What is Reddit's opinion of Western Digital 2TB WD Blue SN550 NVMe Internal SSD - Gen3 x4 PCIe 8Gb/s, M.2 2280, 3D NAND, Up to 2,600 MB/s - WDS200T2B0C?

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Honestly these days an SSD is an SSD, you won't notice speed differences. Unless its for storage don't bother with Spinning disks. If your machine supports it go with a NVME. Stick with well known brands, crucial, WD and Samsung are where i'd start

I've been in IT for 20 years and this hasn't always been true but the past 5-10 years changed a lot. I have a 400MBPS and a 200MBPS both used exclusively for video game installations there is 0 noticeable difference when playing games.

This WD 2TB NVME for ~$225 is what i'd buy, considering some 2TB are going for $400 its a good vaule.
https://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Blue-SN550-Internal/dp/B08K4NP5DQ/

I don't think your RAM is slowing you down as much as you think. Sure you could upgrade to 32GB or drop your CAS latency to 14 or 16, but you might at most get a few percent boost. Your money would be better spent on a newer GPU or CPU.

In terms of SSD, right now drives are the cheapest I've seen them in a while! But there is word that we are in store for price increases soon.

It looks like you have two NVME slots on that board, so grab a 1TB or 2TB NVME drive depending on your budget. PCIE Gen 3 is fine unless you're doing more than gaming (like production type workloads) then spring for Gen 4.

Only one of your M.2 slots supports gen 4, and your current Intel 660P is a Gen 3 drive so if you have it installed into the Gen 4 m.2 slot, move it to the other slot if you buy a gen 4 drive. If you get a gen 3 drive then it doesn't matter.

Looking at /r/buildapcsales, it seems the WD SN550 2TB is on sale for $169 at the moment. It's a decent enough drive, does NOT have dram cache but will use system memory for acceleration. It'll be okay but if you want something faster (keep in mind it won't be noticeably faster in things like loading games, but in file copies or video editing, etc), look at something like the WD SN850 or the Samsung 980 Pro. They will be about the same price as the SN550 but for half its capacity.

this is probably decent. 2TB for $169 which is a significantly better price than the Hynix you got recommended. The Hynix mind you is a better drive but for OS and games I see no reason why it would be a noticable improvement.

It seems solid, but I'd go with this for a ssd saves you some cash and I have the same drive for game storage, works great and never had issues.

Western Digital 2TB WD Blue SN550 NVMe Internal SSD - Gen3 x4 PCIe 8Gb/s, M.2 2280, 3D NAND, Up to 2,600 MB/s - WDS200T2B0C https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08K4NP5DQ/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_i_VSEX8JC0BJR0Y7P9QVB0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Blue-SN550-Internal/dp/B08K4NP5DQ/ref=mp_s_a_1_8?crid=3D338T5BHQ2HN&keywords=m.2+nvme+ssd+2tb&qid=1642004976&sprefix=m.2+nvme+ssd+2tb%2Caps%2C107&sr=8-8

I think this is the one I got, you can get faster or slower or larger or smaller, budget depending.

Thanks for the response, both of the models you've suggested come in quite a bit cheaper than the two I mentioned. For example, the Western digital one. Is that the one you're referring to?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08K4NP5DQ/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_imm_t1_LzZ9FbFKHBZ6A looks like it’s out of stock though

Gotcha. Since most of the parts are just from the bundle, I'll just list out my suggestions.

For the SSD, I would suggest the SN550. It saves $30, and despite being slower on paper, it shouldn't make a practical difference to you. If you were doing something like high-resolution video editing or if your workload otherwise called for high sequential performance, then a high end SSD would make sense. I can go into more detail about this, if you like.

For the HDD, I assume this is just for archival storage. This being the case, my suggestion is to go with the WD Red Plus 4TB due to costing less and having double the capacity. It's a bit slower, but I don't think that speed is the primary factor for it, and it's still a CMR drive. Being 5400RPM should reduce noise from it as well.

For the memory, since you seem to want 4x8gb, I would buy two kits of Ballistix RGB 2x8gb. It's still RGB and it's still going to take up all four slots, but it should save $20 and do a bit better if you want to manually play around with clocks as well.

For the CPU and motherboard, if you don't care about overclocking, a Core i7-12700F shouldn't be noticeably slower, but it would save $40. Note, however, that this would limit your memory overclocking capability and not just your CPU overclocking. You could also go for a cheaper B660 or H670 board to save more.

Put together, this is the list I came up with. Feel free to ask questions if something isn't clear.

