Hi TS,
I have recently built my first PC (modest with value in mind) earlier this year with lots of help from Logan's videos and this forum. I have some spare change around and am looking to upgrade just a little. With some research, I find with my current setup an SSD makes most sense and did a little digging on that. However I am still a newbie and do not follow the recent developments about controllers and quality flash on various drives. Some recommendations that were good 6 months ago are not very good today.
In summary I am looking for a value or budget SSD just enough for Windows/Linux OS that would suit my current build. I am looking to spend around $75. Is this possible?
Here are my specs that may be relevant:
Operating System
Windows 8.1 Pro 64-bit
CPU
AMD FX-6300 14 °C
Vishera 32nm Technology
RAM
8.00GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 798MHz (9-9-9-24)
Motherboard
ASRock 970 Extreme4 (CPUSocket) 33 °C
Graphics
ASUS VN247 (1920x1080@60Hz)
2048MB ATI AMD Radeon HD 7700 Series (XFX Pine Group) 33 °C
Storage
931GB Western Digital WDC WD10EZEX-00KUWA0 ATA Device (SATA) 32 °C
Optical Drives
HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GH24NSB0 ATA Device
Audio
Realtek High Definition Audio
You can get a Crucial MX100 128GB for ~$70. It has pretty decent performance.
Is performance based on read and write speeds or other factors as well?
Not entirely sure.
Now that I think about it, to be honest that probably isn't a very good SSD for you. It's cheap in terms of price/GB, but overall it's relatively slow. The 256GB is the one that's pretty fast. I'd look at possibly a 64GB SSD if you wanted pretty good speed.
These are some I found that seem to fit my needs, any recommendations or support for them?
Kingston SSDNow V300 Series
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820721107
ADATA XPG SX900
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820211596
PNY XLR8
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820178455
I don't know how to navigate through nand controllers. I don't know which are good and which to avoid. Any help in this area is much appreciated!
Kingston avoid the other two seem okay. It is really how your going to use them thats important, Another factor is how long the ssd is going to last. Do you need really fast write speeds. Like for my gaming machine i use a fast read, slow writes with a 3 million hour lifespan. Another question would be how much stuff you plan on sticking on it. Prices are getting low enough that the 256gigs are attractive.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820171740&leaderboard=1 128gig http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820171741 256 gig
adata is wayyyyyy better than kingstons crap
In terms of build quality? Reliability? Controller?
The Adata SX900 is a good drive. Stay away from Kingston's value line- they have changed the flash from synchronous flash to asynchronous flash. This results in inconsistentand lower performance. However, their new Fury line and higher end HyperX 3K are still pretty good.
Thanks for the advice. I'm leaning towards the SX900 also. Hopefully someone who has one can relay their experience with it.
Yeah I'm looking for an ssd as well for just the basic windows OS and a couple games. I think OP needs the same stuff as me. The cheapest it can possibly be,120GB is fine but I can't justify $70 - $80 (ppl keep recoming samsung EVO and hyperx 3k but for capacity its expensive) bucks for it, write speeds have to be slightly better than an avg 7200rpm HDD but those reads are where this thing has to blow a HDD out of the water and finally it has to last a long time if I'm putting that much money into such little storage .... I always hear people talk about theoretical stuff ("Oh you can write 20gb a day for ten years before this will die") but no one ever says anything about ssds massivly losing their performance in a few months or people that end up with dead ssds in a few month because they forgot to move their pagefile over to their HDD etc. Any help and INFORMATION on these drives is appreciated.
As soon as I posted this I was watching Logans mechanical keyboard buying guide and if he were to do one on SSDs just like it that would be amazing.
That would be a really nice guide for people like me and others to point at for reference.
Not the V300 , the others are good.
I've got a Samsung EVO PRO as my boot drive, 120GB. It's not given me any issues thus far, the speed is pretty good, SATA III is pretty much the only limiting factor for it it seems. Been using it for nearly 6 months now. Its a little expensive, think I picked mine up for $120.
I read somewhere that the EVO PRO series comes with a 10yr warranty. Is this true?
Anyone else have any better (cheaper) suggestions ... BTW how are the pny XLR8 drives (not in comparison to something like the 840 Pro just in terms of read speeds and how long over its lifespan it can maintain those read speeds) as of seen them for quite cheap on various sales (480gb I think was sub $150 somewhere not too long ago).
I always recommend the Crucial m500 and m550.
I do not know much about the pkg xlr8 drives. I have heard neither good nor bad.
The 840 pro is in a totally different league. It one of the best consumer grade ssds around. The flash is larger than most in nm size and is a very reliable mlc flash. Good read and write performance and endurance. The 850 pro is also looking exceptional at the moment.