Any disk with 500MB write/read speed and above. I feel the most important with buying a SSD disk is how good the controller is. The better the controller, the longer the disk will last. I've had a few bad controllers from Crucial and Kingston, but that was 3 years ago. They've probably fixed them now.

2x 850 Evo, raid 0

any version of the samsung 960 obliterates everything else

Exaggeration.

Best are NVMe M2 cards, if your mobo supports them. The Samsung EVO or PRO 960 is good. About 3200-3500 MB/s read speeds, a lot faster than a SATA SSD.

is that speed even utilized often when games are loading? does that help with pop in textures and such?

It should load maps faster, but they don't take that long on a normal SSD anyway, so even if its 50% faster, its not much in terms of actual time. I'm not sure about the pop ins, I don't get any with standard SSDs.

However the speed increase over a standard SSD won't be amazing, like it is with HDD->SSD. Theres nothing wrong with normal SSDs for gaming, just depends if you want the top of the line or not.

The crucial mx500 is a well priced SSD that is good for gaming, I use one.

samsung.

It does not really matter as long as it doesn,’t fail. I prefer the Samsung Pro series but it's really about taste. I have two 512GB 850 pros in raid 0, and also a 256GB 840Pro. They are still going pretty strong, no sign of deterioration at all, after this many years, they all "show" themselves to be in 100% conditions. I will probably find them uselessly small before they will start to fail, so perhaps going for the cheaper EVOs would have been a better deal.

Intel, Samsung, etc... all the big names are considered reliable nowadays. I also bought some dirty cheap 2TB micron SSD from newegg some weeks ago (260Euros + shipping, couldn't resist), will see how it will last.

Check Newegg for sales, they have some good SSD deals from time to time, I saw some cheap MX500 there a few days ago.

If you want something new and latest, the new Samsung 970s are really good ones (and the Intel Optane series, but those are way too expensive, I tested one, it's fast, but not worth the money imo)

Why raid 0?

I found a very good deal on sata Samsung Pros at the time when I did the build. It's a faster then a single drive and I automatically backup the entire array to the NAS every day, so I'm not really worried about using raid 0.

Making SSD faster is a concern? :D

Well, yes, technology advances rapidly. Also, the deal was only for the 512GB version, and I wanted more space, so it wasn't only about speed. More to that, I use enterprise grade hardware at my work, and if there is one thing you feel immediately when it comes to computers, it's going to a "slower" system from a faster one.

I use winXP at work :U

Been there done that:)

I would be concerned with data integrity using ssd wid R0 but if you are backing it up independently then ok.

Yes, everything can fail, so I backup all the times, but realistically, I think these will be still in 90-100% condition long after I will bite the dust.

You're not very hopeful about your life expectancy. : D

That too sadly, but maybe I'm just very optimistic about how these nands will hold out:)

SSD GOODRAM IRDM 120GB SATA III 2,5" 550/540
I remember when I was play eve online on HDD and then switch on SSD I described above. It was magic when the performance of my PC goes high. Sometimes I buy eve isk and it is why I need a good pc without lags.

If it says Samsung on it, you're making the right choice)

I was checking where my 970 EVO stands and it is still a good option to get.

You can check a mini comparison here and buy your SSD accordingly.

I'm an IT journalist, and we actually tested that last week in benchmarks (HD Sentinel, AIDA64, AS SSD, Anvil's Storage Utility, CrystalDiskMark, PC Mark 8, real world copy tests between the SSD and RAM disk). It performed pretty good speeds consistently, but it starts throttling during extended writes. So if you're gonna buy it, you have to have a good fan blowing cold air directly at it, if you want to avoid frequent performance drops (during mostly writing).

If you want a budget solution, go for Kingston A1000 (just wrote about it at the beginning of July: https://prohardver.hu/teszt/kingston_a1000_ss...kacio.html --- it's in hungarian, but you can still check the screenshots, if you can't understand the language).

While it's considerably slower (only PCIe 3.0 x2), it's still above SATA SSD range in writing, even more at reading (which is more important in terms of gaming), and its temperatures were phenomenal - no sign of throttling whatsoever, at all, even though it doesn't have a heatsink and we didn't provide any additional cooling.

Some are nice stuff on that list, but some are really not that good.

Just an example: if you want ADATA, forget SP550 and go for SP920 series.

If you don't wanna go into further, deeper research, go for Samsung EVOs/PROs, they are generally good.

One thing to keep in mind though, which you should definitely check before buying: go for MLC NAND over TLC / QLC - at least, I would.

edit: And go for at least 240 / 256 GB - even more, if you can afford that.

hello thats the great idea thanks for sharing

I enjoy the mx 300 & 500