{"id":1094,"date":"2025-09-08T01:51:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-08T01:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/peter\/?p=1094"},"modified":"2026-05-24T11:28:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-24T11:28:10","slug":"safe-shopping-list-of-budget-ssds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/peter\/safe-shopping-list-of-budget-ssds\/","title":{"rendered":"Safe shopping list of budget SSDs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\ud83d\udd39 SATA SSDs (2.5&#8243;)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Still great for older machines (e.g., ThinkPad T61, which only supports SATA II\/3Gb\/s anyway).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Crucial MX500<\/strong> \u2013 TLC NAND, DRAM, very reliable.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Samsung 870 EVO<\/strong> \u2013 TLC NAND, DRAM, excellent endurance.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>WD Blue 3D NAND<\/strong> \u2013 Solid mainstream SATA drive.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Kingston KC600<\/strong> \u2013 TLC NAND, DRAM, strong option for SATA.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\ud83d\udca1 Avoid <strong>Crucial BX500<\/strong> unless it\u2019s super cheap \u2014 it\u2019s DRAM-less and slower under OS workloads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\ud83d\udd39 NVMe SSDs (M.2)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For newer laptops\/desktops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Budget but solid (DRAM-less, OK for secondary storage\/games):<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Crucial P3 \/ P3 Plus<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>WD Blue SN350 \/ SN570<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Better performance (TLC + DRAM, great for boot\/system drive):<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Samsung 970 EVO Plus \/ 980 Pro<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>WD Black SN770 \/ SN850X<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Crucial P5 Plus<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Kingston KC3000<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\ud83d\udd39 General Rules<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Stick to <strong>Samsung, Crucial (Micron), WD\/SanDisk, or Kingston<\/strong> for consumer drives.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>A \u201ctoo-cheap\u201d 1TB NVMe (like $20\u201330 new) = \ud83d\udea9 run away.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>For <strong>old ThinkPads<\/strong> like the T61, the speed difference between a BX500 and an MX500 will be less dramatic (because SATA II bottlenecks at ~300 MB\/s), but <strong>reliability<\/strong> and <strong>consistency<\/strong> still matter.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Stick to Samsung, Crucial (Micron), WD\/SanDisk, or Kingston for consumer drives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/peter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/peter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/peter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/peter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/peter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/peter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1094\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/peter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/peter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/peter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}