The SSD has gone from being an extremely expensive and unreliable component basic part today’s computers and laptops. Nowadays, we can find very reliable units with a warranty of 5 to 10 years very cheap prices, a reality that, along with their superior performance, allowed them to relegate HDDs to a secondary position.

However, not all users are clear when choosing an SSD drive. what requirements it must meet or what properties it must meet to be considered a good buy. Given that we can find a wide range of models on the market today and that even within the same range we have very different options with very different prices, it is easy to feel a certain amount of confusion and end up making mistakes.

I realize that this problem is becoming more and more, so I wanted to share with you this guide in which I am going to check five keys a good SSD must have. It is important for you to keep in mind that the fact that a unit does not meet any of these requirements does not mean that we should consider it a good buy, it will simply mean that it will not be equally qualified for certain profiles and usage scenarios. .

On the other hand, if you don’t meet all or most of the requirements Yes, we could call it a bad option., although this is something that usually does not happen in general. In fact, nowadays it is easier to buy a decent SSD than a bad one, because the competition in this sector is high and the big guys know they can’t slow down.

Things a good SSD should have

1.-TLC memory (three bits per cell) or higher

Any solid state drive worth its salt NAND Flash memory in the form of chips. The data and files of our device are stored in them, and therefore the total storage capacity will depend on them, but also the performance, the price of the unit and its lifetime.

There are four types of NAND Flash memory in use today:

• SLC: in which one bit per cell is stored. It is the fastest and has the longest lifetime, but is the most expensive in terms of cost per gigabyte.
• MLC: two bits per cell are stored in this. It is very fast and has a good lifetime, but it has a high cost relative to the price per gigabyte.
• TLC: Three bits are stored in each cell. It has good performance and reasonable lifespan as well as balanced cost. It is the most widely used and accepted.
• QLC: in this case four bits are stored per cell. Performance drops considerably, as does lifetime, but in exchange, the cost per gigabyte increases.

Really good SSD must use at least TLC memory. This is not to say that SSDs with QLC memory should be considered bad, but it is true that they are aimed at very specific user profiles and that some may be too limited in terms of both performance and lifespan to be useful.

Obviously There are exceptions because, for example, the Corsair MP400 is able to offer good performance, has a 5-year warranty, and can withstand up to 800 TB of writing in its 4 TB version. Whenever possible, we should opt for a unit that meets this minimum and that comes with TLC memory, especially if we are in the low or economical mid range.

2.-Dispersion system according to its performance

This is still important, although it is true that More and more motherboards are coming with passive cooling systems for M.2 SSD drives, so we don’t have to worry as much as before. In any case, a good SSD must include a dissipation system suitable for your needs, and these may vary depending on the performance of each drive.

For example, PCIe Gen3 x2 and x4 SSDs in M.2 format They worked without problems with just a small sticker of scatter that they included, I can confirm this as I used several on a GIGABYTE AORUS AX370 Gaming 5 motherboard. They can work at a maximum of 3.5GB/s, but with the arrival of PCIe Gen4 SSDs the performance has gone up to 7GB/s in this case a specific passive dissipation system is necessary because otherwise we will suffer heat suffocation.

With PCIe Gen5 SSDs, things went even further in that sense and these drives They exceed 10 GB/s, due to which the heat generated is much greater. In these cases, if we don’t have a good heatsink, the thermal throttling can be so severe that the SSD will have to be shut down to protect itself from the heat and prevent permanent damage.

This was a topic I mentioned to you back then when reviewing the Corsair MP700 SSD, a PCIe Gen5 x4 drive that worked seamlessly with the passive dissipation block of the GIGABYTE Z790 AERO G motherboard, which is quite bulky. Corsair preferred not to include a cooling system with this unit because it is a high-end unit and because it understands that buyers of this unit have PCIe Gen5 compatible motherboards that They already have their own passive dispersion systems.

3.-DRAM memory as a cache

Uses every SSD drive specific type of cache improve performance. The cache acts as a small part of the storage space where data, translation tables, and temporary elements are stored, which in short can be useful for a storage unit that will draw from them to speed up various workloads.

This memory It follows the same system of success and failure which is prevalent in traditional caches within CPUs and GPUs, which means that it’s not just cache speed that matters, but capacity as well. The larger the capacity, the more data and elements can be stored, and more hits will be produced, further improving unit performance.

