Question Confused about SSD choice, DRAM needed?

rickon66

Golden Member
Oct 11, 1999
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It has been about 4 years since I put together a new system and I know everything I want in it except for the SSD choice. I thought that DRAM on a drive was a necessity, but now I am wondering if it is and which drives have it. Any thoughts or experience on the matter?
 

UsandThem

Elite Member
May 4, 2000
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It depends on a person's PC usage.

Some DRAMless SSDs are not very good, while some are pretty decent. A person considering a SSD should read some reviews, and see how certain performance tradeoffs will affect them based on what they do with their PC). I use a Samsung 980 on my main desktop, and it is a good buy when on sale (bought mine for $100).

The price difference isn't that different much anymore between quality SSDs if a person watches for a good sale (for example the 1TB 980 PRO is on sale for $150 today vs. $115 for the 980). And that's comparing a DRAMless budget PCIe 3.0 SSD vs. one of the highest rated PCIe 4.0 drives).
 

Tech Junky

Diamond Member
Jan 27, 2022
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Depends on the system / use.

If it's a Gen 3 drive they're all about the same these days.

Gen 4 though has some issues with older releases running at Gen 3 speeds and newer releases hitting up to 7000/6000 speeds.

Then with Gen 4 there seems to be some differences in which controllers work better than others. I tested a Phison based drive as I am using a couple of them currently. It worked fine but, I swapped it out for a WD SN850 just on a gut feeling and ran some tests on it as well and it works well too.

The biggest difference you'll see though is when you do sustained high data writes/reads like backups / copies or other high data programs.
 

kschendel

Senior member
Aug 1, 2018
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Onboard DRAM might be relevant if you are doing a lot of writing to the drive. Most desktop use cases don't. For instance, a game store drive will see relatively little writing. On the other hand, if you're running transactional databases or content creation, you might see a benefit to a more expensive drive with onboard DRAM and a good controller.
 

rickon66

Golden Member
Oct 11, 1999
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Thanks for the replies, I am getting up there in years and I am wanting to build a "final" high-end gaming capable machine with 12th gen I7 or 9, DDR 5 and hopefully an RTX 3080Ti (I've been on EVGA's waiting list since OCT 2020}. I'll be too old for gaming after this one is obsolete.
 
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rickon66

Golden Member
Oct 11, 1999
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DDR5 has been available at Best Buy online fairly often at about $300-310 for 32GB. I know it does not perform any or much better than DDR4 at this time but I wanted the latest technology going forward.
 

Tech Junky

Diamond Member
Jan 27, 2022
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I wanted the latest technology going forward.

Financially it didn't make sense to me to pay 4X the price for RAM and another $100 or so for the MOBO.

I still have all of the other benefits of ADL minus the DDR5 component. I have a selection of PCI4 and 5 slots to use. The only wish list item is a M2 Gen 5 slot and I found a board that has one natively w/o needing an AIC to add one.

 

Lanyap

Elite Member
Dec 23, 2000
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Thanks for the replies, I am getting up there in years and I am wanting to build a "final" high-end gaming capable machine with 12th gen I7 or 9, DDR 5 and hopefully an RTX 3080Ti (I've been on EVGA's waiting list since OCT 2020}. I'll be too old for gaming after this one is obsolete.



Heh, nobody's to old for gaming. I'll be carrying a gaming laptop with me when they wheel me away to the nursing home.