Choosing a new SSD

[Vindekarr]

So, the time has finally come for me to replace my hard drives and I intend to change over to SSDs after numerous positive experiences with SSD armed work hardware, the only question is, which SSD to buy. The budget is around 159 per SSD or 308(US dollars) and the goal is to create the fastest boot and load times possible, while still have at least 400 GB worth of drive space, does this seem reasonable, if not, I could do with any advice you see as useful.

[FMod]

No, it's not. There are no SSD in this capacity range in this price range.

There's a stickied SSD thread above, the question is really simple. Get what's cheaper per GB out of decent SSD. All SSD perform ~the same in a practical PC.

 

Right now the three best options on newegg are:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820171741

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820249025

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233398

In terms of ascending price and performance. The difference in system performance is marginal, in bragging points significant.

[hoofhearted4]

i recommend Crucial M4. its the one I use (128gb) and I plan on upgrading to a 256gb and thats the one ill be buying. Its fast, and i havent had any issues with it what so ever. Ive messed around with duel booting with it, its been wiped several times while i was messing with it, its been in a laptop and a pc, partitioned. and never had a problem. Crucial is what ill be sticking with personally :smile:

 

that said, Corsair Neutron would probably be my second choice.

Edited April 17, 2013 by hoofhearted4

[Erik005]

The Samsung 830 is also an ssd to consider it is almost exactly the same as the m4, but I found that updating the firmware is a little easier. (I get nervous with the dos upgrade procedure)

 

You should buy the cheaper one if you have to choose between the crucial and Samsung.

[Vecna6667]

Samsung now has the 840 series out and it seems to be better than the 830 to most benchmarks.

 

Also, it may do you well with learning how to use the mklink command or use steam mover to make symbolic links. I keep my older games and games made by Valve(which frequently update) on an HDD while newer games are on the SSD. For my steam games that are moved to the HDD, I go into the command line(as administrator) and navigate to the steam\steamapps\common folder and then run mklink /d "exact name of game folder" "new location of said game folder(on my computer that would be e:\game\steam\<folder name>.)" As a little side note with the mklink command, the quotation marks are necessary. Steam Mover will actually move the folders you want to move and make the links as well.

[Erik005]

I think this would be a little over budget, but is is 500gb, There have been concerns about the durability though.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147190

 

The pro version is a lot better but also more expensive.

Edited April 17, 2013 by Erik005

[blove]

I have a Corsair Neutron GTX 240GB as my boot/main drive. With OS, apps, and games (modded FO3, FNV, TES5, along with a couple of other RTSs) I am sitting at 129GB free. Install to the SSD for speed but move data folders to HDDs.

[Thor.]

If you want a ssd you should get one a little bigger if that's going to be you're c drive, you know how fast a 256gb ssd can fill up, the more is used the slower it gets, the recommended data should be half full. or less if you want that full speed of a ssd.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148535

[hoofhearted4]

honestly, unless you wanna put Steam on the SSD, 256gb should be plenty. i have a 128 with about 20GB free. granted ive kept some stuff off there. but even with more stuff, i couldnt fill up a 256gb. keeping uncessessary files off the SSD keeps is clear. Pics, Downloads, Music, etc. and actually looking at where you install things. instead of just C:\Programs\... make home directories for everything like D:\FONV, D:\Fraps. D being a storage drive or something. this is what i do. (Actually i have C and D on my SSD, C being OS, D being SSD Stuff, and F: being Storage Drive (And E being DVD lol))

[kalikka]

Only programs that actually take any space are games. And there is no point to have +60gb of games installed. And if you have 100mb connection like me, its even more obvious (just redownload the damn game...).

Speed drops when you fill the SSD?
Ill post my crystaldiskmark from my HyperX 120gb after I get home, the speed drop isnt anything to whine about...
And I have 2 of the HyperX (2 PCs).

EDIT: Kingston HyperX 120gb Crystaldiskmark scores (VS 67% full HyperX 120gb):

 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.2 x64 © 2007-2013 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : Crystal Dew World
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [sATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 487.785 MB/s
Sequential Write : 491.751 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 436.325 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 474.880 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 28.064 MB/s [ 6851.5 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 82.548 MB/s [ 20153.3 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 133.132 MB/s [ 32502.8 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 254.470 MB/s [ 62126.5 IOPS]

Test : 1000 MB [C: 79.1% (88.3/111.7 GB)] (x5) <0Fill>
Date : 2013/04/12 21:56:04
OS : Windows 7 Ultimate Edition SP1 [6.1 Build 7601] (x64)

1Tb Western Digital Caviar Blue (HDD) scores:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.2 x64 © 2007-2013 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [sATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 124.578 MB/s
Sequential Write : 122.469 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 34.133 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 61.959 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 0.390 MB/s [ 95.2 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 0.941 MB/s [ 229.6 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 0.619 MB/s [ 151.0 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 0.596 MB/s [ 145.4 IOPS]

Test : 1000 MB [E: 21.2% (197.7/931.5 GB)] (x5) <0Fill>
Date : 2013/04/19 21:24:25
OS : Windows 7 Ultimate Edition SP1 [6.1 Build 7601] (x64)

Edited April 19, 2013 by kalikka