NVMe SSDs

This page discusses NVMe Solid State Drives (SSD) storage for your system

The NVMe SSD is the heart of your system's data storage. You need a drive, especially for your operating system, that has high performance for loading games, 3D textures, and writing high-quality video data. If you don't have a fast hard drive in your system, gaming performance can suffer during loading scenes. You can also experience "stuttering," sometimes called "hitching," when game engines stream additional textures from the disk into video memory (VRAM). Due to the high latency of traditional magnetic hard drives, they tend to create more noticeable stuttering. On the other hand, SSDs offer low-latency because there's no moving parts, and data access is simply a silent, electrical signal.

Types of SSD NAND

There are different types of NAND, the chips that actually store your data, depending on which NVMe drive you purchase. In general, the QLC NAND type is going to be significantly slower, albeit providing better latency than a traditional magnetic hard drive. You'll want to look for TLC or SLC NAND drives, which typically cost more, but have drastically better performance over QLC NAND.

  • Single-Level Cell (SLC)

    • SLC drives store one bit per cell, making them the fastest and most durable.

    • They’re rarely seen in consumer SSDs due to high costs and are primarily used in enterprise environments.

  • Multi-Level Cell (MLC)

    • MLC stores two bits per cell, offering a balance between performance, endurance, and cost.

    • MLC drives are less common in consumer products now due to the popularity of TLC and QLC but are still used in professional-grade SSDs.

  • Triple-Level Cell (TLC)

    • TLC stores three bits per cell, which reduces costs and offers a good balance of speed and storage density.

    • It’s widely used in consumer NVMe SSDs because it’s affordable yet fast, making it popular in gaming and general-use SSDs.

  • Quad-Level Cell (QLC)

    • QLC stores four bits per cell, offering the highest storage density at a lower cost per gigabyte.

    • QLC NVMe SSDs have slower write speeds compared to TLC but are ideal for read-heavy applications, making them popular for general storage and budget-friendly options.

Our Favorite NVMe SSDs

These are some of our favorite NVMe SSD drives for operating system boot partitions, or just storing your game data on. The faster the SSD that your games are stored on, the less game stuttering you will experience, not to mention faster load times!

Our Favorite Low-end NVMe SSDs

Sometimes you want decently fast and compact storage, but don't have a huge budget. In those cases, it can be acceptable to stick with an NVMe drive that's built around slower QLC NAND. In most cases, you will be just fine running these drives. However, if you're routinely transferring very large files around your network, or between different drives, QLC NAND should be avoided.

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