Cheapest I've seen a 1TB SSD in quite a while. Nothing fancy or ground breaking here, just a decent price for some reliable mass storage.
Umart also have the 120GB WD Green 2.5" SSD for $29 - https://www.umart.com.au/WD-Green-120GB-3D-NAND-2-5--SSD_412…
Where is the 860 EVO selling for $161?
Probably means after cashback
Where is the 860 EVO selling for $161 after cashback? I'd be keen to pick one up
@Radical Larry: 167 on Centrecom after cashback
https://www.centrecom.com.au/samsung-860-evo-1tb-25-sata-iii…
@pingualien: Just did their shipping calculator and it was $8 delivery so works out more expensive. I'll go with Centrecom
@vrsac: Just realised actually mucked up when I went to buy - PMON20 doesn't apply for shallothead :(
It's been running happily as one of my game drive for over a year now. Performance is respectable as a read-heavy drive.
Doesn't really matter, it's DRAMless with a 3 year warranty. 860 EVO has a DRAM cache + 5 year warranty + is a lot faster. $139 would be a good price for a MX500, but the BX500 really isn't worth purchasing because DRAMless SSDs are just junk for an insignificant price discount.
Just because there are better products out there isn't a valid reason to down vote a deal..
For a game drive it wouldn't be worth it. For boot drive the 860 EVO is a far better option.
It's acceptable as a budget game drive as games are heavy on reads, and the read speed of this thing is still solid. The small, few gigs, of writes a game will do will fit happily within the slc cache.
For the extra $22 the 860 is better value, especially for an OS drive, but this is still viable for read heavy uses.
Definitely. I'd just rather spend my extra money on something more important, like dinner.
@Richardc: 3 years is already plenty, honestly I don't give a shit about warranty as long as it's at least 1 year on every component but the power supply which I expect at least 5 years from.
https://ssd.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Samsung-860-Evo-1TB-vs…
860 evo is ~6 to 9% better, the samsung is a little better all round but depending on your use case the crucial could be better value for money
Fairly reasonable deal. The BX500 is DRAMless and budget, but it's perfectly fine for mainstream use cases.
Nah, I thought so, and I regretted, when the SLC cache exhausted, the write speed is awful, I could not remember exactly, it was around 30~60 MB/s, much worse than a typical 2.5" HDD.
I thought it is TLC not QLC hence shouldn't be 30~60MB/s, Try to troubleshoot it I guess.
I don't have this particular drive, just seems odd according to my experience.
I'm pretty sure it was the SSD, nothing else. I was using the same machine, same USB3 disk closure, same USB3 port doing exactly the same thing: using dd to duplicate disk. I did it two times: 1 was for BX500 and the other was for a Pioneer SSD. For Pioneer SSD, it was just as expected, the output of dd was what I would expect I could get out of the source HDD ~100MB/s peak and 60+MB/s trough.
For BX500, the behavior was similar to the Pioneer one for the first around 10 GB after which the speed suddenly dropped to below 60MB/s, sometimes even below 30MB/s. And that's why I said the performance dropped dramatically after SLC cache exhausted.
I experienced similar behavior with Samsung 840 evo, but again, that was a known issue with the firmware. For this one, it must be the SSD itself.
The write speed is woeful after the cache, for large sequential writes. If you were using this for saving say large PSD files or video editing, you'd be better off with a hdd. 4k random reads and writes this thing will still destroy a hdd.
Not exactly, I was migrating my system drive from HDD to a SSD using dd, a Linux tool to duplicate disk sector by sector so that I can avoid reinstall the OS, which happened to be the worst use case for BX500.
@[Deactivated]: hahaha true. there were some uses cases where a HDD would win, such as "cloning an entire drive". I didn't mean to imply my list was exhaustive.
Good as a secondary but wouldn’t use for a primary drive
The BX500 is DRAMless and budget, but it's perfectly fine for mainstream use cases.
Why would you even consider a slow SSD with a 3 year warranty when much faster and far more durable SSDs with 5 year warranties are only ~$20 more expensive? It's "good enough" is terrible advice.
rather get the qvo, basically same price but better
Haha you wish. The QVO uses QLC NAND, and this uses TLC NAND meaning it is far more enduring and better at sustained writes.
Haha you wish. The QVO uses QLC NAND, and this uses TLC NAND meaning it is far more enduring and better at sustained writes.
