Trust Newegg reviews for NVMe SSD? - lower cost or "big name" like Samsung?

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philb2

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If I select only 4-star and better for PCIE-4 4TB NVMe SSDs on Newegg, there is a big difference in price between various brands, from $223 to $799.
https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?N=10001... 4204 601342076 601305582&Order=1&PageSize=60 Why would anyone buy one of thie really high priced items?

I'm tempted to get this Teamgroup item, https://www.newegg.com/team-group-4tb-t-force-cardea-z44q/p/N82E16820331737?Item=N82E16820331737, because of total writes. Is it worth it to save about $100 by not getting Samsung or one of the other "big names?"
 
There is a level of brand loyalty a lot of us get after having a good run with some products. Also newegg marketplace doesnt regulate prices so some of those stores can charge any amount they want and some of those are really inflated prices. Also there is a lot of performance differences between brands and models that gets taken into account when people buy.
 
The better devices will have DRAM cache in addition to SLC and so, for some use cases, dramatically out perform them.

Just being honest, the only short term failure I've had was with a current gen Samsung EVO SSD (SATA) drive. RMA was easy and I got a replacement. That might be the other bigger advantage with going with someone "bigger".

My primary host is now all Samsung, having been a mixture of Samsung and Micron in the past. Apart from that one 2TB drive issue, it's been fine. I have an older gen Samsung pseudo NVMe in the form of a Z-drive (512G), 2 x 2TB Samsung EVO 870 SATA, and 1 x 4TB Samsung EVO 870 SATA.

Briefly, with that Samsung outage, I considered WD and/or Crucial (MX).

Edit: useful resource:
View: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1B27_j9NDPU3cNlj2HKcrfpJKHkOf-Oi1DbuuQva2gT4/edit#gid=0
 
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There are a lot of variables with SSDs and places where cheaper drives can skimp to save on costs. As mentioned, things like DRAM cache and SLC-cache. Also, some of those drives advertise QLC flash almost as if it's a good thing, when it's actually the opposite of good. The only good thing about QLC is that it stores more data, but it has less endurance and write speed. With a "good" QLC drive, a combination of DRAM cache, SLC cache, and potentially also some over-provisioning can dramatically extend the lifespan of that QLC flash. On a cheap drive, they would omit all of that so that they could simply advertise the largest capacity for the cheapest price possible. You'll be outside the return window, and probably won't even have the option to leave a review anymore by the time the drive dies, so why should they care?
 
cjcox said:
Edit: useful resource:
Click to expand...
cjcox said:
The better devices will have DRAM cache in addition to SLC and so, for some use cases, dramatically out perform them.

Just being honest, the only short term failure I've had was with a current gen Samsung EVO SSD (SATA) drive. RMA was easy and I got a replacement. That might be the other bigger advantage with going with someone "bigger".

My primary host is now all Samsung, having been a mixture of Samsung and Micron in the past. Apart from that one 2TB drive issue, it's been fine. I have an older gen Samsung pseudo NVMe in the form of a Z-drive (512G), 2 x 2TB Samsung EVO 870 SATA, and 1 x 4TB Samsung EVO 870 SATA.

Briefly, with that Samsung outage, I considered WD and/or Crucial (MX).

Edit: useful resource:
View: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1B27_j9NDPU3cNlj2HKcrfpJKHkOf-Oi1DbuuQva2gT4/edit#gid=0
Click to expand...

cjcox

Wowzers. That spreadsheet was quite a lot of work. You are truly one of the good guiys here on [H]

Can [H] make a stickie of your posting, so all the guys here can be aware of that XLS.
 
GotNoRice said:
There are a lot of variables with SSDs and places where cheaper drives can skimp to save on costs. As mentioned, things like DRAM cache and SLC-cache. Also, some of those drives advertise QLC flash almost as if it's a good thing, when it's actually the opposite of good. The only good thing about QLC is that it stores more data, but it has less endurance and write speed. With a "good" QLC drive, a combination of DRAM cache, SLC cache, and potentially also some over-provisioning can dramatically extend the lifespan of that QLC flash. On a cheap drive, they would omit all of that so that they could simply advertise the largest capacity for the cheapest price possible. You'll be outside the return window, and probably won't even have the option to leave a review anymore by the time the drive dies, so why should they care?
Click to expand...
Yeah. Even though me, as the OP, shows noobie ignorance by starting this thread, I'm glad I did. Now I have to review cjcox's spreadsheet and have a conversation with myself about drive quality vs. not spending too much money, I have to say that if I ignore all the good info in your post, that Teamgroup drive does look attractive. But it would be unwise to do that.
 
philb2 said:
cjcox

Wowzers. That spreadsheet was quite a lot of work. You are truly one of the good guiys here on [H]

Can [H] make a stickie of your posting, so all the guys here can be aware of that XLS.
Click to expand...
It's not my spreadsheet. Just linking to it.
 
