Best SSD M.2 NVMe?

@iunlock Samsung has it's track own record of fails e.g. 840 EVO and buggy 960 Pro firmware. I have a Samsung CM871a in my laptop, but only because I couldn't fit a good old Wave mSATA MLC drive with an m.2-mSATA adapter inside. My next microSD card will deinitely be Samsung though - feedback for them is overwhelmingly better than for other brands.

 

Oh absolutely. With the nature of electronics in general the existence of failure rates is inevitable. I still have a 840 EVO and it's still kicking. The 960 Pro I have in my desktop only has the m.2 driver installed itself, as I don't use magician etc... My emphasis is on the importance of real world usage and not putting too much stock into these online reviews that try to make it sound an inferior product is on par with the best of the best. It's very misleading, which is why I buy many brands for myself to actually test it with my heavy usage. I'm always open to the new tech goodies and always on the look out to keep tabs on what's out there...

 

Never had an issue with the numerous Crucial (Micron) or Samsung drives I’ve used. The MX500 however was competition for the EVO 850 not the 860 series, endurance difference is down to newer generation NAND. True Samsung controllers are a bit better and the 860 is only priced a few dollars higher but to play devils advocate I’ve seen the MX500 and Micron 1100 (2 TB) on steep sale prices on occasion in which case would be a better buy at the time. Highly doubt the average user would ever burn through the endurance rating of even the older gen MX500. My MX100s are still in use after 5 years...Infact testing by sime sites a few years ago already showed the NAND in most SSDs can survive much longer than “rated”. Samsung is the best but Micron/Cruicial isn’t terrible and their controllers decent seen them in enterprise environment as well without issue.


Reviewers like Anandtech, some enterprise test sites and some others actually do in depth reviews that detail various performance aspects including power usage etc, so you should probably use sites like that rather than one with 2-3 sequential tests

You just seem to have terrible luck with drives. FYI these are all TLC drives including the MX500/860/970 EVO, if you really want sustained performance and highest endurance people buy MLC drives ie 850/860 PRO or 960/970 PRO as these don’t need any SLC caching to meet advertised performance, because you burn through that your writing to TLC NAND directly and performance drops like a rock. For the average user and gamer or even so called self declared power user (most really aren’t) TLC is just fine and they would never notice the difference.

Honestly the companies that make the actual flash are mainly Micron (was joint venture with Intel till recent split) , Samsung, Toshiba (joint venture Sandisk—>WD) these guys have 99.5% of market and maybe two or three more minor ones have the remaining 0.5% . The rest source NAND from these guys, ie BPX, ADATA etc and rebrand. So even if you hate Sandisk or Micron you more than likely used/using tablets or phones using their NAND anyway.

 

Yes indeed. I'm very familiar with the nitty gritty on the SSD's and industry. You've laid it out very well as to what part goes to what, which I already knew. I use MLC based drives (Samsung Pro line) for my OS drive in all my systems.

As for the 2-3 sequential tests, that's not how I measure what is good and what is not as I've clearly emphasized. I buy these drives for myself so that I can put them to the test.

Rather than having terrible luck, it is more so that my usage habits are not that of an average user so it's a given that my mileage is on the high end. Perhaps what's terrible are the quality of the drives from the brands that I've mentioned as proven so in my case.

The info that I am sharing is rare to obtain, unless one does really put miles on a SSD, so like with you and the crucial it goes to show that even with above avg usage, ssd's can last.. but we all know that already.

Regarding the prices, I've actually obtained the 860 EVO cheaper than the crucial mx500 on several occasions. The point in my previous post was how it has half the endurance at virtually the same price of a superior drive. So which one is the better buy? See my point? Why on earth would anyone buy a crucial mx500 that is inferior?

Have you seen the extreme ssd tests where they wrote into the petabytes? Guess who came wayyyy on top and this was in the 840-850 era mind you ...

Show me something better with a track record to match and I'll be among the first to buy it. Intel has something up their sleeves if they get off their rear end and launch it already lol.

 

I wa quoting the same extreme SSD tests, where the 840 and others lasted way beyond ratings. I also mentioned the Sammy’s are better but I’ve seen the Microns especially 2TBs priced way below in sales ie (less than $200 for the 2TB 1100) which made them better buys at times especially last year before the NAND price drops. If similarly priced as I’ve seen currently of course the 860 is preferred even if priced a little higher, but if getting the 2TB 1100 for less than $200 (sale) vs the 860 at ~$300, I’d say go for the 1100.

Plus as I said I’ve seen Microns in heavy use corporate environments (Database). They’re not “crap” is all I’m saying. I see them as pretty reliable.

 

There is a clear difference between consumer line and enterprise grade memory. The OP was asking about a 2TB m.2 NVMe SSD's and wanting to RAID, so I kept it within the realm of consumer line SSD's. However, you're now talking about enterprise grade stuff, which is a whole different animal.

With the 2TB drives and for the average consumer, of course it will suit them just fine for their needs. I'm well aware of the sales as I track them daily. The 2TB $200 micron during BF was a steal and that ended up right into the xbox where it would serve it well.

I guess the main point here that I'm trying to make is that "Not all SSD's, memory chips, controllers, integrity of the chipset, quality control, etc... are not created equal."

A 2TB crucial drive containing consumer grade micron and (crap->) silicon motion controller that overheats is not equal to a 2TB Samsung 860 EVO with a far superior controller and memory chips.

Therefore, we'll have to agree to disagree... the inferior products are not just as reliable.

To each his own...

 

I don’t disagree, I guess I mistook it as you saying everything Micron/Crucia sucks. That’s on me.

Also in your experience with MX500 I wonder if part of the reason for the performance drop is also actually due to a lower pseudo SLC cache size. Samsung I believe allocates dynamically more than the base pseudo SLC cache depending on free space.

 

No worries mate.

I'm using the 2TB crucial mx500 and 2TB 860 EVO side by side daily ...

 

add 1 more to the samsung ssd squad... they are the gold standard & have been for years now

 

The HP MX950 looks (on paper and review, at any rate) quite impressive, particularly for the price (<$400 for 2TB).