You really don't know much about SSDs, most of your comments just aren't true. You should like a kid who learned that TLC > QLC and will now just parrot that line to look smart.
DRAM cache is far more important to usability than TLC vs. QLC, so for usability, the QVO far exceeds this drive.
Source? I couldn't seem to find anything suggesting that the QVO has a DRAM cache in my limited research.
Edit: I'm blind says it right there on the first google. BX500 > 860 QVO for storage and games, 860 QVO > BX500 for OS?
@Void: 1TB/2TB/4TB has 1GB/2GB/4GB DRAM cache respectively.
https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/global.semi.static/Sam…
That's because "TLC has better endurance than QLC" is factually correct. The presence here of DRAM does improve the endurance of the QLC cells (as well as extra provisioning); for the 1TB QVO vs BX500, they both have the same TBW (360TB).
Performance wise, the QVO does generally perform better, but "far exceeds" is a bit of an exaggeration. By that logic the MX500 "far exceeds" QVO for about the same increase in performance.
Performance wise, the QVO does generally perform better, but "far exceeds" is a bit of an exaggeration. By that logic the MX500 "far exceeds" QVO for about the same increase in performance.
I never said performance, I said usability, which is what most benchmarks don't actually show. In other words, how does the SSD actually feel for day-to-day use, not some fringe cases like copying 200GB of data. Ultimately as per my first comment, all of this discussion is moot because at $161, I would go with an 860 EVO and not either this or the QVO.
However, if you need to pick between this and the QVO for whatever reason, the QVO is far better in terms of usability because the DRAM cache does a really good job of masking the weaknesses of QLC. The most important trait for general day-to-day usability is burst performance, not sustained writes (which is what everyone keeps quoting out of context). Because of the DRAM cache, the QVO will feel snappier in day-to-day use vs. DRAM-less SSDs.
DRAM cache is important, but so is TLC. QLC should be dirt cheap, but it's around the same price as TLC, which makes it a terrible buy as it's really slow when the SLC cache runs out and the drive will die a lot sooner. If QLC was half the price or less than TLC, then it would have a purpose - and when costs come down QLC will eventually be for large storage SSD drives.
SSDs without a DRAM cache are just stupid. It's a saving for the manufacturer of less than <$5 for a significantly inferior product. QLC could have a purpose for cheap SSDs, but right now its price doesn't reflect the inferior quality.
You could argue all day about whether a TLC without DRAM is better than QLC with DRAM, but ultimately the answer currently is "buy neither".
@iseeyou1312: "SSDs without a DRAM cache are just stupid."
Unless you're fairly well embedded in the market that's a baseless comment. Yeah it's about $5 in PARTS to add DRAM but you need to look at engineering effort involved, as well as where companies position items in the market and their portfolio. The BX and MX will have different gross profit margins which affect what market they're targeting. In any case the absolute bottom of a market often represents a lower value for money, in the same way the absolute top does.
Contrary to your nonsense, the answer here is to buy what you can afford. If your budget allows for say an MX500 or 860 evo, they're better value for money in most cases. If even $130 is stretching your budget, this/QVO are plenty capable SSDs that will in most situations make your life much much easier than a hdd.
@incipient: Yikes. It’s iseeyou again. This guy is known for spreading rampant bullshit about computers.
@blergmonkeys: Says the person who doesn't believe temperature can affect clock frequency or that PC components need airflow to cool them down.
@incipient: Creating more skews adds cost - in engineering, manufacturing and retail, so that's not a justification. The BX500 exists due to consumer ignorance - people buy the cheapest SSD without understanding the poor value of their purchasing decision.
Contrary to your nonsense, the answer here is to buy what you can afford.
Terrible advice. The extra $20 is worth the longer five year warranty - even if the drives were otherwise identical. There's a reason why the DRAMless SSDs have short warranty periods - they perform slower and die much sooner.
@iseeyou1312: Well, there are SSDs without DRAM cache but do deliver reasonable performance, e.g. the Toshiba Q serials I bought circa 2011 can still deliver ~550MB/s r and ~500MB/s w.
@[Deactivated]: First TLC SSDs were released in 2012, so they would've been MLC or SLC. Completely different architecture and naturally much faster with far longer lifespans - but the tradeoff is much more expensive to produce. TLC really needs DRAM + a SLC cache to be decent, same with QLC.
Far more enduring? Then why does Samsung offer a bigger warranty on their qlc QVO drive versus this tlc drive? It has double the TBW rating in the 3 year warranty.
