The specifications of solid state drives or SSDs are just as easy to follow as those of routers, but even more than those boxes that magically send the internet through the air, the actual performance is far different. We refresh the basic knowledge about SSDs, and find the best one for you.
It is not in dispute that the arrival of the SSD has had the greatest impact on the sense of speed of our well-known home, garden and kitchen computer or laptop. We would advise those who still doubt the concept and still work with a mechanically rotating hard disk that it is now really time. It is understandable that the breakthrough among the general public took a long time; a computer with a '500GB drive' sounded more appealing to many people than a '250GB drive', regardless of how much faster the ssd technology was. And of course the price difference also played a role. The awareness of SSDs has improved a lot by now, although we are sorry to see many entry-level systems without SSDs. Although we will discuss the differences in this article, we want to make it clear that any recent SSD is better than no SSD.
Different types of SSDs
SSDs purchased separately serve both as a basis for a new system, or as an upgrade for an existing system or laptop. But before we delve deeper into the content, it is important to distinguish between the physical connection of an SSD and the protocol used to communicate between your computer and the disk. You normally connect an ssd to a sata or m.2 connection on your motherboard, the common connections. Recent systems usually have an m.2 slot, but for computers without such a connection, some manufacturers of m.2 SSDs provide a plug-in card that physically connects the SSD to PCI Express slots (where video cards and the like normally go in). ).
Sata is a fairly old connection with which we have been connecting our mechanical hard drives to the computer for years, and we also easily connected the first SSDs to it. Practical, because with an SSD upgrade you rarely had to worry that that beautiful, brand new technology would not fit. However, M.2 as a physical connection is much more attractive: the connection directly on the motherboard saves additional cabling and the matching drives are more compact. This is certainly necessary for thinner laptops, but more compact desktop computers also benefit from it.
New protocol needed
With the rapid developments in the field of flash memory on which the SSDs are based, the need for a new connection and protocol came. That faster connection was already available on every computer in the form of PCI Express, a connection that is many times faster than the SATA interface. PCI Express works with so-called lanes that offer a speed of 1 GB/s. In the case of an m.2 slot, four of these lanes are combined for a maximum theoretical speed of 4 GB/s, fast enough for the fastest SSDs for the time being. However, PCI Express is only half the story, because the latest SSDs also use a different control protocol. The older AHCI protocol used for SATA drives was developed with mechanical drives in mind and has been a bottleneck for newer SSDs in several ways. The first generation of PCI Express SSDs used AHCI, but modern (M.2) PCI Express SSDs use the newer NVME protocol. This was conceived especially for SSDs and offers much-needed improvements: lower latency, higher maximum throughputs, and most importantly, the ability to process many more simultaneous actions. In short: NVME SSDs are much, much more powerful. Although most recent m.2 connections support PCI Express, this is not always the case. An m.2 SSD can perfectly be a SATA variant and therefore does not deviate very much from a 2.5-inch SATA SSD. It is therefore important to see the physical connection and the interface separately from each other.
Nvme all the things!
There is no question that NVME drives are objectively faster. The maximum throughput of a SATA SSD is around 560 MB/s and most SSDs indeed reach or approach that - at least when reading it. But even the slowest NVME drive in this comparison is well over three times faster than that. The fastest (and most expensive) NVME drives in this test, the Samsung 970 PRO SSDs, come in at around 3500 MB/s. Three and a half gigabytes per second is a whole DVD of data over the line in less than a second and a half.
It does lead us to the question of how much the ability to transfer so much data in a short time is practically relevant, a typical light user will rarely demand more than a few megabytes per second of disk actions. To put it in a simple metaphor: when five people arrive at the supermarket checkout with a shopping cart full, it doesn't matter whether they are met by 10 or 50 cashiers.
However, NVME drives excel not only in throughput, but especially in low latency and the ability to handle many more tasks simultaneously, as if our above-mentioned cashiers were not only waiting eagerly but also scanned the entire car before we can draw our bonus card. Nvme sounds so totally fantastic.
optane?
