SSD Cache Recomendation

[eric.frederich]

Backstory: I had a Samsung 840 120G working fine in Unraid.  Son needed an SSD in his laptop, so I ordered a Samsung 860 500G and I'd give him the 120.  Now I get CRC errors.  Apparently this is a known issue between AMD controllers and Samung SSDs.  My motherboard is an AMD 970 chipset.  Reference: 

 

 

So... now I need a recommendation on a new drive for cache.  It's difficult to find information on whether various drives have a DRAM cache or not.  Even drives that have it don't advertise it up front and it takes research for each drive.  Is DRAM cache important?

 

Many options I see... Western Digital, Kingston, SanDick, Crucial, PNY, SK Hynix, ADATA, etc...

What specific drives or brands should I go with?  What drives should I definitely stay away from?

 

[testdasi]

2 hours ago, eric.frederich said:

So... now I need a recommendation on a new drive for cache.  It's difficult to find information on whether various drives have a DRAM cache or not.  Even drives that have it don't advertise it up front and it takes research for each drive.  Is DRAM cache important?

 

Many options I see... Western Digital, Kingston, SanDick, Crucial, PNY, SK Hynix, ADATA, etc...

What specific drives or brands should I go with?  What drives should I definitely stay away from?

 

DRAM cache is critical. Avoid DRAM-less SSD like the plague.

DRAM-less SSD can be slower than a HDD which makes it pointless to get an SSD.

 

A little trick I have found is just to google the SSD model and "DRAMless" and read up on various reviews to see if it mention the SSD is DRAMless. Some reviews have picture of the circuit board and you can even see the DRAM chip. Some just outright say stuff like "this DRAMless model is blablabla". Some will have spec sheets that will tell you if there's DRAM (and even the exact amount of DRAM).

 

Alternatively, bottom-price SSD are typically DRAMless so don't buy the cheapest stuff (use price / GB). This is only a general guide though because there can be old models that are cheap just because they are old (and conversely newer DRAMless models that are not at the bottom of the price chart because they are new).

 

 

Edited May 7, 2020 by testdasi

[eric.frederich]

Thanks, I had someone recommend WD Blue 3D.  Neither Amazon or Newegg pages mentioned cache.  Had to find some PDF which mentioned it.  https://documents.westerndigital.com/content/dam/doc-library/en_us/assets/public/western-digital/product/internal-drives/wd-blue-ssd/user-manual-wd-blue-3d-nand-sata-ssd.pdf

 

The Crucial MX500 I guess has a known issue with Unraid.

I think I may go with this one unless someone can recommend another good value for 500GB.