Entry level DRAM-less NVMe SSD with a few caveats

The HP EX900 uses the Silicon Motion SM2263XT DRAM-less NVMe controller with Host Memory Buffer (HMB) technology. DRAM-less being the keyword here. Because of the speed, most SSD´s will write data to it's internal cache (a.k.a. Drive's RAM) before actually writing it to the NAND memory chip. DRAM-less drives means that they lack the memory chip where it’s data is temporarily stored.. This is a cost saving measure, thus, you are able to get this drive at a significant discount vs the leading brand. What this mambo-jambo means to you is that this disk WILL USE YOUR SYSTEM'S RAM as a temp cache. So, if you buy a 500GB drive, you'll need an additional 500MB of RAM to work with it, A 256GB drive will need an extra 256MB of ram. This might not be apparent at first, but you'll notice that windows explorer will start to 'eat' a lot of it. Under heavy I/O operations, using very large files, this SSD can easily go above the 1GB mark on RAM usage -- via Windows Explorer, therefore I would recommend against it if you have less than 8GB of RAM. Having said that, it's a decent unit that delivers on the advertised read/write speeds in real life usage. I decided to use it as a secondary mass-storage device, since I'm mounting it on a PCI card. If you are looking to replace your main C: drive, you might want to look for one that has an integranted DRAM chipRead full review

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