a key benchmark for SSDs for me is seeing if downloading a big game from steam is bottlenecked by a 1Gbit/s internet connection or by writing the data to the drive while simultaneously decompressing the files, as steam does
@@limeisgaming The SN570 has a weird write-cache bug on Windows. You must disable if you use it for Steam games. I use the SN570 on Linux and Steam never throttled any download.
@@Sunlight91 Thanks didnt know that, its in my sisters PC installed and i was barely able to convince her to try dualbooting if i were to lend here a small ssd to install linux (some 256GB Nvme from an old laptop) but her windows installation is on that SN570.
@@limeisgamingthat's weird. I have the sn570 and my limit was always my cpu. Usage is maxed out at around 600megabits while downloading. Though now you mention I never checked speeds when the download is finished, and it's being installed.
yep, gen3 is more than fast enough for most things home users do. A FEW games can get a small advantage from faster drives. I'd rather have 4tb drives $50 cheaper or 8tb drives down under $300.
Preach. I would even take an 8TB Gen 3 m.2 SSD that has the same $/GB as a 2TB drive. Right now, (at least where I live) the price per GB at 8TB is nearly triple the cost at 2TB.
Gen 3 u.2 drives are affordable, come in a more sensible and easily cooled form factor and are available in big-boy capacities. 15.whateverTB of NVMe for under $1000? Yes please.
@@likefunbutnot "affordable" is a very subjective term. When I talk "affordable", I mean one which is comparable to spinning rust drives. I was just forced to buy more refurb 14TB drives, because there's just no comparison on a $/TB basis. I hope that's the last time I need to order spinning drives, but I doubt it, unfortunately.
Thanks Wendell for correcting what we have been told for ages; that the DRAM on SSDs is for metadata and not user data. Because it's so cheap to solder a DRAM chip to a drive though I'd still rather buy one with than without.
This is basically a review of the Phison SSD controller rather than retail SSDs. Bascially this is a reference / demo board for companies like ADATA / MSI / etc who then makes SSDs based on this chip. This chip is pretty new, so it might take a while for it to show up in retail SSDs.
@@SolarianStrike Addlink has a Gen5 drive up on Amazon (G55) that I *think* is using this controller, looking at the specs. 1TB is $115.44, 2TB is $195.44. EDIT the Addlink may actually be using a Silicon Motion controller, I'm not 100% sure.
Where is gen5 from Samsung though, currently it looks like their PM9E1 is to launch soon, but still no new Pro consumer drive. I take it after CES though.
dram-less is different for NVME, they are using system RAM for the translation table so they don't burn the flash's endurance on that. Only the Sata SSDs must have a DRAM chip because Sata does not allow access to system RAM
Have you considered banchmarking zen4 verses zen4c? Controlling for either frequency or wattage. I'm really curious how much difference there is (With consideration for the different execution units, including scalar int float and AVX's) Or 5 verses 5c if you have access.
My setup is two 2.5" SATA (Linux Mint / Windows 11 [gaming only]), with my NVME for the games themselves. It boots quickly to either OS (but God does W11 suck) and WoW loads fast with no stutters. My curiosity question is what, besides audio/video/database, hits a DRAM cache the most? My drives all have it, just curious... 😶
I wanting an adapter that changes my gen 5x4 m.2 into a 2 gen 4x4 or easier gen 5x2. Put the drives vertical with a bigger heatsink. So they do take more board space
Was about to make this same comment myself. wtaf is that, lol. How much of an OC on your RAM do you have to need a propped up bonus fan like that? Or is the case cooling just that bad, and if so, why do you own it...
@@EhNothing The case is open, so the airflow isn't getting where it might be needed? Or it is a server board that has small heatsinks that need high airflow
The performance of this is mental - there's no debate, but a question comes to mind to me. Who really needs this kind of performance? For the home user, it would be hard to find an application with a real world use case. To the profesional user, the capacities offered by this solution is not enough, and the enterprise will be looking in an entirely different segment. So who is this for?
Don't look at the top speeds advertised (12500MB/sec write or whatever), what is important is the long writes, which can be less than 500MB/sec on a crappy nvme regardless of generation. The advertised speed is bursting data at the rate 4 PCIe lanes can allow into a temporary cache status at 1 bit per cell and it has to schedule the actual write process for later. How fast the drive does actual writes is the lower, but more important number, which is harder data to find on a lot of products without conducting a benchmark investigation on a part by part basis.
