High capacity Kingston DC1500M alternatives?

[romeozor]

I got a ~3.8TB and a ~7.8TB drive a while back and I quite like the form factor of them. They are probably out of production or something because I can barely find anything (in Europe), at least for a reasonable price. I got my 7+TB drive for about €460 off Amazon in mid 2023, it was hovering around €500 for a while, but now even the 3.8TB is hard to find.

I'm not super knowledgeable on U.2 drives, or high capacity flash storage for that matter, so maybe someone can recommend an alternative? Looked at used Optane drives on eBay, but those even more confusing to me given the various versions of Optane. I'd be using the drive in my 1st or 2nd gen Threadripper system.

(Can't really order anything outside Europe due to import/tax hassle)

 

[mbosma]

I know about a couple series that have disks with 4tb+ capacity:
- Samsung DC PM9A3
- Samsung PM1733
- KIOXIA CM7-R
- Solidigm D7-P5520

Not sure what your exact requirements are but just to name a few

Not personaly familiar with this disk but Micron had a 7400 Pro series that is available for relatively cheap:

Micron 7400 PRO 7.68TB NVMe U.3 7mm PCIe 4x4 3D TLC 2.5", 1DWPD - MTFDKCB7T6TDZ-1AZ1ZABYY

Capacity: 7680 BUS: NVMe Format: U.3 2.5" Speed: 6600 MBps (read) / 5400 MBps (write) Lifetime: 1 DWPD Technology: Unknown

smicro.eu

I have ordered from this site before which is in the EU so might help.

 

[Tech Junky]

I picked up a 15.36 Kioxia after burning through 2 micron drives and they're worth the slight premium. I grabbed it off eBay new. It runs cool around 40C which is good considering most of these kinds of drives run hot.

 

[romeozor]

I picked up a 15.36 Kioxia after burning through 2 micron drives and they're worth the slight premium. I grabbed it off eBay new. It runs cool around 40C which is good considering most of these kinds of drives run hot.

Anything to know about those 15tb drives?

 

[Tech Junky]

Anything to know about those 15tb drives?

Depends on which model you're looking at. The higher you go in capacity the better performance you get. Some are designed for higher reads while others are more balanced and some are better for writes.

 

[kwinz]

I wanted to buy SSDs with power loss protection, but I have a fairly low budget. I originally had the Samsung OEM Datacenter SSD PM9A3 3.84TB in mind. I was pretty surprised to see that they have almost doubled in price over the last year (at least in EU the price went from EUR 208 plus tax to EUR 392 plus tax).

Out of the available alternatives that you mentioned in your post in March the the "Micron 7400 PRO 1DWPD Read Intensive" seem to be most reasonably priced at around EUR 265 plus tax for the 4TB variant.

Any advice?

 

[Tech Junky]

Any advice?

Just wait for prices to drop again. The price jacking has happened over the last couple of months. Typically this sort of thing happens when big sales are coming to make the discount look better. Happens all of the time with Amazon. I find eBay search alerts to help in timing for better pricing

 

[kwinz]

Thanks for the reply @Tech Junky ! At least for the "Samsung OEM Datacenter SSD PM9A3 3.84TB, M.2 22110/M-Key/PCIe 4.0 x4"
I can't really tell if that was supposed to be a temporary price hike. I have price data for cheapest offer going back 1 year.

Would they double the price for a whole 6 months to prepare for a sale, like you said?



Or are they simply not manufacturing M.2 any more to focus on newer M3 or E1.S form factor and the leftover stock gets sold at inflated prices?
Or was the "cheap" price last year just temporary because everyone was concerned about Samsung firmware bugs?

I haven't really followed the SSD market recently. I am actually confused what's going on here!

 

[nexox]

SSD prices crashed last summer for a number of reasons, then recovered, and it seems like it will take a while to get back to the same price/TB levels, plus enterprise drives have moved away from m.2 for a while now, even before E1.S they were mostly relegated to boot volumes, with the main storage on U.2.

 

[Tech Junky]

Well, I track the Kioxia drives since that's what I went with after burning through 2 Micron drives for no apparent reason. There's also a NAND supply issue in the supply chain.

You might be on to something though with the change of model by SS and depleting the stock before release. There always seems to be something pushing prices in either direction though. But, I picked up the Kioxia 16TB last Aug for ~$1200 and now they're pushing 2-3K depending on the supplier.

 

[kwinz]

Appreciate it! Ok, so it's a combination of those reasons. I guess I will bite the bullet and order "Micron 7400 PRO"s then. Form factor is not top priority for me, but I care a lot about price. I see that the cheapest Micron 7400 PROs that I are in stock right now come in U.3 form factor, which is fine for my use.

