Bump - same question here

late to the party but honestly, after building rigs for like fifteen years, ive learned that chasing the perfect drive through forum threads can be a massive rabbit hole. i remember when we were all losing our minds over the first gen nvme stuff and now i just look for stability over raw speed since most of the top tier drives feel the same in daily use anyway. honestly, just head over to youtube and search for ultra 7 265k ssd scaling or benchmarks. i saw a really great video about a week ago, might have been from one of the big tech reviewers, where they tested a ton of drives specifically on this platform. it breaks down the whole price-to-performance thing way better than i can here. basically just check the top few results there and youll find exactly what fits that budget without overthinking it.

This ^

No way, I literally just dealt with this yesterday. Small world.

I've had good luck with Samsung 970 EVO Plus. Snappy performance for ~$120. Worth a look!

Hey! For that 265K, check the Phison E18-based drives; they're often cheaper than Samsung. I've had issues with sustained writes on some 'budget' drives, so ensure it has a decent DRAM cache. Unfortunately, some controllers overheat. Maybe consider a heatsink? Are you planning heavy sustained writes?

Before dropping $150, consider a used, but reliable, 1TB drive from eBay. I snagged a Samsung 970 EVO for $60 last year; works great!

Consider the Samsung 970 EVO Plus. Over the years, I've seen fewer thermal runaway issues with its design. Protect your data; safety first!