Lexar NM790 4 TB

[geogan]

Different CPU, motherboard, and windows version between those tests.

I suspect Windows updates are the most significant change, especially for DRAMless drives like the NM790 which are hugely dependent on OS management of the HMB. Microsoft broke all the DRAMless Sandisk/WD drives by futzing around with that a few months ago. HMB is constantly getting messed with to patch vulnerability, tweak performance, and update stuff like DirectStorage.

As for numbers being different for two different capacities of the same model tested at the same time, that's completely normal and exactly as expected. Lower capacities require different DRAM density, which will have different latencies and bandwidth, sometimes lower capacities also use fewer channels on the controller, and occasionally both things are true.

TL;DR is that the test results for any given SSD only apply to that model, with that firmware, at that capacity, on that platform. YMMV and the on thing that matters is the relative performance compared to other SSDs also tested on the same platform and OS version.

OK thanks, that might explain it alright... only reason I ask is I am looking to upgrade my 2TB Sabrent Rocket SSD and saw this come up on Amazon and seems like good price/performance compared to the likes of latest Samsungs - I only need it to increase space of this gaming SSD drive - but you saying these DRAMless drives are now worse possibly than these old reviews after MS messing around with OS?

 

[Chrispy_]

I mean, if it's just a gaming drive then IOPS is irrelevant. The IOPS results could be four times worse than even the lowest NM790 score tested and still be within margin of error for game loading.

For a gaming drive, just get one that's well-priced. I personally like to stay away from QLC like the NV2/NV3 because if I decide to bring back half a dozen AAA games from my 2.5GbE NAS to my SSD, it will write at 275MB/s continuously for half an hour, which absolutely ruins QLC drives, they're mostly far too shit to handle continuous transfers unless they're mostly empty.

I digress though; Unless you have a 2.5GbE and 2.5Gbps Internet, you don't really care what SSD you get as a games library as long as it's at least an NVMe drive. The NM790 is both decent and cheap for a 4TB offering and I wouldn't hesitate to buy one for a games library, I don't think it's a bad option for a workstation production/apllication drive, either.

 

[geogan]

I mean, if it's just a gaming drive then IOPS is irrelevant. The IOPS results could be four times worse than even the lowest NM790 score tested and still be within margin of error for game loading.

For a gaming drive, just get one that's well-priced. I personally like to stay away from QLC like the NV2/NV3 because if I decide to bring back half a dozen AAA games from my 2.5GbE NAS to my SSD, it will write at 275MB/s continuously for half an hour, which absolutely ruins QLC drives, they're mostly far too shit to handle continuous transfers unless they're mostly empty.

I digress though; Unless you have a 2.5GbE and 2.5Gbps Internet, you don't really care what SSD you get as a games library as long as it's at least an NVMe drive. The NM790 is both decent and cheap for a 4TB offering and I wouldn't hesitate to buy one for a games library, I don't think it's a bad option for a workstation production/apllication drive, either.

Yeah I basically want a 4TB NvME SSD that's as cheap as possible with good write speed for the initial transfer of the existing 2TB games drive (Sabrent Rocket). After that full SSD transfer is done, I don't think it matters - they all more or less load games files just as quick (not sure if quicker or slower than my existing Sabrent Rocket NVMe 4.0 though?).

I initially saw the Crucial P3 Plus SSD 4TB for similar price and everyone in reviews seemed to be raving about it, until I went to the "one star" section and some guy said....

I bought this even though it has a low durability rating (TBW rating is very low) because it was cheap. Because I intended to use it for a backup session every week. I was initially pleased. It wrote the backup data at a continuous 5k MB/s initially. Once you fill the SLC (actually its not true SLC) buffer it slows to 85 to 90MB/s which is so slow that it takes many hours to complete a task that my existing Samsung 2TB drives complete in a couple of minutes.
Worse still, once the cache is filled other drives write this out to the memory at native memory speed. So the cache empties. Not this drive! It STAYS slow from then on. Once the drive is 30% full it no longer writes at GB speeds but UNDER 100MB/s at best. Its worse than an micro SD card. Dont waste your money.

I replaced this 4TB drive with a Lexar MN 790 4TB one. This has a MUCH greater TBW rating so should last 4x as long. It also writes at 800MB/s after its initial cache has been filled. And it clears this rapidly. So it is quite literally 10X as fast when copying large files compared to the (unusable?) corsair P3 plus. If you buy a 4TB drive you will need to write data to it? This one actually lets you!
Its £10 more, 10X better!!!

... and I noticed this confirmed in the review of it here. Not sure if its the terrible QLC stuff which I don't ever want to buy.

I think the NM790 has a more continuous write speed in the "fill the drive" tables score... and not QLC

Unless you can recommend a better 4TB drive that is not something stupid like 100-300 more than it (like the Samsungs and PCIE 5 drives are) - this Lexar is €265 right now on Amazon UK which is where I get most of my stuff.

The other very annoying thing is my motherboard only has 2 x NVMe slots so there is no way to add this new one without taking existing one out, so I would now have to first copy entire 2TB SDD contents to a temporary folder on a 10TB SATA drive and then swap the drives out, and then write back from SATA... which massively slows & doubles the entire operation! And also having to take apart PC, removing the vertical mount 4080 just to get to the slots! SATA drives are much more convenient to replace!

