Best SSD for Gaming: PCIe 4.0 vs 3.0 vs SATA vs HDD Load Time Battle

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  • čas přidán 19. 06. 2024
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    Storage Devices Used:
    Samsung 870 QVO - amzn.to/3lwzzjH
    Sabrent Rocket Q - amzn.to/3iLp1LP
    Sabrent Rocket - amzn.to/2SJvIUa
    Sabrent Rocket 4.0 - amzn.to/2SNZZ3T
    Seagate FireCuda 520 - amzn.to/3dgXzEl
    WD Black SN750 - amzn.to/3dgihV4
    WD Blue SN550 - amzn.to/36T2Qkq
    Adata XPG SX8200 Pro - amzn.to/3nDuUhw
    Intel SSD 665p - amzn.to/34KKBea
    Corsair Force MP600 - amzn.to/34O77TQ
    Team Group GX1 - amzn.to/33NkrIO
    Crucial MX500 - amzn.to/3dginfo
    Samsung T5 - amzn.to/36OR22B
    Read this on TechSpot: www.techspot.com/review/2116-...
    Video Index:
    00:00 - Welcome back to Hardware Unboxed
    01:26 - Overview of Storage Used
    05:08 - A Synthetic Test
    07:16 - Game Loading Performance
    14:18 - Conclusion
    Best SSD Option for Gaming: PCIe 4.0 vs 3.0 vs SATA vs HDD
    Disclaimer: Any pricing information shown or mentioned in this video was accurate at the time of video production, and may have since changed
    Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. We may also earn a commission on some sales made through other store links
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  • Věda a technologie

Komentáře • 2,3K

  • @Hardwareunboxed
    @Hardwareunboxed  Před 3 lety +946

    For those asking why we didn't test drive X, Y or Z... we focused on testing different types of drive, rather than just every drive available. We don't have the time to test 100 different SSDs. I think from the conclusion and testing you'll see why it doesn't make a ton of sense to test even more SSDs in this way

    • @L39T
      @L39T Před 3 lety +13

      Thanks

    • @marceldiezasch6192
      @marceldiezasch6192 Před 3 lety +35

      Talking about different types, at least 1 Optane drive would've made sense.

    • @Hardwareunboxed
      @Hardwareunboxed  Před 3 lety +50

      SD cards can be reaaaalllllly slow, especially the cheap ones. So that doesn't surprise me

    • @XeqtrM1
      @XeqtrM1 Před 3 lety +2

      Yep I agree bc no games yett has ssd in mind yett but maybe next year that my change since next gen games will be made with use of ssd in mind so next gen games will take advantage of ssd since console will use ssd in thejr games to so next gen we will see a bigger difference next gen when new games actually take advantage of a ssd

    • @dewaynethomas3122
      @dewaynethomas3122 Před 3 lety +11

      SSD's even make yer mustache get longer. I need that upgrade now!!!

  • @nerdtechgasm6502
    @nerdtechgasm6502 Před 3 lety +819

    Current game engines don't utilize multi-core data streaming from storage much, if at all. It's CPU (mostly) & memory bandwidth bound, once you get to SSD speeds. Current API never needed it, and especially on PS4/Xbox 1, where the HDD is so slow that trying to do multi-stream fetching will stall it anyway, so it was never a focal point for devs. This is where Direct Storage IO and new consoles change the landscape, expect game engines to be revised for these new standards in the near future.

    • @MichaelFitzpatrickk
      @MichaelFitzpatrickk Před 3 lety +62

      So pcie 4.0 might actually make a significant difference in next gen console port to pc titles? cool.

    • @nerdtechgasm6502
      @nerdtechgasm6502 Před 3 lety +62

      @@MichaelFitzpatrickk Yes, and Intel bringing gen 4 next year, to speed up PC ecosystem adoption. Even gen 3 NVMe will see significant gains once devs switch to multi-stream data fetch & decompression algos.

    • @robertjif6337
      @robertjif6337 Před 3 lety +26

      @@MichaelFitzpatrickk u might even see new line on minimun requirement like: at least 3500rw speed

    • @austin357
      @austin357 Před 3 lety +21

      This could make a big difference to the gaming experience! And then we might be happy we have NVMe drives.

    • @robertjif6337
      @robertjif6337 Před 3 lety +27

      @@austin357 So happy amd, sony and ms help push fast io so dev can improve their game design.
      Following years gonna be amazing for everyone, we got intel who got kick in the butt and now they have awake, nvidia pushing the best they can to avoid big navi taking their crown, and amd keep growing their rnd division.

  • @Tsunami_415
    @Tsunami_415 Před 3 lety +331

    "Buy an SSD. ANY SSD to significantly speed up load times."
    Planet Coaster: "Hold My Beer."

    • @liquathrushbane2003
      @liquathrushbane2003 Před 3 lety +7

      Not surprised in the least - Frontier have a habit of butchering anything they touch.

    • @s.g.3042
      @s.g.3042 Před 3 lety +6

      Thanks for the testing, but does the median 10 sec. access SSD advantage over a HDD justify the 5x higher prices?

    • @cybershocked
      @cybershocked Před 3 lety +14

      @@s.g.3042 Not for that game, no.
      But i'd expect most people to play more than that one game, plus an SSD will benefit boot times, and general OS responsiveness.

    • @TGXNickTM
      @TGXNickTM Před 3 lety +2

      And we also have Cities: Skylines with thousand of assets (but actually, SSD improves loading speed drastically)

    • @GameslordXY
      @GameslordXY Před 3 lety

      I wonder how would Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 handle that game's loading times.
      Under the assumption that it's properly optimized for those.

  • @yuyuy666
    @yuyuy666 Před 3 lety +460

    Moustache Setting: High

  • @nilankoor
    @nilankoor Před 3 lety +700

    That moustache is loading faster than any SSD is loading a game, Tim!

  • @andrewpower
    @andrewpower Před 3 lety +171

    One of the big things for me was noticing the lack of stutter from asset streaming in games like Diablo 3 when run from an SSD. I always see load testing but never much on asset streaming, which should be a big deal (presumably) with devs working on games for the new consoles as a base line.

