A loyal Dutch RedShark reader named Willem dropped us a line to tell us about some amazing deals he has seen on SSDs from Chinese manufacturer KingSpec.

From https://www.redsharknews.com/technology/item/5680-is-it-worth-buying-ultra-cheap-ssds

Nice beginning.

DRAM-less SSDs cut costs by omitting the DRAM cache chip, which can be a good move if the controller and NAND are able to deliver steady performance without stuttering. The obvious problem is that NAND prices have been high for the past few years so saving the cost of a DRAM chip and using a slightly cheaper controller doesn’t offer any great savings. The downside of low performance is far worse than the upside of slightly reduced costs.

Performance is usually almost same if you deal with lot of big files like with editing. You need DRAM to greatly save time looking for addresses where file elements reside in NAND chips, and it is manly important for lot of small files. And especially during writing of such files.

And it is exactly due to very high prices of DRAM(!) why manufacturers so like DRAM less controllers now.

Look further down the specification and you will see the application for these SSDs is listed as ‘POS machine, Shipping, Queuing machine, etc, which is pretty much the opposite of ‘Workstation’ or ‘Mission Critical System.’ It isn’t clear whether KingSpec is talking down expectations because the P3-XXX doesn’t perform especially well or because it lacks reliability.

Thing to look for is independent SSDs reviews. Not this vague bullshit.

We don’t know anything about the 3D NAND used by KingSpec, however, we imagine it comes from a Chinese manufacturer, rather than Toshiba, Samsung or Intel/Micron. That sounds like a potential concern, although you would have to be very naive if you didn’t think the Chinese are determined to move into the CPU and memory chip businesses. It was always inevitable that Chinese NAND would start life in embedded devices, SD cards and USB drives and then move up to SSDs as part of the learning curve.

Nope Chinese manufacturers are yet to make any NAND, so all comes from same factories. May be chips grade is worse, who knows, as KingSpec is really low end thing.

This is the area that causes us the greatest concern but which also offers KingSpec the potential to undercut its competition by a significant amount. In a world where Crucial charges £349 for a 2TB MX500 or £205 for a 1TB model, KingSpec is coming in 35 or 40 percent cheaper.

Well, if you just look for deals you'll observe that NAND prices are falling fast and 1TB and 2TB brand models can be got sometimes cheaper than any Kingspec drives.

So, yes for editing (even 4K and such) any good 3D TLC SSD you could get on deals, even DRAM less thing, will do fine. Editing requires access to not very large numbers of quite big files that are read in big chunks - quite easy thing to do for SSDs. But if you want to put some advanced database or complex data driven server - it is other story.