In the past, each new computer mainly looked at the amount of storage. After all, more storage seemed better. It has now become clear that the type of storage is more important. A computer with a solid state drive works much more smoothly than with a mechanical hard disk. An SSD is indispensable in any new and older system. The question is: which one do you choose? What is the best SSD at the moment?
The fact is that the advent of the SSD has had the greatest impact on the sense of speed of any computer. With an SSD, the PC starts up much faster, responds faster and the chance of malfunctions is smaller. The computers no longer have any moving parts. And moving parts are always vulnerable. And there is another advantage: a PC with an SSD is much quieter. The rattling sound of the old hard drives no longer exists. You don’t have to leave it for the price. The first SSDs were very expensive about ten years ago. But now the price per gigabyte has dropped dramatically. Since 2018, that price itself has fallen by two-thirds. A ssd of a few tens already more than meets the wishes of most users. So there is no longer any reason not to purchase an SSD.
Solid state drive
Technically, SSDs are simple products. They have some flash memory that holds all your data, and a controller so the PC can communicate with it. That is why we also see dozens of brands of SSDs, while there are only three major manufacturers left that make even more technically complex mechanical drives.
An SSD is actually nothing more than a USB stick, but (as a rule) with somewhat faster and more reliable parts for daily intensive use. Better SSDs naturally have even faster and more reliable components. Sometimes they also have their own piece of working memory (dram) built in. This makes them even faster in daily use.
Types of SSDs
SSDs come in different shapes and sizes. First of all, we look at the physical connection with which you connect an SSD. It is therefore advisable to check which connections your PC has before buying one. You normally connect an SSD to a sata or m.2 connection on your motherboard.
Sata is a somewhat older connection with which we have been connecting our mechanical hard drives to the computer for years. You can use a sata-ssd on almost any system that is still usable. You do this with a sata cable to the motherboard and with a sata power cable from your power supply. Such a sata-SSD is much faster than a mechanical hard disk, but in the end it is somewhat limited by the older connection. Sata allows a maximum of 600 megabytes per second through.
The younger m.2 connection is more attractive. This is located directly on the motherboard of modern systems, making separate cables unnecessary. The SSDs themselves are even more compact and lighter. Most m.2 SSDs are also considerably faster, depending on the protocol. Recent laptops and the better computers of the past three to four years often have an m.2 slot. Just check that, because that is not always the case.
Protocol
If your system has an m.2 connection, you still have to pay attention to the communication protocol. The vast majority of m.2 connections support so-called NVME SSDs. These are a lot faster than SATA SSDs. There are also m.2 connections where you can only connect m.2 sata ssd’s, this is also referred to as ahci. An NVME drive will not work on that. Most motherboards and laptops with an m.2 slot will indicate whether the slot is suitable for pcie and / or m.2 sata drives.
If your system has space for an m.2-mvme drive, then such an SSD is preferred. The maximum speeds here are around 3,500 megabytes per second, or even higher with a very recent AMD system. A nice advantage is that many m.2 nvme ssd is not even more expensive than an affordable sata ssd.
What do you need?
The key question is what those speeds mean for you? We have a simple answer to that: not much for most users. Typically simple use, such as browsing, emailing or even some light photo editing, will rarely require more than a few megabytes per second of data. Every SSD simply complies with this. This also applies if you are considering an SSD simply to make the PC boot smoothly again. Even then, practically any simple or cheap SSD will suffice.
Faster NVME SSDs really come into their own with demanding users with demanding creative applications. Think of video editing, cad cam workstation use or the frequent transfer of large amounts of data.
Manufacturers also like to target gamers with their fastest (and most expensive) NVME SSDs. But in practice it appears that gamers hardly notice any difference between a simple SSD and the most expensive variant. The difference between an old-fashioned hard drive and an SSD is huge when it comes to loading games, but the difference between the slowest and the fastest is marginal.
What’s big enough?
The size of the SSD depends entirely on your use. For typical users, 256 GB or 512 GB will usually suffice, but gamers and creative professionals will soon appreciate a terabyte or two. You have to estimate this yourself based on your own use.
As a rule, we recommend buying an SSD of about 500 gigabytes or more. The additional cost is usually small. Because of the way SSDs work, larger capacities are also slightly faster and more durable than smaller models.
Of course, there is no need to buy an excessive amount of storage if you don’t need it, but it definitely pays not to be too thrifty. Switching from a 256GB SSD to a faster, more sustainable 512GB SSD for an extra tenner or two and thus also getting plenty of extra capacity for the future is not a bad investment.
Reliability
Ideally, we would weigh reliability most heavily. This is just impossible to test. And because of the inherently durable components, the chance that an SSD will fail, even with intensive use, is small. Only a handful of our own collection of hundreds of different SSDs have died in the past ten years. It is better to take the specifications from the manufacturers with a grain of salt.
