 

[cst1992]

I just need a drive for excess data storage.

Believe it or not till now I've been using the 5400RPM 2.5" drives you get when you strip the cover off an external hard drive. Now that I am getting a new PC I intend to leave those drives in my old PC.

Surely a WD Blue is better than those? Black, if not Blue?

 

[lexluthermiester]

Surely a WD Blue is better than those? Black, if not Blue?

Oh heck yes. It might be a wiser idea to get a 4TB WD Blue. You get a lot of space for a price that's easy on the wallet.