Question about the new gen4 nvme's vs the gen3's.

I've seen a few gen 4 nvme's on the market, such as gigabytes aorus"s 1tb nvme. I was going to put a 970pro nvme in the new 3000 series build, but with the gen4 support from the x570 chipset and 3000 series cpu I was thinking to go with this instead. I see it's cheaper than the 970pro and I'm wondering why, when the gen4 seems like a faster nvme compared to the 970pro. I'd there something I'm missing? Thanks.

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Gen4 runs a lot hotter due to higher power needs, that's one thing to consider. If, then only buy one with a heatsink.

The 970Pro does not slow down after a given amount of GB written continuously, that might be the case with those Gen4's available, but I have no info on that, you'd need to read some reviews.

BTW, most Gen4 1TB drives dropped to 200$ this week, might be good time.

Tbh, I'd wait for Samsung to come up with a Gen4 drive. Data reliability is a thing I wouldnt gamble with tho Corsair and Gigabyte offer a 5y warranty as well.

I doubt it makes any difference for home user usage, unless you plan to run as many VM's as you possibly can from that drive or do very heavy db work. For gaming, there will be zero difference for a long time to come.

I was looking at the aorus wrapped in a copper hs that was >$100 less than the 970pro. I did manage to find real world comparisons between the two and despite pcie 4.0, the gen4 ,,only bested the 970pro by mediocre amounts in random read and write benchmarks. The differences were barely noticable. The few on the market are pretty immature. I was thinking exactly what you suggested: wait for Samsung's offering.

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The 970 EVO Plus is as fast as the PRO but the PRO is more durable and has a bigger warranty when it comes to writes, but both have a 5-year warranty.

Nand is Nand, the main difference is that Samsung makes the stuff they sell while nearly everyone else us is using Micron's. Most of Micron's stuff has a higher TBW rating than Samsung which I rate higher than warranty even though they're all 5yrs. A choice in flash storage probably shouldn't be about max sequential unless you're doing high throughput workloads regularly The random read speeds of small files like in video games rarely benefit from having anything faster than a SATA SSD. They all benefit from keeping the controller cool. I'm seeing a near equal amount of failed older laptop m.2 ssd's at work that are based on either intel, samsung, or micron. Although all the micron ones I've seen have been Transcend modules.

I was going to go with the 970pro, but decided to just get the aorus 1tb gen4. Its somewhat faster and the price was too good to pass up on. Demand isn't high yet so I figured why not take advantage of the extremely low price tag.

Toshiba and SK Hynix are also big players in NAND. It's a handful of players out there, some are focused on Endusers, some are more or solely focused on OEM.

I picked up a 2TB Corsair MP510 because it was down to $253 and is rated for 3300TBW a few months back. The Samsung equivalent had like 1/3 the endurance being marginally faster for way more money. Didn't seem worth it to me.

I usually dont talk companies down but this you should know, copied directly from Corsair's own forum:

From AnandTech's P34A80 review: "Corsair seemingly hasn't provided a firmware update for one of their SSDs since they were using SandForce controllers years ago".

Seeing that and the dead "SSD Firmware Update" forum here, it's pretty clear there are zero chances Corsair will provide any kind of performance improvement firmware updates (for MP510 or whatever else they re-sell).

Last edited by taCrs; 04-01-2019 at 06:00 PM.

That's why I would never buy anything from corsair but a case and maybe a AIO, if that wouldnt need their crappy iCue or Link software.

I hope you get lucky with it, support will be zero.

I usually dont talk companies down but this you should know, copied directly from Corsair's own forum:

 

From AnandTech's P34A80 review: "Corsair seemingly hasn't provided a firmware update for one of their SSDs since they were using SandForce controllers years ago".

 

Seeing that and the dead "SSD Firmware Update" forum here, it's pretty clear there are zero chances Corsair will provide any kind of performance improvement firmware updates (for MP510 or whatever else they re-sell).

Last edited by taCrs; 04-01-2019 at 06:00 PM.

 

That's why I would never buy anything from corsair but a case and maybe a AIO, if that wouldnt need their crappy iCue or Link software.