"Kingston DC1500M" in U.2 or "Solidigm SSD D5-P5430" in U.2 would be an alternative if the Microns had any issues, although they have lower squential speeds at least on paper and are slightly more expensive.

 

[Tech Junky]

@kwinz

Yeah, when I was putting my toe in the water initially those were on avg $900 for the 16TB option. I think I went with the 7450 though. Word of warning though is they run hot and will need direct cooling. The Kioxia though tends to run cooler at ~40C w/o direct cooling for the CD8 model.

 

[kwinz]

Ufff, talk about getting hot. The Micron 7400 PRO U.3 has up to 22W power draw according to datasheet. I was hoping for less. Whatever "up to" means in practice.

 

[nexox]

Pretty much all U.2/3 drives will be able to use most of the 25W power budget (at least I think it's 25, somewhere around there in any case,) because that's how they go fast, but it typically requires high-throughput multithreaded random writes to actually get there. Idle in basically all the spec sheets I have seen is "ehh 5ish watts" and those that specify read-only power consumption tend to be around 10W max.

 

[nabsltd]

At least for the "Samsung OEM Datacenter SSD PM9A3 3.84TB, M.2 22110/M-Key/PCIe 4.0 x4"
I can't really tell if that was supposed to be a temporary price hike. I have price data for cheapest offer going back 1 year.

If you don't need PCIe 4.0, go with the PM983. You can easily find the 3.84TB version for around $200.

 

[kwinz]

If you don't need PCIe 4.0, go with the PM983. You can easily find the 3.84TB version for around $200.

Maybe the 1TB Version for ~180. Serverschmiede.com GmbH
Or the 2TB version for ~420 Samsung SSD 2,5 1,92 TB PM983 Serie ( PCIe, NVMe ) Enterprise SSD (MZQLB1T9HAJR-00007)
I find the 3.84TB version at EU vendors for around 600 USD new including tax. https://www.galaxus.at/de/s1/product/samsung-pm983-3820-gb-m2-22110-ssd-10347863

Please point me to where I can eAsiLy get PM983 3.84TB version for USD 200!

You probably know something I don't.

 

[mrpasc]

Used ones, eBay US. Or „open box“ from china for around 275$. For whatever reason there is significant more supply of used enterprise gear in the US than in Europe. Assume this is because of less strict warranties rules and less strict data security rules for repurposing.

Samsung 3.84TB 22110 PM983 SSD PCIe Gen3x4 NVMe M.2 Solid State Drive MZ-1LB3T80 | eBay

Enterprise grade mixed-use SSD. Terabytes Written (@4 KB random write): 1,366 TB. Uncorrectable Bit Error Rate (UBER): < 1 sector per 10. 17 bits read. Power Consumption. Idle: Typ.

www.ebay.de

MZ-QLB3T80 Samsung PM983 3.84TB 2.5inch NVMe Gen3.0 x4 SSD MZQLB3T8HALS | eBay

Cloud Storage Corp © 2020. Ending Soon. New Arrivals. QUICK LINKS. We are here 24/7, should you need any help.

www.ebay.de

 

[nabsltd]

Please point me to where I can eAsiLy get PM983 3.84TB version for USD 200!

Check the shipping to wherever you live...I doubt it will be more than US$50:

MZ-1LB3T80 SAMSUNG 3.84TB TLC NVME PCIE 3.0x4 M.2 22110 SOLID STATE DRIVE | eBay

PRODUCT TYPE SOLID STATE DRIVE. ROTATIONAL SPEED. PART NUMBER MZ-1LB3T80. OTHER PART NUMBERS. CONDITION USED. We will do our best to resolve the issue.

www.ebay.com

 

[kwinz]

Okay, thank you very much @nabsltd. That is indeed a good price. Not sure if those SSDs have a lot of wear on them, but it should be okay I guess.

The main issue when buying overseas from eBay is that eBay forces me to pay 20% VAT tax when the goods enter the EU even if I am VAT exempt.



I believe there is a way to get this removed if I open an ebay business account and apply for EORI/IOSS number, but besides the struggle with ebay having an EORI requires me to fill out a time consuming tax form each month and it's not worth the hassle.

I guess I will stay with the previous plan and get two pieces of the faster "Micron 7400 PRO U.3 3840 GB PCI Express 4.0 3D TLC NAND NVMe (MTFDKCB3T8TDZ-1AZ1ZABYYR)" new locally with 2 year warranty for only 80 USD more:



Cheers