Understanding relative SSD performance

Digital Tigers has shipped systems with SSDs standard since 2009, and during these past 14 years we have offered only the industry's top-performing and most reliable SSDs. We offer multiple SSD models at different capacities to give customers a choice between top performance and top affordability, along with trusted models for proven reliability (i.e. Samsung).

Real-world SSD performance cannot be summarized accurately using manufacturer specs such as sequential transfer rate (MB/s) or I/O operations per second (IOPS). While those specs are broadly useful to identify ballpark expected performance, the relative performance of SSDs in similar performance categories can be determined only by running specialized performance tests. These tests simulate real-world performance through a blend of operations and a lot of random concurrent I/O operations reading or writing data blocks as small as 4 KB, which is a small fraction of a digital image or 4000 characters of text.

PC Mark 10 is popular computer performance benchmarking tool with component tests for various computer subsystems. It's favored by Tom's Hardware, one of the industry's top review websites for hardware. Using their public test results for PC Mark 10 - Full System Drive Benchmark, we have compiled the following table comparing relative performance of the very fast SSDs that we offer. Since drive capacity can be a performance factor (larger = faster), the scores below are for the 2TB versions of each SSD model, to avoid drive capacity affecting results..

The winner by a wide margin is the new Samsung 990 PRO series.

Projecting SSD reliability

SSDs are vastly more reliable than hard drives, in addition to being dramatically faster.

Samsung has dominated the SSD marketplace for more than 10 years and currently holds more than a 40% market share for enterprise SSDs. Samsung's market share is well earned, as Samsung SSDs have achieved an unmatched reliability record for the past 10+ years, during which its competitors delivered less consistent reliability.

We offer and recommend Samsung SSDs for the highest expected reliability, based on our shipping Samsung SSDs for 10+ years and observing Samsung's reliability record across the industry.

We also offer Crucial and Western Digital (WD_Black) SSDs, because they deliver excellent value and have been reliable in our more limited experience. Crucial is a division of Micron, one of the world's largest memory manufacturers and a top U.S. semiconductor company. We've shipped Crucial SATA SSDs as a value choice for about a decade, with no failures. We are shipping the new Crucial P5 Plus and P3 Plus NVMe SSDs for the first time in 2023, so we have no direct reliability data yet for this series or for Crucial NVMe SSDs..

Western Digital is a longtime U.S. leader for hard drive manufacturing that has made successful efforts in recent years to be a strong player in SSDs. We've shipped their WD_Black SN770 SSDs for about a year with zero failures. We started shipping the very fast SN850X in 2023 and have zero direct reliability data.

Optimize Windows for Business Use, Privacy, Performance, Stability and Control (New!)

Digital Tigers now offers the option of a customized Windows experience, reflecting what we believe are the priorities of most business users. This optimization is far more important for Windows 10 than for prior Microsoft operating systems.

Optimize for Business Use: Remove Microsoft bloatware (games/consumer apps)

Windows 10 comes with dozens of consumer games and apps that do nothing for business users. We remove Candy Crush Saga, Xbox, Zune Music, Windows Phone, Bing News and much more, while providing a record of what's been uninstalled and how to reinstall any apps you want back. The removals streamline your desktop and Apps / Programs menus and promote a more professional desktop experience.

Privacy: Block Microsoft telemetry, disable Cortana, install ad-blockers, block Start menu ads

By default, Microsoft monitors your configuration and your activity on your computer and sends updates to its servers multiple times an hour, a practice known as telemetry, as part of its product feedback process. This monitoring includes your web browsing history using Microsoft browsers. We block most such monitoring. You can change this preference later if you prefer.

We also disable Cortana, the digital assistant component, reverting the search box to "Search Windows." This removes the conflation of desktop and web search inherent to Cortana, and stops the comprehensive tracking that Cortana conducts and sends to Microsoft (Cortana's Notebook). For Windows 10 Pro, disabling Cortana is handled via Group Policy. For Windows 10 Home, we add a Windows Registry key to disable it. You can reenable Cortana later if you prefer.

