SSD Guide
Modern PC SSDs have a few specs you need to be aware of before you purchase.
(Don't worry, it's easier than it sounds!)
- INTERFACE: SATA (old), NVMe (new)
- SIZE: 3.5" (big), 2.5", M.2 (tiny)
- FLASH: QLC (slow/cheap), TLC, SLC (fast/expensive)
- CACHE: Does it have its own RAM?
Q: Can my PC use an SSD?
As long as it's not 15+ years old, yes. Every motherboard today has "SATA" ports, which are basically data plugs meant for hard drives. Worse case, you can buy an SSD supporting that plug. Even the PlayStation 4 supports SSDs using this method.
If you absolutely want an M.2 NVMe because it's awesome/small/fast, but don't have the slot, you can buy an M.2 adapter card that plugs into any PCIe 3.0/4.0 slot. This will allow you to add 1-2 M.2 NVMe drives of your choosing. (But usually this cannot be booted from.)
Q: What size of SSD should I buy?
For this, you need to look at the website or manual of your
motherboard because there are a few specs out there
:
- SATA (2.5"): As I said above, you undoubtedly have a SATA port. If your case has a spot to install a 2.5" drive, that means you can buy a 2.5" SSD. It's the slowest and oldest of SSDs, but it does work. Just remember you need to have a SATA cable and a SATA power cable for it to work.
- M.2 (SATA): Most motherboards in the last 5 years (or more) support M.2, a tiny standard where the SSD is so small it's literally a stick that plugs into the motherboard. No cables. The older M.2 slots still use SATA, meaning if you plug in an M.2 SATA drive, one of your SATA ports will be disabled.
- M.2 (NVMe): The modern standard. NVMe is a protocol specifically for SSDs that communicates as if it's a PCIe card. NVMe cards are easily the fastest, and this is the protocol used by PS5/XSX. M.2 cards do require a tiny standoff and screw, which should come with your motherboard accessories (if not, look on amazon...) Since they are so tiny and cableless, they are the easiest to install.
Q: What speed of SSD should I buy?
This is a bit trickier. There are basically 5 products on the market currently (2020):
- INTERFACE: SATA (slowest) > PCIe 3.0 > PCIe 3.0x4 > PCIe 4.0
Why PCIe? NVMe communicates like a PCIe card, so it uses PCIe speeds. As of April 2020, only AMD X570 motherboards and the PlayStation 5 support PCIe 4.0. Intel only supports up to PCIe 3.0x4 and might not support 4.0 until 2021. 4.0 offers massive boosts in bandwidth (5-8GB/s) but you won't notice this different (yet) in gaming.
- CACHE: Any decent SSD uses a RAM cache to maximize lifetime and reduce latency. However, some new (2019/2020) cheap SSDs are starting to appear that are "DRAMless", using part of the SSD itself as a cache. Avoid these if at all possible; the latency hit is severe.
- FLASH: The storage chips themselves. Basically to make SSDs affordable, manufacturers went from 1 bit per cell (SLC) to 2 bits (MLC) to 3 bits (TLC) and finally 4 bits (QLC). Every time they do this, you get more storage, but lifetime and speed get cut severely. Currently most "performance" SSDs are TLC and "cheap" SSDs are QLC.
If you hear about "3D", well, that's the other solution. Most modern SSDs stack layers of MLC/TLC on top of each other. (64, 96, 128 microscopic layers tall). Samsung's VNAND does exactly this, sidestepping the whole QLC problem.
So given all of this, there are basically these classes available today from cheapest to most expensive:
- DRAMless QLC: new, dirt cheap, bad performance, 2.5" or M.2 form factors, avoid.
- 2.5" SATA: old drives, mostly going out of the market, although the Samsung 860 Evo hangs around.
- QLC + DRAM (Sabrent Rocket Q) The "slowest" of the fast, but still good. Avoid the Intel 660p if possible.
- TLC + DRAM (HP ex950, ADATA SX 8200 Pro) 3.0x4 drives with great performance.
- Samsung VNAND (970 EVO, 970 Pro) The best of 3.0x4 but very expensive.
- PCIe 4.0 (AORUS Gen 4) The fastest today, but double the price of 3.0x4 and games can't use it yet.