As the OP, still wondering. Can you trust the star ratings on The Egg? I know that no one can believe product reviews on the Big A from Seattle. Too many reports about fake reviews there.
 
Personally, I wouldn't trust ChinEgg with a bag of recycled dogpoo, let alone any 'puter parts, reviews, or any thing else, but that's just me :)

Also, I feel the need to quote the old sayings:

A. "Cheap is as Cheap does"
B. "You only get what you pay for" :)
C. "Real folks don't rely on "benchmarks & mfgr claims"
D. "A fool & his/her money are soon parted"

shall I continue ? :D
 
Take reviews from any (r)etailer with a grain of salt, especially Amazon. On Newegg, you can filter by verified owners to help cut down fake reviews but it's not foolproof. You can do this on Amazon too but Amazon I trust even less especially on cheaper products. Prices are generally high on some stuff because it's Newegg Marketplace (aka third party sellers).

I've never used any TeamGroup QLC drives, but I've used the Z540, Z440, and MP33 NVMEs as well as quite a few AX2 SATA SSDs and they all work great. I think most of them have a 5 year warranty so just backup your data and have fun.
 
Dopamin3 said:
On Newegg, you can filter by verified owners to help cut down fake reviews but it's not foolproof.
Click to expand...
Good idea. I've been a customer since lile forever, and I have found some of their reviews very knowledgeable. Almost like they were written by [H] forum members. :happy:

Dopamin3 said:
You can do this on Amazon too but Amazon I trust even less especially on cheaper products.
Click to expand...
I trust Amazon about as much as I trust one of those emails telling me about a problem at XYZ bank. Thing is, I don't have, and never had an account at this bank.

I also look for products with more than just 3-4-5 reviews.

Dopamin3 said:
Prices are generally high on some stuff because it's Newegg Marketplace (aka third party sellers).
Click to expand...
Yeah. There are a few third party sellers who stock items that Newegg doesn't stock directly and the prices are still good, and these are store I trust. Like Beach Audio and Antonline.

If something is being shipped from China, fergeddidaboudid, as they say where I grew up.

Dopamin3 said:
I've never used any TeamGroup QLC drives, but I've used the Z540, Z440, and MP33 NVMEs as well as quite a few AX2 SATA SSDs and they all work great. I think most of them have a 5 year warranty so just backup your data and have fun.
Click to expand...
Good to know. Now I just need to check the drives specs against that massive database that was just uploaded.
 
I've been pretty with TeamGroup and Sabrent drives, although I haven't really exercised them much...they haven't just died for no reason either.

I don't think I've purchased any from newegg though. If I did, it'd be either sold by newegg or "direct from manufacturer".
 
Well, in my house I have several samsung drives, several WD drives, a few silicon power drives and then one by sk hynix. All but the sk hynix I bought.

The silicon powers, I actually have three; one that failed and had to be RMAed within a few months. RMA was kinda weird because it isn't super clear where to send it, but they did replace it. The replacement I put in an ubuntu server running crafty to serve minecraft and the game files get nightly backup on the NAS, so it isn't very critical data. The other two, are in a drawer.

The Hynix still works.

The samsungs I did have one fail and I RMAed it. I'm not sure why it failed, but I am somewhat suspicious that I may have helped in the demise when some coolant dripped on it. Whoops.

The WDs are all still working.

For the systems we use every day...all are on WD or samsung, except the ubuntu server that hosts minecraft.

When that SP failed it really made me rethink how I do things. Only 500-1000GB drives in our machines with not much there. Then I use 10gbe to connect to the NAS with iSCSI to a RAID5 of spinners. It isn't as fast, but fast enough.
 
GotNoRice said:
There are a lot of variables with SSDs and places where cheaper drives can skimp to save on costs. As mentioned, things like DRAM cache and SLC-cache. Also, some of those drives advertise QLC flash almost as if it's a good thing, when it's actually the opposite of good.
Click to expand...
Back in the day, when drives were MFM, SCSI, or PATA, it was easy to pick out a drive. Even without Backblaze stats. SSDs seem to have a lot more variables.

GotNoRice said:
The only good thing about QLC is that it stores more data, but it has less endurance and write speed.
Click to expand...
So can I just look at write speed and ignore SLC vs. QLC?

GotNoRice said:
With a "good" QLC drive, a combination of DRAM cache, SLC cache, and potentially also some over-provisioning can dramatically extend the lifespan of that QLC flash.
Click to expand...
Yeah, that is what I would want.
GotNoRice said:
On a cheap drive, they would omit all of that so that they could simply advertise the largest capacity for the cheapest price possible. You'll be outside the return window, and probably won't even have the option to leave a review anymore by the time the drive dies, so why should they care?
Click to expand...
Sure, if the company is still in business?