We install Chrome and Firefox web browsers, along with Adblock Plus and uBlock Origin ad blockers. The ad blockers improve your web browsing experience while speeding up page-load times and bolstering privacy and security. We set Chrome as the default browser, based on its popularity; you can change this preference.

We install VLC media player and make it the default media player, bypassing the tracking and ads inherent in Windows 10 Movies & TV. You can install any preferred media player and make it your default.

We also turn off Start menu ads ("suggestions," Windows Store apps you never downloaded, appearing as tiles in your Start menu) and targeted ads from third-party apps ("Let my apps use my advertising ID"). You can reverse these settings later if you prefer.

Performance: More system resources, faster browsing, fewer background processes

We change Windows Registry settings to allocate more system resources for graphical, user and desktop objects, doubling the number of application windows and financial trading indicators that can be displayed. These changes reduce the frequency of out-of-memory errors when there is available physical memory, and they reduce the probability that you will be prevented from opening new windows.

We install Chrome and Firefox web browsers, which have faster performance and also enable you to isolate demanding web applications in one browser while you use another browser for general use. Adblock Plus and uBlock Origin speed up web browsing by removing ads, which are often resource-intensive.

We disable the ability of most preinstalled apps to run in the background (Privacy > Background Apps setting), and we turn off non-essential items running at startup.

Blocking Microsoft telemetry and other tracking prevents occasional spikes in CPU, drive and network utilization, avoiding interference with your actual applications.

Stability and Control: Take control of Windows Update

We believe best practice for Windows Update calls for timely security updates and deferred feature updates. Timely security updates are important to protect the system from newly discovered vulnerabilities. Deferred feature updates are important because major new revisions to Windows 10 can cause system instability and application compatibility issues when first released.

Windows 10 Pro (highly recommended) enables us to set Windows feature updates to release on the slower Semi-Annual Channel, and then we use Group Policy to add an extra 180-day delay beyond this slower distribution channel. Without these configuration settings, Windows 10 Pro users would receive updates much closer to their first release. Unfortunately we can do none of these optimizations for Windows 10 Home, and so Windows 10 Home users get new feature updates immediately, with some risk of problems.

We also make changes to Windows to put you in control of when you install updates and when you restart your computer. With Windows 10, Microsoft has become very aggressive with updates, forcing computers to download updates and even forcing system reboots, disregarding alternative customer priorities. There is usually an opportunity to defer a number of hours, but after this modest concession, the system takes control and executes an update and reboot, which normally cannot be stopped. For Windows 10 Pro customers, we make changes to keep you in control of when updates are installed and when you reboot your computer. Certainly security updates are timely and important, but so is control of your time and your workspace, so we give that control back to you.

If you prefer to disable these controls or to get faster Windows feature updates, we can undo these preferences before or after purchase.

Start Menu Customization

Many people still prefer the Start menu from Windows 7 or even Windows XP over the tiled Start menu introduced with Windows 10. Desktop business users in particular may find the Windows 10 Start menu inefficient to navigate and visually noisy. From your first bootup, the standard Microsoft-imposed tiled interface acts as a set of billboards promoting games and entertainment, which seems out of place on a work computer running Windows 10 Pro. Going forward, Microsoft seeks to monetize your workspace by directing your attention to new tiles that appear on an ongoing basis, making the Windows desktop effectively an advertising vehicle.

Windows 10 is otherwise a great operating system, with many important improvements over Windows 7 and XP. However, you may miss the old Start menu and you may not appreciate Microsoft's monetizing your own workspace.

Now you can combine the superior performance of Windows 10 with a familiar and efficient Start menu that you prefer and control.

The standard Windows 10 tiled Start menu remains accessible if ever needed. Meanwhile, you can tailor your new and familiar Start menu to your unique preferences with highly configurable options and skins. You can also permanently revert to the standard Windows 10 Start menu at any time.