Question – SSD p(SLC)mode?

“p(SLC)” is a confusing term since SLC already says what needs to be said and PLC for all intents and purposes is the opposite of SLC.

The question becomes “why are there no (or a lack of, I’ve never actively sought SLC SSDs) SLC SSDs?” I think the answer is very simple. MLC/TLC/QLC/PLC brought prices down for high capacity SSDs. Who needs say a 250GB cutting edge performance SSD? What does M.2 peak out at these days, something like 15GB/sec? Wow, I filled a 250GB SSD in 16 seconds! If you’re going to have that kind of throughput in a product, it’s got to end up getting stored somewhere, and that item has got to be affordable. Most high-end mainstream SSDs I’m aware of are TLC tech, so let’s do a simple calculation. If a 1TB TLC M.2 drive costs £100 then logically (ignoring physical and supply constraints) a SLC equivalent drive is going to cost three times more. When a single ‘current’ computer game weighs in at over 250GB in terms of storage needs, if one wants more than a few games installed then one needs at least 1TB SSD storage. How does that affect the cost of ownership for the average PC gamer? I (for personal reasons) have never spent £300 on a storage drive. £150? Sure (my first SSD: Samsung 840 PRO 256GB).

I personally haven’t noticed any real-world difference from changing from a decent SATA SSD to a decent NVMe drive. Why do I need to be able to do multi-gigs per second transfer speeds until the cows come home? At my business’s end of the market, I go for decent quality SSDs for two reasons: 1) I’ve seen what happens in terms of real-world performance with DRAM-less SSDs, 2) I’m hoping that buying from higher in the range than the trash results in better quality and reliability.

I’m going to ignore your capacitor question as I know next to nothing about SSD manufacturing techniques.