 

[Chrispy_]

Yeah, P3 and P3+ are QLC garbage. Fine for bursty stuff or as an OS drive for casual users but utterly useless at large amounts of writing. 80-90MBs is both pitiful and expected from a QLC drive that's filled its cache. When many great TLC-based drives like the NM790 or SN770 are available for just a few bucks more, it's very hard to say anything nice about QLC drives because they're simply not cheap enough to warrant the massive downsides to sustained workloads or endurance.

Personally, I'm annoyed that QLC drives aren't at least 20% cheaper than TLC drives, because they're using 25% less physical NAND to store the capacity you're paying for. I know the fixed costs like controller and packaging/distribution/assembly don't scale down in price like the QLC NAND does, but IMO that just means that low-capacity QLC drives shouldn't exist AT ALL.

NM790 will be fine as that's still TLC and filling it from a 2TB source drive would never be slower than 1800MB/s, even if you dumped a full 2TB Sabrent Rocket onto it at all at once.

This is the chart you care about:

The other very annoying thing is my motherboard only has 2 x NVMe slots so there is no way to add this new one without taking existing one out, so I would now have to first copy entire 2TB SDD contents to a temporary folder on a 10TB SATA drive and then swap the drives out, and then write back from SATA... which massively slows & doubles the entire operation! And also having to take apart PC, removing the vertical mount 4080 just to get to the slots! SATA drives are much more convenient to replace!

Buy a cheap USB-C 3.2x2 NVMe enclosure for ~900MB/s transfers like this UGreen one I use. It's handy for the leftover drive you're replacing.

Amazon.co.uk

 

[geogan]

Yeah, P3 and P3+ are QLC garbage. Fine for bursty stuff or as an OS drive for casual users but utterly useless at large amounts of writing. 80-90MBs is both pitiful and expected from a QLC drive that's filled its cache. When many great TLC-based drives like the NM790 or SN770 are available for just a few bucks more, it's very hard to say anything nice about QLC drives because they're simply not cheap enough to warrant the massive downsides to sustained workloads or endurance.

Personally, I'm annoyed that QLC drives aren't at least 20% cheaper than TLC drives, because they're using 25% less physical NAND to store the capacity you're paying for. I know the fixed costs like controller and packaging/distribution/assembly don't scale down in price like the QLC NAND does, but IMO that just means that low-capacity QLC drives shouldn't exist AT ALL.

NM790 will be fine as that's still TLC and filling it from a 2TB source drive would never be slower than 1800MB/s, even if you dumped a full 2TB Sabrent Rocket onto it at all at once.

This is the chart you care about:

View attachment 383716


Buy a cheap USB-C 3.2x2 NVMe enclosure for ~900MB/s transfers like this UGreen one I use. It's handy for the leftover drive you're replacing.

Amazon.co.uk

Yes I did see that "fill the drive" graph - that's main one I was interested in... the continuous average write.

Seems others had same idea... the one you have is not available but this one by Sabrent themselves is probably a safer bet for me to actually place a Sabrent Rocket into reliably... think its the only one they seem to make.

I'll probably just go for these two together.

 

[Chrispy_]

Any NVMe enclosure from any brand is good enough for 10Gbps it would seem, based on my experience of several.

The trick is to make sure you have a 10Gbps port, since some front-panel USB-C ports are routed to internal 5Gbps motherboard headers, and some coloured, labelled USB 3.2x2 A-type ports that you'd think are 10Gbps are actually just the motherboard manufacturer being creative with colour schemes, and they'd just be regular, blue 5Gbps ports if it weren't for the themed flair.

I've never used a 20Gpbs enclosure, mainly because they're twice the price and unless you only deal with modern high-end systems, you probably don't have a 20Gbps port. So many modern entry and midrange boards don't seem to bother with them.

 

[geogan]

Any NVMe enclosure from any brand is good enough for 10Gbps it would seem, based on my experience of several.

The trick is to make sure you have a 10Gbps port, since some front-panel USB-C ports are routed to internal 5Gbps motherboard headers, and some coloured, labelled USB 3.2x2 A-type ports that you'd think are 10Gbps are actually just the motherboard manufacturer being creative with colour schemes, and they'd just be regular, blue 5Gbps ports if it weren't for the themed flair.

I've never used a 20Gpbs enclosure, mainly because they're twice the price and unless you only deal with modern high-end systems, you probably don't have a 20Gbps port. So many modern entry and midrange boards don't seem to bother with them.

Yes I have a ASUS Hero VIII and seems it has a rear "USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C" connector... I also a type-C port on front of my HAF EVO 700 case but that whole front panel is very dodgy... there are four USB ports on it but I can only use two of them because they have to be individually cabled back to motherboard and only one connector on it... so only two ports work (tried to buy a one-to-two special splitter cable but did not work to make all four work)... sometimes had errors ripping Blurays from front, so recently switched back to a motherboard rear port - an absolute pain to get to on this gigantic case. I only use the Type-C for my ASUS ROG Theta 7.1 headphones!

Anyway the Amazon order is in now - bloody annoying import charges from UK Amazon site into EU of €55 so total was nearly €300 - the drive before tax/import was only €220 it said.... but when I looked on German & Spanish Amazon sites, they both said the drive was €280 so I don't know what's going on with Amazon!