What's the fastest storage in your PC?

[Splinterdog]

2 SATA SSDs and 2 HDD.

Realistically, what I need is a lot more storage, and while SATA SSDs aren't all that impressive anymore, they're enough for me for now. Besides, I fear that once I jump to NVMe, I will never be able to go back to SATA SSDs (which could mean a price premium, magnified by my country's economic madness on top of it, for me).

You and I are in the same boat as we live in the same crazy country. Buy now, before the elections.
I'm on M.2 SATA, but when funds allow I'll be grabbing an NVMe, probably on my next trip to the first world.
I'm happy with the general performance, but now that I know how fast NVMe is...

 

[E-curbi]

We're wondering about the adoption rates of fast storage. What kind of storage is the fastest in your computer?

Normally this would be the drive that has your Windows installation (your C: ), but we understand that some creators could have faster devices than even their C: for their data-sets (such as RAID volumes).

Intel's Optane 3D X-Point and Micron's 3D X-Point adoption rates are not important?

Both are much faster at lower QD-1 and QD-2 than standard NVMe SSDs.

Below, the Intel 900P is rated 1st out of 1011 SSDs user data provided by enthusiasts. And that's not important?

Please click the green human to continue - UserBenchmark

 

[kapone32]

Intel's Optane 3D X-Point and Micron's 3D X-Point adoption rates are not important?

Both are much faster at lower QD-1 and QD-2 than standard NVMe SSDs.

Below, the Intel 900P is rated 1st out of 1011 SSDs user data provided by enthusiasts. And that's not important?

Please click the green human to continue - UserBenchmark

They do work better than all NVME drives at Qd1 and QD2 but the cost is what puts it out of the range of most users.

 

[E-curbi]

They do work better than all NVME drives at Qd1 and QD2 but the cost is what puts it out of the range of most users.

I agree the Optane 905P PCIe drives are crazy too expensive at $1200 and $2200.

Yet, the Optane 900P 280GB capacity is only $254 at Newegg, been around that price for over a year. Not large enough to store everything, but easily room for your primary OS and a few applications.

I'm using a 900P 280GB SSD as OS and app primary drive along with (4) SATA 250GB Samsung 860 Pro SSDs as additional internal storage, and it works out great. Can always add larger SATA SSDs if need be.

$254 is not so expensive that the entire technology should be omitted from a survey, even if the adoption numbers are still low. Just sayin'

 

[kapone32]

I agree the Optane 905P PCIe drives are crazy too expensive at $1200 and $2400.

Yet, the Optane 900P 280GB capacity is only $254 at newegg, been that price for over a year. Not large enough to store everything, but easily room for your primary OS and a few applications.

I'm using a 900P 280GB SSD as OS and app drive with (4) SATA 250GB Samsung 860 Pro SSDs as internal storage, and it works out great. Can always add larger SATA SSDs as need be.

$254 is not so expensive that the entire technology should be omitted from a survey, even if the adoption numbers are still low. Just sayin'


View attachment 135173

If I could get one for that price I would probably do it but in Canada they are almost $500 and that is truly eye watering $1.71 per GB.

INTEL SSD SSDPE21D280GASX 900P 280GB 2.5IN PCIE 4.0 20NM 3D XPOINT Brown Box : Amazon.ca: Electronics

INTEL SSD SSDPE21D280GASX 900P 280GB 2.5IN PCIE 4.0 20NM 3D XPOINT Brown Box : Amazon.ca: Electronics

www.amazon.ca

 

[phill]

I'm still on SATA SSD simply because when I tried my NVME drive with my X99 MSI board, if I overclocked the BCLK even 0.01Mhz, it just refused to work and being that my OCD kills me when it comes to overclocking, I need it to read 4.2Ghz rather than 4.199Ghz, I just can't lol

That said, would probably not notice the difference between and even then, tend to use just for the OS and not for anything else really.. Seems a little redundant at that point even for an enthusiast... Rest of my system is HDs as I've no spare cash to upgrade to good sized SSDs. However, I'm toying with the idea of SSD raid with a controller... Should prove interesting for 5 minutes at least!

Anything else here is just pure storage, so raid 1 or 5 drive setups on my NAS or my servers... I would just like to be able to grab some nice sized drives at some point... My poor NAS is filling up

 

[E-curbi]

If I could get one for that price I would probably do it but in Canada they are almost $500 and that is truly eye watering $1.71 per GB.

