Don't buy the WD SN770 (or SN750 SE or Samsung 980)

PCIe 4.0 drives that perform worse than 3.0 drives? And have better numbers on their spec sheets? Noooo, who woulda guessed you're being ripped off!

[CognizantCheddar]

*SN770 is outperforming nearly all gen 4 drives in a **_real-world performance_* (e.g. 3DMark, PCMark), probably due to it having the latest and greatest BiCS flash (currently, the only WD one released with BiCS5). This is demonstrated in _numerous_ published reviews from reputable sites, easily found with google.

SN770 is explicitly a gaming-centric product. It is not targeted at prosumers using nvme's with databases/servers under neverending heavy data load. SN770 is a highly specialized budget product.

You need to be specifying how narrow your personal context is for recommending drives. 95% of us are only ever going to be affected by real-world performance.

[earthpotato]

If you properly read the review on the link that he post, the site clearly stated that Samsung 980 is perfectly fine for normal/gamer users, the data that they shown is from benchmarks for end user with heavy workload. It's pretty obvious that any DRAM-less NVME drive will choke on this, so if you are a user such as creators with heavy video editing with higher resolution, 3d models building, servers, etc, you should skip this drives, they are not suitable for these kind of heavy workload. (I don't know which type of work is consider as heavy so I'm just using my imagination here so it could be wrong but you get the point)

- A lot of people argument is price, they say that the difference between DRAM-less and DRAM is only around 10$ or something, but for my country the difference is like 30$.
- Also the DRAM-less have lower TBW(lifespan), these depend on the brand, for Samsung, the drives TBW are pretty much the same based on the price point.
- Skip DRAM-less NVME if you are not a normal/gamer user.
- The brand itself or your past experience with the brand product.
For me I think these are some valid point to consider of buying/choosing which drives suitable for you.

Conclusion, only heavy workload user will get rip off from this DRAM-less NVME drive.

Try check this website, it answers the questions if NVME need DRAM or not.

[FactLOCO]

The problem with synthetic benchmarks, especially in the case of SSDs, is that they have zero resemblance with real world pc workloads. Don't base your buying decisions solely on them.

[konrad]

I have the 770 and 850 on 2 different computers. Cannot tell the difference, but then again, I am a gamer and thats all I use my pcs for

[fresco_dinero]

I use a sn770 for gaming on my PS5 and it works flawlessly. Fast loading speeds, fast transfer speeds, and its technically under the 5500 recommended speed but I can’t tell a difference because it loads everything just as fast as the internal ssd

[JustSomeGuyLV]

Edited original post. I said that they downgraded read speed to 1.6GB/s for this memory drive. CORRECTION - read speed is 3.6 GB/s. Turns out i had to put this memory drive into different m2 slot (two m2 slots on my motherboard) to get full speed. Strangely, only one of the two m2 slots on my mobo supports gen4 speeds, while the second m2 slot on my mobo is gen3 slot (slower speed). The annoying oddity is with my mobo, not this WD drive.

[adamhymas]

I've yet to see the performance difference between the two types of drives when it comes to being a gamer

[seiyachan]

It's good what you talk about. But the way you scroll up and down and jump thru here and there, it's hard to follow what you are talking about.

[cancerboarder]

at 3:20 you can clearly see that the test for that 4.0 pci express WD770 was listed with 1.3x pcie speed, i would also like to point out, that sql server uses a constant readwrite system, which engages the drive almost non stop, it also uses lots of compressions and decompressions when building databases and updating them, therefore if you are looking at the drives, for pure read or write speed that test is not going to represent the actual performance, also in a gaming situation, these drives would benchmark much better, since 95% of gaming is read speed, reading to ram not other storage media. basically he is correct that these drives would not perform well for database work, or maybe even video transcoding, but would still be Excellent in a gaming or every day use scenario.

[Gamix]

He’s probably running one of these drives

[Abu_Shawarib]

Normal consumers don't dumb +100GB every other day and run intensive database server. Your arguments are meaningless.

[rottenfist]

Just bought one as an upgrade to Samsung Pro 970 512GB and it works great. I do office - internet stuffs, gaming, windows 10, run few virtual machines with some containers, some basic video editing. This device is not a high-end 24/7 running server storage so these extreme tests are pretty meaningless. Did all possible tests with AJA, A-SSD, Crystal and Atto and it was faster than Samsung Pro 970 also didn't get hot like 970. BTW interface = PCIe 3.0 x4

[telecaster-freechannel]

Just came to leave my dislike here.
Ordered my SN770, arrived a few days ago. Using it just as a game drive, works flawlessly, 0 issues, DRAM isn't a must for this case.

[chegaro]

Your review means nothin in the real world. I have used them all and they all work fine for normal every day to day.

[innermindvisulize]

That's too bad just ordered the SN770 1tb for $35 new

[rounlee]

Pcie 4.0 nvme with HMB is good for normal and gaming user. It's cheaper than gen3 with dram, and faster quite lot of times.

[HECKAKYH-ADEKBATEH]

Yes, you are totally right. It has no cache and just dumps info onto the drive, which it then tries to sort out. This results in HUGE amount of write cycles and wear, compared to SSDs with RAM.

Interesting Comparison there but which one do you suggest out of the listed below
1. Samsung 970 Evo Plus
2. Samsung 980
3. WD Black SN770
4. WD Black SN750
5. WD Black SN750SE

[michaelzomsuv]

Oh well, too late.
I bought it 1 month ago and I don't want to go through all the trouble of returning it.
All the reviews I looked at said the SN770 was a good buy...

[AGameZAT]

just because they're DRam-less doesn't make them trash drives. Please do some thinking before shitting out such nonsense. Thank you. They're still useable for regular data storage, game storage, whatever, not to put an OS on them. They're not trash, they're good. Just not for every usecase.