I'm planning to start a laptop/computer repair service from home, mostly for my neighbors. I've received some requests, which are mostly people complaining their laptop is slow. From my experience, the most cost effective way of speeding up a laptop is to just replace the HDD with an SSD. But I'm not sure which SSD to use for the upgrade. I personally am using Samsung 860 EVO, but it's a bit expensive (RM200 for 250GB) for those who don't really care which specific brand is better and just want a fast laptop for the lowest price. Any suggestions? And is there a place I can buy the SSD in bulk for a cheaper price per unit?

No need Samsung, other generic brand from China will work well. Rarely people exceed endurance limit of this SSD. How many quantity you looking at?

Any DRAMless SSD is crap in my eyes.

Those laptop performance issues may need maintenance as well. Dust buildup will increase the temps.

Preferably I want to avoid generic China brand. Quick google shows that they tend to have inconsistent quality. One unit might work great, but another can fail after just few months of use. And I don't want to deal with the logistics of returning a faulty SSD to China. So I'm sticking with known brands, but on the cheaper side.

Some brands I came across on LYN are Kingston A400 and Adata SU650. Any other options than these 2 out there?

As for the quantity, I don't plan to buy in bulk in the short term. Just asking around for future reference.

That's why I specifically mentioned the SSD will be for general end users who just wants a laptop that feels fast (e.g. light browsing, watching Youtube, editing files, etc.). I don't think they care about the SSD having DRAM or not. And they probably don't want to spend extra on that either.

I just bought a few units of 1TB Silicon Power SSD.

Good enough. So far no problem.

Replaced all the HDD in my office.

They will start making noise when they run out of space and stuttering occurs. Even elevated workload may cause stutters (even mouse cannot move).

Like I said, DRAMless is trash.

Hmm, point taken. I've heard about that issue before. Seems like you have to ensure to have at least 30% unused space. So which budget SSD with DRAM do you recommend?

Seagate Barracuda, Kingston UV500, Sandisk Ultra 3D, Samsung 860 Evo, Crucial MX500. Pick one.

Crucial MX500

Kingston UV500 is dramless, isn't it?

Nope. UV500 does has DRAM. Just don't know how much. Crucial MX500 definitely will perform better.

is there software that can check if ssd got dram? crystaldisk?

Nope. It doesn't. Price of the SSD does give you a clue.

That UV500 is super cheap though. Hence the curiosity.

It may be the slowest of the bunch. I'll take 860 Evo or MX500 over that any day.

Kingston UV500 is OK , got 5 years warranty like the rest evo860 , crucial.
i got one 250gb for 142 rm. during sale just to try . good value i think

i bench it against evo 860 (190rm ) and evo is about 15 % faster .

This post has been edited by tien171: Sep 14 2019, 12:21 AM

Use this database as your reference:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1B27...2gT4/edit#gid=0

http://www.johnnylucky.org/data-storage/ssd-database.html

This post has been edited by chocobo7779: Sep 14 2019, 03:59 AM

Thanks for the recommendation guys. Looks like Kingston UV500 is the cheapest SATA3 SSD with DRAM.

My take is crucial mx500. I dont consider samsung 860 evo as budget ssd. In my eyes they are consider expensive.
Crucial is Micron. They make their own NAND flash and their own DRAM. They only buy the SSD controller from 3rd party.
The supply chain is consistent unlike Kingston which is just an assembler. If their NAND flash runs out of stock , they simply go buy from someone else , therefore you might get different performance numbers from different batches of SSD. It happened before.

UV500 is dram-less (same as A400), it is better than A400 as it is 3D TLC and better controller, while A400 is 2D TLC.

Don't anyhow believe the tables tabulated is 100% correct, people will always make mistakes here and there.

This post has been edited by BTS1501: Sep 15 2019, 08:54 AM