INTEL SSD SSDPE21D280GASX 900P 280GB 2.5IN PCIE 4.0 20NM 3D XPOINT Brown Box : Amazon.ca: Electronics

INTEL SSD SSDPE21D280GASX 900P 280GB 2.5IN PCIE 4.0 20NM 3D XPOINT Brown Box : Amazon.ca: Electronics

www.amazon.ca

Wow, I had no idea the same part in Canada would cost so much more. Of course the USD to CAD conversion is active - but still.

Yea, Newegg US has a special volume pricing for Intel Optane drives, and the 280GB capacity has been between $249 and $299 for about 12months now.

Sometimes, Newegg will have a special 900P 280GB PCIe SSD $249 with an additional 10% off for about 5days, so as low as $224USD. Just have to save the page and keep checking for the sale.

Newegg US also has the lowest prices for Gskill Trident Z ddr4 memory kits, they have some special high-volume agreement made with Gskill. Newegg US apparently purchases in bulk and passes on a lower price to consumers.

I watched and waited for my Trident Z Royal Silver kit to drop in price at pricepickers.com, it only dropped about $10 but Newegg always had the lowest price

A cool website to watch prices fall over time:

Just plug in the part you're planning to purchase and watch the price go down. lol My 4600mhz kit didn't drop by much, lol, but there's a cool graph that tells you when the part launched and how the price fluctuates as time moves forward, pretty cool.

G.Skill Trident Z Royal 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-4600 CL18 Memory

pcpartpicker.com

Grabbed my ddr4 kit back in May this year for $419. Today it's selling for $389. $30 less - same kit.

Can Canadians purchase from Newegg US? Gosh why not?

 

[Bronan]

lol i see lots of people posting that their nvme are the fastest.
But really for what because they are the fastest at a synthetic benchmark.
I have learned that my raid0 setup with 4 x old enterprise ssd (550/490 Mb/s each ) outperform my duo nvme in many situations.
All my games and large data is being stored on these very fast sata ssd drives and because they already outperform the nvme at game loading most of the time, making a raid0 cluster of them gets me insane loading speeds.
Since writing only concerns saving your progress its actually less important for gaming. When i (un)pack my large archives i see that even with this task the raid0 of the sata3 ssd beat the crap out of the nvme.
It simply is faster on the old ssd raid setup, so my next machine is going to get a sata raid card and the next motherboard has to have alot of sata connectors so i can make a huge raid10 setup with sata3 ssd. Everyone thinking that will be slower than nvme has to really look very well if they have a need for a 64 queue depth task if not your still better of with the old sata3.
So my next project will be 16 ssd in raid 10, so as soon as one company is selling a bunch of ssd drives being replaced i will buy a fair amount of them.
But it really depends on the size of the drives as well, because i see alot of fairly new models already being switched out as well being ssd over 1,2 Tb and larger ones. I seen today already 4 ssd being larger than 4 Tb being sold. These drives have a insane amount of read/write cycles so they should hardly ever fail with whatever i do on them. I simply will never reach the drives end of read/write limits as long as i live. So when i can it will be up to 8 larger ssd or go for 16 smaller ones being 480 to 512 Gb. That will make a freaking fast raid setup
As backup i have a synology 1618+ with 2 sata ssd as cache and 4 x 8 Tb in raid 10 which is also storing all pc backups as well for important files

 

[stmal]

my setup
NVME SSD 512GB - Boot drive and big games. I think it will improve loading time
SATA SSD. For smaller games.
HDD. For geforce instant replay

 

[John Naylor]

I'd love to see a few test results including typical real world every day uses. Test in reviews are, for the most part show a) things one never actually does, b) does once or twice in its lifetime or c) the difference is too small to be observed w/o instrumentation. WinStartUp, Game level loading and even video import are obviously relatable. With the forum audience here, obviously, "We love power .... arghh, arghhh, arghhh" ... but Id love to be able to look at the issue in terms of ROI. ... and probably laugh at myself for saying "Yeah ... I ***need** that

For example, we measured a 0.9 second difference in OS startup time with SSD vs SSHD

A 2TB SSHD is $95
A 2TB SSD is $300-450

Can you get enough of a productivity increase over its lifetime to warrant the extra cost ? Accounting for the fact the user does not instantly respond ? For example, if a legal secretary is opening a document that her boss marked up .... I'd bet that she is reading the document, assessing what she has to do and the document is on screen looong before she's ready to start typing. If one option boots to windows 1 ...2 ... 3 seconds faster, does it matter if the user is away from their desk getting cofee when their system is booting ? Doers it matter how long a level takes to load, if the user has taken a bio or looking at a web site getting an idea of what to expect in the next level.

