Is this the cheapest 1TB SSD I could get? Crucial BX500 1TB from PBTech

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  Corey NZ on 26/12/2021 - 15:17

  Here's another option for only $99

  https://www.computerlounge.co.nz/shop/components/storage/sol…

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    Gooddeal69 on 26/12/2021 - 15:39

    do you know what the actual size would be once installed in my laptop?

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      Dunno on 26/12/2021 - 16:20

      +1

      894GB

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        [Deactivated] on 26/12/2021 - 21:00

        https://ssd.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Seagate-BarraCuda-Q1-S…
        Speed is better on the BX500 but i suspect the Barracuda is just a name brand under the hood like Toshiba

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          Nil Einne on 26/12/2021 - 21:36

          @[Deactivated]: I would take userbenchmark scores with a grain of salt though, especially for SSDs. Their methodology isn't always that great, and relying on random users results given the number of variables is always problematic. And the number of results for the Seagate is very low further adding to the problems. To give an example, why is the Sustained write so much higher than the sequential write for the Seagate? And we haven't even gotten in SSD manufacturers tendency to chop and change what they use in their drives over time.

          Unfortunately a combination of target market (the Q1 seems to be mostly sold in India and other parts of Asia and the Pacific, while available in the US I think the price etc means it's not very popular) and lack of interest in SATA SSDs especially low end SATA SSDs nowadays means there doesn't seem to be a decent professional benchmark of this drive at least from my quick search. (I found https://www.geekawhat.com/seagate-barracuda-q1-ssd-review/ which is fairly useless. Even the SSD spreadsheet doesn't know much about it https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1B27_j9NDPU3cNlj2HKcr… e.g. no controller details.) IMO in the absence of better benchmarks, since they're both DRAM less QLC SATA SSDs, they can be taken as roughly equivalent in performance. (Although I couldn't find specific confirmation the Q1 is DRAM-less, I think given the price etc, we can be sure it is.)

          While somewhat old and US centric, you can see Anandtech's advice back in May 2021 was similar https://www.anandtech.com/show/9799/best-ssds

          We consider mainstream SATA SSDs to be those that use TLC NAND and have DRAM buffers. These offer performance and reliability that's a step above budget models with DRAMless controllers or QLC NAND (or both). We don't bother making recommendations for those budget-oriented models, because the right answer is usually just whatever's cheapest at the time, and with many of those products it's impossible to keep track of what kind of components they're using from one month to the next.

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            [Deactivated] on 26/12/2021 - 22:23

            @Nil Einne: You do make a good point i use it more as a reference.
            Would be nice to have better benchmarks but SATA SSDs don't matter too much as they more or less max out the bus and having a dram cache and high endurance NAND is more important

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    Nil Einne on 28/12/2021 - 19:56

    Interesting that the price on that went up and it's still in stock. I assumed it would last until the end of their sale today or it went out of stock but seems I was wrong. Looking at PriceSpy, seems it actually went down on the 21 so guess it wasn't part of their boxing day sales but another deal so less surprising. Still don't care that much was strongly leaning towards getting something else. And SSD prices are trending down nowadays.

    BTW having looked at OzBargain to keep an eye out for Amazon deals in recent days, I've found it interesting that they seem to be getting some quite good deals, in fact some better than what I've seen on SlickDeals considering Australia's 10% GST. Sadly the slightly depressing bit is none of the recent ones have been Amazon Australia so I can't get them. (Although I found out the 2TB 970 Evo Plus did go at $275 once in mid December but I missed it and there was a 1TB Crucial P1 for $99 earlier on from a third party on Amazon which I also missed so hopefully just waiting for a repeat.)