WD_BLACK 4TB SN850X NVMe 4TB for $230

[trs96]

https://www.amazon.com/WD_BLACK-SN850X-Internal-Gaming-Solid/dp/B0B7CQ2CHH/?tag=tonymacx86com-20

Best price for the maximum size NVMe. What are you waiting for ? $57.50 per TB is a great deal for the very best Hackintosh boot drive. For audio and video Pros running a hackintosh, this is a must have. Stock up now before the end of the year.

 

[trs96]

2TB size is only $60 per TB if you don't need 4. Most people will be able to "get by" with a 2TB boot drive. Sweet spot for price to performance ratio.

 

[craighazan]

That's a great price for a really fast drive. Even the 1TB will get those speeds, extremely happy with mine.

 

[trs96]

That's a great price for a really fast drive. Even the 1TB will get those speeds, extremely happy with mine.

The 2/4 TB versions give you a higher TBW so you can write a lot more data to those. The 1TB versions are fine for a general use hackintosh. Pro video/photo editors and Logic Pro users should get the 2 or 4 TB sizes. The slower Random Read IOPS of the 1TB don't make a difference the end user will ever notice.

 

[UtterDisbelief]

The 2/4 TB versions give you a higher TBW so you can write a lot more data to those. The 1TB versions are fine for a general use hackintosh. Pro video/photo editors and Logic Pro users should get the 2 or 4 TB sizes. The slower Random Read IOPS of the 1TB don't make a difference the end user will ever notice.

View attachment 576432

But the quoted TBW only works if you do not use the extra storage for anything. So an alternative would be to use the smaller capacity versions - save a packet - and replace the drive earlier, when retail prices for a given size have dropped?

Just a thought.

 

[trs96]

So an alternative would be to use the smaller capacity versions - save a packet - and replace the drive earlier, when retail prices for a given size have dropped?

Yes, for most normal users the smaller 1TB version is the best choice. For people that work with 4/8K video daily for a job, the file sizes get extremely large, so much so that the drive gets completely over-written much more often. For those people the DWPD is what's important.

DWPD, or Drive Writes Per Day, as its name suggests, tells how many times you can overwrite the entire size of an SSD daily for a specific warranty period. So, for example, if your 1TB SSD is rated 1 DWPD, it can handle 1TB of data written to it every day over its warranty period. But if its DWPD is 10, it can withstand 10TB of data written to it daily. DWPD is more commonly used in the enterprise space, whereas TBW is typical for consumer-grade SSDs.

If you want to find out an SSD's DWPD, you can calculate it using the TBW.

To convert TBW to DWPD, use the following formula:

DWPD = TBW / (365 * Warranty (Years) * Capacity (TB) )

 

[trs96]

For people that work with 4/8K video daily

A 1 hr. 8K video is nearly 38 times as large as one that is 1080p.

 

[trs96]

If you want to follow the steps in this YT Video you can see how much data has been written to your Mac's SSD. It's rather involved and takes time, but may be worth it to find out when you have a small 256/512 GB SSD.

 

[trs96]

The 4TB for $220 is sold out at Amazon but the good news is you can buy two SN770 2TB drives for the same price as one 4TB SN850X. https://www.amazon.com/WD_BLACK-SN770-Internal-Gaming-Solid/dp/B09QV5KJHV/?tag=tonymacx86com-20

Newegg also has the 2TB version, for $110. Most mobos currently have at least 2 NVMe m.2 slots so you can split up your 4TB for dual booting or employ one as a scratch drive. You only lose the small DRAM cache that the 850X model has. The SN770 performance is good enough for most use cases. It uses a small amount of your system ram as a cache so it benchmarks fairly close to the SN850X.

Western Digital WD_BLACK SN770 M.2 2280 2TB PCIe Gen4 16GT/s, up to 4 Lanes Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) WDS200T3X0E - Newegg.com

Buy Western Digital WD_BLACK SN770 M.2 2280 2TB PCIe Gen4 16GT/s, up to 4 Lanes Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) WDS200T3X0E with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!

www.newegg.com

 

[trs96]

WD has the top 6 best selling drives on Amazon.com. People are buying these for their hacks and Windows too. Samsung isn't even in the top 10 anymore.

The 990 Pro has been problematic for Windows users. Mostly because of firmware problems. We all know to avoid them as hackintosh users. Have not seen anyone here trying to run macOS on a 990. Thank goodness for that.

Puget Systems had this to say:

A few weeks ago, we wrote about concerns we had with Samsung 990 Pro drives degrading at a faster-than-expected rate. We appreciate that Samsung has promptly addressed this situation via new drive firmware, and today we have an update on that situation and details about how the support team here at Puget Systems plans to take care of our customers.

Shortly after our previous blog post went up, Samsung released a new firmware version that is intended to fix whatever was causing the accelerated health loss on their 990 Pro SSDs. The original firmware on these drives was version 0B2QJXD7, and the fixed version is 1B2QJXD7. A moderator on Samsung’s German Community Forum has said that the new firmware only stops the problem from continuing – it cannot undo any damage that has already been done. Using Google translate on the original text, which is in German, yields this statement: “The S.M.A.R.T. values will not be restored to factory settings after the firmware update. The actual S.M.A.R.T. values of each SSD will vary depending on the user environment and usage conditions.” This can be verified by checking the health of an affected drive both before and after performing the update and noting that the health level stays the same.

That understanding of the problem has led us to put together a plan for helping our customers through this situation. First, we will be reaching out to everyone who bought a Puget Systems workstation with a Samsung 990 Pro drive to make sure that they update to the latest firmware. At that time, we will also be checking to see what the drive’s health is now. Anyone with unacceptable current drive health will have it replaced immediately.

Samsung 990 Pro Critical Firmware Update

Samsung has promptly addressed concerns from owners of their 990 Pro SSDs with a firmware update that halts any abnormal degradation. We discuss this fix, our plan here at Puget Systems to take care of our customers, and how you can update the firmware on your Samsung SSD.

www.pugetsystems.com

​