Guide
Comparing five PCIe 4.0 SSDs
by Kevin Hofer
Fast and reliable: The best SSDs for PCs and laptops
15.3.2020
Translation: machine translated
Once you have experienced an SSD in your computer, you will never want to do without it again. The data carriers are incredibly fast, compact and silent. SSDs are very popular due to their many positive features. The range on sale is correspondingly large.
In contrast to hard drives, SSDs (solid state drives) store their data on flash memory and not on magnetic discs. This means that access times are shorter and read and write speeds are higher. Each block of an SSD can be accessed at the same speed. Regardless of whether they are next to each other or on a different module. As no mechanical components are used in the SSD, these storage devices are silent.
How much memory do I need?
SSDs are more expensive than conventional hard drives. That's why it's worth considering how much storage space you actually need. You should ask yourself what exactly is important for your system.
You are on the safe side with 250 or 500 gigabytes. The value for money is also very good here. Data such as photos that you don't look at every day can still be stored on a normal hard drive - either externally or, if your computer has space for a second hard drive, on an internal HDD. This is currently the most sensible solution, as the price per gigabyte for hard drives is significantly lower than for SSDs.
If you are working with large amounts of data, such as when editing photos or videos, the speed of an SSD is clearly noticeable. The situation is similar with large projects that need to be loaded quickly. When developing games, for example, it makes perfect sense to store your current project on the SSD. If you want to manage this type of employees with an SSD, one to two terabyte SSDs make sense, depending on the size of your projects.
Due to current developments in the industry and the increasing demand for flash memory for servers and cars, the price of SSDs is expected to rise again in the future. The really large models are not cheap even today. Anyone looking for an SSD with around four terabytes will pay more than twice as much as for the two-terabyte versions.
If you also need fast storage on the go, but you can't open your laptop to install another SSD or it no longer has a free slot, it may be worthwhile for you to consider an external SSD that you connect to your laptop via USB cable:
SATA 3 or NVMe SSD?
SLC, QLC, TLC and co
When buying an SSD, you will come across three-letter abbreviations. These describe the memory cells of the flash memory used.
The abbreviation of interest to you is more likely to be TBW. This stands for "terabytes written", i.e. the number of terabytes written before the SSD breaks down. The greater the capacity of the SSD, the more TBW the model can manage. In practice, SSDs usually last significantly longer, the values are given with a margin. When making a purchase decision, it is particularly worth taking a look at this value.
Here is an example of a comparison using the Samsung 860 QVO (2.5-inch, SATA 3, QLC) and the Samsung 860 EVO Basic (2.5-inch, SATA 3, TLC), when used for around five years:
Conclusion
You should currently only buy as much SSD storage for your computer as you actually need, as they are still quite expensive. When buying, pay attention to the connection that your system supports and only go for super-fast NVMe storage if you actually handle large amounts of data frequently, such as for photo or video editing. Otherwise, a SATA 3 SSD is also sufficient for office applications or video games.
Most of the time I'm living between bits and bytes, testing alternative Android operating systems and trying to make my life smarter with Open Source technology - always with a focus on privacy and data protection. When I'm not testing cool gadgets, I'm developing video games, writing stories and playing the accordion.
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