Please Stop Buying the Wrong SSD

As far as exciting PC components go, storage is pretty close to the bottom. So, I can understand why many gamers simply add up their Steam backlog, key their target capacity into the filter menu, sort by price, and click buy. I mean, it's not like your SSD impacts gaming performance anyway. Or does it? Actually, it can. And even for day-to-day use, the difference between a bottom of the barrel SSD and a good one can be a lot more than you would think from quickly glancing at a spec sheet. And I'm not just talking about performance. Some of the most popular SSDs on the market are missing an important feature that also impacts reliability. I'm talking about cold hard cash, baby. That little DRAM cache chip right there can make a big difference. And many SSD makers just don't want to talk about it to the point where until you peel up the sticker, it can be hard to know whether their product has one or doesn't. Why? Of course, the answer is the other kind of cash. So, let's talk about how to tell the difference, how much it matters or doesn't matter, and which manufacturers are transparent about their products, and which ones seem to be going out of their way to make this information harder to find. Just like I'm going out of my way to tell you about our sponsor, Seahoo. Their new Seahoo Doro C300 Pro V2 is a full body adaptive ergonomic chair with some features you may not be used to seeing or see whoing. See who what I did. Learn more by using our link in the video description. What's the difference between this SSD and this one? Well, if you knew that this one came later, and if you were already familiar with this one, you would probably think that the SE was short for second edition or special edition, and that wow, that's a pretty good deal, right? Wrong. See, unlike the original, the sequel omits a DRAM chip, making it about as good of a follow-up on the original as the return of Jafar. But if you look at the product pages or the technical specifications, you will find no mention of that important difference. Now, the SE does have things about it that are better. It moves to PCIe Gen 4, but the thing is that even in a best case scenario, this drive hardly takes advantage of that increased bandwidth. So what is supposed to be a product information sheet turns instead into a product marketing sheet. And WD is far from the only one engaging in this behavior. So why does it matter? Well, your SSD is actually a tiny little computer inside your computer with its own little energyefficient SOC called a controller. The SOC contains a CPU, firmware, its own memory, by the way, and everything it needs both to interface with your PC and with the NAND flash chips that actually store your data. The ones that have a DRAM cache are using that to store the flash translation layer, which is sort of like a map or a lookup table that tells your operating system exactly where all of the data is stored on the physical NAND that makes up your storage. Aside from improving performance by just knowing where your data lives, especially as the drive becomes more full, that map helps your SSD to organize and decide which blocks are best to erase and where to write new data in order to minimize where. But since some drives don't have a DRAM cache, obviously that's not the only solution. Modern drives do have some good enough workarounds so they don't need to use expensive DRAM which uh is especially relevant today for NVME drives the ones that look like this. Host memory buffer is a feature that uses a little bit of your system memory to store this map. It's not as fast as having it directly onboard the SSD or as large, but given that this strategy is usually employed in lowerc cost drives, the PCIe interface has enough bandwidth for it to offer decent performance. Finally, the map can just be stored on the good old regular NAND. None of these strategies are as good as a dedicated DRAM chip on board, though, which is exactly why years ago, the industry identified DRAM caches as an important factor for potential buyers and plopped it front and center. But then fast forward to today, and do you know whether your WD Black SSD has a DRAM chip? I do. Let me explain. The top-end SN850X does, but the SN7100 and SN770 do not, which is weird because if you go back a little further to the SN750, that drive does have a DRAM chip. Not the SN750 SE, though. And things are even worse in WD Blue. Did you know that if you buy a SATA WDL SA510 in 2 TB, it has a DRAM chip, but the smaller sizes of the same model don't? Are you confused yet? You should be. No, really, you should be. As far as we can tell, WD Black, blue, green, etc. are just colors that exist more to trick you into thinking something is better than it is. Then they're about clear and consistent product labeling for consumers. And WD is not the only one guilty of this. SanDisk, Seagate, MSI, Corsair, Crucial, and NetApp have all been guilty at times of not sharing whether their drives use DRAM or not. Now, to be fair to our corporate overlords, please don't punish me. Being DRAMless doesn't make an SSD useless. Doesn't even make it bad. Modern drives with host memory buffer can be perfectly performant, especially as a secondary storage drive or for gaming. And I will always say that real world performance trumps whatever you can put on a spec sheet. But I also always say that consumers have a right to be informed about what they're buying. And too often we were not able to confirm whether a device had a DRAM chip or didn't without resorting to a third party resource like tech powerup or just having the physical drive in our hands so that we could peel off the heat spreader/ sticker likely voiding our warranty. And this is important because there is one situation where I would strongly recommend a DRAM cache and that's as an operating system drive. This is especially true as your drive starts to get older and more full, but you will notice a difference in system responsiveness during background operations like system updates or virus scans. And furthermore, if you wanted to play a game that benefits from direct storage, that is streaming game assets directly from your SSD, it might not be a terrible idea to have a DRAM cache drive for that as well. I think the most frustrating thing about this for me though is how easy it would be for manufacturers to fix it. Samsung for all of their participation in this problem of some drives being DRMless and others not. At least actually says whether their drives have DRAM right on the product pages. I shouldn't have to praise them for that, but here we are. So, what do we do? Well, we vote with our wallets. WD is dead as an SSD brand now, but SanDisk still exists as a separate entity and has had a similarly spotty history. Though, to their credit, they've begun specifying the cache in their new Optimus lines data sheet. So, that's progress. As for the companies who do disclose things properly, well, Samsung we already mentioned, but also Kingston and Acer Predator all list whether their drives have a DRAM chip. So, as new Gen 5 SSDs continue to come onto the market, pick the ones that let consumers know what the heck is inside them. And I mean, just generally make your voice heard. If you were researching an SSD and you had to dig deep to figure out whether it had DAM or not, let the manufacturer know that that made your shopping experience frustrating. While you're at it, let them know about our sponsor, Seahoo. Their new Doro C300 Pro V2 office chair was built with your comfort in mind. Their signature Dinoore system offers full body dynamic support, not just for your back, but in the headrest, lumbar, and armrests as well. The chair moves with you as you adjust and get more comfortable with something they call synchro flex, which means you won't be constantly readjusting how you fit in the chair. This extends to the lumbar support as well, which allows for the chair to cover the majority of your back without it jutting into you with some uncomfortable pressure. Their 8D bionic armrests pivot in, you guessed it, eight different directions. That's up, down, all around. So, no matter how you're sitting, your arms can rest easy, and the fabric is made with a breathable mesh to cut down on the sweat buildup. If you're gaming on an ultrawide monitor, you may even appreciate their ultra wide headrest as you pivot from side to side. Click our link down below to order your CEO Doro C300 Pro V2 today. Or you can even sign up to their mailing list to save an additional $50. If you guys enjoyed this video, maybe you'll enjoy the time we water cooled an SSD. Totally unnecessary, but definitely