Crucial P1 - 1 Terabyte NVMe - 115.49$

Just got one, thanks OP!

Get wd sn550 1tb for $120, a much better drive

wlee wrote: ↑ Get wd sn550 1tb for $120, a much better drive

Better in what way? Micron (Crucial) manufacturer’s their own NAND. WD has to buy the NAND from either Hynix, Samsung or Micron

The only other things are DRAM and controller. Other than Samsung, everyone else is using someone else’s controller

Did you see the Linus video?



If I want quality, I would stick with Samsung or Micron. Since they manufacture their own NAND. Samsung you pay a premium.

Everyone else is just buying components and assembling the drive. WD is no different than Kingston. Yes you can buy higher grade NAND, add more cache, but the quality control still lies with the manufacturer.

Gee wrote: ↑ This is a good price for this drive. Keep in mind, this drive is being phased out for the P2, but I think this is the better drive.

@Gee why do you say the P1 is a better drive than the newer P2?

crashxxx wrote: ↑ @Gee why do you say the P1 is a better drive than the newer P2?

Few reasons. The P2 uses TLC which I think is the only plus. The P1 uses QLC which is why it is slower than the P2

But if you look deeper, the P1 uses an SMI 4 channel NVMe controller with 1 Gig DDR3 Cache

The P2 on the other hand uses a Phison controller that doesn’t support DRAM Cache.

No cache makes the P2 a bad buy

My argument has always been that speeds are negligible. But the lack of cache on the SSD will tax your system memory.

I've read somewhere that DRAM is important for having the drive run OS. What do you look for when finding a new primary m2 drive?

My B&H order for the 2tb drive was canceled.

wlee wrote: ↑ Get wd sn550 1tb for $120, a much better drive

I should note that the SN550 is DRAMless, and they buy their NAND from SanDisk which is part of Western Digital.

SanDisk has a partnership with Toshiba who manufacturer’s the NAND

goldenmean wrote: ↑I've read somewhere that DRAM is important for having the drive run OS. What do you look for when finding a new primary m2 drive?

My B&H order for the 2tb drive was canceled.

That's the case for sata ssd, not for nvme ssd

goldenmean wrote: ↑ I've read somewhere that DRAM is important for having the drive run OS. What do you look for when finding a new primary m2 drive?

My B&H order for the 2tb drive was canceled.

Honestly, I would just buy any decently priced drive. People are too concerned about endurance, speed etc. If you’re concerned about endurance, I can safely say that your computer will be obsolete before you get anywhere near the end of the drive.

Speeds only matter if you are moving large amounts of files from one folder to another or to another drive on the same system. The bottleneck will be your network, not the drive.

I think the best drives to get are MLC but they are scarce and expensive. As technology advances, they are able to increases the cell count and you get more capacity but the trade off is speed and endurance. SLC is better than MLC which is better than TLC which is better than QLC etc.

The best value is probably the P1 right now. You can get the 2 terabyte for 228.99$ on Amazon

Gee wrote: ↑ Few reasons. The P2 uses TLC which I think is the only plus. The P1 uses QLC which is why it is slower than the P2

But if you look deeper, the P1 uses an SMI 4 channel NVMe controller with 1 Gig DDR3 Cache

The P2 on the other hand uses a Phison controller that doesn’t support DRAM Cache.

No cache makes the P2 a bad buy

My argument has always been that speeds are negligible. But the lack of cache on the SSD will tax your system memory.

Since when QLC is better than TLC? Without dram, QLC would perform like a sata ssd. P1 is a cheaper model.

wlee wrote: ↑ Since when QLC is better than TLC? Without dram, QLC would perform like a sata ssd. P1 is a cheaper model.

It is not better. I clearly stated that the P2 uses TLC which is the only plus.

I haven’t dug into the P2’s controller, but I am going to assume that it is an 8 channel controller that supports PCIe 4.0 which is why you can get away with not having any DRAM (Similar to the SN550)

2TB, buy now, think later.

https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B07JFM524H/?th=1

Gee wrote: ↑ It is not better. I clearly stated that the P2 uses TLC which is the only plus.