    • @fwabble
      @fwabble Před 3 lety +17

      So frametime consistency SSD vs High End SSD etc sounds good to me, let's go Tim, FREE THE MOUSTACHE

    • @brucethen
      @brucethen Před 3 lety +5

      I'm a WoW player and loafing from HDD you get I game quick enough but there is no scenery, you are standing in mid-air till the ship and NPCs load, this can take several seconds ( feels like minutes)

    • @MasterKurisu
      @MasterKurisu Před 3 lety +7

      I build gaming computers for customers from time to time, and have noticed that as well. An SSD seems to bring up the minimum frame rates a bit in certain games.

    • @BaerentoeterLP
      @BaerentoeterLP Před 3 lety +5

      Makes sense, since random access is the biggest advantage of SSDs.

    • @tjw6550
      @tjw6550 Před 3 lety +4

      This! I've searched for detailed tests and information on this. Since I bought a used 256GB SSD for some of my games I noticed that those peaks in frames times in some games just vanished - and it's definitely noticeable. Namely those games are ghost recon wildlands and watchdogs 2. (Uuuubisoft, what are you saying to this?)

  • @kristofgheyssens3941
    @kristofgheyssens3941 Před 3 lety +99

    Would love to see a "Best SSD for Productivity".
    I guess differences would be larger zipping/unzipping large archives, exporting 4K videos, editing high res images in Photoshop.

    • @Ilya__s
      @Ilya__s Před 3 lety +2

      this

    • @DanteLovesPizza
      @DanteLovesPizza Před 3 lety +6

      Without seeing any tests and benchmarks, I already have the answer for you; the 980 PRO.

    • @jc.1191
      @jc.1191 Před 3 lety +3

      Fast nvme with high random read and write. Gen 4 cpu lanes look real good. I suspect we'll get bumps to dmi on intel next gen.

    • @churblefurbles
      @churblefurbles Před 3 lety +2

      Its the same, the crystaldiskmark tells the tale, straight line sequential for exactly that, unless you are dealing with huge raw 4k+ video its mostly just 4k random single threaded like with games, and there all the nvme fall down to almost sata, which is why they end up performing like that.

  • @biollante879
    @biollante879 Před 3 lety +3

    This is EXACTLY the video I needed for my new build. THANK YOU SO MUCH.

  • @vncube1
    @vncube1 Před 3 lety +183

    Tim: "We're not reviewers...but"
    That means we're about to get one of more elaborate reviews on that those tech components on CZcams :P

    • @mix3k818
      @mix3k818 Před 3 lety +2

      A common saying goes "every word before 'but' is irrelevant"

    • @TheGauges420
      @TheGauges420 Před 3 lety

      @@rawdez_ you're just stupid and dont understand what he meant, even though it was obvious. What it means is, despite them claiming they arent experts, the info they're about to reveal will indeed make them look more expert than most. You're just dumb and failed reading comprehension, so it's ok, I love your irrelevant ass anyway.

  • @SeveruSniper
    @SeveruSniper Před 3 lety +462

    I've got the feeling that this video will have an update when developers get used to the new consoles SSDs.

    • @Hardwareunboxed
      @Hardwareunboxed  Před 3 lety +293

      You bet it will

    • @allenqueen
      @allenqueen Před 3 lety +66

      Yea, in 2022

    • @darklightning9319
      @darklightning9319 Před 3 lety +14

      By then ssd’s will be much cheaper

    • @cia4gent128
      @cia4gent128 Před 3 lety +22

      @@allenqueen 2022 my ASS! Direct Storage API is coming with the next windows update...

    • @SeveruSniper
      @SeveruSniper Před 3 lety +42

      @@allenqueen I've just realised that 2022 is only 1 year and 2 months. Oh god, I'm an elder.

  • @FedericoTrentonGame
    @FedericoTrentonGame Před 3 lety +2

    finally, I have been waiting for a video just like this for quite a while, everyone just compares pcie 3.0 vs 4.0 or random ssd vs pcie nvme drives.
    but you took the time and effort to also mark the difference in TLC and QLC, cache vs non cache, m.2 Sata vs regular sata, and even the HDD, that was something I have not seen any youtuber do.
    thank you for this video I'll be referring to it and sharing next time I find people struggling with this question :)

  • @TigeronStarfire
    @TigeronStarfire Před 3 lety +8

    Thank you so much for this. I've been weighing an SSD game drive purchase (particularly among the ones tested), and this was a big help. I knew PCIe based drives weren't that much faster in years past (and still aren't to today) so it would make more sense to get a regular SSD for today and upgrade to a 4.0 drive when we see much more tangible loading improvements on PC.

  • @totodoro
    @totodoro Před 3 lety +151

    Windows boot time would be a good test to include in the bench

    • @martinarscott3524
      @martinarscott3524 Před 3 lety +8

      other youtubers have done that, but I find their results odd - switching my boot drive from MX500 to SN750 halved the time windows takes to load, it's lightning fast in comparison, however other youtubers have reported only a second or 2 difference....

    • @eskimo4130
      @eskimo4130 Před 3 lety +4

      @@martinarscott3524 Interesting. I was eyeing up a 500gb SN750 for purely boot + some programs. Talking about something as extreme as that much more speed upon boot raises eyebrows a lot.

    • @martinarscott3524
      @martinarscott3524 Před 3 lety

      @@eskimo4130 it's a great drive, I went for the included heatsink option as they do tend to get quite hot without, haven't had any problems so far

    • @darthioan
      @darthioan Před 3 lety +3

      For something that's done once a day, or once every few days or weeks (I let my system go to sleep/hibernate), what's the benefit between 10 second or less boot time and even less than that? I reinstalled windows by mistake on a sata ssd drive instead of the nvme sata 3, and I did not notice any difference. It took me a week to notice windows was installed on the wrong drive after running crystal disk to check the hdds.

    • @TalTheBest
      @TalTheBest Před 3 lety +4

      We live in an era where boots are extremely fast anyway

  • @unclerubo
    @unclerubo Před 3 lety +197

    I'm more interested in the effect of fast storage in frametimes, especially in open world games where assets need to be streamed in on the fly.
    Looking at those 1% and 0.1% lows comparing the different drives should give you a good idea of the actual experience while gaming.

