Are the efficiency differences from one manufacturer to the next enough to make a meaningful difference in battery run-time?
I’ve never really considered that when selecting NVME drives.
I have a Samsung 990Pro in my FW16 and a 980Pro in my FW13.
That is very highly dependent on what you do on battery, most semi decent modern ssds will spend the bulk of their time on battery in a pretty deep sleep state in most “regular” use-cases which makes their power consumption/efficiency while active differences wash out quite a lot.
If you do IO heavy workloads on battery it^ll make a much bigger difference.
Has anyone considered a low capacity Psuedo-SLC drive for increased reliability?
Are these read/write speed reasonable? They seem quite slow given that PSLC is potentially faster than TLC.
SFPC080GM1EC4TO-I-6F-A1P-STD Swissbit, Form Factor M.2 2230
Memory Capacity 80GB
Flash Memory Type pSLC NAND
Sequential Read Speed 1773MB/s
Sequential Write Speed 718MB/s
Random Read up to (IOPS) 140k
Random Write up to (IOPS) 100k
Interfaces: PCIe
Encryption Type: AES 256-bit
May I know your experience with this drive? I am interested in it as well.
Seems strange that using TLC in single bit mode could be faster than TLC in its normal mode, same work, less data, I’d expect it to be slower.
1 Like
At the same time one would assume that pslc should be faster as it only has to write to the main cell BUT as it is more spread out there could be losses from that or just the controller itself cant push it any faster could be an issue too. I do wish that ssd manufacturers would allow you to make a tlc or QLC a Psudo SLC, MLC or TLC drive if we agreed to the loss of space.
In a perfect world PSLC should be 3x the speed of TLC.
I suspect it’s slower because the speed comes from writing more data at once, seeing as QLC will write 4 bits per cell, so has to do a quarter of the work required compared to writing the same amount 1 bit at a time over more cells.
Definitely, I will finally receive my laptop in a couple of days and then install it, I will post my experience here then a bit later.
1 Like
Thanks, I should get my FW16 soon as well, I am from batch 7 
Currently I am using wd black SN850x 2tb for 2280 slot, trying to research on 2230 2tb to get max and I can’t find any proper review for sn770m 2tb yet, Tom hardware seems to test with SteamDeck and Desktop only,
The more bits per cell you use the more accurate you gotta write, that takes longer. pslc is way faster than tlc or qulc mode.
2 Likes
Most SSDs will dynamically switch portions of the drive between pSLC and native (either MLC, TLC, or QLC) depending depending on how much storage is needed.
The drive you linked is essentially a 240 GB TLC drive that has been permanently locked so that it can’t switch to TLC mode (which means that it can’t be filled past 80 GB as that is the maximum it can store while the entire drive is in pSLC mode).
That drive is also pretty slow. £163.05 for an 80 GB drive (which is physically 240 GB TLC). It is rated at 1773 MB/s read, 718 MB/s write, 140K read IOPS, and 100k write IOPS. That is not fast by modern standards.
By comparison I purchased my TN446 2230 SSD for a third of that price (although different regions may have different pricing) and even when it hits TLC mode (it does operate in pSLC mode initially but it can only set a small portion of the drive to pSLC mode) it matches the drive you linked in write performance and beats it in read performance while being higher capacity and cheaper.
There are some drives that can set the entire drive to pSLC mode. For example the Sabrent Rocket Q4 can set the entire drive to pSLC mode. That means that the 1 TB Sabrent Rocket Q4 can turn itself into a 250 GB pSLC drive and the 2 TB Sabrent Rocket Q4 can turn itself into a 500 GB pSLC drive.
The 1 TB Sabrent Rocket Q4 (which behaves like a 250 GB pSLC drive when not very full) is usually cheaper than the drive you linked and has much better performance as long as the Sabrent Rocket Q4 stays in pSLC mode. However when it starts dropping to QLC mode the performance plummets to way below the drive you linked.
Other drives like the Corsair MP600 Mini and Sabrent Rocket 4 (not Q4, just 4) each can set a portion of the drive to pSLC mode, however since it’s a small portion (60 GB out of a 1 TB drive) it’s only used for stuff accessed recently. However even when operating exclusively in their normal TLC mode those drives achieve anywhere from 2 to 6 times the performance of the drive you linked depending on the workload.
Ultimately good TLC (even if it can’t dynamically switch to a pSLC mode) is usually significantly better for performance and cost than bad TLC operating in pSLC mode.
3 Likes
Thanks Kyle,
You’re a long way ahead of me on the PSLC research.
I’d like to be able to partition a small amount of the disk space for important files for reliability.
I only really need 6GB but 60 or more would be nice.
I don’t want to go with QLC though, even for less important files. Does anything immediately spring to mind please?
Very many thanks.
Might as well get one of those kingston industrial pslc microsd cards for that XD (no joke they are actually quite nice).
SSDs these days are quite durable and will start crying long before the flash actually wears out. Statistically it’s a lot more likely for the firmware to screw up before the actual flash does.
If the files are actually important, backups and redundancy are the better way to go than a slightly fancier ssd.
1 Like
It’s more the risk of corruption than the cells actually wearing out, but I agree that mirroring or backups is important.
Having used an MLC for 13 years I would be comfrted with PSLC, SLC or MLC rather than TLC for my email or other important files.
SD card? No… too easy for someone to wanderoff with. 
If you care about corruption you need a filesystem with checksums (zfs or btrfs or something). Also ssds already do a lot of that stuff internally. Corruption can always happen. Since you got a 16, why not just have 2 ssds in a btrfs/zfs mirror, then you can detect and repair corruption if it happens?
I only got ssds when tlc was the mainstream for non pro drives but I have beaten the hell out of them and never got any actual corruption. Ironically the earlier SLC and MLC drives we used at work may have had batter flash in theory but the controllers were so immature they were a lot more reliable than the more modern tlc ones we used later. Hell the 250GB 960 evo I was trying to kill is still going and has almost 600TBW on it now, that’s about 2.4k drive writes and about 5 times what the warranty claims XD, the only issue that one got is crying about exceeding the warranty limit.
1 Like
No problem, I am batch 5 and should have received it weeks ago. But despite my address update as per instructions, Framework by accident sent my notebook to the wrong country (!). To an old address I inserted ages ago when I pre-ordered… Will finally receive it this weekend. Framework support was also not really helpful - quite a sobering experience. But in any case, I will finally get it soon.
Thanks, for now I changed my mind and order the wd black sn770m 2tb because I noticed these two prices are not much difference in amazon. I might find a way to solve the heat issue.
Alright, all the best! I have no idea what to expect, I hope it works when I put it in over the weekend ;).
Should be all good, I can’t find real review of pcie 4 m. 2230 in a laptop at all. Most of the review are based on the testing result done in the steam deck or desktop. Just got shipping notification so I might get FW16 in 2 or 3 days.
Hmm…you got me thinking. Maybe I should do this. Have a ZFS mirror on the 2230 & same sized part of the 2280, and use the rest of the 2280 as “misc data” partition (video games, movies, music, etc). LOL. I really don’t need that. Although I definitely want to wait for the BIOS fix for the 2230 disappearing when waking from sleep.