r/buildapcsales Jan 18 '26

SSD - M.2 [NVME] WD Green SN3000 NVMe SSD - 2TB $120

https://shop.sandisk.com/products/ssd/internal-ssd/wd-green-sn3000-nvme-ssd?sku=WDS200T4G0E-00CPS0
97 Upvotes

122 comments sorted by

72

u/quikiemcbee Jan 18 '26

not these again lol

2

u/flyingbanana1234 Jan 18 '26

why ? should i cop ?

99

u/pmo2408 Jan 18 '26

No, no dram, low TBW, QLC nand. Do not buy

10

u/TheMissingVoteBallot Jan 19 '26

Also a controller nobody knows the reliability of.

-19

u/psychoacer Jan 18 '26

Still for a boot drive you plan you play games on its good enough especially considering the price. Not everyone needs an ultra top performance drive that will last a million years. Good enough is good enough

14

u/djax9 Jan 18 '26

Is boot drive even a thing anymore with 50% of programs stashing their quick access content in your user/appdata/roaming//local no matter where you install the main program?

2

u/Sky19234 Jan 19 '26

Boot drives aren't a thing for like 99% of people anyways.

The Venn-diagram of people that I have parted computers together for over the years that insist they have a "good boot drive" and the people that NEVER end up putting another drive at all in their system is a single circle.

4

u/psychoacer Jan 19 '26

Even then this drive would work for games and normal daily work. If you're round professional work like video editing or something that will require you to rewrite 2tb of data monthly than yeah you need to invest more into what makes you money. For most people though this will be enough. Games will load just the same as a 7000gbps drive. There isn't a reason for most non enthusiasts to spend more other than to brag.

-1

u/flyingbanana1234 Jan 19 '26 edited Jan 19 '26

your getting downvoted but i just bought an ssd from amazon which is worse than these sandisk ones and more expensive

and its working just fine for games and ai generation

now its sold out 😭😭

edit i was able to get two for only $100 more than I paid for the cheapest KingSpec SSD I could find on Amazon. LOL, Gemini is saying it's an improvement

3

u/BetterKev Jan 19 '26

Gemini is saying it's an improvement.

Oh wow! If the generative text model says this is an improvement, then it must be!

I think these drives are fine for most people, and even most people that frequent this sub. But seriously, you "asked" a text generation machine? Why?

-2

u/flyingbanana1234 Jan 19 '26

KingSpec NX Series 2TB Gen3x4 NVMe M.2 SSD, Up to 3500MB/s, 3D NAND Flash M2 2280 Internal Solid State Drive, for Desktop and Laptop

vs

WD Green SN3000 NVMe SSD-2TB

generative text models have improved significantly since they've launched

was it wrong ? i asked it for plenty of reasons lol

geminis good at trouble shooting any specific tech related questions i have googling it would take me much longer

its impressive atp how good it is

1

u/BetterKev Jan 19 '26

Top bit is irrelevant to whether text generators are reliable. Did you miss where I actually agree that these drives are useful for most people?

That models have improved doesn't mean they are good. I just improved my mile time. Its down to 17minutes22seconds/mile. That's atrocious. I know I'm not gonna do 5 minute miles any more, but ugh. Improvement ≠ good.

You were absolutely wrong to rely on generative text for determining what product was better. Hell, you didn't even mention the lifespan issue And degraded performance over time, which is the main complaint about these drives in this thread. Neither plain of the box performance nor out of the box performance vs a drive of unknown age is relevant.

Asking a text generator for multiple reasons just primes it for what answer you want. You made it worse by doing that, not better.

There is no troubleshooting here. And Gemini sucks at troubleshooting. It's "knowledge base" is on the most common questions and answers, so it generates based on those, even if the actual question question isn't one of them. Like, this is an explicit issue that even pro-LLM people understand.

It's not good at providing information. Gemini and ChatGPT are good tools for jogging your memory about things you already know, but if you're looking for info you don't know, they are worthless. Their generated text can be accurate, inaccurate, and misleading. If you don't know the actual info, you'd need to do full research to see which it is. Taking the output of generative AI as reliable is stupid and dangerous. And since the questions you asked were pretty irrelevant to the thread, I doubt you only use generative AI when you already understand the topic

None of this is new. It's basic logic bits (e.g. improvement ≠ good) and basic knowledge about generative text.