While yes, I'm still going to install a Samsung Pro level SSD and Im still gonna use a 7200 rpm SSHD for archival storage needs, I would just love to have some real data so as to put performance differences in perspective.

 

[E-curbi]

Optane 900P 280GB is back down to $254 at Newegg. woohoo!

Intel Optane 900P 480 Gb Solid State Drive - Internal - Pci Express (Pci Express 3.0 X4) - Newegg.com

Buy Intel Optane 900P 480 Gb Solid State Drive - Internal - Pci Express (Pci Express 3.0 X4) with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!

www.newegg.com

Still believe this PCIe SSD storage drive should be included in this survey, even if only a small percent of owners respond. That's how you watch a trend and adoption rate of new technology over time.

900P is available in 280GB, 480GB PCIe plug and play, no data or power cables to attach, keeps the build nice and clean, uses 4 CPU lanes OR 4 chipset lanes depending on which slot you choose to mount the drive on your motherboard.

The 900P HHHL (half height half length) form factor and "built like a tank" drive enclosure are also extremely sexy, imho.

It's a really nice looking part for only $254. Grab one on a 10% off sale for $228. Black Friday Newegg Sale coming up maybe only $199, woohoo!

This pic below, the 900P is connected using 4 CPU lanes since the workstation graphics card is only an 8X card using 8 CPU lanes. 4lanes + 8lanes = 12 CPU lanes out of 16 available.

Then, I have (4) Samsung 860 Pro SATA SSDs connected using 16 chipset lanes (4lanes each drive) of the 24 Z390 chipset lanes available, mounted in a front access hot-swap bay.

The small capacity and (relatively) inexpensive 280GB 900P SSD really only works out as an extremely fast QD-1 QD-2 OS and "primary app only" storage solution because the (4) Sammy SATA drives are available as additional internal storage.

 

[kapone32]

Wow, I had no idea the same part in Canada would cost so much more. Of course the USD to CAD conversion is active - but still.

Yea, Newegg US has a special volume pricing for Intel Optane drives, and the 280GB capacity has been between $249 and $299 for about 12months now.

Sometimes, Newegg will have a special 900P 280GB PCIe SSD $249 with an additional 10% off for about 5days, so as low as $224USD. Just have to save the page and keep checking for the sale.

Newegg US also has the lowest prices for Gskill Trident Z ddr4 memory kits, they have some special high-volume agreement made with Gskill. Newegg US apparently purchases in bulk and passes on a lower price to consumers.

I watched and waited for my Trident Z Royal Silver kit to drop in price at pricepickers.com, it only dropped about $10 but Newegg always had the lowest price

A cool website to watch prices fall over time:

Just plug in the part you're planning to purchase and watch the price go down. lol My 4600mhz kit didn't drop by much, lol, but there's a cool graph that tells you when the part launched and how the price fluctuates as time moves forward, pretty cool.

G.Skill Trident Z Royal 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-4600 CL18 Memory

pcpartpicker.com

Grabbed my ddr4 kit back in May this year for $419. Today it's selling for $389. $30 less - same kit.

Can Canadians purchase from Newegg US? Gosh why not?

We used to be able to but for some reason they kick you to the Canadian site. I remember I wanted to order the As Rock Phantom Gaming 6 from Newegg US. I could put in my cart but could not check out. I called Newegg and was told that I had to shop on the Canadian site. I then told them the product was not available in Canada....they released it 3 days later for $445.00 vs $249.99 (which is over $100 more than the exchange rate). I am going to look on Amazon.com to see what they cost. I can get it from them but with the conversion and fees it would $438.40 just too much for 280GB.

 

[E-curbi]

We used to be able to but for some reason they kick you to the Canadian site. I remember I wanted to order the As Rock Phantom Gaming 6 from Newegg US. I could put in my cart but could not check out. I called Newegg and was told that I had to shop on the Canadian site. I then told them the product was not available in Canada....they released it 3 days later for $445.00 vs $249.99 (which is over $100 more than the exchange rate). I am going to look on Amazon.com to see what they cost. I can get it from them but with the conversion and fees it would $438.40 just too much for 280GB.