@@douglasmurphy3266 Tom's Hardware tests sustained write in all of their reviews, with a graph so you can see exactly where the cache runs out and you drop to real flash speed. Also, some drop to a steady flash write speed and others keep trying to short cycle the cache causing frequent dips and small spikes. (this assumes the drive has plenty of free capacity, so there isn't additional slowdown for on the fly erasing and shuffling of blocks.
I think if you have a system capable of HMB, It's not as big of a deal to have a DRAM-less SSD as it was 5 years ago. I own dozens of NVME drives, but the 990EVO has done just fine on my daily driver.
I would rather it only use 2 lanes or even 1 lane and not need active cooling. Like how much cost are we adding to the storage drive in aluminum and a fan simply so we can hit faster speeds. If we actually got any real world benefits from it it could be different but honestly the only time most people actually benefit from these speeds are when they are un-zipping a file. Download speeds are going to be bottlenecked by your WAN connection and unless you have 100Gbps networking at home even local network file transfers are going to be bottlenecked by the network. If you have a NVME drive connected through thunderbolt 5 you may be able to get up to 10GBps but are you really using thunderbolt to transfer around data that often and is it really so critical where 5GBps wouldn't be fast enough? Having the additional PCIE lanes available is just going to be much more beneficial more often, especially as we move on to faster PCIE standards. PCIE 6 can do 7.5GBps on a single lane and PCIE 7 will be 15GBps on a single lane. Again we will be fine with the "slow" single lane speeds. Stop it with the exotic cooling solutions already.
My experience with DRAM-less nvme drives for anything other than a basic OS drive (NAS, SAN etc) is absolutely awful. Performance can be all over the place, and with a filesystem like ZFS it can really cause some headaches...
Thanks for the quick dram cache explainer. That makes way more sense than it caching user data. You could lose so much stuff if the system crashed at the wrong time if it had all that on the dram.
Does anyone even need those speeds? Like seriously, what advantages are there in anything by having a SSD that reads and writes faster than say 3GB/s? Id much rather companies spent their time making higher storage, more durable SSDs than faster and faster 1-2 TB ones that make 0 difference
it's a matter of flexibility, the same controller can connect to one to X amount of flash chips and the amount of DRAM needed increases as you add more chips. If you bake the DRAM on the controller you lock it to a specific flash size
I don't care not need Gen5, especially if it needs a chunk of aluminum and a fan. I need large capacity gen3 or even gen2 drives. Stop this silly race to the highest speed, nobody needs Gen5 in consumer space
Absolutely appreciate your groups push back against the vacuous leanings of the 'interwebs', the dumbing down of content simply results in in what I would call the 'mayonaise effect' where interesting, technical details, are just whipped into a nondescript, uninteresting, uniformly bland diet of stuff you really shouldn't bother exposing yourself to. there are a few others out there putting up the fight as well. So for that I feel compelled to start with 🫡 to the Level1 Techs team. Carry on...
a key benchmark for SSDs for me is seeing if downloading a big game from steam is bottlenecked by a 1Gbit/s internet connection or by writing the data to the drive while simultaneously decompressing the files, as steam does
WD blue sn570 cant handle 250mbit down link
@@limeisgaming The SN570 has a weird write-cache bug on Windows. You must disable if you use it for Steam games. I use the SN570 on Linux and Steam never throttled any download.
@@Sunlight91 Thanks didnt know that, its in my sisters PC installed and i was barely able to convince her to try dualbooting if i were to lend here a small ssd to install linux (some 256GB Nvme from an old laptop) but her windows installation is on that SN570.
@@limeisgamingthat's weird. I have the sn570 and my limit was always my cpu. Usage is maxed out at around 600megabits while downloading.
Though now you mention I never checked speeds when the download is finished, and it's being installed.
I'd rather have an even lower cost, higher capacity Gen3 SSD.
yep, gen3 is more than fast enough for most things home users do. A FEW games can get a small advantage from faster drives. I'd rather have 4tb drives $50 cheaper or 8tb drives down under $300.
Preach. I would even take an 8TB Gen 3 m.2 SSD that has the same $/GB as a 2TB drive. Right now, (at least where I live) the price per GB at 8TB is nearly triple the cost at 2TB.
I'm still willing to settle for sata if it's cheap enough.