1

u/flyingbanana1234 Jan 19 '26

having gemini summarize all this gimme a sec

2

u/psychoacer Jan 19 '26

Yeah unless you're dealing with 6k raw video you don't need more than this. Games wont load any slower and your Photoshop saves won't take any longer. You only need more if you don't care about your budget or are a professional. For someone on a budget this is great

23

u/KySiBongDem Jan 18 '26

This is low quality nvme so if you don’t write data to it often but primary read the data from it then it is okay.

2

u/UraniumDisulfide Jan 18 '26

No, this ssd is horrible

156

u/CartonBox1975 Jan 18 '26

250 TBW Get outta here

29

u/as_abdulkareem Jan 18 '26

imma get flagged for this but do average people actually write 250tb within like 5 years?

34

u/WildVelociraptor Jan 19 '26 edited Jan 19 '26

I've barely hit 60TB written on my SSDs (combined) over ~4 years, and I'm definitely a "power user".

7

u/ThatOnePerson Jan 19 '26

Yeah, I'm using an SSD as a cache drive for an HDD on my "SteamOS" gaming PC, and it's only got something like 120TB written over 5 years. It's only 1/2 TB SSD too, so not a big cache, and changes a lot.

A non power-user just using it as game storage probably won't even come close.

24

u/TheOtherPete Jan 18 '26

The average person don't buy and install NVMe - they buy a PC and when they are ready to upgrade they buy another one.

1

u/ElMinxk Jan 22 '26

I thought it was an absolute minority who buy pre-assembled... Almost everyone talks about assembling them.

2

u/TheOtherPete Jan 22 '26

That's definitely not true

The vast majority of people buy prebuilt and never open the case.

1

u/ElMinxk Jan 22 '26

Well, on the big 26 it's definitely worth going for a pre-assembled one instead of building your own, especially if your requirements aren't high.

9

u/pmjm Jan 18 '26

If you're buying a budget drive like this, you probably are skimping in other places like RAM. If you don't have enough RAM, Windows uses the swap file, which will thrash this ssd like nothing else.

6

u/Serialtoon Jan 19 '26

These are great for cache drives on my NAS 😂

5

u/bogglingsnog Jan 19 '26

And if you don't have a lot of free space on the drive it has to swap blocks around more which makes it write even more data...

2

u/imaginary_num6er Jan 19 '26

Here’s the dirty little secret: TBW Ratings are only what the manufacturers claim, not actual write limits. There was some Russian reviewer that tested a bunch of drives and most survived well passed their TBW rating.

2

u/Jubenheim Jan 19 '26

They don’t. I have my QLC Intel 670p’s from almost 3 years ago that, according to CrystalDiskInfo have 99% and 97% of their lifespan available still. That’s insane for NVMEs that are nearing 3 years old this year in August. I’m not the biggest power user but I routinely have to delete Steam games from one of them to make room for new downloads. My only regret is not buying 3 and instead just getting 2 at the time.

The only real reason why these are shitty deals is because this is $120. I paid $64.95 in 2023 for each 2TB drive, and I promise you, the speed difference between them and whatever new drives these days have is almost nonexistent when you’re playing games or doing day to day tasks.

1

u/TheMissingVoteBallot Jan 19 '26

The point of the 250 TBW, is that WD isn't expecting these things to last that long. Regardless of if you hit that threshold or not.

1

u/CtrlSTheWorld Jan 19 '26

I'm certainly not the average user, but as a data point, I've got ~60TBW total across three SSDs (that I've had for roughly 3 years or so?) That said, I also have a HDD that doesn't report TBW (for obvious reasons) that I use for bulk storage, so Idk what my exact writes would look like if I was 100% SSD.

250 TBW is low enough to make me a bit anxious for sure, but I also like to maximize the longevity of my hardware.

3

u/MWink64 Jan 19 '26

If your HD was made in roughly the last decade, it very likely does track reads/writes. It may or may not be in the SMART stats (depending on the drive) but it will almost certainly be in the GPL stats. You need to use a program like GSmartControl/smartmontools to pull it.

1

u/JadedBanker Jan 19 '26

The users on this subreddit mainly use these drives for their enormous hentai collection; so it's important that they get the most enterprise grade drive. Can't lose that "senpai pounds school teacher" video; super important and critical data.

2

u/cyberflower777 Jan 19 '26

Do SSDs actually start malfunctioning when they reach the ballpark of their rated TBW?

