The single biggest factor in SSD performance is the presence and quantity of DRAM cache. A drive with a GB or two of DRAM will write at several hundred MB/s all day long, while a DRAM-less drive will slow to a crawl after the first couple GB written.
This being the case, why does nobody list this spec? Neither amazon nor newegg have cache as a filterable item. 95% of drives don’t even mention it one way or the other in the product description. It’s fucking maddening.
Are there any web shops that will let me search for drives with DRAM cache specifically, or am I going to have to resort to googling full reviews of each model individually?
Go to https://pcpartpicker.com/products/internal-hard-drive/ and move the Cache slider from 2MB to 8MB. IDK why the 2MB options even exists, it should say “none” or something, but setting it to 8MB shows all drives with a DRAM cache, and the 4th column actually shows how much cache it has.
Thanks, but I don’t think PCP is terribly accurate when it comes to cache. Narrowing it down to 2.5" drives with at least 1TB and at least 8mb cache only returns 13 results. Just a bunch of samsung drives and the crucial MX500. I know there’s more than that out there.