NVME questions

[Fry178]

@freeagent
set min to 2048, max to at least size of ram, this way at least your reducing writes on the drive a bit..

@kapone32
so you know how/for what OP is using the rig?
unless on unlimited budget, os doesnt need more than 50gb, so even a 128gb would be fine,
outside i rather have 2 small drives, either using one as backup or at least as 2nd drive for games/software,
limiting data loss in case of "a disaster"...

the "missing" cache will not make any difference, outside copying large files or benchmarking the drive, so again, its wasting money (if not used that way).
even if used a lot, i doubt a regular user will see more than 10TB written/y, meaning easily 10y of life..
at least with drives form past 3=4y and up.


@ThrashZone
no need for leaving space free.
unless you fill to them to the brink

 

[djisas]

why not buy a wd sn550 blue 1tb these are very good drives. i replaced my wd blue with a sn750 1tb and honestly i can't tell the difference except in benchmarks and they can be had for 99.99usd.

Great bang for buck on those blue puppies, fast enough, reliable enough cheaper than most although not the greatest endurance, but that shouldn't be an issue with light workloads...

 

[kapone32]

@kapone32
so you know how/for what OP is using the rig?
unless on unlimited budget, os doesnt need more than 50gb, so even a 128gb would be fine,
outside i rather have 2 small drives, either using one as backup or at least as 2nd drive for games/software,
limiting data loss in case of "a disaster"...

the "missing" cache will not make any difference, outside copying large files or benchmarking the drive, so again, its wasting money (if not used that way).
even if used a lot, i doubt a regular user will see more than 10TB written/y, meaning easily 10y of life..
at least with drives form past 3=4y and up.

I understand what you are saying from a pragmatic perspective using past experiences. I do feel though that NVME will grow in significance as time goes on. If you are at 500 the jump to 1 TB is not that big in price especially if you are looking at budget NVME.

 

[ThrashZone]

Spoiler: Other content

@freeagent
set min to 2048, max to at least size of ram, this way at least your reducing writes on the drive a bit..

@kapone32
so you know how/for what OP is using the rig?
unless on unlimited budget, os doesnt need more than 50gb, so even a 128gb would be fine,
outside i rather have 2 small drives, either using one as backup or at least as 2nd drive for games/software,
limiting data loss in case of "a disaster"...

the "missing" cache will not make any difference, outside copying large files or benchmarking the drive, so again, its wasting money (if not used that way).
even if used a lot, i doubt a regular user will see more than 10TB written/y, meaning easily 10y of life..
at least with drives form past 3=4y and up.

@ThrashZone
no need for leaving space free.
unless you fill to them to the brink

Hi,
One
I like keeping partitions smaller so windows doesn't write all other the place so it's not about filling them up which I don't 500gb is silly as a os drive anyway win-10 is only about 60gb's last I checked lol
I said I cut 500gb in half but reality C is usually only 140gb for win-10 which is still too much

Two
I also keep partitions small enough to where a system image can fit the majority of my 2.5" ssd which are 240-256gb so I can switch back and forth.

Third
Unallocated space is needed regardless for over provisioning/ although I let the firmware do this chore not samsung magician so I just leave a crapload more than is recommended on a 500gb ssd which I believe is 32gb over provision space.

Forth
I'd never fill an ssd or partition to the "brink"

 

[Fry178]

@ThrashZone
not formatting part of it will only really help if you fill the formatted space up, to reduce writes on nand.
as far as drives from the past 3-4y, that has shown to be irrelevant, as virtually all dead/dying drives Backblaze had data on,
suffered from nand/controller death, not write (cycles)..

 

[Hyderz]

500gb feels a bit small these days, i would opt for a 1tb since they have come down in price.

 

[Zach_01]

cheers, so should be ok , was considering 1 of these 2 , bearing in mind any heat issues

Samsung 970 EVO 500 GB PCIe NVMe​

or

WD_BLACK SN750 500GB High-Performance NVMe (with heatsink)​

both roughly the same price, so which would you go for considering the above?