Is controller a good proxy for overall drive performance? Any "best" controllers? Any controllers that are last-generation and have been superseded by newer, better designs?
 
philb2 said:
So can I just look at write speed and ignore SLC vs. QLC?
Click to expand...

If write speed is measured as a singular number, then it's usefulness is limited. But if you can see what a drive's write speed is over time (during a large file transfer for example), you can notice some distinct patterns based on what configuration the drive has.
-Write speed will be crazy fast (up to near the limits of PCIe bandwidth in some cases) while the drive is writing to the DRam cache. However this will only last for a very short amount of time until that DRam cache fills up.
-Write speed will still be fairly impressive when a drive is writing to it's SLC cache. Of course, this only lasts until the SLC cache becomes full.
-Write speed will drop like a rock once you are directly writing to the QLC flash. At this point, you'll be talking about write speeds similar to what you would get when writing data to a mechanical drive in many cases.

So if a drive has both a DRam and SLC cache then you can notice a transition between both of these phases as you transfer a large file. On a drive without a DRam or SLC cache, the write speed would be slow from the very beginning (perhaps a bit faster at the start due to OS write caching).

philb2 said:
Is controller a good proxy for overall drive performance?
Click to expand...

It's just one piece of the puzzle, but I don't think that there are really any notoriously bad controllers out there right now similar to early-generation Sandforce, etc.
 
In my experience avoid QLC drives at all costs unless it's a write once (and you are ready to wait forever for everything to get written) and read only drive after being written. I needed a cheap boot drive for the media server I built my son and grabbed a 512GB Crucial QLC NVME drive. I was well aware that it was QLC and writes were going to be bad once the cache was full. What I wasn't expecting was to have slower writes than a more than ten year old 2.5" 4500 RPM SATA spinner. I am not joking. That ancient 2.5" drive can sustain higher write speeds. Even worse is the fact that the cache was basically full and the write speeds dropped to the floor after maybe 15 seconds.

I won't touch another QLC drive.
 
Nobu said:
I've been pretty with TeamGroup and Sabrent drives, although I haven't really exercised them much...they haven't just died for no reason either.

I don't think I've purchased any from newegg though. If I did, it'd be either sold by newegg or "direct from manufacturer".
Click to expand...
I was going to ask about Sabrent drives. Ive had no luck with Samsung NVME drives, had two fail.. Was going to get a Sabrent PCIe 4.0 2TB for a boot drive but not sure of quality.
 
I've had good luck with getting the upper tier of any NVMe... E.g., "Legend" for ADATA, or "Pro" for Samsung, "Black" for WD, etc.
But I gather that's because, as others have posted, those flagship devices have all the features such as cache, high write endurance, etc.
 
Dave65 said:
I was going to ask about Sabrent drives. Ive had no luck with Samsung NVME drives, had two fail.. Was going to get a Sabrent PCIe 4.0 2TB for a boot drive but not sure of quality.
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Three years ago now, I got a Sabrent 1TB NVMe drive as the main drive in my AMD X570 rig. (Now X670e). All my drive partitions except MEDIA (photos, movies, etc) are on that drive. Includes Windows and Photoshop swap. Runs fine. Absolutely no issues. Probably could get a 4 TB drive now for the same money. :rolleyes:
 
TPU has an SSD database which I find helpful: https://www.techpowerup.com/ssd-specs/

It's been mentioned above but, definitely avoid QLC and DRAMless. I check prices on the capacity/type and then determine which (if any) aren't QLC/DRAMless. From there I check reviews/benchmarks.
 
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philb2 said:
Three years ago now, I got a Sabrent 1TB NVMe drive as the main drive in my AMD X570 rig. (Now X670e). All my drive partitions except MEDIA (photos, movies, etc) are on that drive. Includes Windows and Photoshop swap. Runs fine. Absolutely no issues. Probably could get a 4 TB drive now for the same money. :rolleyes:
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That is good to know, I won't worry about getting one. Was thinking a 4TB myself.. Thanks!
 
#WD4me4EVA#

QLC/dramless = I would not/never will touch it, even with YOUR 10ft pole !

'nuff said :D
 
Prince Valiant said:
TPU has an SSD database which I find helpful: https://www.techpowerup.com/ssd-specs/

It's been mentioned above but, definitely avoid QLC and DRAMless. I check prices on the capacity/type and then determine which (if any) aren't QLC/DRAMless. From there I check reviews/benchmarks.
Click to expand...

dogDAbone said:
#WD4me4EVA#

QLC/dramless = I would not/never will touch it, even with YOUR 10ft pole !

'nuff said :D
Click to expand...
Why avoid QLC &/or DRAMless? I generally agree with the QLC and I did, for a while - also think I should avoid DRAMless - but, there are a lot of claims that the performance 'loss' - is negligible in real world settings UNLESS - the same claim goes - if you're a content creator.