    • @xkiroxX
      @xkiroxX Před 3 lety +36

      Exactly. Games like assassins creed origins/Odyssey run like garbage on HDDs

    • @ToufiqSayed
      @ToufiqSayed Před 3 lety +49

      I second this. Most open-world games (Horizon ZD right now) stutter a lot on my WD Green HDD (granted its a crappy HDD for gaming). It wasn't until I got the Adata SU800 SSD a couple of weeks back that I found out that it was actually the HDD that was the reason for the stutter. It never crossed my mind earlier since most of the people on community forums confidently say that SSDs only improve load times in gaming and not the games' performance, which made me think that one of the CPU/GPU/RAM components was the bottleneck.

    • @TanvirRaiyan
      @TanvirRaiyan Před 3 lety +4

      Red dead redemption 2 also stutters a lot on hdd.

    • @75IFFY
      @75IFFY Před 3 lety

      Yeah, Sottr tanks between areas. Drops frame rate under 48fps and vsync does its janky stutter thing.

    • @dralord1307
      @dralord1307 Před 3 lety +11

      @@Selfundum2424 I have seen on some windows 10 computers the hd gets spiked to full usage. HD or SSD didnt matter. There is something in windows that is causing it. The system has 8gigs of ram, and it was only using 2gig. For some reason the windows image viewer was pegging the SSD to 100% usage for minutes at a time. And it wasnt even opened. Really made me wonder wtf it was doing. I have noticed this on multiple systems with diff cpus/mobo's/etc etc

  • @MantaProx2
    @MantaProx2 Před 3 lety +1

    Your timing for these videos is on point. This was my next path of upgrading my system. Thankyou very much.

  • @necrotic256
    @necrotic256 Před rokem +13

    3 years later, and just a single mediocre game implemented DirectStorage

  • @Fever_Dream
    @Fever_Dream Před 3 lety +507

    I hate how damn impossible it is to find out if a drive has a DRAM cache.

    • @seventhtaco6781
      @seventhtaco6781 Před 3 lety +7

      Just ask customer support lol or reddit or other forums

    • @winonesoon9771
      @winonesoon9771 Před 3 lety +3

      Oh i know its crazy

    • @cm01
      @cm01 Před 3 lety +14

      I've never had a problem googling "does [model name] have dram" and multiple review sites immediately pop up staying whether it had a dram cache, which controller they used, everything you could want to know.

    • @rentojad
      @rentojad Před 3 lety +98

      @@cm01 Here is great source docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1B27_j9NDPU3cNlj2HKcrfpJKHkOf-Oi1DbuuQva2gT4/edit#gid=0
      Dram, Nand type, layers and everything you want to know

    • @geenx8
      @geenx8 Před 3 lety +5

      Aren't you exaggerating? Combining an SSD model name with 'DRAM' renders immediate result most of the time.

  • @inkysteve
    @inkysteve Před 3 lety +39

    I'm old enough to remember a time when that HDD would have been regarded as the fastest thing in the universe. My first HDD, a 64MB monster, probably had a speed of about 1 or 2 MBs. You youngsters don't know how much you've got it made. My first mouse was made from sticks.

    • @masternobody1896
      @masternobody1896 Před 3 lety +6

      you young will not know how nasa made to moon to moon with 1kb cpu

    • @sureshpatre7654
      @sureshpatre7654 Před 3 lety +5

      @@masternobody1896 with 4KB RAM

    • @TheTeeroy32
      @TheTeeroy32 Před 3 lety +2

      @@masternobody1896 the source code for the Apollo missions could be downloaded, a Commodore 64 was fast enough to run it.

    • @irridiastarfire
      @irridiastarfire Před 3 lety +12

      oh lah dee dah, here's a guy showing off with his fancy mouse made out of sticks! In my day we had to store our data using punch cards made out of papyrus, written by hand with a blunt rock. The data could only be read once a year at the summer solstice when the sun was in the right position in the sky :p

    • @LookingGlass69
      @LookingGlass69 Před 3 lety +1

      My first hdd was a whopping 700MB

  • @theroflraptor
    @theroflraptor Před 3 lety

    Super useful video thanks Tim! Been wondering about this for a while ❤️

  • @PcCentric
    @PcCentric Před 3 lety +272

    Camera Quality Is So Sharp 👀

  • @Jamesified
    @Jamesified Před 3 lety +22

    Another great video, you guys don't miss. Thank you!

    • @jonasbindslev9894
      @jonasbindslev9894 Před 3 lety

      The video has been out for 8 minutes. But you're probably right 😋

    • @Jamesified
      @Jamesified Před 3 lety

      @@jonasbindslev9894 Skimmed the intro, checked a few graphs, then watched the conclusion. I already have an sn550 so was just really interested to hear their thoughts.

  • @LeoDavidson
    @LeoDavidson Před 3 lety +256

    They keep making SSDs faster when they're already faster than most real-world tasks can take advantage of. What I actually want is for them to have higher capacities and lower prices, not better speeds. I'd like to actually be able to replace all my noisy, huge, hot HDDs that have to be in a separate machine in another room so I don't hear them, but that day never seems to come.

    • @James192p
      @James192p Před 3 lety +42

      This is exactly what QLC storage drive are for. Low cost, high capacity. And work is underway for PLC (5 bits per cell). Both Toshiba and Intel talked about it last year.

    • @dscarmo
      @dscarmo Před 3 lety +6

      Use sata ssds to replace your storage

    • @the-lonemandalorian2674
      @the-lonemandalorian2674 Před 3 lety +36

      Something to keep in mind is that SSDs have a higher failure rate of lost data (when trying to recover data) than hard drives. SSDs are not really great for long term storage yet and their flash storage can also be a huge problem on the off chance that it goes bad quicker.
      Data centers and such are going to keep hard drives around because they’re longer lasting and easier to recover which will in turn not drop the prices of SSDs as quickly.

    • @LeoDavidson
      @LeoDavidson Před 3 lety +12

      @@dscarmo I'd like to, when you can buy 16TB ones for less than a car.

    • @dralord1307
      @dralord1307 Před 3 lety +8

      @@the-lonemandalorian2674 Yeah I still have working hard drives from way back in 2006 LOL

  • @fraool944
    @fraool944 Před 3 lety

    Thanks SO helpful !!
    Answered heaps of questions and concerns I had !!