Currently we can find three main types of cache on SSD drives:

• FRAME: It is the best option, but also the most expensive. This type of cache is the fastest and offers the best performance, although it increases the cost of SSDs.
• NAND Flash memory as cache: The cheapest SSDs come without DRAM as cache and instead use a block of NAND Flash memory that will operate in SLC mode to improve performance. It’s the cheapest option, but the one that offers the worst performance.
• The HMB system: This is quite a strange solution as it is used in SSDs that come with no cache and that directly use some of the system RAM to use it as such.

The best SSDs are those that use DRAM as a cache, as this will allow it to offer a higher level of performance, especially for large sequential write operations and random read and write operations. This is not to say that an SSD that does not have integrated DRAM as a cache is a bad buy, nothing could be further from the truth, I actually use drives of this type, but it is clear that it will not reach the level of performance of a drive that has this type of cache.

In the end, this part will depend a lot on our budget and our needs. An SSD without DRAM as a cache can offer good enough performance for most users It can be considered a good option if it meets the other four points of this article.

4.-Life according to its capacity

This question is more important than it seems, although we have to interpret it correctly, because there is still a lot of confusion about it today. When I talk about lifetime, I mean the number of write cycles that an SSD is guaranteed before it fails and goes into read-only mode. For example, a drive like the 2TB Corsair MP600 GS has a 1200 TB write life, a figure that is completely optimal in relation to its total capacity.

For comparison purposes, the 4TB Corsair MP400 has a Lifetime 800 TB write, a figure that is less balanced in relation to its capacity, but falls into an acceptable level and this is understandable, since it is a unit using QLC memory. The 2TB Corsair MP700 has a lifetime of up to 1,400 TB of writingso it would be the best of the three in that sense.

Lifetime expressed in TB must be in line with the storage capacity of the drive, because ultimately we will not use the 512GB drive as much as the 4TB drive. Normally, the latter will have to face more write cycles and therefore its lifetime in this sense must be longer.

Another aspect to consider in this case is the warranty. A good SSD usually has five-year warranty, enough time to allow us to have peace of mind that we will be able to amortize our investment without problems, even if some offer up to 10 years of warranty.

5.-Balanced performance based on its price and scope

The democratization of SSDs has an important consequence, which is that many users do not care about the actual speeds they are able to offer, believing that in the end having an SSD is enough for optimal performance. That’s right, even the slowest SSD is able to offer a huge improvement over HDD and achieve a good user experience, but it depends on the actual performanceand affects the price-performance ratio of the unit.

For example, a 50 euro SSD drive that has a capacity of 1 TB and achieves speeds of 2,100 MB/s and 1,500 MB/s in sequential read and write will generally offer us a good user experience at a very reasonable price, but a drive that offers the same capacity for 50 euros and works at a speed of 3,000 MB/s and 2,500 MB/s, it will clearly be better and It will be a much more recommended option and better adapted to its range and price.

Ideally, within the most economical ranges, we move within this range 2500 and 3500 MB/s sequential write and read speed, while in the middle range we should move 5000 and 7000 MB/s, depending on the total cost and capacity of the unit concerned. In these cases, we are of course talking about the PCIe Gen4 standard.

If we want something higher now we need to move to PCIe Gen 5 drives, which are the only ones capable of reaching higher speeds. In these cases, the price difference is significant and only certain user profiles will really benefit from this performance increase, so keep that in mind.

So what could we consider a good SSD even if it doesn’t meet all these keys?

Well, it is very easy, the unit that is used TCL memorywhich achieves 3000 MB/s read and 2500 MB/s sequential write and that it has an adequate lifespan according to the capacity, it should be considered a good SSD even if it does not have DRAM as a cache and if it does not have a good dissipation system, because with those maximum speeds the classic just needs a thermal sticker which is sufficient. They come with most low-end units .

In that sense it is Kingston NV2 1TB It’s an excellent example because it’s a good SSD and it’s also very economical. We can just buy it 49.99 euros, and it is a very good option to build a PC for very little money, or to expand both the current equipment and the one that is already a few years old.

If we’re looking for something better that exhaustively fits almost all the keys we’ve seen in this article, Samsung 980 Pro 2TB It’s an excellent choice because it uses MLC memory, has DRAM as a cache, achieves 7,000 MB/s and 5,100 MB/s sequential reads and writes, and is priced 149.99 euros. It works without an additional cooler, but it is advisable to add one to maximize its performance.

Note: This guide contains some links from our affiliates, but none of the products included were designed or recommended by them or their manufacturers, but were selected at our own discretion.