**SSDs and NVMe Drives: A Comprehensive Guide**

In this article, we will explore the world of Solid State Drives (SSDs) and Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) drives, discussing their differences, advantages, and prices. Whether you're looking to upgrade your current system or build a new one from scratch, understanding the pros and cons of each type of drive is essential.

**SSDs: A Great Option for Most Users**

If you're in the market for an SSD, there are many great options available at various price points. For $80, you can get a 500 GB SSD with a good reputation for speed and reliability. This drive is a great option for most users who don't require extreme performance. It's also worth noting that this drive has a mail-in rebate offer, which brings the price down to around $68 or $70 from Amazon. This may not be the fastest option available, but it's definitely a great value for the price.

**NVMe Drives: Faster and More Expensive**

For those who want extreme performance, NVMe drives are the way to go. These drives use a different communication protocol with motherboards, resulting in significantly faster speeds. However, they also come at a higher price point. The Samsung 970 Evo is one of the best-performing NVMe drives on the market, and it's available in various capacities. While the 250 GB option may not be too expensive, the 500 GB version costs around $150.

**Prices for NVMe Drives Have Decreased**

It's worth noting that prices for NVMe drives have decreased significantly over time. Just a year ago, I spent around $220 on a 500 GB NVMe drive, and now it's available for under $150. This is because the technology has become more mature, and manufacturers are producing larger capacity drives at lower costs. For example, the Western Digital Black NVMe Drive offers 500 GB of storage for around $40-$50 less than the Samsung alternative.

**Budget-Friendly Options**

For those on a tighter budget, there are still great options available. The SanDisk SSD Plus is a 250 GB drive that's priced at just $35. While it may not be as fast as some other options, it's still significantly faster than traditional hard drives and will make a noticeable difference in performance.

**The Importance of Upgrading to an SSD**

Upgrading from a traditional hard drive to an SSD can have a significant impact on your system's performance. Not only will your startup times be faster, but you'll also experience improved responsiveness when browsing the internet, watching videos, or running other resource-intensive applications. If you're in the market for a new PC or want to upgrade your current system, make sure to factor in an SSD as a must-have component.

**Conclusion**

In conclusion, both SSDs and NVMe drives are great options for those looking to improve their system's performance. While NVMe drives offer faster speeds, they also come at a higher price point. By understanding the pros and cons of each type of drive and considering your budget and needs, you can make an informed decision about which option is right for you.

**Recommendations**

* For most users, an SSD like the 500 GB Samsung model (with rebate) or the SanDisk SSD Plus ($35) is a great value.

* If you're looking for extreme performance, consider the Samsung 970 Evo NVMe drive in your desired capacity.

* When shopping for an NVMe drive, look for options with lower prices and consider the Western Digital Black NVMe Drive (500 GB) as a budget-friendly alternative.

By following these recommendations and considering your specific needs and budget, you can find the perfect SSD or NVMe drive for your system.

WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwe're finally at the point where reasonably-sized SSDs aren't super expensive so what we're gonna do in this video is we're gonna have a quick look at SSD price trends over the last 18 months or so and then I'm going to show you a couple of products which I think are a really good purchase at this time so that you can supercharge your PC experience with an SSD so we're going to be using PC parts picker for this video which I know is kind of an american-based site and all the prices is going to be in dollars but you can actually look at the SSDs that I recommend and see where you can find it for the cheapest price in your region and sometimes you may be able to find a better deal on different Hardware in South America or South Africa or Asia so just kind of have a look at what the cheapest drive is in this specific size category that you're looking for and then look for reviews to see if it's a decent Drive or not now first off this doesn't look like it's going very well because well 64 gigs of SSD storage is a lot more expensive today than it was 18 months ago but honestly you shouldn't be buying 64 gigs of SSD space that's quite pointless because you're looking at about $100 for a 64 gig Drive and as you'll see later you can get a lot more storage for that and the same thing goes for a hundred and twenty eight gigs just ignore those the first price point that I'd actually be looking at is 256 gig drive and as you can see it's about the same price in house it was 18 months ago and the thing is this might not seem great but honestly there have been some really big price hikes in SSDs and RAM and things like that so the fact that you can get it for the same price is not the worst thing ever and then this is the ideal SSD capacity for a Windows operating system drive in my opinion is 512 gigs and as you can see it's actually dropped but it's dropped like it's priced quite a lot and we'll look at some specific drives in a little bit now the thing that's the most interesting here to me is the two terabyte SSD space because 18 months ago a two terabyte SSD was costing you around $1000 and today you can get one for about $500 even less if you look around and honestly think that's amazing it shows you that higher capacity SSDs are actually becoming more reasonable and they might replace traditional hard drives even for mass storage but I think that's the off of it if you look at kind of traditional hard drives here 1 terabyte 2 terabyte and 310 by drives cost about the same that they used to 18 months ago you can see there isn't a huge amount of fluctuation in fact 2 terabyte drives are actually a bit more expensive today than they used to be but yes so let's go to actual specific components which you could use for for your next build or for your current PC to upgrade it now as you can see here the most popular drive at the moment by quite a long shot is the it's a mechanical drive and it gives you one terabyte of space for 44 dollars which is a good deal it's a lot more space than you'd get for 44 dollars for an SSD but honestly you should only be using a hard drive as a normal hard drive for mass storage because an SSD makes a huge difference in the usability of your PC so let's look at what I think is the best kind of middle-of-the-road SSD which doesn't cost too much but is a very flexible option for multiple use cases so it's over here it's the 860 Evo from Samsung Samsung has a really good reputation for the actual like lifespan of their drives they have a good warranty they're just really good SSDs and you can now get a 500 gig 860 Evo for 78 dollars which isn't a huge amount and it's a really great Drive as you look here at the actual price history over the last 120 days about 120 days ago you were spending about $10 more than you would be today which doesn't sound like a lot but as a percentage that's quite a lot this is a really great Drive if you have $80 to spend on an SSD get this one but you may not want to spend $80 on an SSD and still want 500 gigs and this is something that you can actually get from various manufacturers at different prices so this crucial mx 500 here is also a really great SSD which is fast and it's got a good reputation for 62 dollars but this is with mail in rebate so if you're not into that kind of thing you're looking at about $68 or $70 from Amazon so you're saving about nine dollars off the Samsung drive for the same capacity and honestly you wouldn't be able to feel the speed difference in your system now if you want to go more high-end you can buy an nvme drive now an nvme drive uses a different way of communicating with your motherboard so it means that it performs a lot better and it can be much faster but honestly if you have two computers one with a normal SSD in it and one with an nvme SSD in it when you're doing things like browsing the internet and you know just kind of normal tasks like that you're not gonna be able to feel the performance difference so unless you specifically know that your use case requires an nvme drive I think you don't need to spend extra and you can just buy a normal SSD but nvme drives have become a lot cheaper here is a samsung 970 Evo which is one of the best performing nvme drives around and away this is the 250 gig option which again isn't too bad but if you're spending this much on a drive I wouldn't go for that option here is the 500 gig one for a hundred and fifty dollars as you can see it's quite a bit more expensive than the SATA variants but when I bought an nvme Drive let's say it was about a year and a half ago I spent pretty much 220 dollars on a 500 gig nvme Drive and now it's a hundred and fifty dollars in fact you can probably get a one terabyte drive ok so here we've got an one terabyte is only a little bit more than I spent about a year ago on a 500 gig nvme Drive so honestly the prices are getting much better for nvme drives and two hundred and fifty dollars for one terabyte of some of the fastest storage available on the market today is a pretty good deal in my opinion but if you want an nvme drive and you don't want to spend that much money there is a Western Digital option and here it is it's called the black nvme Drive 500 gigs for about 40 to 50 dollars less than the Samsung alternative but you have to keep in mind that it is a lot slower the Samsung nvme drive but yes so this is kind of like a budget option which also has a five-year warranty and it's a really good hard drive and then if you want to go even more budget here is a SanDisk SSD plus a 250 gig SSD for $35 so that means even if you have a very budget build this is a very great option because it is a lot faster than a mechanical Drive still make a huge difference in the in the performance of your system especially when browsing the internet and doing just normal kind of things like the boot speed of your PC now that was just a quick look at the actual prices of various products at the moment when looking at SSDs and I honestly think if you don't have an SSD on your PC yet go and buy one of the options that fits your budget the best because honestly upgrading from a normal hard drive to an SSD is going to make the biggest performance jump of any component that you can have in your PC when it comes to the startup times and just the day-to-day usability because honestly not every like you're not only gaming on your PC you're also shopping on it and browsing the internet and watching youtube videos and so on and this is a great way to upgrade your system and if you're buying a PC today you cannot buy a PC without an SSD in it no matter what your budget is you have to factor in an SSD in my opinion because it makes such a big difference even if you put an SSD in a really old system it'll make a huge difference in the day to day usability anyway thank you very much for watching if you like the video do like and subscribe to the channel for more videos like this one