  • @guybrushthreepwood3002

    Excellent video, and has helped my storage choices on my new build. Thanks :)

  • @developerpranav
    @developerpranav Před 3 lety +14

    SSDs are so difficult to test, and they did a good job at it. Exceptionally well made video.

  • @Kallan007
    @Kallan007 Před 3 lety +5

    I love Hardware Unboxed, for this reason, they give you the best benchmarks for real-world use. Thanks again guys, keep up the good work.

  • @-gordozian-2611
    @-gordozian-2611 Před 3 lety

    Thank you so much. Finally I got the answer I needed. Awesome comprehensive breakdown Tim.

  • @elenfoiro78
    @elenfoiro78 Před 3 lety +1

    Really useful analysis, and wise advices. You won my subscription. Great job guys.

  • @DanCGHW
    @DanCGHW Před 3 lety +5

    I'm rocking the WD SN550 1TB and after installing RD2 I was questioning my decision due to the load times but I feel better after seeing the benchmarks and considering the price to performance. Cheers! (that 40 secs feels like an eternity though :P )

  • @nickgooday7142
    @nickgooday7142 Před 3 lety +4

    Another great show guys... keep up the good work..

  • @Viper6332
    @Viper6332 Před 3 lety

    Thanks for the great video its good to have a video that show all the data needed in one place makes my choice much easier thanks

  • @lostvanguard470
    @lostvanguard470 Před 3 lety

    Great video. I'm about to build a deep learning rig and I've been thinking about storage a lot. Appreciate the information.

  • @sinnlos9600
    @sinnlos9600 Před 3 lety +3

    Your tests are the best on the market. And thats a huge compliment looking at your competition.

  • @Rick-tg4oy
    @Rick-tg4oy Před 3 lety +17

    Thanks for this vid! I was just trying to decide between 4.0 and 3.0 for my new build. I think I'll go for 3.0. There's no point in paying $70+ more for 1.8 seconds.
    Even if Direct Storage makes a huge difference, like the vid said, that's a couple years out. I can make a new purchase then if I want.

  • @Sam-hj8hy
    @Sam-hj8hy Před 3 lety +1

    Thanks a bunch. I am waiting to build a zen 3 system and have been going back and forth about upgrading my sata ssd to a pci4 harddrive. I think I will hang on to my current drive for a few more years.

  • @isuruabc100
    @isuruabc100 Před 3 lety +1

    SSD testing is much needed, there isn't really a big channel covering them I believe. Great work 👌🏽

  • @PizzaOMC
    @PizzaOMC Před 3 lety +18

    What would be awesome is if you guys did a professional work load test for these like opening ue4 projects, large cad files, large 3d models etc. Would be cool to see how that scales

    • @clv101
      @clv101 Před 3 lety +3

      Yep, that's the missing test. The message is clear for games - but what about other use cases?

    • @jetpil0t
      @jetpil0t Před 3 lety

      @Deez Nutz Agreed, it's possible that "gaming" is perhaps no longer a simple definition. I am not a "professional" or a "developer" however I will dabble in game capture, Unity level editing on Steam Workshop, VMs with a custom game server etc and this is where NVME SSDs are noticeably better. Particularly considering HWUB is referencing 12 and 16 core CPUs for gaming, it is fair to assume the purchasers of those products may dabble outside of "playing games" where an NVME SSD is going to be better in almost every way.

  • @noxplague
    @noxplague Před 3 lety +3

    This was a great video! So often storage is either taken for granted or now assumed that the fastest, latest is best. So it is great to have a true analysis showing that benefits are marginal for PCIe 4.0 at this time. Again great work and it will be fascinating to see how this data changes Over the next two to three years

    • @robertcarhiboux3164
      @robertcarhiboux3164 Před 2 lety

      4.0 has advantage for workload or file copy, but it's lifespan makes it useless for this kind of usage :p

  • @isaactjones
    @isaactjones Před 3 lety

    I began watching this video not knowing it was exactly what I have been looking for. Excellent! Thanks

  • @astro7996
    @astro7996 Před 3 lety

    Thank you for sharing the results of these tests. Quality content

  • @TinoB20
    @TinoB20 Před 3 lety +6

    It be really interesting to see PCI-E.3 vs .4 on content creation, like 4K video and audio work and large transfer files. Im sure many content creators are curious to see if the move to PCI-E.4 is currently worth the premium.
    thanks!
    sick 'stash!

  • @maesde
    @maesde Před 3 lety +4

    Great video, thank you very much :). But one thing I believe would be worth to have another video about: gaming performance while on an SSD. I noticed my games run far smoother when playing on a SSD than on a HDD. Beyond loading times, on my SSD I actually get more fps and a more stable performance (probably due to assets being loaded while in game). It definitely pays to play on an SSD, even beyond the loading times.

  • @ThePaleoCon
    @ThePaleoCon Před 3 lety

    Exactly the video I was looking for, thank you!

  • @westwonic
    @westwonic Před 3 lety

    Many thanks for clarifying the SSD dram vs non dram debate re gaming. Another great video, Excellent work.

  • @ZCSilver
    @ZCSilver Před 3 lety +38

    This was a great video, though it does make me feel bad for using my 6 year old sata SSD as a boot drive only and having all my games on a regular hard drive. I'd have been interested to see how fast a 7200rpm drive performed, since you wouldn't get a 5400 rpm if you planning to run things off it.

    • @svetthesaiyan
      @svetthesaiyan Před 3 lety +1

      Nothing to be interested about.
      My Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM010 is shockingly slow for both handling Windows and playing games. Cannot wait until I get my hands on an SSD come next summer and forget I ever had this piece of hardware in my rig.
      I'll see if I can get a PCIe 3.0 or maybe even 4.0 drive for my operating system and at least a 1 TB SATA drive for everything else.