It's a 2TB Western Digital (WD Blue) SN550 M.2 PCIe NVME. This one: https://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Blue-SN550-Internal/dp/B08K4NP5DQ?pldnSite=1

Deal link: Amazon

Bought the WD SN550 2TB for my G14 to replace the 1TB Intel stock drive. Works well, not best in class but low power draw and decent specs.

https://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Blue-SN550-Internal/dp/B08K4NP5DQ/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=2tb+nvme+2280&qid=1630555328&sr=8-3

Deal link: Amazon

That one's also available.

You only need to worry about matching drives if you're setting up a RAID array, and even then it's not really all that essential.

This one is also from Amazon but doesn't seem to have the same fees.

https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B08K4NP5DQ?tag=pcp0f-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1

Would you recommend Western Digital 2TB WD Blue SN550 NVMe Internal SSD - Gen3 x4 PCIe 8Gb/s, M.2 2280, 3D NAND, Up to 2,600 MB/s - WDS200T2B0C https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08K4NP5DQ/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_08K5HSVF1YYZWARWC7CB?psc=1

Hey /u/fromCaliToBoston,

That's great to hear! When Apple announced the M1 last year, I was honestly a bit skeptical. And then the reviews started coming in (along with benchmarks), and I slowly became a believer. Actually plotting with one completely sold me! I think you'll be happy with it!

Regarding the NVMe, I personally plot with the following:

• NVMe Enclosure: OWC Envoy Express (https://www.owcdigital.com/products/envoy-express)
• NVMe for Plotting: Western Digital SN550 2TB (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08K4NP5DQ)

I went with the WD NVMe mostly for cost and brand name. Based on what I've read here, there are probably other NVMes that provide a better bang-for-buck, especially when you start looking at "endurance" (or how much you can write before the thing dies). The WD above has an "endurance" of "900 TBW". For comparison, another NVMe recommended here is the Sabrent Rocket 2TB, which has an advertised endurance of 3,115TBW! (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MTQTNVR)

However, I've read articles of "SSD stress testing" where they found real-world numbers to be much higher than advertised. I figured 900TBW was pretty good and am keeping my fingers crossed that I'll get higher, real-world numbers. However, going forward, I'll probably go with the Sabrent Rocket 2TB.

(Really, any quality M.2 NVMe SSD should suffice)

As for the enclosure, I recently just switched to the Envoy Express from OWC and that made a HUGE difference in plotting times. I've been plotting for four days and have had zero issues thus far (my one concern was heat, but it seems to dissipate decently). Prior to the enclosure, I was using a USB 3.2 enclosure from Amazon, which also worked - just slower overall. You'll pay about double for the Thunderbolt 3 enclosure from OWC. I personally think it's worth it!

Finally, if you can swing it, I'd definitely grab two Mac Minis from the start! My own personal setup:

• Farmer / Plotter - Macbook Pro (16" 2019 w/ 32GB RAM)
• Plotter - Mac Mini M1
• Plotter - Mac Mini M1
• Plotter - Mac Mini M1

One thing I'm seriously considering is replacing the MBP with a fourth Mac Mini M1 (less wear on the MBP, and I think Mac Mini will just be more power efficient). I also have an OWC ThunderBay drive, which I'll hold off on discussing now (it's still boxed up!) - Basically, the original plan was to just add Seagate external drives as I needed them. I could do that, but actually moving plots around (from the M1 plotters) has become a bit of a bottleneck in the pipeline. I'm hoping I can leverage IP over Thunderbolt somehow.

Hopefully this helps man! Also, here are some photos (I guess to "verify" what I've written?)

• Current Farming situation: https://i.imgur.com/xuWooEH.png
• Current External drive situation: https://i.imgur.com/bDpqp9Y.png
• My "dashboard" to view current plotting jobs: https://i.imgur.com/g2Jdx8j.jpeg
• Getting the Mac Minis ready!: https://i.imgur.com/uiZzw2k.jpeg - the MBP on the right is a work machine so no plotting on it, but man it's tempting, lol!

Good luck man! And regarding your username, I did the reverse 10 years ago! (Left last year to Oregon)

Do you think this Nvme is good?

Western Digital 2TB WD Blue SN550 NVMe Internal SSD - Gen3 x4 PCIe 8Gb/s, M.2 2280, 3D NAND, Up to 2,600 MB/s - WDS200T2B0C https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08K4NP5DQ/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_WX1SHE382K3AYCG7DT3R