Also, I think there is a report that - as the drive gets more data/info on the drive - it slows down (more) than one with Dram?

I am inclined to avoid dramless drives because the savings isn't that much? I think it's anywhere from $40 (max) to a bit less - it's not worth it? I checked pcpartpicker - I found the cheapest (dramless) driver to be about $165 (CAD - Cdn market for me) to (1st drive with dram) $200 & change. I guess that can be perceived as a good savings but the ssd is a lower tier drive vs a pretty good one (WD 850X 2tb). Nvme 4.0 x 4 drives have increased in price quite a bit so that's actually a good price nowadays. 'Not sure how much they are in the USA or other regions.
 
I guess I am one of those folks who demand the very best possible performance from my machines, since they make me $$$$, and as they say "time is money"...

My IT guys Work did multiple head to head comparisions of mid-tier drives with & without dram, and QLC vs TLC back when Gen 4 drives first came out....and over a 30day period, they calculated that the slower bargin-level drives, while saving a few $ on the front end, would have cost us mucho-megabucks in the long run....

This would have been the result of over 180 highly-trained, highly-paid people sitting on the arses doing nothing while waiting for their CAD files/images/videos to be rendered, and our uber-complex database calculations to output their final numbers into production-ready forms...

Needless to say, da Boss said "not no, not hiel no, but F*CK NO" 🤑😱😤
 
pavel said:
Why avoid QLC &/or DRAMless? I generally agree with the QLC and I did, for a while - also think I should avoid DRAMless - but, there are a lot of claims that the performance 'loss' - is negligible in real world settings UNLESS - the same claim goes - if you're a content creator.

Also, I think there is a report that - as the drive gets more data/info on the drive - it slows down (more) than one with Dram?

I am inclined to avoid dramless drives because the savings isn't that much? I think it's anywhere from $40 (max) to a bit less - it's not worth it? I checked pcpartpicker - I found the cheapest (dramless) driver to be about $165 (CAD - Cdn market for me) to (1st drive with dram) $200 & change. I guess that can be perceived as a good savings but the ssd is a lower tier drive vs a pretty good one (WD 850X 2tb). Nvme 4.0 x 4 drives have increased in price quite a bit so that's actually a good price nowadays. 'Not sure how much they are in the USA or other regions.
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The savings have never been enough for me to consider it. Last SSD purchase I made it was something like $5 - $10 more for the drive I bought versus a DRAMless one.
 
I tell you, last year was "amazing" with regards to SSD pricing (talking 2022 thru 2023), but those deals IMHO are now gone. Not saying there aren't deals, but only comparing against what is typical for 2024.

Would love to see another era of SSD glut to cause those massive deals in the prior year again.

My fear is that in the quest for capacity, more of those deals will be QLC as demand for density increases and smaller sizes will start disappearing. But, maybe we're still a year or two from that (??)

IMHO, just as with battery technology, we need a revolutionary replacement technology storage wise. But that may be a huge pipe dream.
 
I would like to think that 3D XPoint (Optane) was a revolutionary tech, given its outstanding performance and endurance, but never had the chance to mature and come down in price (and power) to properly compete with and replace NAND.
 
philb2 said:
4-D memory stacking? :)
Click to expand...
Yeah, maybe not quite so impossible, but definitely got the "idea".

Edit: I was thinking something "light" (laser?) based, but with persist/change capabilities. Has to be "fast", yet... cool and durable.
 
cjcox said:
we need a revolutionary replacement technology storage wise. But that may be a huge pipe dream.
Click to expand...
Not so much a pipe dream, cause as soon as I can get my quantum phase change isolinear omega particle chips into mass production, dram, nand ect will immediately go the way of the dinosaurs, hehehe :)

But seriously, I agree that it is about time for something new to come along soon. I've seen a few reports about the research that is going on, but none of it is close to real-world possibilities yet...
 
Yeah, there are all these reports about doublling the efficiency of existing hardware, of faster and faster PCI. Seagate predicitng 240 TB drives, etc.How can an ordinary slob like me keep up with all the news?
 
I just bought a 990 Pro 2TB from microcenter here in Cambridge, MA for 189$. 5 months ago the 4TB version was 249$ at the same microcenter.

Works fine for me for an OS and game drive. 1,550,000 random read IOPS does wonders for game loads.

I basically get reviews from hardware sites like Ars or here or the typical sites we geeks visit. I don't buy my ssds based on cosumer reviews from sites that SELL the items. I go to geek sites that talk about the functionality of the items. Like this site.

Personally I say within 50 years the storage, cpu, ram, video and everything will be on 1 chip. Even the motherboard. Just need power to it. We are getting closer to knowing if this is a matrix or not. Hint...it is.
 
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