"Sumsung 970 Evo Plus 500GB PCIE NVMe" would my choise. The EVO Plus is almost identical to my 970Pro 512GB in performance but same TBW as EVOnonPlus (300).
You should consider a small heatsink with insignificant cost if your board doesn't have one. These are even better than most boards do have but they need minimum airflow to work properly. Board heatsinks dont have fins but they have more mass and soak from heat slower that the ones below.

This is for reference


With nice case airflow you should never face any thermal issue with either of them.

There's always a better and more expensive choise too but I dont think is required



This is my 970Pro 512GB (typical usage) with board heatsink right below CPU socket and a case fan (120mm 650rpm) over board VRM and CPU socket. I never saw it over 45C for NAND and 65C for controller.


As for the page file discussion, I do have one (16GB static) on a secondary old SATA 850Pro 1TB. I had various issues in the past with small (2GB) or no page file at all.
Also SSDs are partition agnostic. it doesnt matter for TBW if a drive has 1 or 10 partitions. Though I dont have any partitions on my 3 SSDs.

970Pro 512GB (OS, apps, and some games I dont mind loosing progress, Usage ~260GB)
850Pro 1TB (PageFile, general storage= pics, videos and other, game installments, Usage ~550GB)
860Evo 1TB (game installments, Usage ~500GB)

System restore is kept to minimum space for the OS drive and disabled for the other 2. My policy is to keep space usage at 60~65% max, though I haven't reach this level yet.

EDIT: I made a mistake about TBW of the EVO Plus. Its corrected now.

 

[freeagent]

@freeagent
set min to 2048, max to at least size of ram, this way at least your reducing writes on the drive a bit..

This is why I disabled the page file to begin with, was to reduce writes. If it blue screams its usually because of something I did in the bios. I am just a casual user with no high end software installed. I am ok with 16GB of ram, 32GB is way overkill for me, I'm just in it for the performance bump from single to dual rank.. although I do give up a little at the very top with 4 sticks and the new bios.. but that's ok I guess..

I switched my 500 and 1TB around, the 500 was my boot drive. The 1TB is a bit faster, with double the endurance. It feels backwards to me running the big one. I got it so I don't have to download certain games every time I reinstall. But at the same time it feels wrong to just put games on it lol

Sigh.

I guess the little one runs cooler because it is not as dense.

 

[Fry178]

yeah, only prob is win expects and needs one.
with fixed settings there is no writing, unless win actually uses it,
e.g. no impact unless the space is actually needed.
even if its just for diagnostic/troubleshooting..

 

[freeagent]

Its just an old habit from when 64gb SSDs were a thing. Every time it crashes it can leave up half a gb worth of logs and gibberish.. do that a few times and you have a few gb of logs that I don't need because I know why it crashed. Either something I did in the bios, or running the GPU too fast or both

 

[Mussels]

This is why I disabled the page file to begin with, was to reduce writes. If it blue screams its usually because of something I did in the bios. I am just a casual user with no high end software installed. I am ok with 16GB of ram, 32GB is way overkill for me, I'm just in it for the performance bump from single to dual rank.. although I do give up a little at the very top with 4 sticks and the new bios.. but that's ok I guess..

I switched my 500 and 1TB around, the 500 was my boot drive. The 1TB is a bit faster, with double the endurance. It feels backwards to me running the big one. I got it so I don't have to download certain games every time I reinstall. But at the same time it feels wrong to just put games on it lol

Sigh.

I guess the little one runs cooler because it is not as dense.

View attachment 189950

you're increasing writes by disabling it, because the OS has to create and delete any files it needs paged over and over. With a large static page file, the previously needed files are still there, saving a write.

Remember, windows does not let you actually disable it: if its not enabled on any drives at all, it'll create one on the fly as needed.

 

[Isaac`]

you're increasing writes by disabling it, because the OS has to create and delete any files it needs paged over and over. With a large static page file, the previously needed files are still there, saving a write.

Remember, windows does not let you actually disable it: if its not enabled on any drives at all, it'll create one on the fly as needed.

No this is false if swap is disabled and you run out of ram
your program crashes and you get sad