If you just want a really fast computer for work (and who doesn’t?), you can probably get by with as little as 128 GB and use mechanical hard drives for general storage. However, when looking at the price/performance ratio (performance is usually improved in larger capacities), 1–2 TB is a reasonable price point with few compromises. MLC Vs. TLC Vs. QLC NAND The downsides to increased densities are – all other things being equal – worse performance and durability. Adding additional bits per cell adds to the complexity and cells will be worn down in fewer write/erase cycles. A somewhat surprising addition to the list of top performers is the Phison E25-based is the new (as of November 2023) Crucial T500. What makes it an unlikely leader is that the E25 controller only has four NAND channels, compared to the eight more commonly found in high-end SSDs.

Seagate’s FireCuda 520 absorbed nearly 370GB of data before its write performance tanked. Once the pSLC cache is full, the write speed fell to an average of 600 MBps. After letting it idle for a bit, the cache should mostly recover. After 30 seconds, the drive recovered 16-20GB, and after just a minute, it recovered 63GB of pSLC space. Bear in mind, the cache capacity is dynamic. After an intense write workload, it only recovered 118GB of cache after idling for 5 minutes, and only 100GB after idling up to 30 minutes. Launched to the first mainstream products in 2019 at the same time as the third generation of Ryzen desktop CPUsand the first AMD Navi-based graphics cards, PCIe 4.0 is the latest technical iteration on the channel that your motherboard uses to talk to expansion cards in your PC, including graphics cards, Wi-Fi cards, and the latest SSDs. The 4.0 version doubles the bandwidth ceiling of the last, taking the maximum theoretical throughput of PCIe 3.0 from 16GBps up to 32GBps. We say "theoretical" because in real-world usage scenarios, today's PCIe 4.0-capable SSDs won't come close to that. (Today's models max out right around 5,000MBps read and write, which is significantly higher than the approximate 3,500MBps peaks that the best PCIe 3.0 SSDs are rated for.)Gen5 SSDs can be expected to improve even further in terms of performance, efficiency, and not least pricing over the coming months and years. But for now, the Crucial T700 is the fastest consumer storage device you can get for your Gen5-capable PC. The only drive that can compete thus far is the T-Force Z540 from Teamgroup, which is largely based on the same hardware.

Samsung’s 980 PRO launched in late 2020 and was a market leader before the WD SN850 arrived. And to be fair – even after the arrival of the 2nd-gen Phison E18 SSDs, it is still the best M.2 SSD in some benchmarks. In other words, it remains a solid choice for any PCIe Gen4-capable system. At times, you can find it at a slight discount compared to the competition, which makes it even more attractive. Most importantly, you want to boot from your fastest drive. That means it must be able to store the OS and all of its associated files (such as caches and swap). And it’s not that much:

Firmwaredownloads

Other PCIe 5.0 SSDs such as the Aorus Gen5 10000 and Corsair MP700, all of which also use the Phison E26, can reach sequential read speeds of around 10,000 MB/s, but the Crucial T700 goes all the way up to 12,400 MB/s. A bit of an anomalous result here. Despite running the test twice, the best score I was able to achieve on the ISO Copy portion of the test was well below that of the competition. (The numbers from the File Copy trace were right-on.) Let's see if that carries over into our sequential read and write tests in Crystal DiskMark 6.0. Crystal DiskMark 6.0

Pcie 4.0 is faster, about double that of pcie 3.0, or 16 Gbits/sec for a by 4 link which boils down to approx 8,000 Mega Bytes per second (theoretically) First up, there's the overall PCMark 10 full system drive benchmark from UL. This score represents how well a drive does throughout the entire PCMark 10 run, and this score is the sanctioned score presented by UL's software at the end of each run. This score reflects a weighted average of the various simulated activities that the PCMark 10 storage test runs, from copying files to launching games, from booting an OS to running creative applications. It's a general indicator of how consistently a drive can perform through 23 different usage scenarios, meaningful only compared with the scores of other, competing drives. The difference between an SSD and a hard drive regarding user experience is clearly noticeable. To date, the effect of shifting from one type of SSD to another is not nearly as dramatic, at least when it comes to gaming. These are some results from our own testing:Another detail worth noting is that, much like the FireCuda 530, you have to opt for the 2TB or 4TB models to get the best possible performance. As for Intel? Even on its latest desktops, it's not even on the PCIe 4.0 map. The new-for-2020 Intel-based Z490 boardsthat rolled out with the company's 10th Generation "Comet Lake-S" desktop processors don't have support for PCIe 4.0, though the rumor mill has suggested that support for PCIe 4.0 will be coming to this platform in the future. (Some Z490 board makers have advertised Z490 motherboards as PCIe 4.0 "ready," while Intel has no comment on the matter.) But as of today, none of the company's in-market mainstream chips, 10th Generation or below, is capable of supporting the PCIe 4.0 spec. Unlike most other drives we've tested in this category, the FireCuda 520 does not include its own surface-mounted heatsink. While some drives, like the TeamGroup T-Force Cardea Zero Z440, come with a sleek, slim heatsink (in the case of the Cardea, a graphene/copper-based strip), and options like the Corsair Force Series MP600 have chunky, removable metal heatsinks mounted on top, the FireCuda 520 has neither.