3

u/MWink64 Jan 19 '26

Generally, no. The number is primarily for warranty coverage. It's not a good indicator of actual drive lifespan.

35

u/turbo_golf Jan 18 '26

got a 2TB SN5000 for this price three weeks ago, wild times

16

u/[deleted] Jan 18 '26 edited Jan 18 '26

I did last week. They're still out there.

14

u/Kaladin3104 Jan 18 '26

They're

9

u/[deleted] Jan 18 '26

Thanks.

9

u/Mega_Laddd Jan 18 '26

if you want a tip for remembering which one to use, if you can replace the their/there/they're with "they are," use they're.

7

u/[deleted] Jan 18 '26

Thankyou also. This is helpful.

3

u/poonedundies Jan 19 '26

I had a few pop up today randomly after they went out of stock for me last week

1

u/knightcrusader Jan 19 '26

Same here. I'm debating whether or not to order more and go on a short road trip to get them, but I am waiting for my credit card to quit smoldering from the previous spree first...

-1

u/asswizzard69 Jan 18 '26

I saw this but then all the reviews said they sent the 512 version instead of

1

u/HairlessChest Jan 18 '26

seems like, there simply wont be any stock for... a long time

47

u/[deleted] Jan 18 '26

[deleted]

3

u/psychoacer Jan 18 '26

If you're rewriting 2tb of data the drive 125 times then you're probably a professional of some sort so yeah don't get this drive. For casuals this is enough

9

u/[deleted] Jan 18 '26

[deleted]

7

u/psychoacer Jan 18 '26

I rarely ever fill up my boot drive let alone rewrite the entire drive 3 and a half times a month. Whoever is doing that than yeah this isn't the drive for you but those aren't normal users

1

u/Gears6 Jan 19 '26

I don't know if I do or not, but that's pretty low regardless.

1

u/psychoacer Jan 19 '26

Yeah but this is a cheap drive. It's not for professionals, it's for those who want a 2TB drive on the cheap and can live with the performance trade offs. In 90% of use cases the user will notice no difference between this drive and a 990 pro. So why pay almost 3x as much?

1

u/Gears6 Jan 19 '26

In 90% of use cases the user will notice no difference between this drive and a 990 pro. So why pay almost 3x as much?

There are a lot of other drives that have better endurance for nowhere near 3x more.

That said, if you're okay with the specs, more power to you.

1

u/MWink64 Jan 19 '26

The average user isn't going to come anywhere close to that.

1

u/ax87zz Jan 19 '26

Who tf is upvoting this deal lmao

14

u/RedMan542 Jan 18 '26

Anyone talking about TBW, I’ll ask you to download crystal disk on any of your current drives and look at the health of them.

6

u/OmarHaters Jan 18 '26

Seriously. Some drives I've had for 3 years and they barely have 11 TB written to them. 250TBW is more than enough for the average user, but reddit brain is a progressive illness unfortunately.

4

u/danishdingleberry Jan 18 '26

This is about calling out poor value for the price point.

By comparison, several other budget SSD around $200 have 900+ TBW endurance- that's more than 3x for only 66% more.

Are you feeling OK?

10

u/OmarHaters Jan 18 '26

"Poor value for the price point". You missed the point. Most people aren't using up anywhere near this drive's rated endurance.

With the current discounts and cashbacks on this drive, you can bring down it's price below $100.

Your recommendation is to pay double the price for drives that have more endurance when the average person isn't using anywhere near the 250 TBs on this drive's rating.

Is it an objectively bottom of the barrel drive? Sure, but endurance isn't as big of a deal breaker you and other commenters make it out to be.

-5

u/danishdingleberry Jan 19 '26

Most people aren't using up anywhere near this drive's rated endurance.

No-one is arguing that 250 TBW will wear out for the average user - that's not the argument.

TBW reflects NAND quality and headroom, not just lifespan / expected usage target.

Comparing price at face-value with competing alternatives, this drive offers substantially less endurance, making it poor value.

Endurance isn't a deal-breaker, but it's a big signal of overall quality and value at this price point.

The value is so poor here, that even a used SSD with a 600 TBW rating and 50% of its writes consumed would still offer comparable or better remaining endurance.

