Acquiring a computer, either one of those that sell assembled or by parts, without an SSD, is not recommended. We can currently find a wide range of SSDs on the market, but some should not even be touched with a stick. The so-called Chinese SSDs are a bad idea and its price is not as good as it seems.
Surely, if you are thinking of buying an SSD, you will have searched for information about it. Specialized media, like ours, will always mention the most prestigious and quality brands. But are Chinese SSD brands bad simply because of their origin or because of something else?
Chinese SSDs are of very low quality
We all know that the chinese productson many occasions, are low quality products. Cutting back on certain aspects allows them to offer cheaper products than the competition. Something that also happens in the SSD market.
Simply put, an SSD has three elements. First of all, the memory chips where the information will be stored. Next, one controller which will be in charge of indicating where the information is stored, among others. Finally, the cache (which is usually a RAM memory chip) that saves information temporarily and increases performance.
Mainly, the problems of these Chinese SSDs are:
- Memories: They usually use discarded memories by the big manufacturers, for being of low quality or because there newer models that allow more capacity and/or performance. What it causes is that they are slower, with less capacity or that their durability is greatly reduced
- Controller: Habitually use old controllers that the big manufacturers do not want because they are obsolete or that they lack functions. Most importantly, it affects the process that prevents a memory cell on a memory chip from being excessively worn out. Can typically lead to more wear and faster drive degradation
- Cache: Some of these SSDs use as cache DDR2 or DDR3 memories, while the big manufacturers use DDR4 chips. Even some Chinese assemblers remove this chip to reduce costs and thus offer cheaper units. This affects the speed of reading and writing, slowing them down
Also, we can see if a unit is Chinese by the information it provides. The recognized manufacturers indicate the durability in TBW (terabytes written) while chinese manufacturers are usually less clear. They express it in hours, in the amount of information written each day or other parameters that really say nothing.
They are time bombs
The durability and quality of Chinese SSDs is not worth the savings. They are units of very poor quality and that will last us much less than other commercial units of recognized brands. In addition, what is the need to buy an SSD of dubious origin if you have the Kingston A400, which are the cheapest, offer stable performance and are practically indestructible. Well, see here a comparison between “normal” SSDs and Chinese SSDs, where you will see which are the best SSDs for durability.
We recommend going for SSDs from Kingston, Crucial, WD, Kioxia, Seagate, Samsung, and other well-known manufacturers. The truth is that distinguishing them is very easy, since Chinese SSDs do not have an official website, the information they offer is quite strange and no prestigious media would recommend them to you.
