Black Friday 2024: 4x4TB NVMe drives for my NAS

[Aqualung]

Looking to purchase a bunch of 4TB NVMe drives for my new all-NVMe NAS this incoming Black Friday, so TBW matters. Hopefully around $200 each (so PCIe 5 seems to be out of the question), though I don't want them to be slouches either (no PCIe 3). As far as I can tell, the big ones (990 Pro, SN850X, Fury Renegade, MP600 Pro/Elite) are unlikely to drop to ~$200 or less, so it looks like I may be stuck with the "second tier" of 4TB drives:

1. Lexar NM790 (no DRAM cache, TBW = 3000);
2. HP FX900 Pro (TBW = 2400), Tom's review here;
3. Lexar Play (no DRAM cache, TBW = 3200);
4. Crucial T500?;
5. Silicon Power US75 (TBW = 2400);
6. Teamgroup MP44 (no DRAM cache, TBW = 3000);
7. Silicon Power XS70 (TBW = 2800), etc.

So, assuming that they all drop to around $200, which ones in the list would you guys recommend? Are there any other choices besides these?

[Naturally, I'd prefer 8TB drives, but those are unlikely to drop to ~$400 this time around.]

 

[Solaris17]

I don’t have time to look at these but try to make sure they have cache!!!

 

[TheLostSwede]

Considering you're bottlenecked by the Ethernet interface on the NAS, assuming you don't have some enterprise level hardware at home, I would go for the Crucial T500, since they have a 5 year warranty and you know they'll honour it.

The "HP" drives are made and distributed by BIWIN, so don't expect HP warranty on those drives.

 

[Aqualung]

Shocked to see how low the TBW rating is on the big name NVMes! Most of them hover around the 2400 mark! Should I rather trust Samsung, say, at 2400, or one of these 3000-3200 DRAM-less second tier drives? What do you guys think? Interestingly, the DRAM-less seem to have a better TBW rating!

Again, my use is mainly passive data storage on my NAS. I do not envision a lot of data crunching on the NAS.

 

[TheLostSwede]

How much data do you write on a daily basis?
I wouldn't really be too worried about it based on what you're saying your use case is.

Also, this might be handy:

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That HP drive you were listing is going for under $200, as is the Silicon Power drive, although the HP appears to be the better choice.
$50 more gets you the WD Black SN850X.

https://camelcamelcamel.com/search?q=4tb+NVME+ssd&sp=Price%3ALowToHigh

https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?N=100011693%20600551612%20601193224&Order=1

 

[Solaris17]

Again, my use is mainly passive data storage on my NAS. I do not envision a lot of data crunching on the NAS.

If your not doing a ton of writes or super large writes regularly, then you can probably suffer through the initial transfer and live with non-cached disks.

 

[chrcoluk]

There is some good sales on black friday for storage of course its all out of stock. I think storage has tons of people watching it now, because it has such volatile pricing, everyone waiting to pounce on a sale.

SN850X's at least without heatsinks were close to last winter pricing, but now out of stock, 4TB particularly good pricing.
I got another WD red plus, but had to ask WD to discount their store to price match amazon black friday as amazon went out of stock within 2 minutes of the price drop, WD obliged.

For reference I dont really bother with nand caching on my NAS, its mostly used for media and backups, I dont see the need to cache on SSD for that stuff, and it has plenty of RAM cache. It can also sustainably write at least as fast as I can read the data and my network speed.

 

[Aqualung]

The Kingston Fury Renegade actually looks very attractive, with its 4000(!) TBW. The $255 price, however, might place it out of my reach. If that drops down to ~200 this Friday (unlikely), then I think I've got my answer.

 

[TheLostSwede]

For reference I dont really bother with nand caching on my NAS, its mostly used for media and backups, I dont see the need to cache on SSD for that stuff, and it has plenty of RAM cache. It can also sustainably write at least as fast as I can read the data and my network speed.

The DRAM on SSDs aren't for caching data read/writes though, it's for the meta data file table, which makes it faster for the SSD to find the data when you want to access it again. Modern DRAM-less drives aren't suffering as much as they used to, so in many use cases there isn't a huge difference.

 

[dgianstefani]

The Kingston Fury Renegade actually looks very attractive, with its 4000(!) TBW. The $255 price, however, might place it out of my reach. If that drops down to ~200 this Friday (unlikely), then I think I've got my answer.

All these drives use the same/very similar NAND, so I doubt there's a real difference between them regarding endurance.

If you want endurance you buy SLC or Optane, neither of which are in your budget.

 

[Wirko]

If your not doing a ton of writes or super large writes regularly, then you can probably suffer through the initial transfer and live with non-cached disks.

Agreed but that also depends on other parts of the NAS system - the OS and possibly the motherboard. If you have neither DRAM cache nor HMB, chances are performance and endurance will suffer a lot.

Edit: I understand you mean DRAM cache on the SSD, not SLC cache or some other form of caching.

The Kingston Fury Renegade actually looks very attractive, with its 4000(!) TBW. The $255 price, however, might place it out of my reach. If that drops down to ~200 this Friday (unlikely), then I think I've got my answer.

The KC3000 is just as good. Same controller, same Micron NAND. The difference in endurance comes from the difference in usable capacity, 2 TB vs. 2048 GB. Indeed the KC3000 has a variant with Kioxia NAND (same type as the SN850X), but I don't expect that one to be inferior in any respect. I bought a 2 TB KC3000 in July and it came with Micron NAND.

Another option if you're seeking high endurance is the WD SN700 (5.1 PB for 4 TB model) but it's only PCIe 3.0 and probably over your budget.

The "HP" drives are made and distributed by BIWIN, so don't expect HP warranty on those drives.

What do you mean by that? Sure you can't expect enterprise-level HP warranty, and I'd worry about HP retail customer support too, but (at least if you are in Europe) you file the RMA with the retailer, not HP, right?

 

[Kapone33]

Whatever is cheapest. NVME have no difference in real world performance or endurance. I can confirm that SSDs do not suffer the pitfall that NVME does, especially when you RAID 0 them.

Agreed but that also depends on other parts of the NAS system - the OS and possibly the motherboard. If you have neither DRAM cache nor HMB, chances are performance and endurance will suffer a lot.

Edit: I understand you mean DRAM cache on the SSD, not SLC cache or some other form of caching.


The KC3000 is just as good. Same controller, same Micron NAND. The difference in endurance comes from the difference in usable capacity, 2 TB vs. 2048 GB. Indeed the KC3000 has a variant with Kioxia NAND (same type as the SN850X), but I don't expect that one to be inferior in any respect. I bought a 2 TB KC3000 in July and it came with Micron NAND.

Another option if you're seeking high endurance is the WD SN700 (5.1 PB for 4 TB model) but it's only PCIe 3.0 and probably over your budget.


What do you mean by that? Sure you can't expect enterprise-level HP warranty, and I'd worry about HP retail customer support too, but (at least if you are in Europe) you file the RMA with the retailer, not HP, right?

Does anything today compare to the endurance of the Intel 660P?

 

[TheLostSwede]

What do you mean by that? Sure you can't expect enterprise-level HP warranty, and I'd worry about HP retail customer support too, but (at least if you are in Europe) you file the RMA with the retailer, not HP, right?

I guess that depends, since the warranty is often longer than the store has to give you for SSDs and DRAM. At some point you might have to deal with the company and HP might say that you have to deal with BIWIN which might not want to deal with end users and then you're screwed.