    • @MareLooke
      @MareLooke Před 3 lety +12

      Agreed, using a slow HDD for something it wasn't designed for doesn't really give a fair comparison. They should have used a WD Black, a Toshiba X300, or a Seagate Gaming drive for a fair comparison. I use a Toshiba X300 as extended game storage, and while not ideal for some games (those that store their data disorganized, mostly), it's definitely not unbearably slow, nor does it result in streaming stutter.
      If I'm not mistaken a much more limited test was done by another channel (LTT?) pitting a cheap (and bad, no cache etc.) SSD against a WD black, and, if I'm not misremembering, the Black could keep up pretty darn well, and even beat the SSD in some tests.
      Right tool for the job, and all that. (of course, a *good* SSD should beat a *good* HDD every time when designed for the same purpose, except, for now, in price/GiB)

    • @utubby3730
      @utubby3730 Před 3 lety +9

      Considering this is a rare look into this topic by anyone these days, I thought the lack of 7200RPM stuck out like a sore thumb. Most people who do still have a HDD in a desktop will be using a 7200RPM one.
      It’s really for a better overall picture. Pitting a slow eco drive against SSDs just exaggerates the problem. The take away really doesn’t change however, you should be moving on from mechanical if you haven’t already.

    • @sbjf
      @sbjf Před 3 lety

      It's a 7200RPM drive, not 5400rpm. HU just fell for WD's fake numbers.

    • @utubby3730
      @utubby3730 Před 3 lety

      @@sbjf Whether thats correct or not, the point of having more HDD with different RPM still stands. The tests on this are shrinking, so even just from a historical stand point, it would be nice to be able to point to a soruce which showed a good summary of all the above. Even if general consumers very rarely go for the higher RPM 10-15K, it would be interesting to see that represented, far more than just a bunch of different branded - but ultimately the same - SSDs.

  • @glenwaldrop8166
    @glenwaldrop8166 Před 3 lety +50

    "welcome back to todd we're unboxed"
    Thanks for fixing that CZcams. It was saying "Hardware Unboxed" for a little while there and I was getting concerned.

  • @marklamutt
    @marklamutt Před 3 lety

    Tim, really top notch content, as always! I very much appreciate the work that you and Monitor Steve do!

  • @jozefhajnala
    @jozefhajnala Před 3 lety

    Fantastically useful video, with all the hype around PCIE SSDs this brings a lot of practical info in terms of value-based purchases. Thank you.

  • @LuxLikeGaming
    @LuxLikeGaming Před 3 lety +3

    Good video with a a lot of usefull information, BUT it would have been nice to color code the drives in the benchmarks to clearly show which ones are Sata vs PCI-E 3/4.

  • @garytallowin6623
    @garytallowin6623 Před 3 lety +6

    I feel like you could have covered tiered storage for pc.. software like primocache or fuzedrive do a great job at ssd caching / tiering to bring ssd level performance to large (much cheaper) spinning rust disks.

  • @HayBayle
    @HayBayle Před 3 lety +1

    Was actually looking at getting a larger SSD to replace my old chunky archival HDD. Cheers for the in- depth tests!

  • @CsabaMajor999
    @CsabaMajor999 Před 3 lety

    super useful video! it's great help since soon i want to build a new PC and choosing an SSD just become much-much easier! thank you

  • @miikasuominen3845
    @miikasuominen3845 Před 3 lety +40

    MS actually said in that article, that:
    "This process has already begun for DirectStorage and we’re working with our industry partners right now to finish designing/building the API and its supporting components. We’re targeting getting a development preview of DirectStorage into the hands of game developers next year."
    So, developers will get a preview-version. NEXT YEAR.
    They didn't even state is it February or November...
    Getting something out that might take a very long time...
    I wouldn't hold my breath ;)

    • @aga87df
      @aga87df Před 3 lety

      ThIs technology was made in order to unload the processor. It's not for fast loading

    • @miikasuominen3845
      @miikasuominen3845 Před 3 lety +7

      @@aga87df You really should first even bother to read about the thing were discussing here, than come to post something you know nothing about...
      Here, read the article first: devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/directstorage-is-coming-to-pc/

    • @mayumikentei
      @mayumikentei Před 3 lety +2

      @@aga87df Direct storage puts way more load on the cpu due to decompression techniques.

    • @mayumikentei
      @mayumikentei Před 3 lety

      @Devenn Eng I know that was my point lmao, the dude above said direct storage was because the cpus were week. But the whole idea is because the cpus are so fast they can use direct storage.

  • @ximsa3522
    @ximsa3522 Před 3 lety +3

    Would be interesting to examine sustained read/write performance in a future video - to get a glimpse on how fast they really are when the cache gets full

    • @irridiastarfire
      @irridiastarfire Před 3 lety

      Anandtech has some extremely thorough SSD benchmarks including testing full vs. fresh drives, power per task, synthetic benchmarks vs. simulated real-world workloads, etc. Their 860/870 QVO benchmarks were really helpful for me, showing the limitations of QLC NAND (I'm now rocking 16TB of QLC SSDs :) )

  • @BrianLongoria
    @BrianLongoria Před 3 lety +2

    Very helpful! I was tossing around the idea of "needing" a pcie 4.0 drive. Clearly I do not at this time. Thank you! a 2tb 3.x nvme will be ample power for my game expansion.

  • @joehorecny7835
    @joehorecny7835 Před 3 lety +1

    You guys always do a fair and consistent job of reviewing products, I would personally enjoy seeing more SSD comparisons, as well as other components! Keep up the good work Mates!

    • @robertcarhiboux3164
      @robertcarhiboux3164 Před 2 lety

      I don't think it's faire to put a 12TB HDD. Take a 1TB HDD drive and loading will be a lot faster.

  • @imglidinhere
    @imglidinhere Před 3 lety +6

    I would LOVE to see a frametime graph with each of these drives, just to showcase exactly how necessary it is to have a solid state drive for gaming over a traditional hard drive. I remember back some six years ago when I played World of Tanks, back when it ran on just a single core even, that I netted something like a 15-20% uplift switching from a HDD to a SSD alone. Sure, load times decrease, but when you can feed the CPU that data all the faster during games, wouldn't it make sense why the game runs smoother too?
    Thoughts?

  • @prathameshjoshi007
    @prathameshjoshi007 Před 3 lety +4

    I would definitely expect HDD heavy games like ARk survival and crysis remastered if you may test on these?

  • @davidj7516
    @davidj7516 Před 3 lety

    Thank you very much. A subject I've been waiting for for a while.

  • @DarkAge69
    @DarkAge69 Před 3 lety +1

    Thank you for this one, i really appreciate how much time and work this one took

  • @suhaib1249
    @suhaib1249 Před 3 lety +4

    Thanks, this is what I needed for my new build. Couldn’t have been more timely. I am getting a PCIe gen 4 as boot drive but was torn between what to pick as mass storage secondary for games.