Good idea!

When I was watching the 900P pricing prior to purchase, I noticed sometimes Amazon US would MATCH the Newegg US price at $254. And other times Amazon US was asking $299 and $359 and $389.

The best price at Amazon will be the deal that's marked "ships and sold by Amazon" (same goes for Newegg). All the other deals are typically 3rd party "sharks" charging way too much.
-----
We buy tshirts and stuffed bears from Muskoka BearWear in Canada all the time, that's silly Canadians cannot purchase from Newegg US.

 

[kapone32]

Good idea!

When I was watching the 900P pricing prior to purchase, I noticed sometimes Amazon US would MATCH the Newegg US price at $254. And other times Amazon US was asking $299 and $359 and $389.

The best price at Amazon will be the deal that's marked "ships and sold by Amazon" (same goes for Newegg). All the other deals are typically 3rd party "sharks" charging way too much.
-----
We buy tshirts and stuffed bears from Muskoka BearWear in Canada all the time, that's silly Canadians cannot purchase from Newegg US.

I know, they do list some products shipping from the US. I do agree that it sucks because I remember my 2 favourite purchases from Neweeg.com The first was the OCZ Revodrive 3 240GB for $199 (first consumer PCIE_E SSD drive) and the QNIX 2710 1440P 27" IPS for $249. Generally speaking the US has much better prices than anywhere else for PC parts. I am going to Pennsylvania with the family this weekend. The wife wants to go to Erie for some shopping unfortunately there are no Micro Centers within even an hour drive from there.

 

[E-curbi]

I know, they do list some products shipping from the US. I do agree that it sucks because I remember my 2 favourite purchases from Neweeg.com The first was the OCZ Revodrive 3 240GB for $199 (first consumer PCIE_E SSD drive) and the QNIX 2710 1440P 27" IPS for $249. Generally speaking the US has much better prices than anywhere else for PC parts. I am going to Pennsylvania with the family this weekend. The wife wants to go to Erie for some shopping unfortunately there are no Micro Centers within even an hour drive from there.

That OCZ Revodrive 3 was superfast, although I never owned one.

Microcenter's price on Optane and Trident Z ddr4 was always higher when I was shopping/researching prices.

Like I stated before, Newegg must have some sort of high-volume sales agreement with both Intel and Gskill. For like 3-4years they have had the lowest possible prices on both product stacks.

Of course I don't know that for certain, but it's a darn good guess. Even way back in 2016 when I grabbed my first Trident Z ddr4 3200Mhz 14CL kit, Newegg US had the lowest price and not by $10-$20, sometimes over $100 less than other online e-tailers. That has to be an agreement of some sort with the Gskill. I believe they have a similar agreement with Intel for Optane, at least at the Newegg US store.

Happy Halloween everyone at TPU:

We're having an early kids party that ends at 6pm, then a few adults over for a celebration we call Hallowaggna!

gf greets everyone at the door with a bra on her head, and it gets a bit spooky from there on out.

Happy Hallowaggna TPU!

 

[kapone32]

That OCZ Revodrive 3 was superfast, although I never owned one.

Microcenter's price on Optane and Trident Z ddr4 was always higher when I was shopping/researching prices.

Like I stated before, Newegg must have some sort of high-volume sales agreement with both Intel and Gskill. For like 3-4years they have had the lowest possible prices on both product stacks.

Of course I don't know that for certain, but it's a darn good guess. Even way back in 2016 when I grabbed my first Trident Z ddr4 3200Mhz 14CL kit, Newegg US had the lowest price and not by $10-$20, sometimes over $100 less than other online e-tailers. That has to be an agreement of some sort with the Gskill. I believe they have a similar agreement with Intel for Optane, at least at the Newegg US store.

Happy Halloween everyone at TPU:

We're having an early kids party that ends at 6pm, then a few adults over for a celebration we call Hallowaggna!

gf greets everyone at the door with a bra on her head, and it gets a bit spooky from there on out.

Happy Hallowaggna TPU!

Yeah it was the fastest SSD you could buy. THe only thing faster today is NVME. It took a little longer to load Windows but once in the OS it would fly. It even increased my TW Shougn 2 FPS my 20 over a HDD. I still have it sitting in the box it came in. I will probably never sell it.