until the next one bye byewe're finally at the point where reasonably-sized SSDs aren't super expensive so what we're gonna do in this video is we're gonna have a quick look at SSD price trends over the last 18 months or so and then I'm going to show you a couple of products which I think are a really good purchase at this time so that you can supercharge your PC experience with an SSD so we're going to be using PC parts picker for this video which I know is kind of an american-based site and all the prices is going to be in dollars but you can actually look at the SSDs that I recommend and see where you can find it for the cheapest price in your region and sometimes you may be able to find a better deal on different Hardware in South America or South Africa or Asia so just kind of have a look at what the cheapest drive is in this specific size category that you're looking for and then look for reviews to see if it's a decent Drive or not now first off this doesn't look like it's going very well because well 64 gigs of SSD storage is a lot more expensive today than it was 18 months ago but honestly you shouldn't be buying 64 gigs of SSD space that's quite pointless because you're looking at about $100 for a 64 gig Drive and as you'll see later you can get a lot more storage for that and the same thing goes for a hundred and twenty eight gigs just ignore those the first price point that I'd actually be looking at is 256 gig drive and as you can see it's about the same price in house it was 18 months ago and the thing is this might not seem great but honestly there have been some really big price hikes in SSDs and RAM and things like that so the fact that you can get it for the same price is not the worst thing ever and then this is the ideal SSD capacity for a Windows operating system drive in my opinion is 512 gigs and as you can see it's actually dropped but it's dropped like it's priced quite a lot and we'll look at some specific drives in a little bit now the thing that's the most interesting here to me is the two terabyte SSD space because 18 months ago a two terabyte SSD was costing you around $1000 and today you can get one for about $500 even less if you look around and honestly think that's amazing it shows you that higher capacity SSDs are actually becoming more reasonable and they might replace traditional hard drives even for mass storage but I think that's the off of it if you look at kind of traditional hard drives here 1 terabyte 2 terabyte and 310 by drives cost about the same that they used to 18 months ago you can see there isn't a huge amount of fluctuation in fact 2 terabyte drives are actually a bit more expensive today than they used to be but yes so let's go to actual specific components which you could use for for your next build or for your current PC to upgrade it now as you can see here the most popular drive at the moment by quite a long shot is the it's a mechanical drive and it gives you one terabyte of space for 44 dollars which is a good deal it's a lot more space than you'd get for 44 dollars for an SSD but honestly you should only be using a hard drive as a normal hard drive for mass storage because an SSD makes a huge difference in the usability of your PC so let's look at what I think is the best kind of middle-of-the-road SSD which doesn't cost too much but is a very flexible option for multiple use cases so it's over here it's the 860 Evo from Samsung Samsung has a really good reputation for the actual like lifespan of their drives they have a good warranty they're just really good SSDs and you can now get a 500 gig 860 Evo for 78 dollars which isn't a huge amount and it's a really great Drive as you look here at the actual price history over the last 120 days about 120 days ago you were spending about $10 more than you would be today which doesn't sound like a lot but as a percentage that's quite a lot this is a really great Drive if you have $80 to spend on an SSD get this one but you may not want to spend $80 on an SSD and still want 500 gigs and this is something that you can actually get from various manufacturers at different prices so this crucial mx 500 here is also a really great SSD which is fast and it's got a good reputation for 62 dollars but this is with mail in rebate so if you're not into that kind of thing you're looking at about $68 or $70 from Amazon so you're saving about nine dollars off the Samsung drive for the same capacity and honestly you wouldn't be able to feel the speed difference in your system now if you want to go more high-end you can buy an nvme drive now an nvme drive uses a different way of communicating with your motherboard so it means that it performs a lot better and it can be much faster but honestly if you have two computers one with a normal SSD in it and one with an nvme SSD in it when you're doing things like browsing the internet and you know just kind of normal tasks like that you're not gonna be able to feel the performance difference so unless you specifically know that your use case requires an nvme drive I think you don't need to spend extra and you can just buy a normal SSD but nvme drives have become a lot cheaper here is a samsung 970 Evo which is one of the best performing nvme drives around and away this is the 250 gig option which again isn't too bad but if you're spending this much on a drive I wouldn't go for that option here is the 500 gig one for a hundred and fifty dollars as you can see it's quite a bit more expensive than the SATA variants but when I bought an nvme Drive let's say it was about a year and a half ago I spent pretty much 220 dollars on a 500 gig nvme Drive and now it's a hundred and fifty dollars in fact you can probably get a one terabyte drive ok so here we've got an one terabyte is only a little bit more than I spent about a year ago on a 500 gig nvme Drive so honestly the prices are getting much better for nvme drives and two hundred and fifty dollars for one terabyte of some of the fastest storage available on the market today is a pretty good deal in my opinion but if you want an nvme drive and you don't want to spend that much money there is a Western Digital option and here it is it's called the black nvme Drive 500 gigs for about 40 to 50 dollars less than the Samsung alternative but you have to keep in mind that it is a lot slower the Samsung nvme drive but yes so this is kind of like a budget option which also has a five-year warranty and it's a really good hard drive and then if you want to go even more budget here is a SanDisk SSD plus a 250 gig SSD for $35 so that means even if you have a very budget build this is a very great option because it is a lot faster than a mechanical Drive still make a huge difference in the in the performance of your system especially when browsing the internet and doing just normal kind of things like the boot speed of your PC now that was just a quick look at the actual prices of various products at the moment when looking at SSDs and I honestly think if you don't have an SSD on your PC yet go and buy one of the options that fits your budget the best because honestly upgrading from a normal hard drive to an SSD is going to make the biggest performance jump of any component that you can have in your PC when it comes to the startup times and just the day-to-day usability because honestly not every like you're not only gaming on your PC you're also shopping on it and browsing the internet and watching youtube videos and so on and this is a great way to upgrade your system and if you're buying a PC today you cannot buy a PC without an SSD in it no matter what your budget is you have to factor in an SSD in my opinion because it makes such a big difference even if you put an SSD in a really old system it'll make a huge difference in the day to day usability anyway thank you very much for watching if you like the video do like and subscribe to the channel for more videos like this one until the next one bye bye