Help me choose new SSD

[yoco]

Hi all! My motherboard is Gigabyte x570 Gaming X, and believe it or not I just realised it has two M2 slots 😅

So I wanna buy a new SSD, which would mostly be used for gaming. What would you recommend I buy? Is 990 Evo Plus good choice?

[+DoctorD Subscriber²]

Personally, I used to be a big fan of the Evo drives but have found the Corsair MP 700 is just a bit faster and seems to fit my needs just as well. 

[yoco]

On 22/07/2025 at 11:54, DoctorD said:

Personally, I used to be a big fan of the Evo drives but have found the Corsair MP 700 is just a bit faster and seems to fit my needs just as well. 

Thank you for replying! Is MP600 also good? Where I'm looking they don't have MP700. I was also looking at Corsair T500, that comes with heatsink.

[farmeunit]

Samsung is definitely good, but there are many good brands and models.  I use Klevv, Orico, Samsung 980 Pro, Western Digital Blue/Black, and even Inland drives.  Have had no issues with any of those.

Ideally you'll get one with onboard cache, but I use several without and they're generally fine for gaming/secondary drive.  At work we buy a ton of Team Group.

 

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

I've used Samsung in the past, but now I'm more Into Western Digital Blue/Black. I know they're based off SandDisk, but, stil l like em.

[+DoctorD Subscriber²]

On 22/07/2025 at 06:45, yoco said:

Thank you for replying! Is MP600 also good? Where I'm looking they don't have MP700. I was also looking at Corsair T500, that comes with heatsink.

The board you mentioned has a heatsink over the primary M.2 slot so keep that in mind when looking.  I have always looked at it like this (for what it's worth) your main drive should be what you need for your build because saving now money is going to potentially stink later.  The 600 series is not even in the same league as the 700 or the Evo

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

I have had good results with Corsair, Crucial, Kioxia (formerly Toshiba), Nextorage, OWC, Patriot, Sabrent, Samsung, SanDisk (formerly Western Digital), Solidigm (formerly Intel) and Team Group SSDs. 

Be sure to look at warranty length, and whether the drive uses TLC or QLC memory.  The former tends to be faster and lasts longer, but QLC is maturing and is usually less expensive.

 

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky
 

[LaP]

I use to buy only Samsung and Crucial MX but things have change a lot in the last 5 years.

 

Western Digital Black ssd are very good.

Corsair MP too (specially when it comes to gen 5)

The Patriot 2TB Viper VP4300 Lite is a good cheap option with decent perf

Crucial Txxx is pretty good too.

I had bad exp with TeamGroup when they initially came out but i bought two TEAMGROUP T-Force Vulcan Z 2TB SLC Cache for my new computer because they were the cheapest 2 tb with any kind of cache and i've been pleasantly surprised.

 

You got to do your own research. Does it have dram cache? If yes which type of dram cache. Does it have a large SLC cache? If so how large is it? 20% of the drive? 30% of the drive? For example the TG 2TB i posted above has a 650GB SLC cache which is about 30% of the drive capacity. Is it TLC or QLC. I'd avoid QLC drive without any type of cache unless it's for storage they tend to perform badly with small writes. I'm not an expert so do your own research  https://www.techpowerup.com/ , https://www.tweaktown.com/ and https://www.tomshardware.com/ are usually good sources to know the real spec of a ssd and nvme specially the cache since a lot of manufacturer are not clear about this.

Edited July 22, 2025 by LaP

[LaP]

On 22/07/2025 at 16:53, goretsky said:

Hello,

I have had good results with Corsair, Crucial, Kioxia (formerly Toshiba), Nextorage, OWC, Patriot, Sabrent, Samsung, SanDisk (formerly Western Digital), Solidigm (formerly Intel) and Team Group SSDs. 

Be sure to look at warranty length, and whether the drive uses TLC or QLC memory.  The former tends to be faster and lasts longer, but QLC is maturing and is usually less expensive.

 

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky
 

Kioxia is Toshiba rebranded?

Did not know that. 

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

On 22/07/2025 at 17:54, LaP said:

I had bad exp with TeamGroup when they initially came out but i bought two TEAMGROUP T-Force Vulcan Z 2TB SLC Cache for my new computer because they were the cheapest 2 tb with any kind of cache and i've been pleasantly surprised.

Yeah, TeamGroup have really upped their game. They are cheap, but good these days.

[yoco]

I bought Crucial T500. Works fine

[hellowalkman Reporter]

On 29/07/2025 at 02:41, yoco said:

I bought Crucial T500. Works fine

very nice enjoy the upgrade.

[remixedcat]

I'm using an enterprise grade seagate nytro in this dell latitude 5400 laptop lol. it's a very high endurance drive like 1.8PBW endurance on a 960GB drive. Gonna get either a Firecuda 520/530r or Seagate Nytro m2 2280 nvme next month. Currently have like 5 samsung sata ssds that are working good, and wd blue sn520,sk hynix bc901,and micron m.2 nvme ssds. all working goo cept the wd blue is terrible on random read and writes and is introducing a lot of DPC latency for music production in bitwig studio. Not recommended. WD blues give me the blues. 

[Seumul-net]

Choose an M.2 NVMe SSD (1 TB capacity) from a trusted brand. Ensure it matches your system’s interface (e.g., PCIe 4.0) and gives high performance for the price.

[a_gave]

I've been using a Samsung 990 PRO 2TB for the past few months and TBH it is just working awesome.