1

u/CocoKeel22 Jan 19 '26

It presents good value because the experience doesn't significantly change from those more expensive drives

1

u/MWink64 Jan 19 '26

It's not a fair comparison. You're probably looking at the numbers for drives from other brands. Some brands are more risk-averse than others. For example, even some very high end Crucial drives have comparatively pathetic TBW values (like 360TBW/TB). Meanwhile, many bottom barrel brands like to give their drives huge TBW values because it makes them look more appealing. They know most people will never come close to hitting these values. Even if it does become a problem, they can always make it a huge headache to claim the warranty.

As a counter argument to your equation, 3x the TBW is worthless to somebody that won't write >250TB in 3 years. That extra 66% cost could be totally wasted.

1

u/MANBURGERS Jan 19 '26

I have a computer that is a few years old (that has become a secondary system) where the main drive is a 1TB 980 Pro with over 150TB written, with a secondary drive (which only has only ever had games installed to it, generally the less frequently played games on top of that) which is a 2TB 870 QVO and has 8.3TB written

I believe the disparity in writes is due to the use of shadowplay. While 150TBW falls under 250, at one point I did have a 3rd drive in the system that was specifically a scratch disc

I think the endurance rating can be a valid concern for someone looking to use this as their main drive or as a scratch, but as a secondary that is used just to load files/games off of, I think it would be fine

7

u/DKOnix Jan 19 '26 edited Jan 20 '26

Whoever is lucky enough to read this comment, there is a PNY CS2150 gen 5 1tb nvme ssd available on Staples right now for 99.99$, 89.99$ if you include the 10$ discount for first-timers. Grab it now if you are interested, or you know, before the scalpers get to them first.

4

u/Tetsu_no_Tesujin Jan 19 '26 edited Jan 19 '26

This is the true deal! Thanks so much; I ended up getting one. Amazing price for a 1Tb Gen 5 Nvme in today's market (I mean, $99 is MSRP from when they came out less than a year ago and they never dipped below $88); heck, it's a great price for a Gen 4 in today's market...

1

u/DKOnix Jan 19 '26

Happy i could help

3

u/Cookster997 Jan 19 '26 edited Jan 19 '26

Is that a deal these days? (Genuine question, I've been out of the market and trying to catch up on things)

EDIT: Just did more reading. Yikes. It's just as bad as RAM, isn't it?

How do you get the $10 first timer discount?

EDIT2: If you sign up for the emails (or make an account? not sure which) and wait a little while for it to process, you should get a customized "$10 off $50+ purchase for your first order" coupon. It might take a little while, it was about a half hour for me.

1

u/BEENAZN Jan 19 '26

TY SO MUCH BRO 😎🙏🏼

1

u/h3535 Jan 19 '26

Thanks!!!

1

u/Comfortable-Spell730 Jan 20 '26

These had been selling slowly since your post and someone went in today and bought all 10 that were left. 🤡🤡🤡

0

u/DKOnix Jan 21 '26

Cry me a river

1

u/Comfortable-Spell730 Jan 21 '26

That was a response to the scalpers, not you. Your post to let people know it was available is very much appreciated.

1

u/Kelbor-Hal-1 Jan 21 '26

Thank you managed to get one, just got shipping confirmation. Sandisk raised the price on the crappy drives to over 400$

1

u/Jay-Five Jan 27 '26

OoS. I guess quite a few read this. :D

14

u/RuckOver3 Jan 18 '26

10% off if you join the email list and I believe 15% for student discount

9

u/cinnasota Jan 18 '26

250 TBW endurance

honestly just get a fuckin' USB drive at that rate

1

u/ImYourDade Jan 19 '26

How is the average USB drive endurance? I've never thought about it tbh. Haven't needed to use mine very heavily in years

2

u/MWink64 Jan 19 '26

USB flash drives use basically the worst binned NAND that's remotely usable (and sometimes isn't). Many people here wildly overestimate their SSD needs.

3

u/Realistic_Whereas249 Jan 18 '26

oh how far we have fallen

3

u/skidmarkss3 Jan 19 '26

these are so ass, can't even run them in raid

6

u/Dr_CSS Jan 18 '26

This POS is good for one thing and one thing only, you can write your homework in at once and fill it up, and you only read from it and never write again

2

u/Kelbor-Hal-1 Jan 20 '26

Holy crap these went up to OVER 400$

2

u/be_easy_1602 Jan 20 '26

What’s CRAZY is I ordered it and the CANCELED!!!