Linus Tech Tips did a blind test for today's games (2019/early 2020) and
found no noticeable difference between SATA 2.5" and PCIe 4.0 in terms of initial load and overall experience. Benchmarks slow a slight advantage up the scale, but not enough to be noticeable without the numbers in front of you. Professional apps clearly favor NVMe. tl;dr?
- Budget minded gamers should opt for 2.5" SATA or QLC+DRAM. Crucial P1, 860 EVO, etc.
- Perf/pro app gamers should opt for TLC drives. ex950, SX8200 Pro, etc.
- In general I won't recommend the Samsung 970 unless you find a great sale, as you're always better off with, say, a 1TB TLC drive than a 500GB Samsung.
- Similarly, unless you are doing heavy video editing or other demanding high end drive stuff, you're better off with 3.0x4 than 4.0 drives for the same size reason. The SX8200 Pro 2TB at some point was at or under $300 USD.
Q: Why don't games scale with the SSD yet?
A handful of reasons, although there are probably more:
- Today's games on PC use RAM as a massive cache, because there's just more to work with than on console. A PS4 game is constantly thrashing its hard drive to stream data in and out, while a PC with 16GB of RAM has a huge amount of space to just preload most of that information. They can "lazy stream", so to speak.
- Windows overhead. Microsoft is introducing DirectStorage with Xbox Series X as a way to minimize this and is expected to update that on PC DirectX as well.
- Common denominator: PC is rarely lead platform (even though the vast majority of gamedev is PCs). I'd say most gamedev uses 2.5" SATA these days for development tools and running the build, but optimization is to run on an HD. So I suspect that in the future as PS5/XSX games use relatively huge amounts of RAM and fast storage, games will either scale up better on PC or offer an "SSD mode" to change the loading strategy. <<no inside info here, sadly! Just a guess.
Looking forward for people buying now, if you want to be "future proof", you can buy a TLC 3.0x4 drive and get the same or better specs as the Xbox Series X drive. But I suspect even QLC drives will see benefit if games start using SSDs more effectively.
Q: What about PlayStation 5?
Sony has a bit of a Ferrari. The fastest SSDs today are 8 channel, 5GB/s PCIe 4.0 drives that can only be used on the AMD X570 motherboard. Sony's solution is 12 channel (never used in PC retail) and 5.5GB/s. Add in a custom I/O core and it's probably not directly comparable to any PC drive.
Later 2020, the second generation of PCIe 4.0 drives will come out on the PC market (Samsung 980 Pro, Phison E18, etc) with even better bandwidth (7GB/s+ vs. PS5 5.5GB/s). So the highway won't be as "wide", but traffic will be faster, sort of evening-out the advantage. I suspect many of them will be considered PS5 compatible. Just keep in mind they will be expensive - expect to pay double the price of a 3.0x4 drive at first.
Q: Does Brand Name Matter?
Not really. These days all SSDs use controller chips from a handful of manufacturers. So for example, the HP ex950 and ADATA SX8200 Pro are virtually the same drive despite vastly different brand names. Each brand may introduce their own tweaks, but at the end of the day the number of drive controller and flash manufacturers is very few. There has also been some high profile gaffes by major brands, especially Intel with their subpar 660p/665p models.
Where brand can matter a bit is if you're buying truly no-name Chinese brands from, say, Alibaba. A lot of b/c-tier stock and controller chips we've never heard of come out of that space. General rule of thumb: if you're not sure about the brand, google some reviews or search on youtube. Almost all of the popular but lesser known brands have reviews. (addlink, ADATA, teamforce, etc)
Q: How much storage should I get?
In the old days of SSDs you'd just get a small boot drive for Windows. You can still do that, but SSD speed scales up towards 1TB/2TB. So if you want fast, you want one of those two sizes. There's just a peace-of-mind benefit to having one drive letter that is fast everywhere and not always managing what goes on the SSD, what goes on the HDD, etc. For average gaming a 1TB model is recommended; it's lots of room for games, Windows, and minimal management. The Crucial P1 (QLC+DRAM) has been at or below $100 USD, which means there are affordable drives at that size.
Keep in mind that most motherboards have only two M.2 slots, and the maximum size M.2 you can buy today is 2TB. (4TB is sometimes available, but only if you have...say, 2-3000 dollars). So if you have a lot of games you may want another M.2 drive later (or just a big HDD for all of those tiny games that don't give a crap about where you store it).
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