I haven’t dug into the P2’s controller, but I am going to assume that it is an 8 channel controller that supports PCIe 4.0 which is why you can get away with not having any DRAM (Similar to the SN550)

P2 is PCIe 3.0 and uses and 4 channel entry level Phison E13T controller

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/cr ... 2-nvme-ssd
https://www.phison.com/en/solutions/con ... s5013-e13t

This is a classic battle in the entry level NVME SSD market: DRAMless TLC vs. QLC with big cache. Let me share a link for reference:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/9799/best-ssds

Conclusion: Less than 1TB: DRAMless TLC, 1TB and above, QLC with big cache. 2 TB QLC makes particularly good sense with the huge size of cache.

They both crawl slowly like a mechanical drive when over 70% full... My sad DRAMless drive at home writes at less than 20 MB/s when it is 90% full...

Dhanushan wrote: ↑ P2 is PCIe 3.0 and uses and 4 channel entry level Phison E13T controller

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/cr ... 2-nvme-ssd
https://www.phison.com/en/solutions/con ... s5013-e13t

That does it for me. The P1 is definitely the better option over the P2

Gee wrote: ↑ Better in what way? Micron (Crucial) manufacturer’s their own NAND. WD has to buy the NAND from either Hynix, Samsung or Micron

The only other things are DRAM and controller. Other than Samsung, everyone else is using someone else’s controller

Did you see the Linus video?



If I want quality, I would stick with Samsung or Micron. Since they manufacture their own NAND. Samsung you pay a premium.

Everyone else is just buying components and assembling the drive. WD is no different than Kingston. Yes you can buy higher grade NAND, add more cache, but the quality control still lies with the manufacturer.

Wow so many things wrong with this post. First of all, WD makes their own NAND, they bought Sandisk years ago. Second, WD also makes their own controllers, Crucial does not. So you're literally criticizing the WD product for being the exact opposite of what it is.

Jep4444 wrote: ↑ Wow so many things wrong with this post. First of all, WD makes their own NAND, they bought Sandisk years ago. Second, WD also makes their own controllers, Crucial does not. So you're literally criticizing the WD product for being the exact opposite of what it is.

Crucial (a brand of Micron) P5 uses a controller designed by Micron.

"The Crucial P5 is the first retail SSD to use a controller designed by Micron. Their in-house SSD controller design efforts date back at least as far as their 2015 acquisition of Tidal Systems, but the first product with a Micron-designed SSD controller only showed up a year ago: the Micron 2200 series client OEM SSD."
from https://www.anandtech.com/show/15743/cr ... -nvme-ssds

Dhanushan wrote: ↑ Crucial (a brand of Micron) P5 uses a controller designed by Micron.

"The Crucial P5 is the first retail SSD to use a controller designed by Micron. Their in-house SSD controller design efforts date back at least as far as their 2015 acquisition of Tidal Systems, but the first product with a Micron-designed SSD controller only showed up a year ago: the Micron 2200 series client OEM SSD."
from https://www.anandtech.com/show/15743/cr ... -nvme-ssds

Sure, but the P1's controller is not designed by Crucial (it's designed by Silicon Motion). The SN550's controller is designed by WD. Maybe I was a bit over general but it is correct about the products being discussed in this thread.

Jep4444 wrote: ↑ Sure, but the P1's controller is not designed by Crucial (it's designed by Silicon Motion). The SN550's controller is designed by WD. Maybe I was a bit over general but it is correct about the products being discussed in this thread.

I would not say the SN550's controller is designed by WD, it was designed by their subsidiary Sandisk. I would say it is a WD in-house controller.

from https://www.tech-critter.com/wd-blue-sn ... tb-review/

Here we take a closer look at the WD in-house controller, the SanDisk 20-82-01008-A1. The controller has a small amount of SRAM built into it and supports the latest NVMe 1.4 which utilizes the host memory buffer to overcome the limitations of DRAMless SSD as we’ve seen in the past.

Unlike the previous generation M.2 2280 form factor SSD we’ve seen from a few years back then, the single NAND flash on the WD Blue SN550 has a whopping 1TB capacity. The SanDisk branded 96-layer BiCS4 3D NAND flash with a rated write endurance of 600 TBW, which is an impressive number for a consumer-grade SSD.

from https://tipsmake.com/try-wd-blue-ssd-sn ... e-standard

WD SN550 has a printed circuit board on one side and no DRAM integrated. This is understandable because the product is located in the common segment, needing to minimize production costs to reduce the price. The two most prominent chips on the top (black) are the SanDisk 20-82-01008-A1 controller, made in China, and the 1TB SanDisk 96-layer 3D TLC NAND memory chip, made in Malaysia.