SSD insiders may already have their sights on Optane SSDs, or actually 3D XPoint SSDs, since Optane is the brand name that Intel uses. So far we've talked about the connections and protocols, but the type of memory used in an SSD obviously also has an impact on performance. 3D XPoint models are now for sale and have proven to be much faster, but given the extreme additional cost, they are currently only interesting for the most demanding professionals.
The reality is more complicated
So NVME SSDs are objectively great, but when we look at a complete computer system, the SSD is just one of many cogs in the bigger picture. If we stay with the checkout metaphor again, we can express this by saying that although the checkout works much faster, the total time we spend on the message, including driving and parking, does not necessarily change significantly.
Whether the entire system goes faster with such a much faster SSD compared to an entry-level SSD depends on what tasks you let the system perform. Only disk-heavy tasks actually go faster, but there are fewer than you might think. If we look at things that are relevant for a typical home user, we actually see no difference. Think of starting up the PC, opening a photo or starting a game. Tasks that go significantly faster with an SSD than with a mechanical hard drive, but you have to be in good hands to notice the difference between the slowest and fastest drive in this test. The theoretical advantages simply do not matter in practice.
This science puts a lot of pressure on the more luxurious SSDs in this comparison, not only NVME models but also the more expensive SATA options compared to the cheapest possible model. It makes it easy to understand why SSDs often don't look at any indication of speed, but only at the price per GB. If performance does not matter for many basic tasks, then you prefer to buy as much storage for your money as possible. Are you mainly looking for an SSD to make your system start smoothly, or a gamer who wants to store as many games as possible on the SSD, then we understand the urge to grab the cheapest one. Then the 'old-fashioned' SATA drives suddenly turn out to be not so crazy. Every dollar you save feels like a profit when you only look at the boot time of your system.
Bigger = Faster?
A well-known phenomenon is that larger SSDs are faster than smaller variants. Up to about 1 TB, we usually see improvements in performance with drives within the same series. As a result, we sometimes see lower-positioned, higher-capacity drives putting pressure on manufacturers' higher-ranked options with less storage. The Samsung 970 EVO 1TB versus the Samsung 970 PRO 512GB is a good example of this. Because larger ones are faster, can process more data (TBW rating) and have a more favorable price per GB, models from about 500 GB are usually the most interesting in terms of content.
And reliability?
Ideally, we would put reliability first, but this is virtually impossible to test. This would take several years and by the end the tested models would be off the market long and wide. Theoretically interesting, but practically without much value. Reliability is partly determined by the amount of data in each memory cell. An SSD that stores 3 bits of data in a cell (3-bit TLC memory) theoretically wears a lot faster than a model with 2 bits of data per cell (2-bit MLC memory), where we use 1-bit SLC memory can be omitted given the price of those cells yields practically unsaleable SSDs.
Fortunately, the longevity of the memory used in all of these SSDs is so good that reliability is no longer a consideration for most purposes. Only the toughest professional users will really want to consider the type of memory. Therefore, we do include the memory configuration in the table, but we weigh it limited for the consumer. It's especially crucial to remember that in theory anything can break, so you should always have a good backup.
Heavy, heavier, heaviest
The definition of professional is not a simple one, because a professional Excel worker will not quickly benefit from a faster SSD. It is mainly creative professionals who can benefit from a more luxurious SSD, although the degree of load on your system will determine whether a real top model offers a profit or whether you will suffice with something more than an entry-level device. However, for video and photo editing, a high-performing model is a good addition. Certainly an SSD with a smooth cache in it is useful at times when a lot is written to the disk. It is therefore nice that the better SATA drives or mid-range NVME drives are not much more expensive than the entry-level ones.
SSDs with powerful specs are also useful if you're running multiple virtual machines from the same SSD, or if you're performing database or web server-like tasks. The typical consumer will be the worst, but serious IT professionals will see enough in SSDs of which we can demonstrate with benchmarks that the underlying qualities are significantly better.
And sata express? U.2?
Sata and m.2 are certainly not the only methods to connect an ssd, we also see sata-express and u.2 connections on some recent motherboards. Although these can be useful in certain enterprise solutions, in practice they are of no use to us as consumers. None of the SSD manufacturers pay attention to it in their consumer or SMB products, and the reality is also starting to dawn on motherboard manufacturers that those connections are not very successful.
