The overproduction of NAND flash memory components is noticeable in German retail. Mid-range models in particular became noticeably cheaper again at the beginning of 2023. Kingston’s NV2 with 1 TB capacity is currently available (from €49), the Adata Legend 800 with 2 TB costs around twice as much (from €99.99).
With these SSDs, the manufacturers do not commit themselves to specific components, but rather use what is currently readily available. Kingston in particular is open about this and therefore gives few details in the data sheet. The bottom line: You can get all sorts of components, only a minimum speed is guaranteed. This has the charming advantage that cheap purchase prices are also popular on the market.
Trimmed to low prices
In the case of the Kingston NV2 1 TB, 3.5 GB/s reading and 2.1 GB/s writing are guaranteed. The write value is only valid as long as the SLC cache is not full. Since QLC memory chips that store four bits per cell (quadruple level cells) can also sit on the SSD, the write performance can potentially drop significantly with large files. However, most people will hardly notice this in everyday life.
The manufacturers save on a DRAM cache with the cheap SSDs, but this is no longer a problem these days. With the NVMe Host Memory Buffer function, modern SSD controllers can use the main memory as a buffer.
Formally, the above models are SSDs with a PCI Express 4.0 x4 connection. With transfer speeds of up to 3.5 GB/s, an M.2 slot with a PCIe 3.0 x4 connection is also sufficient to achieve these speeds. Virtually every mainboard has the right slots these days.
More component security for an additional charge
If you spend a little more money, you get more security with the built-in components. Western Digital’s WD Blue SN570 with 1 TB (from €56.80), for example, always uses TLC memory from its own production or from the partner Kioxia. Consequently, Western Digital also specifies random access values in the data sheet: 460,000 reading and 450,000 writing.
(mma)