Do you need a Gen 4 NVME SSD? – TechteamGB
Do you need a Gen 4 SSD? Well, there’s more to it than a simple yes or no so lets dive into it. But first, if you aren’t already, consider subscribing for more videos like this every monday, wednesday and friday.
PCIe Gen 4 SSDs are still pretty new, they only came about when AMD launched their Ryzen 3000 series lineup and their X570 motherboards, with support for the gen 4 standard. Because they are so new, pretty much all of them are all using the same Phison E16 controller, which itself is both new, and pretty basic. The drive itself isn’t actually much different, if at all, from a gen 3 version, the NAND flash is the same, the only real difference is the bottleneck of the PCIe connection, capping out at around 4GB/s, whereas gen 4 allows for upto 8GB/s.
Right now we only see speeds of around 4 or 5GB/s from Gen 4 drives, but what you might call ‘next generation’ drives could see, well, as high as 6 or 7GB/s, with better optimisation for real world workloads too, as the current drives are really no better than Gen 3 drives for lower queue depth workloads like the 4KB Q1T1 test in Crystal Disk Mark.
So, why would you want a gen 4 drive right now? Well, if you read or write to them in the right way, you can see some benefit. My usual read/write test showed about a 50% speed increase using a gen 4 drive over gen 3. Booting to windows isn’t really affected too much by this style of drive, and as I showed in a recent video on game loading times with Gen 4 drives, neither are games all that much.
Of course, there are a few professional applications that can benefit, video editing for example, especially VFX heavy workloads in programs like after effects, having your disc cache on a gen 4 drive can see a noticeable performance improvement. In the data centre, there are plenty of applications that could do with faster drives, but there are a couple of problems I haven’t yet mentioned. First, these aren’t datacentre drives, so it’s not fair to compare them, and second these drives don’t necessarily have the IOPS – input output operations per second – that you’d want in a lot of more professional applications. As Linus pointed out in his Threadripper 3990X review, a drive technology like Intel’s OPTANE drives might hold more performance in, say, database management, than these gen 4 drives.
So, how does that all relate to you? Well, if you are just gaming, a standard gen 3 drive, even one of the slightly slower and cheaper drives like this WD Blue SN500 is perfect for you. It’s a great value for money while still providing all the performance you’d need for the foreseeable future. If you video edit too, honestly, a faster gen 3 drive like the Samsung 970 EVO Plus, Adata SX 8200 Pro or WD Black SN750 is still plenty. And finally, if you already have a 3rd gen Ryzen CPU and X570 motherboard, and just want to flex, then sure, go right ahead and gen a gen 4 drive.
Of course, all of this is based on current softwares and as drives get faster and faster, the applications will be optimised to benefit more from that, so if you are watching this in 5 or 10 years, one, wow the world hasn’t ended yet? And 2, how’s PCIe 6 doing? Worth buying? Let me know!
Sabrent on Amazon: https://techteamgb.co.uk/rocket1tb4
Aorus Gen4 on Amazon: https://techteamgb.co.uk/aorusgenm2