 

 

I hope you get lucky with it, support will be zero.

At the same time firmware updates are to fix discovered problems or deficiencies. Samsung isn't putting out anymore updates for my EVO 850/860 drives. Sometimes there just isn't an actual reason to put out any more updates. That article mentions the firmware update to expand nand support for some future product that has nothing to do with the already purchased devices. They explicitly state that there wasn't really a quantifiable change between firmwares revisions. If it's doing what you expect it to out of the box (especially if you looked at reviews first) there not be a firmware update is kind of a non-issue.

I hope you are right in your case.

From my own experience with Corsair software I cannot talk good about that company anymore and that voided all options fro me at least to buy anything from them that needs software to operate properly.

You should try iCue or LINK, it's of the same quality as Asus Aura, a total fail.

I am running only Samsung SSD, 2.5" and NVMe, everywhere and thats more than 20 drives by far. None has failed yet but my own 830Evo years back in my Apple MBPr.

And yes, I have read the MP510 reviews, more than one, it's a very capable drive, just that it's RE-branded turns me off plus Corsair's inability to deliver proper software code. I am not arguing the speed of those drives, their TBW and 5y warranty, that is all excellent, tho I would still rather buy a 970 Evo Plus.

My motto is not to buy re-branded. I would also not buy a Gigabyte NVMe v4. Drives are not their usual thing, they make great boards tho.

Maybe a personal thing, it's stomach related I guess. :noexpression:

I hope you are right in your case.

 

From my own experience with Corsair software I cannot talk good about that company anymore and that voided all options fro me at least to buy anything from them that needs software to operate properly.

 

You should try iCue or LINK, it's of the same quality as Asus Aura, a total fail.

 

I am running only Samsung SSD, 2.5" and NVMe, everywhere and thats more than 20 drives by far. None has failed yet but my own 830Evo years back in my Apple MBPr.

 

And yes, I have read the MP510 reviews, more than one, it's a very capable drive, just that it's RE-branded turns me off plus Corsair's inability to deliver proper software code. I am not arguing the speed of those drives, their TBW and 5y warranty, that is all excellent, tho I would still rather buy a 970 Evo Plus.

 

My motto is not to buy re-branded. I would also not buy a Gigabyte NVMe v4. Drives are not their usual thing, they make great boards tho.

 

Maybe a personal thing, it's stomach related I guess. :noexpression:

That's kind of the point I made in my first post, basically all the drives are rebrands besides Intel and Samsung, but the product being rebranded is from a company as reputable as the others. You bought an Asus 1080ti as opposed to a founder's edition straight from Nvidia. It's literally the same thing. I work in computer repair and have seen various early model SSD's and Optane (not technically nand) that had failed. The best thing you can do for ssd longevity is keep the temps (applies for HDDs too) in check and fill it once. If you can fill and wipe it without any issue, it's probably not going to experience a premature failure. Still have an OCZ Vertex from 2012 that's been in 3 different builds, going strong. I haven't had a drive failure of any sort since Maxtor and Quantum were still a thing.

I hope you are right in your case.

 

I would also not buy a Gigabyte NVMe v4. Drives are not their usual thing, they make great boards tho.

I agree, but with a TBW of 3600 and actual write speeds at least a gig/s greater than the 970pro, coupled with a price less than $200 US, I figured I'd take a chance. I used the difference in price from the 970pro nvme to instead pick-up a new PSU for this new build instead of using my current PSU. I'll just be diligent about backing up anything of importance I put on that drive :)

Is there a practical performance difference for our application? As I understand it, the single thread sequential data rate does not seem to be any better for the NVME 4th gen over 3rd gen, and that the improvement was in the number of simultaneous areas that cod be read? As I recall, Tech Deals did a comparison between SSDs and ended up finding that even the 660p had the same load times as all the available SSDs. I believe they ended up comparing a Gen 4 drive to it in a later video, but don't see it at the moment:

I'm not sure we gain anything by going to a gen 4 NVME drive that we don't gain more of by going to a bigger entry level NVME.