    • @jamesthomson8659
      @jamesthomson8659 Před 3 lety

      @U are My submissive toy and a big HDD for back-up.

    • @SVT_LIGHTNING
      @SVT_LIGHTNING Před 3 lety +2

      I just upgraded from my 850 evo ssd’s to corsairs mp600 as a boot drive and storage drive and I don’t care what anyone’s says in reviews and comments about it not making a difference for games because that’s complete b.s. For the main games I play like bfv and cod m.w alone made a night a day difference. I’m first in every game on call of duty and wait around for 5 seconds or more for people to load in. It’s ridiculous. Bfv was probably the biggest improvement with loading into 64 players games and all games in seconds. I’m not even joking it’s stupid fast. Games like Rdr2 and gta is faster but not night and day faster. Maybe a few seconds. But where the new nvme drives really shine is that my os boots in seconds. My os is already open and loaded in before my monitor can turn on from a dead start. My monitor is the bottleneck lol Corsairs mp600 are 179 each right now on amazon being they are on sale and worth every penny. When I bought my 850 evo back in 2016 during the Black Friday sale they were 216 each after taxes for the 1tb which was cheep compared to the over $300 before the Black Friday sale. So in 2020 paying less for the same storage size and more than triple the speeds is a huge win in my books. A upgrade that should be good for many years to come.

    • @suhaib1249
      @suhaib1249 Před 3 lety

      JT_STUD Thanks for sharing your experience. I think your set up is different to the one discussed here and what I am considering which could explain some of the differences. No doubt, it makes a big difference to go with fast PCIe 4 M2 drive for Windows which they have done for the test and I plan to do the same. But instead of using the same drive like you do I plan on going with another 2TB drive for mass storage. I was contemplating between SSD and PCIe Gen 3 for secondary drive. I am not bothered with 2-3 sec extra load time which is usually the case as you mentioned and also demonstrated in the test. I think what they pointed out was that differences in raw speed don’t translate in to similar magnitude jump in game loading times which is true. Of course, you can shave off few seconds in loading but how important is that? In my case, I want Windows to load fast so I am going with Gen 4 but for a secondary drive for mass storage and game, I am open to save some money. It is not that RDR 2 is going to load in 10 seconds on a Gen 4. Point is this is still relatively new and will be few years down the line until codes will be written to take full advantage of the fast NVME drives until then difference will be relatively small. I might use that money towards a better GPU not Big Navi is round the corner or it could be 3080X.

    • @SkiRiverRun
      @SkiRiverRun Před 3 lety

      @@jamesthomson8659 multiple drives in a separate unRaid or FreeNAS server for backup.

  • @JoeCensored
    @JoeCensored Před 3 lety +197

    So any SSD is better than HDD, and diminishing returns for high end SSD's with games.

    • @TheXev
      @TheXev Před 3 lety +23

      At least right now. Devs will need to become better at getting data to load.

    • @renehoyvik
      @renehoyvik Před 3 lety +14

      For now while games still using linear data loading. Moving forward more and more games will load using parallel data loading if they want their games on the new consoles.

    • @ZXspectrum..
      @ZXspectrum.. Před 3 lety +6

      Yes but if your building a system get a normal HDD instead of a SSD for 1/3 the price and put what you have saved towards the graphics card

    • @larrypage1337
      @larrypage1337 Před 3 lety +5

      Yeah but PCIe 3.0 NVMes are now as cheap as the good SATA drives.

    • @olive3228
      @olive3228 Před 3 lety +22

      @@ZXspectrum.. An ssd is mandatory for any system. Atleast a 120gb sata 3 ssd for windows.

  • @turinsbane4200
    @turinsbane4200 Před 3 lety +1

    I appreciate this video because I'm planning to finally snag myself an NVME drive during the Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales. It's the last piece I need for the 'ultimate' version of the system I first built back in February. I saved some money at the time by reusing the Samsung 850 EVO I'd previously installed in my old laptop as my primary boot drive, but with the prices on 1tb NVME drives these days, it's time I made the upgrade.

  • @Flightcoach
    @Flightcoach Před 3 lety

    Good one, thanks. Would like to see video editing and general office work benchmark too!

  • @xxxxzachxxxxx
    @xxxxzachxxxxx Před 3 lety +18

    Ryzen is usually better at decompression...I would love to see Ryzen VS Intel Core with those same drives and see how they scale across CPU architectures!

  • @trakaiszeks
    @trakaiszeks Před 3 lety +32

    This video arrived the exact moment i opened youtube. And i am gathering data on SSD's and their usefulness over certain speeds.
    I did a little experiment myself:
    I created a 250gb zip archive full with random large game files from my drives and tried to copy it within a 970 evo.
    The initial copy speed was 1.8gbps. About 50gb down the line the speed dropped to 600MBps, then started wildly fluctuating between 600 and 800 mbps, occasionally rising back to 1.8gbps for 5 seconds and going back down.
    My conclusion is that the real MLC speed is around 600MBps
    Tlc speed is around 400MBps (crucial MX500)
    Qlc speed is around 80MBps (random review i read)
    Which makes HDD's write speed firmly above Qlc at 167MBps.
    Obviously that's not random reads and random writes. Those is where SSDs have ridiculous advantage. But during normal workloads on a defragmented hard drive random reads don't happen under normal workloads with large files.

    • @gchatz6480
      @gchatz6480 Před 3 lety +1

      Nice timing 😊

    • @trakaiszeks
      @trakaiszeks Před 3 lety +2

      @@gchatz6480 So, the problem with crystal disk mark and many other ssd benchmarks is that they never exceed the cache.
      I created a 250gb zip archive full with random large game files from my drives and tried to copy it within a 970 evo.
      The initial copy speed was 1.8gbps. About 50gb down the line the speed dropped to 600MBps, then started wildly fluctuating between 600 and 800 mbps, occasionally rising back to 1.8gbps for 5 seconds and going back down.
      My conclusion is that the real MLC speed is around 600MBps
      Tlc speed is around 400MBps (crucial MX500)
      Qlc speed is around 80MBps (random review i read)
      Which makes HDD's write speed firmly above Qlc at 167MBps.

