Is it true that SSDs degrade with limited writes?

Question

I've heard it said that SSDs have a finite number of writes before they reach an end of life. Should this impact how much memory I am allowed to get to prevent myself from using the swap file?

Answer 1

Although it is a fact that SSDs have a set number of write cycles, for casual and even professional consumers the maximum amount of writes is more than adequate and the wearing of the drive due to this circumstance is uncommon. It is more relevant in certain situations such as a data center. Thus, it is something that shouldn't be given too much emphasis with regards to how much memory one has to have on the laptop.

Comments

On the SSD memory swapping point for those curious on the impact, I currently have a Windows 11 laptop with 8GB RAM that I bought just under 2 years ago. Due to the insufficiency of the RAM for my needs I have a 12GB page file to remove hiccups and system halts I'd get otherwise. The swapping does make an appreciable blow on drive health but not necessarily a concerning one in my opinion unless you want to keep your hardware for beyond 10 years.

I'm currently at 82% lifespan left, 26 TBW / 150 TBW for 23 months of use, and this laptop is mostly office centric for the most part in terms of workload, does homework, multiple chrome tabs, some gaming here and there, 1080p content edits on rare occasions, nothing special.

Comparing that to my desktop that has sufficient 16GB of RAM and no page file at all, I have 95% lifespan for over 4 years of usage on that one. Hope that helps with any purchasing decisions