Gen 3 u.2 drives are affordable, come in a more sensible and easily cooled form factor and are available in big-boy capacities. 15.whateverTB of NVMe for under $1000? Yes please.
@@likefunbutnot "affordable" is a very subjective term. When I talk "affordable", I mean one which is comparable to spinning rust drives. I was just forced to buy more refurb 14TB drives, because there's just no comparison on a $/TB basis. I hope that's the last time I need to order spinning drives, but I doubt it, unfortunately.
That SSD name could almost give monitor names a run for their money.
Thanks Wendell for correcting what we have been told for ages; that the DRAM on SSDs is for metadata and not user data. Because it's so cheap to solder a DRAM chip to a drive though I'd still rather buy one with than without.
It makes sense. Just like what L1 is to the CPU and L2, L3 is to L2 and the RAM, this is the "L4" between disk and RAM.
RIP Optane
FINALLY!
I wish Intel still made drives like the 900p/905p…
Yes. Very nice, but did I miss the release date or where to buy?
You kno, I've seen it a couple of times now and Wendell your a madman for not screwing your m.2 drives
Where the hell can you even find these to buy? Googling online turns up vaporware. Are they in-stock anywhere?
This is basically a review of the Phison SSD controller rather than retail SSDs.
Bascially this is a reference / demo board for companies like ADATA / MSI / etc who then makes SSDs based on this chip.
This chip is pretty new, so it might take a while for it to show up in retail SSDs.
@@SolarianStrike Addlink has a Gen5 drive up on Amazon (G55) that I *think* is using this controller, looking at the specs. 1TB is $115.44, 2TB is $195.44.
EDIT the Addlink may actually be using a Silicon Motion controller, I'm not 100% sure.
Corsair just released their version yesterday. Search for Corsair MP700 Elite SSD
Where is gen5 from Samsung though, currently it looks like their PM9E1 is to launch soon, but still no new Pro consumer drive. I take it after CES though.
DRAM-less in a swear word in my household. Still happy with the Gen.4 Seagates on Asus Hyper 4xM.2 cards.
dram-less is different for NVME, they are using system RAM for the translation table so they don't burn the flash's endurance on that. Only the Sata SSDs must have a DRAM chip because Sata does not allow access to system RAM
Have you considered banchmarking zen4 verses zen4c? Controlling for either frequency or wattage. I'm really curious how much difference there is (With consideration for the different execution units, including scalar int float and AVX's)
Or 5 verses 5c if you have access.
I don't feel so horrible. My T700 gets a 4201 score. I thought it would have been worse.
In Windows 11 24h2, they've actually changed some things under the hood to host memory buffers for dreamless SSDs.
i don't know what micro services are. do you mean the ssd controller can be like another core to help cpu process stuff ?
My setup is two 2.5" SATA (Linux Mint / Windows 11 [gaming only]), with my NVME for the games themselves. It boots quickly to either OS (but God does W11 suck) and WoW loads fast with no stutters. My curiosity question is what, besides audio/video/database, hits a DRAM cache the most? My drives all have it, just curious... 😶
I wanting an adapter that changes my gen 5x4 m.2 into a 2 gen 4x4 or easier gen 5x2. Put the drives vertical with a bigger heatsink. So they do take more board space
What Is happening with the white fan on the top of the noctua cooler?
RAM and VRM cooling.
@@krusic22 got it
Was about to make this same comment myself. wtaf is that, lol. How much of an OC on your RAM do you have to need a propped up bonus fan like that? Or is the case cooling just that bad, and if so, why do you own it...
@@EhNothingBack in the ddr2 days, one of the things that got Corsair going in the enthusiast space was their dominator ram with a dedicated ram fan.
@@EhNothing The case is open, so the airflow isn't getting where it might be needed? Or it is a server board that has small heatsinks that need high airflow
I wonder why the fan is stacked like that on top of the CPU cooler? Must be to help cool the VRM on the motherboard.
The performance of this is mental - there's no debate, but a question comes to mind to me. Who really needs this kind of performance? For the home user, it would be hard to find an application with a real world use case. To the profesional user, the capacities offered by this solution is not enough, and the enterprise will be looking in an entirely different segment. So who is this for?
Don't look at the top speeds advertised (12500MB/sec write or whatever), what is important is the long writes, which can be less than 500MB/sec on a crappy nvme regardless of generation. The advertised speed is bursting data at the rate 4 PCIe lanes can allow into a temporary cache status at 1 bit per cell and it has to schedule the actual write process for later.