    • @ralfrudi3963
      @ralfrudi3963 Před 3 lety +1

      Well the question is, how often do you copy 250gb files in a real world scenario? If you transfer such huge amounts of data on a daily or even weekly basis you might want to look into professional grade hardware, an average consumer does simply not move that much data that often.

    • @trakaiszeks
      @trakaiszeks Před 3 lety +2

      @@ralfrudi3963 Gaming: When you download and install large games, move steam libraries and manipulate mod data and large procedural world saves (can span past 100gb for those).
      Productivity: 4k video files, scratch disks, large photo sessions.
      Others: Drive backups and cloning.
      Would i really want to pay twice the price over currently available SSDs to get around 200TBW extra endurance? Nope. Besides, MLC drives are only around 10% more expensive than QLC counterparts at 1TB mark, and often have more than double TBW rating.

    • @-Batman-
      @-Batman- Před 3 lety

      Bro I want that sweet SLC drive when I have my first built.

  • @Duartzno
    @Duartzno Před 3 lety

    Excellent analysis... you saved me a upgrade so I can get a few Hardware Unboxed T-shirts!

  • @e3446
    @e3446 Před 3 lety

    Very Good. Kudos for testing different types of ssds.

  • @jackmckenzie6788
    @jackmckenzie6788 Před 3 lety +40

    I would've liked to see a faster and slightly more mainstream HDD in there as well, something like the Barracude 2 or 3TB 7200RPM.

    • @Zellonous
      @Zellonous Před 3 lety +5

      I feel like they just grabbed the first hdd they found

    • @sourmango4760
      @sourmango4760 Před 3 lety +1

      whats the point

    • @crookim
      @crookim Před 3 lety +11

      No sane PC Gamer plays from a 5400 rpm HDD, I have 2x 2TB Barracuda HDD and they are way faster than a normal 5400 rpm HDD and if I have an annoying long loading game like total war Warhammer I'll move it to the SSD!

    • @CopeAndSeeth
      @CopeAndSeeth Před 3 lety

      No

    • @herbertholland924
      @herbertholland924 Před 3 lety

      I used to have a 10,000 RPM Raptor. That was amazeballs back in the day.

  • @mix3k818
    @mix3k818 Před 3 lety +5

    Glad I am now on SSDs.
    I mean, my laptop not only kept having faulty HDDs, but it was also slow as hell if you wanted to load anything.

    • @PainterVierax
      @PainterVierax Před 3 lety +2

      SSDs on laptops makes a lot of sense because they are immune to shocks and vibrations, consumes relatively less power and are less temperature sensitive.

  • @wafelhausen
    @wafelhausen Před 3 lety

    This was very helpful, thanks. i bought a 870 qvo before watching this to move my steam library to from an old hard drive. i made the right choice.

  • @TheUltimateAlieN
    @TheUltimateAlieN Před 3 lety +1

    Thank you for this video. You have helped me with planning my new build. I’ll probably skip the PCIE 4.0 SSD now, and just buy a MB that can use one, in order to upgrade to one in the future, when they become relevant for gaming performance.

  • @SmarterGaming
    @SmarterGaming Před 3 lety +10

    I will be interested in seeing how long it takes game developers to start taking advantage of the direct i/0 on the ssd's... and if it will be pcie 4.0 only or also work on pcie 3.0?

    • @andrewb5894
      @andrewb5894 Před 2 lety

      Will probably work on any with caching

  • @westbrionage
    @westbrionage Před 3 lety +12

    Seems like the actual bottlenecks are the games themselves, something clearly going on during "loading" that doesn't have anything to do with searching for data.

  • @yaserarafath3116
    @yaserarafath3116 Před 3 lety

    very good comparison . finally i got an idea which one should i choose thanks broooooooooo

  • @jeverbever
    @jeverbever Před 3 lety

    Thank you for helping me figure out what storage I should get for my PC!

  • @misterthegeoff9767
    @misterthegeoff9767 Před 3 lety +4

    Those Red Dead Redemption 2 figures remind me of when I upgraded my Steam drive from 7200RPM HDD to SATA SSD in an attempt to improve GTA loading times. To this day GTA still loads slow as molasses.

    • @Bestgameplayer10
      @Bestgameplayer10 Před 3 lety +1

      Yeah. GTA Online loading is issues with the game itself (though story mode loads fast af). Console load times for GTA Online are also faster than GTA Online load times on PC. Rockstar is just doing something wrong.

  • @Lexicographic
    @Lexicographic Před 3 lety +22

    Would be interesting to see how performance oriented HDDs compare in these tests (ie 7200rpm WD Black)

    • @larrypage1337
      @larrypage1337 Před 3 lety

      Still twice as slow.

    • @andersjjensen
      @andersjjensen Před 3 lety +2

      Still horribly. The fastest 15K RPM HDDs are still dog slow compared the a cheap SATA SSD unless they are run at enterprise grade RAID levels.

    • @Zellonous
      @Zellonous Před 3 lety +1

      @@andersjjensen dog slow in synthetic. This video shows the performance lose is much less than what most people think. So what would change if you didn't use the slowest hdd?

    • @andersjjensen
      @andersjjensen Před 3 lety

      @@Zellonous It would close the gap a little in the few games that showed some sort of sensitivity to transfer speed, but not by a meaningful amount. The 15K RPM drives have a decent sustained read/write advantage over cheaper 7.2K desktop variants, but their seek times aren't other-worldly better, and it's the seek times that stacks up to the poor performance of HDDs not the actual throughput of linear data (as evident by the disparity between low end and high end SSDs in synthetic workloads that doesn't translate to any proper gains in games)

  • @GucciGamerTV
    @GucciGamerTV Před 3 lety +1

    This was an awesome video. Maybe you could do a follow up video testing if there is any difference in load times by having the games installed on a completely separate drive than the one that the OS is on?

  • @Ukiegaming
    @Ukiegaming Před 3 lety

    Thank you for the great video! Also, I am happy with my SX8200 pro I got a year ago!

  • @jaytate491
    @jaytate491 Před 3 lety +7

    Rerun this when they release Direct Storage API. That will be the impressive difference if it turns out to be as good as it seems.

  • @chrislosada6701
    @chrislosada6701 Před 3 lety +3

    I guess this will just be revisited next year when DirectStorage from Microsoft comes to PC. Great Vid Overall!