Newegg is usually the best site for parts in terms of new products and pricing. I am not sure how it works in the States but we have manufacturer>>distributor>>retailer and it is the distributor that sets prices.


Happy Halloween to you too. We may be getting a wind/rain storm in the part of Canada I live in so there may not be too many trick or treaters out tonight.

 

[983264]

My only fastest HDD's are a pair of WD1600HLFS VelociRaptor, and one of it it is my main OS Drive.

Soon gonna get a 250GB M2 NVMe for OS Drive, a 1TB SATA SSD for Game Drive, then 2x 2TB HDD for storage

 

[killster1]

Anything critical is stored online now.
Anything i think unworthy of the upload time, is not worth duplication.
Its not like the old days where i kept a copy of a every OS and their updates, game ISO's and all patches, and all these other things - because you can easily download games (via steam, origin etc) with all the updates and no need for CD keys, you can download legit OS ISO's easily (and your account stuff is all cloud synced in them as well) so its just a very different era
Then (for me at least) add in that 5 years ago everyone here in aus was at best on cable with <10Mb uploads or me on DSL with <1Mb upload and now i have a 100/40 connection, and its a very different situation.

10mb upload is nice but whats more nice is that you dont have a bw cap for monthly usage. fastest here is 1mbit upload or 500tb cap a month 10mbit, i stick with 18mbit / 1000tb monthly limit and just deal with it. I wonder how redundant online storage is and if it could /will ever be taken away / compromised. Maybe im paranoid or value my data more than you but i keep it offline in fireproof safe double backed up with 1 offsite backup in another fireproof / bolted down safe.. just feel like one day maybe there will be no internet but i guess at that point my files are not going to be the first thing on my mind. do you encrypt then upload?

as far as fastest storage im excited to get higher capacity pcie nvme but dont want to fork over the $$ for it. samsung 970 pro nvme should be my fastest storage. but most my pc's / boys pcs/lappys all run with hp 920ex seems like best bang for your buck /moderately reliable when i purchased last.

wonder if optane should be added to the list?

 

[Flaky]

Still believe this PCIe SSD storage drive should be included in this survey, even if only a small percent of owners respond. That's how you watch a trend and adoption rate of new technology over time.

But... it already belongs to "NVMe SSD" category.
Does it communicate over NVMe? Yes.
Is it an SSD? Yes.

But I get the message about xpoint being something an order of magnitude better than conventional nand flash.
Do you include Intel M10 and H10 in this group? If so - count me in

Aside from mostly proprietary and experimental devices, there is one more type that accidentally got excluded from this poll - PCIe AHCI SSD. Best known is probably Plextor M6e(A), with others being mostly OEM parts. Rather short lived, but still worthy mentioning, as they were transitional thing between SATA form factor and NVMe's preferred M.2 form factor (at least for consumer market).

 

[trparky]

Can you get enough of a productivity increase over its lifetime to warrant the extra cost ?

I'd have to have agreed with you about NVMe SSDs back a year ago because NVMe SSDs had a price premium but these days the price premium is at best $5 to $10. It's a no brainer to go with an NVMe SDD if you can get one for just a few dollars more than that of a SATA SSD.

 

[Fragment]

OS on 1x Samsung 840 EVO 500GB

Games on 2 x Seagate Exos E 4kn, 6TB in RAID0 Array of 12TB

 

[R-T-B]

This is the fastest storage I have.

Its the quickest i can get a beer.

Voted NVMe SSD


View attachment 133649

So if the British have warm beer due to Lucas Electric Refridgerators...

Wtf do aussies have to say about that?

 

[Outback Bronze]

So if the British have warm beer due to Lucas Electric Refridgerators...

Wtf do aussies have to say about that?

We drink em Kimberley Cool : )

 

[candle_86]

Hell, all my systems are SSD now, except for a single 4TB drive in the NAS

for home use, mech drives dont make sense any more (except for the heavy pirates who want to run their own home netflix alternatives)

Nah I run a 256gb Samsung pm841 nvme and 3x2tb drives, I ripped all my cd/DVD based games to iso along with my DVD/Blu-ray collection, then every game I own on steam/origin/Uplay/got is also installed

 

[bug]

How do I change my vote, now that I moved my Linux install onto my shiny new 970 EVO?