I’m working my way up, slowly, to rebuilding a 5800X AMD desktop (on an Asrock B500 Extreme4 motherboard). The current build lacks a second M.2 NVMe SSD, so I’m also thinking about what kind (and how much) SSD to emplace in that currently open slot. Based on a teaser from NeoWin this morning, I’m also pondering US$200 4TB SSD availability, and its potential impact on that refurbishment.

Why Am I Pondering US$200 4TB SSD Availability?

Other than the obvious — amazing price for decent performance — I’ve got lots of reasons to think about choosing my second drive for this rebuild. Here’s a list:

• I’ve got 3 or 4 good 1TB NVMe SSDs already in hand, all with 3K+ MBps read/write capability, plus 1 2 TB that’s PCIe Gen 4 and on par with the cheap-o 4TB item.
• The B550 manual says the max capacity of SSDs it handles tops out at 2TB. So a 4TB unit might not even work.
• I am trying to contain myself on this redo, price-wise, so I’m not sure I want to fork out another US$200, even though it’s a pretty potent price/performance combination.

Then I Started Thinking About HDDs

You can still buy a Seagate 5TB 2.5″ 5400 RPM hard disk for between US$140 and $160. That puts cost per TB on a roughly equal footing, though it does significantly impact performance. Indeed,  the HDD’s 450 MBps read/write is a decimal order of magnitude slower than this SSD’s reported 4,500 MBps or better. FWIW, I already own two of those so I could easily emplace one as a backup or archival drive in that build. Backup/archival space won’t be an issue, for sure.

So you see my situation: I have to think about what I want from the rebuild, and manage the expense versus capacity/capability ratio. I’ll keep thinking, and keep writing about it here. So far I’m leaning heavily toward “use what I’ve got, keep it cheap.” But that could change: Stay tuned!