Have a backup
While SSDs are more durable than mechanical drives, they can still break. For example due to a power failure, overvoltage or simply a breakdown. Where a mechanical drive often malfunctions before it stops working, an SSD goes from functioning without problems in one go to unusable. So always make sure you have a good backup of all your important data. Buying a more sustainable SSD is therefore not a backup.
External SSDs
SSDs also come in external versions, which you can connect via a USB connection, for example, or via a Thunderbolt 3 if you have a very recent (luxury) laptop. External SSDs are an easy way to add extra storage to your system, but this means that you have to connect an extra box. That makes them especially suitable as storage that you occasionally take somewhere. But external SSDs are not a good alternative to internal SSDs for use as, for example Windows OS drive.
Install clean
Most SSDs come with a piece of software that makes it easier to migrate your entire system to the SSD. We have found that an SSD upgrade is a good time for a clean installation. A clean reinstallation of Windows 10 is a piece of cake with a USB stick and the Windows Media Creation tool (free to download). This way you really make a clean start with your system. Obviously make sure you have a good backup before you start.
Buying tips
Based on our own tests, we have made a brief overview of the best SSDs for most purposes
Crucial MX500
As we indicated, it does not matter that much for simple use whether you buy a simple SSD or one of the fastest. The price war in the field for SSDs has only ensured that the price difference between the real entry-level and the better models is minimal.
The Crucial MX500 is a perfect example of this: price-wise it competes with the often disappointing budget models, but in terms of content you get one of the better and faster SATA SSDs on the market. That makes the MX500 the ideal SSD for the majority of purposes. From simply starting a brand new PC quickly to upgrading an oldie.
Samsung 870 QVO
If you are looking for a really large amount of storage in SSD form, think of 4 or 8 terabytes, then the range is enormously limited. Only a handful of manufacturers make such large SSDs and they are often very expensive.
The Samsung 870 QVO is a pleasant exception. It is one of the cheapest drives in large capacities and it manages to hold its own in performance technology. It is slightly less suitable as a primary drive for your PC because of the way it stores its data. This is more suitable as a photo or video archive or as a game installation drive. But as extra large extra storage, this SSD is hard to beat.
Type of memory
You often encounter the type of memory in the specifications of the SSDs. Nowadays this is almost always tlc (also referred to as 3-bit mlc) or qlc (also referred to as 4-bit mlc). This indicates how many bits of information can be stored in each memory cell. The more data is stored per memory cell, the slower the speed and the faster each cell wears out. Fewer cells also means lower costs and less physical space required. Both types therefore serve their own purpose.
Kingston A2000
The Kingston A2000 is not the fastest NVME SSD, but it costs less than practically all of its competitors. As a rule, you pay hardly more for it than for a sata-ssd entry-level model. That makes the A2000 one of the most interesting SSDs on the market if your system or laptop has an m.2 slot. There is only one real disadvantage: it will not be made larger than 1 terabyte.
Samsung 970 EVO Plus
The number of scenarios in which a real premium NVME SSD is recommended is limited. We mainly think of creative professionals who often work with large photo and video files. Or to intensive users of other workstation applications, home servers and craft databases.
If your usage falls under that, then the Samsung 970 EVO Plus is practically unbeaten. This has an additional cost compared to the excellent A2000, but with really intensive use, the performance is slightly higher.
Sabrent Rocket Q
If you need an extremely large amount of space on one m.2-nvme-SSD, for your laptop, for example, then the choice is again limited. The 4 terabyte NVME SSDs are rare. There is currently only one manufacturer that has released an 8 terabyte m.2 SSD: Sabrent with their Rocket Q.
This is a fast SSD that holds up well in its own way, but it is the extreme capacity that makes it a unique product. Mind you, 8 terabytes of SSD storage is not cheap to produce. The pleasure of being able to own such a large SSD comes with a hefty price tag: 1,499 euros.
Samsung 980 PRO (Gen4)
The youngest category of SSDs are the so-called gen4 SSDs. These are capable of pushing the limits of NVME SSDs and designed to get the most out of the new PCI Express 4.0 connection. This is a connection that we only find on the most recent (of the past year) high-end motherboards for AMD CPUs.
These products are only of interest to a very small group of enthusiasts for the following reasons. The speed of an SSD has a limited impact. The gen4 connection is on only a very select number of systems. And the gen4 SSDs are hugely pricey. From a technical point of view, the Samsung 980 PRO is the fastest and ultimate SSD on the market, with speeds close to 7,000 megabytes per second.
That does not mean that you have to break open your piggy bank for that. Again, the biggest gain is in the purchase of any SSD. The exact performance of each model is only a concern for very intensive users.
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