Samsung 970 PRO vs. EVO

[RhoXS]

I am getting ready to do a major hardware upgrade. I am currently using a M.2 Samsung 960 PRO. Although I see no overwhelming reason to buy a new Samsung 970, the cost of a 500 GB replacement is under $150. This is sufficiently inexpensive to just buy a new drive and keep my existing drive intact in case I have to return to my original hardware.

So, even though the price difference is inconsequential, why would I not purchase the advertised faster and less expensive EVO instead of the more expensive PRO? Speed, although very important, is secondary and reliability is of paramount and primary importance to me. Is the EVO faster but less reliable and is that why it is less expensive? I don't see the small loss of capacity with the EVO being consequential.

 

[UsandThem]

If reliability is your largest concern, why not just continue to use the 960 PRO? It's still a very fast drive with MLC NAND, along with a 10 year warranty? You really aren't going to see much of a performance difference between the 960 and 970 series, so it's really not much of an upgrade. I have a 970 EVO Plus and and a 960 EVO in my PC, and outside of synthetic benchmarks, there's hardly any difference.

The 970 EVO uses TLC NAND, while the 970 PRO is one of the very few drives that still use MLC NAND, and why it comes with a much higher TBW warranty. You might want to read a review on the 970 series which will show you the differences between the EVO and PRO lines.

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-970-pro-ssd-review,5572.html
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-970-evo-plus-ssd,5608.html

 

[kschendel]

The 970 Pro is for very write-intensive environments; update-heavy database servers, lots of active VM's, lots of hires photo / video editing, that sort of thing. It's not worth the money in any sort of normal consumer environment, or even prosumer.

If reliability really is paramount, I'd be inclined to get a pair of decent but not exotic SSD's and mirror them.