Which SSD should I buy for gaming?

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I am rebuilding my gaming PC. I have decided to replace my 256 GB Samsung 840 Pro with an SSD that has around 500 GB in storage capacity. Samsung would be my default SSD choice but I did a comparison on newegg.com between the following SSDs:

1. SanDisk Extreme Pro 2.5" 480GB SATA 6.0Gb/s MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) SDSSDXPS-480G-G25

2. SAMSUNG 850 PRO 2.5" 512GB SATA III 3-D Vertical Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) MZ-7KE512BW

I am not super knowledgeable on some of the SSD specs, but with the exception of the differences between price and storage, their capabilities look to be nearly identical. Reliability is my top concern. Cost comes in second. If there are two competing products that have nearly identical records in terms of capabilities and reliability, I would select the cheaper of the two. Which of these would work better for me or is there a third choice of SSD that you would recommend? This PC will be used for gaming, drone simulation, and school work. Thanks in advance.
 
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1. I think there is a detail people tend to get confused. Samsung is the leader in NAND and SSD technology. However, that doesn't mean they make the "best" drives or is the top end choice necessarily. Better technology just means there is more profit margin for them in their manufacturing to achieve a satisfactory yield and reliability rating. Rather than saying the 850 Pro is the "top choice", I would say it's more a trusted and popular choice that is likely good enough for anything that you want to throw at it for normal client use, including gaming.

2. For HDDs, a couple years ago, it was thought that WD placed more emphasis in the client HDD market than Seagate and so their drives have built up a better reputation for the "best...
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rkzhao

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Mar 8, 2016
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You can't really go wrong with Samsung right now. Samsung is the leader in NAND technology and has arguably the best NAND. However, their client drives aren't necessarily designed to be any more reliable than other client market drives and it's mostly just that they have pretty good NAND and firmware.

I believe in the client market space, the Crucial/Micron MX family of drives are the only ones that contains some basic capacitors to protect against data corruption on sudden power loss. It's a nice to have for me.
 
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Thanks for the input. I have just a couple more questions.

1. Am I correct in my understanding that the Samsung 850 Pro is pretty much both the top end and choice for a SATA SSD as well as gaming?

2. I have had two 2 TB Seagate HDDs in my machine for the three years that I have used my gaming PC. I am going to replace them in my rebuild. Is 64 MB of cache sufficient or should I go with 128 MB of cache? One HDD will be for games and the other for music.

3. The Seagates have worked for me, but reliability is always my top concern. Are there any other reliable brands of HDDs that I should consider? Both Seagate HDDs are 2 TB and I am looking at replacing them with 3 TB HDDs.
 
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rkzhao

Respectable
Mar 8, 2016
183
1
1,860
1. I think there is a detail people tend to get confused. Samsung is the leader in NAND and SSD technology. However, that doesn't mean they make the "best" drives or is the top end choice necessarily. Better technology just means there is more profit margin for them in their manufacturing to achieve a satisfactory yield and reliability rating. Rather than saying the 850 Pro is the "top choice", I would say it's more a trusted and popular choice that is likely good enough for anything that you want to throw at it for normal client use, including gaming.

2. For HDDs, a couple years ago, it was thought that WD placed more emphasis in the client HDD market than Seagate and so their drives have built up a better reputation for the "best HDDs" whereas Seagate was more a better bang for the buck kind of thing. Nowadays, Seagate has been focusing more on their client offerings as well, or at least more marketing. Personally, I like Seagate's latest HDDs. For a 3TB drive, either a WD or Seagate would be a solid choice. I tend to feel that the cache size is less of a factor when you can use the SSD for performance but of course, a larger cache will allow you to read and write more data faster from the the disk.

Like most thing, it all comes down to your preference and wallet.
 
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