FREESHIPWHOLESALE2201
Saw PB Tech are offering the 2TB 970 Evo Plus for $348.99 as part of the EOFY sale. Sale ends on 22th but as it's the EOFY theoretically anyway it's limited to available stock. This is one of the best PCI express generation 3 SSDs, only gen 3 which is clearly better is the Hynix P31 but that's barely available outside the US. Also one of the biggest advantages of that is it's low power usage which can be a big deal for laptops but less so for desktops.
While generation 4 SSD prices are coming down, all the deals for decent gen 4 SSDs available shipped to NZ I've seen have been 20% more or so shipped. I don't consider the old E16+Kioxia 96L SSDs worth it, although they've sometimes been at a similar price, they not so clearly better than this on a gen 4 system even at 2TB despite advantages in sequential speeds (within the SLC write limit). And QLC generation 4, well unless you're after it for a PS5 I'd say no at the same price. Maybe if significantly cheaper and you're only after it for gaming.
Pricewise you can regularly get it sold by Amazon Australia for about NZ$6 cheaper shipped 1. Amazon seem to have problems keeping it in stock so it's not in available at the moment (I don't include third party sellers at a similar price given the added risks), with NZ warranty PB Tech seems a better bet to me. It has been cheaper at Amazon once before in December I think, however not since and I've been keeping an eye out. I don't know what price the EPP store although is said to be worse than this price and the education is $400 last I checked.
Note there was a lot of fuss about the 1TB swapping controller and NAND last year but at least as of about 1.5 months ago, there didn't seem to be much evidence this had happened much with the 2TB. More importantly this is actually likely a positive for the 2TB variant. The reason it lead to worse performance in some areas for the 1TB variant is because they started using 512Gb dies of their newer 128L NAND instead of 256Gb dies of their 92L NAND. Fewer dies means you may not be able to fill all channels so easily. But the 2TB variant used 512Gb dies so the swap is expected the be beneficial all round as the controller is their newer 980 Pro controller limited to generation 3 speeds and their 128L flash is also better as is generally the case whenever there's an increase in layer density within the same type of flash. (Obviously going from TLC to QLC or whatever that's different.)
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Price when in stock for the MZ-V7S2T0BW https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B07MLJD32L is something like AU$295 + ~ $5.50 shipping since it's excluded from their free shipping for some reason. So *1.15/1.10 you get AU$314.17 and ends up about NZ$336.73 at mid market rates but a more realistic credit card rate is probably NZ$343 at best. The MZ-V7S2T0B/AM https://www.amazon.com.au/gp/product/B07MFZXR1B was AU$299 recently and the one sold by Amazon has also excluded free shipping so is worse. Note B/AM vs BW seems to just be world vs North America, I think think there's any difference between the two other than packaging etc. ↩
Is anyone able to provide some insight into why someone might want to get an SSD as a secondary drive, versus getting a hard drive?
I have a 1 TB SSD boot drive and want some more space, but am torn on SSD vs HDD.