How to buy a solid state drive

Solid state drives are currently very cheap, more than 1TB of products cheap domestic goods have fallen to more than 300 yuan price, many users see cheap start to want to buy, but be sure to pay attention to these aspects before buying to sort out.

Solid state drive basic shopping chapter

Capacity: Choosing the right capacity depends on your storage needs. If you need to store a lot of data, it may make more sense to choose a high-capacity drive. If you do not plan to expand frequently or your data needs are relatively large, you may want to consider 1TB or 2TB products.

Read and write speed: Read and write speed is an important indicator of hard drive performance. Faster read and write speeds can improve the speed and responsiveness of your system. Generally speaking, the faster the read speed, the faster you can launch applications and transfer files.

There are generally three levels of read and write speeds: low-end, mid-range, high-end and ultra-high-end.

1. Low end refers to transfer speeds of around 500MB/s, and these are generally SATA interfaces.

2. Mid-range refers to the transfer speed of about 2000MB/s, which is basically the M.2 interface; high-end refers to the transfer speed of more than 3000MB/s.

3. Ultra-high-end speed can exceed 7000MB/s speed, of course, the price is also more expensive.

Interface type: Choosing the right drive for your computer's interface type will ensure maximum performance from your drive. Common interface types include SATA, PCIe and NVMe. Generally, new motherboards now support the NVMe interface and the drives are not expensive, so it is less advisable to buy SATA.

Cache type: There are two types of SSD cache, one is SLC cache, which mainly uses TLC to simulate SLC to speed up the write speed, when writing full SLC cache, the transfer speed will show a precipitous decline; the other is DRAM cache, which uses DRAM chips (also known as memory particles) as cache, the latter is used more on high-end SSDs due to chip cost reasons.

The role of the SSD cache is to compensate for the speed difference between high-speed and low-speed devices. The cache can improve the read/write performance and stability of the SSD, but it is not the bigger the better, it also depends on how well the master controller and flash particles match.

Brands and prices

Choosing a well-known brand and getting the right price are other factors to consider when buying an SSD. Well-known brands tend to offer higher quality and better after-sales service. Price is also an important factor and a sensible choice needs to be made based on your needs and budget. In general, Samsung, Magnesium, Western Digital, Kingston, Zest, Ingenieur and Armour Man are the bigger brands and the ones to look out for.

Why different prices for the same capacity Solid State

As the saying goes, you get what you pay for, although the current price of solid state drives has dropped to freezing, but the same capacity of solid state is still a huge price difference, here the main difference in two points, first of all, the speed of reading and writing, this we must consider when buying and selling, usually more expensive read and write speed is higher.

Second, the brand is basically the original particles, small factory can be a large factory to pick up the remaining particles. What are original particles?

Original particles are particles that have passed the rigorous testing and screening of memory particle manufacturers, generally Samsung, Western Digital, Intel, Micron, Toshiba and some other major brands. Genuine particles can be identified by logos such as Samsung's QR code and SEC, Intel's lower case i, Micron's upper case M, Toshiba's TOSHIBA and so on.

On the other hand, the white and black chips left over from the big manufacturers are particles that have not passed or have not been tested and screened by storage particle manufacturers, and are of unstable quality and performance, and may fail or be damaged. Therefore, when choosing an SSD, it is best to check if the original particles are used to avoid buying inferior products.