How fast the drive does actual writes is the lower, but more important number, which is harder data to find on a lot of products without conducting a benchmark investigation on a part by part basis.
@@douglasmurphy3266 Tom's Hardware tests sustained write in all of their reviews, with a graph so you can see exactly where the cache runs out and you drop to real flash speed. Also, some drop to a steady flash write speed and others keep trying to short cycle the cache causing frequent dips and small spikes. (this assumes the drive has plenty of free capacity, so there isn't additional slowdown for on the fly erasing and shuffling of blocks.
I smell some Allyn !
For feedback, I like the new intro music.
I think if you have a system capable of HMB, It's not as big of a deal to have a DRAM-less SSD as it was 5 years ago. I own dozens of NVME drives, but the 990EVO has done just fine on my daily driver.
So is 2 pcie lanes typical?
That brand only reminds me of S11 controllers, that were failing left and right in SSDs while ago. Hopefully they learned from that.
Anybody noticed that SSD wasn't secured???
still hoping for price wars and introduction of 16TB m.2 in 2280 size....
I guess we need DDR5 on NVMe, if that's even possible since DDR5 needs its own PMIC.
..."not doing a lot of writing"... Ah, the L406S, not fast but A LOT....
No one sells Phison, anywhere.
Phison is the controller manufacturer, they don't make SSDs themselves.
I have several old PCIe 3.0 SSDs. They are still good enough for everything. I only replaced SSDs because they are too small.
Me over here upgrading business accounts off HDDs 😭😭😭
please fix your discord server link in the description
The High Cost of Low Performance.
Viagra helps.
This channel is truly a tonic for the mind!
Rather have a Gen4 SSD with DRAM
I would rather it only use 2 lanes or even 1 lane and not need active cooling. Like how much cost are we adding to the storage drive in aluminum and a fan simply so we can hit faster speeds. If we actually got any real world benefits from it it could be different but honestly the only time most people actually benefit from these speeds are when they are un-zipping a file. Download speeds are going to be bottlenecked by your WAN connection and unless you have 100Gbps networking at home even local network file transfers are going to be bottlenecked by the network. If you have a NVME drive connected through thunderbolt 5 you may be able to get up to 10GBps but are you really using thunderbolt to transfer around data that often and is it really so critical where 5GBps wouldn't be fast enough? Having the additional PCIE lanes available is just going to be much more beneficial more often, especially as we move on to faster PCIE standards. PCIE 6 can do 7.5GBps on a single lane and PCIE 7 will be 15GBps on a single lane. Again we will be fine with the "slow" single lane speeds. Stop it with the exotic cooling solutions already.
My experience with DRAM-less nvme drives for anything other than a basic OS drive (NAS, SAN etc) is absolutely awful. Performance can be all over the place, and with a filesystem like ZFS it can really cause some headaches...
Thanks for the quick dram cache explainer. That makes way more sense than it caching user data. You could lose so much stuff if the system crashed at the wrong time if it had all that on the dram.
Does anyone even need those speeds? Like seriously, what advantages are there in anything by having a SSD that reads and writes faster than say 3GB/s?
Id much rather companies spent their time making higher storage, more durable SSDs than faster and faster 1-2 TB ones that make 0 difference
Honestly I'd rather have super cheap QLC 12TB+ SATA 2.5" form factor drives (~$50/TB) like those cheap off-brand DRAM-less ones...
They should have a fast ram chunk on the controller so dram/hmba isn't needed. I suspect it's a matter of die space/cost.
it's a matter of flexibility, the same controller can connect to one to X amount of flash chips and the amount of DRAM needed increases as you add more chips. If you bake the DRAM on the controller you lock it to a specific flash size
I don't care not need Gen5, especially if it needs a chunk of aluminum and a fan. I need large capacity gen3 or even gen2 drives. Stop this silly race to the highest speed, nobody needs Gen5 in consumer space
Thanks for the 8min ad Wendell.
Absolutely appreciate your groups push back against the vacuous leanings of the 'interwebs', the dumbing down of content simply results in in what I would call the 'mayonaise effect' where interesting, technical details, are just whipped into a nondescript, uninteresting, uniformly bland diet of stuff you really shouldn't bother exposing yourself to. there are a few others out there putting up the fight as well. So for that I feel compelled to start with 🫡 to the Level1 Techs team.
Carry on...