    • @creytax9802
      @creytax9802 Před 3 lety

      Do you thing there will be needed new motherboard for this technic? Or just a normal M.2 Motherboard with M.2 SSD. TY

    • @chrislosada6701
      @chrislosada6701 Před 3 lety +1

      @@creytax9802 it suppose to be a software thing using the already existing stuff (rtx 3000 & big navi are the only supported gpus)
      my technical not so technical understanding of this lol

  • @MagedRock
    @MagedRock Před 3 lety

    thanks a lot for the video
    it was very useful for me!
    and keep on the Amazing work

  • @Shelldamage
    @Shelldamage Před 3 lety

    Very intertesting test, thx for that!

  • @usmayadali
    @usmayadali Před 3 lety +6

    I was surprised not to see Samsung 980 Pro in this list, but great content as always! Thank you

  • @mj4wd
    @mj4wd Před 3 lety +24

    Omg, the mustache situation has escalated, a lot.

  • @TheHope12322
    @TheHope12322 Před 3 lety

    Thank you for the storage review!

  • @senor135
    @senor135 Před 3 lety +2

    great content, as always! keep up the great work, friends

  • @wedgoku
    @wedgoku Před 3 lety +4

    I use a 1TB Samsung 970 Pro M.2 NVME PCIe 3.0 SSD, the Samsung 970 Pro uses MLC flash which means it gets its full speed all the time,- if you look @ online reviews you can see the Samsung 1TB 970 Pro in game loading beats most PCI express 4.0 M.2 SSDs since it has better [random 4k IOPS]. SSD manufactures are now cutting manufacturing corners using the cheaper TLC flash memory which means if you hammer the SSD too much it will throttle it's max speed. PCI Express 3.0 vs 4.0 does not really matter, what matters is the controller used on the SSD & what memory it is using, stay far away from QLC flash memory, the speed will throttle to almost harddrive levels.

  • @foxboi6309
    @foxboi6309 Před 3 lety +61

    "Todd we're unboxed" is now my favorite tech channel.

  • @fatzz5800
    @fatzz5800 Před 2 lety

    Thank you for the information bro, Just bought a WD Blue SN550

  • @texedomel01
    @texedomel01 Před 3 lety

    Solid video! Good to know I didn't lose much by pulling a dramless sata ssd from my old build and use it as a game drive on my new one.

  • @fajarn7052
    @fajarn7052 Před 3 lety +17

    Well, my wealth haven't reached that stage yet. I just reached stage 'Use SSD as boot drive'. For storage and game installation, I can only afford so much that I prefer having more space rather than speed. I can only benefit from the speed only when I write/read/loading games. With space, I can still benefit having large storage space even when I'm not using it.
    Next stage is, 'having a cheap secondary SSD for temporary game installation'.

    • @surft
      @surft Před 3 lety

      Just make sure whatever ssd you get has DRAM cache since you are putting you OS on it which constantly reads and writes.

    • @Cheepchipsable
      @Cheepchipsable Před 3 lety +1

      That's what we need, a demonstration of in game comparisons between SSD and HDD.
      I'm not certain that the few seconds people save will be put to good use anyway...

    • @fajarn7052
      @fajarn7052 Před 3 lety

      @@surft haha, maybe that would be one my next stage, currently I'm using the cheapest m.2 nvme drive I could find as boot drive.

    • @fajarn7052
      @fajarn7052 Před 3 lety

      @@Cheepchipsable I don't think there are that much difference in actual gameplay though, only in loading screen as the game engine loads the assets from the drive. Though I'm not really sure.
      In consoles, which solely focused on gaming, faster storage might make more sense, player can't do much while the game was loading. In pc, I'll just alt-tab and watch youtube/browse the web while the game is loading.

    • @angelkitty11
      @angelkitty11 Před 3 lety

      Hmm same here. I currently have a 250GB SSD as a boot drive and some apps and 2x 1TB HDDs. I'm going to get a cheap 512GB M.2 SATA SSD though, for storing some of my favorite games.
      SSDs are getting cheaper, it's only double the price of HDD per GB.

  • @i_watch_everything
    @i_watch_everything Před 3 lety +65

    "Welcome back to todd we're unboxed"
    Damn it CZcams

    • @PhatDildokhunty
      @PhatDildokhunty Před 3 lety +5

      For real, CZcams's subtitles are painful most of the time.

    • @Joker-no1fz
      @Joker-no1fz Před 3 lety

      he is todd howard.

    • @yogurtfluff1
      @yogurtfluff1 Před 3 lety +12

      Todd is probably grateful for being unboxed.

    • @Raivo_K
      @Raivo_K Před 3 lety +1

      @@Joker-no1fz 14 times loading speedup

    • @Joker-no1fz
      @Joker-no1fz Před 3 lety

      @@Raivo_K 16 times the snatch.

  • @deadpixel4106
    @deadpixel4106 Před 3 lety

    Useful info. Thank you for making this video

  • @davidborowiec981
    @davidborowiec981 Před 3 lety

    Great video and timely!

  • @aliancemd
    @aliancemd Před 3 lety +3

    22:38 I am not sure if it's okay for Mustache Tim to say "I'll catch you in the next one" :D

  • @andrewcharlton4053
    @andrewcharlton4053 Před 3 lety +3

    Would have been interesting to see a Raid 0 or 10 array of WD Black's or Golds to see if they can hold up vs SSDs

    • @yahyasajid5113
      @yahyasajid5113 Před 3 lety

      No amount of raid will bring the 4K r&w up with nand flash

  • @Jay_the_Caffeinator
    @Jay_the_Caffeinator Před 3 lety

    Thank you so much for this! I have been contemplating on getting a PCIe drive for awhile. When I built my son's computer (Fall 2019) I put a PCIe 4.0 drive in it. Granted, it is the only drive he has in the system. But I have 3 SSDs and 3 HDDs. The SSDs are a much smaller capacity. Maybe I'll just keep waiting until the Black Friday sales. Or maybe Amazon will have a deal on their Prime days this year.

  • @Gruntld
    @Gruntld Před 3 lety

    Fantastic content and review.
    Very timely for me as I've just purchased an expansion drive.
    My Steam HHD is full so I've bought a 1TB SSD cheapie.
    Looks like I'm in sync with the experts.
    No buyer's remorse here.
    Thank you.