The same warranty at 3 years, and both 360tbw (you need to check the qtb model for the bx, not the 960gb)
@incipient: My bad, I mixed up the stats. Still impressive that Samsung can offer same or better warranty on their qvo drives versus many other tlc drives.
Yeah I just figured out the QVO has a DRAM cache and that I am dum dum. So they balance each other out. Samsung usually just tend to have a straight up better warranty, but in this case they are the same.
@Void: Samsung 860 QVO is better than BX500 not just because of the DRAM cache, the actual QLC NAND provides better sustained writes on BX500. BX500, not only being DRAMless, has inferior / cheapo grade TLC NAND. BX500 gets really ugly when the drive is filled up.
A lot of SD cards or USB flash drives have TLC based NAND and yet they are still much slower than QVO. It is not just the base NAND technology.
It's not 860 QVO is great, it is more BX500 is really low grade TLC based solution. BX500 has its uses, after all, it is generally faster than most SD cards (even with its ugly sustained write performance).
Probably worth paying the few bucks extra for the EVO. If you’re getting 2TB or 4TB the price gap between EVO and QVO becomes large enough to consider the QVO.
I guess these cheaper drives are worth it for cold storage and secondary drives. Though the relatively small price difference might still make the EVO better value
Good price, but I still won't recommend BX500 to others - bad thermal performance with its plastic case and poor write speed after SLC cache.
That's the point of these budget drives. They give you bulk SSD storage on the cheap for games or documents.
is this good for PS4?
no point with a SSD in a PS4, it is limited by USB. Normal HDDs are cheaper, have larger disk sizes and max out speed transfer rate anyway.
PS4 has USB 3 which is 5Gbs (roughly 500MBs). Good HDDs read at around 160MBs. A good SSD can saturate the connection, so theoretically 3X faster. In reality though, game load time will vary from roughly the same to 40% faster than a HDD, with most game load times being in the 10% to 20% range.
But I agree with you in that I would rather a 4TB drive for my PS4 than a 1TB SSD.
As for the OP drive, I have 2 in raid 0 (backed up) that I got for around $100 each, they serve their purpose (steam and plex). Most of the sustained writes I do to it are limited by my internet connection.
Incorrect, you do get significant loading performance improvement with an SSD, even through USB 3.0 / 3.1 gen 1. Not only the sequential read/write is much faster, the random read/write simply blows HDD out of water.
Right now, you don't get significant boost in gaming between m.2/NVMe/MLC SSD over even this really sub-par DRAMless TLC SSD. That will likely change once the next gen consoles arrive. However, the difference between HDD and SSD for game loading is significant.
You get what you pay for. Can only lose data when you cheap out on bargain SSDs
The reliability of this drive will be acceptably good. Good nand, good controller, well made. Performance and endurance is where you'll really take a hit.
If you start going really budget, such as no-brand Chinese stuff, then you'll get into high failure rates.
Who knows what happens 5 years down the track. I know I dont replace SSD every 5 years.
Can only lose data when you cheap out on bargain SSDs
If you're depending on the reliability of your drive to save your data, you're doing it wrong…
what is different with this https://www.centrecom.com.au/samsung-860-qvo-1tb-25-sata-ssd… $136 after cashback
TLC vs QLC NAND on the QVO. However the QVO has a DRAM cache, so it is better. Basically just get the QVO, though for an OS drive I don't recommend either and recommend at least the Crucial MX500, WD Blue or Samsung 860 EVO.
I wouldn't touch this even at half the price. DRAMless QLC no thanks. especially when decent performing DRAM and TLC drives are just few dozens dollars more on a good deal which is often right now
It is TLC…
yes you are right
It's low grade TLC, which can be beaten by quality QLC offerings. Micron (which owns Crucial) really puts low grade TLC NAND chips on this one. Its DRAMless design can turn really ugly when its garbage collection kicks in for a while (which really chokes the SSD for a few seconds).
That's a thing?! Aaaah so many things about SSDs to know!
Gah dramless…
Can you well informed individuals let me know if this is a good deal:
https://www.amazon.com.au/Silicon-Power-Performance-Internal…
It's DRAMless. The Crucial MX500 or WD Blue (they are as good as each other) are better options. Last I checked the Blue is $85.
I'd steer clear. When the 1TB 860 EVO is $161, I'd just pay the extra $22.