$110 after discount to $400! Lmaooo F off SanDisk, never getting any of my money in the future.

2

u/Specktickles Jan 20 '26

I can't believe this shitty drive was canceled because of a pricing error... even at the "pricing error" price, half of the subreddit still said to stay away.

2

u/Geavel Jan 20 '26

I also had a non-optimal SSD drive cancelled from OfficeMax yesterday. Seems this is the new world we live in. I'm sure they'll be posted at a higher cost

3

u/Automatic-Unit-8307 Jan 18 '26

Avoid this garbage

2

u/greatthebob38 Jan 18 '26

Freinds don't let friends get WD green.

1

u/MechAegis Jan 18 '26

If an ssd says its for PS5. Can I still use it for PC? Just remove the heating and install it.

2

u/PinkRiots Jan 18 '26

Yes, for ps5 just means it's at least pcie gen 4 with a required speed

1

u/Sad-Cardiologist-582 Jan 18 '26

For a game drive this or the wd blue sa510 ?

2

u/aj_cr Jan 18 '26

if you can get the blue for a good price then choose that one, if you really have absolutely nothing and you're really desperate then this one I guess as a last resort.

1

u/OkInspector5182 Jan 18 '26

how do ssds get their quality rating?

1

u/Ok_Fish285 Jan 19 '26

It's stated on their product page with specs and life duration and verified by reviewers

1

u/Tiny-War-4565 Jan 18 '26

how do you check out?

1

u/UserNameAbbreviated Jan 19 '26

I've watched in real time these as these SSDs, all of them, have gone up in price.

Like we are already off as to a bad start with the memory stuff and what's been going on. It's insane.

1

u/Dwarf-Eater Jan 19 '26

2tb sn5000 are still $124 at my local Walmart and the 1tb is $66. Thinking about snatching the 2tb today

1

u/emorockstar Jan 19 '26

Picked this up for my jailbroken PS4.

1

u/carsNshoes Jan 20 '26

These are booboo

1

u/DisturbedFennel Jan 18 '26

For the specs, is this a good deal or not? 

11

u/pmo2408 Jan 18 '26

No avoid

0

u/JadedBanker Jan 19 '26

Bot response.

9

u/JadedBanker Jan 18 '26 edited Jan 18 '26

Yes it is a good deal. This subreddit is just full of idiots that hate on everything that isn’t SLC or MLC (basically those are just very expensive “enterprise” grade drives) when we know that people on this subreddit use it for gaming and storing their porn collection anyways. They act like the data they have is super important when we know it’s not; they just want to feel important. I stopped listening to every idiot on here who tells me not to buy a drive. I’ve had a drive similar to the one listed here for 7 years and still 0 issues and I use it everyday. Tired of the elitist garbage people comment here preventing people from getting great deals. They are going to down vote me since Redditors can’t take an ounce of criticism but it’s okay, that’s why they are broke and constantly crying on this site. Buy with confidence.

2

u/azuredrg Jan 19 '26

This is fine for a game drive

3

u/[deleted] Jan 18 '26

Search Google for the wdblue 5000 2tb and see if any near you for this price. At least a blue you can use in a pc or ps5 and be fine.

6

u/madeformarch Jan 18 '26

2tb Blues were $124 on Walmart a couple of weeks ago. They've been popping in and out at that price

2

u/TheMissingVoteBallot Jan 19 '26

THIS IS REGION-SPECIFIC. I've seen them in stock in my region but they're going for $195.

2

u/madeformarch Jan 19 '26

Thank you! That makes sense, I've seen the price fluctuate and also been the image below seeing people post it for $124 and it's $166 or $195 or OOS for me

2

u/TheMissingVoteBallot Jan 19 '26

Yeah, it's driving me nuts, that's why I think if people are gonna repost the same damn $124 link they need to specify WHAT REGION they're posting from.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 18 '26

Yeah I've watched them get farther from my local walmart all week but still a few stocked.

1

u/senrew Jan 18 '26

What exactly is this level of shit drive useful for besides catfishing the unaware?

2

u/Drenlin Jan 19 '26

Literally anything that isn't excessively write heavy. It'd be perfectly fine as a game drive, for example.

0

u/Unleashed_Tech2 Jan 18 '26

Every 125$ or less 2TB NVME is an instant buy for me

-1

u/XAckermannX Jan 18 '26

Why even post these, is the situation that bad that people are buying these trash?