Best SSDs For The Money: August 2012 (Archive)

[adamovera]

Are you still holding off on an SSD upgrade? You may not need to. Vendors are cutting their prices yet again. If you're on a budget, drives under $200 sure are tempting. This may be a temporary phenomenon, though; retailers are in "back to school" mode.

Best SSDs For The Money: August 2012 : Read more

 

[adamovera]

Archived comments are found here: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-2463736/ssds-money-august-2012.html

 

[blackmagnum]

Sandisk Extreme is the Performance King! Where's Samsung?

 

[CRamseyer]

A close second. The Extreme PRO delivers better latency under heavy workloads.

 

[Nuckles_56]

Looks like samsung really lost out this month as they don't have a single SSD there at all

 

[CRamseyer]

We're starting to see some waves on 850 Pro pricing. We'll have to see where all of the drives are next month.

 

[SessouXFX]

I have the 240GB Extreme Pro. It's money in the bank.....

 

[mapesdhs]

I obtained a 240GB Arc 100 recently, was surprised how well it performed. Full archive of test images here for
AS-SSD, CDM, HDTachRW and Atto (many more models to test when I can find the time).

Ian.

 

[unityole]

i got 2 sammy 850 pro in raid 0 and sandisk extreme pro in raid 0 in same machine with same clock rate/ram, the later definitely a tad faster and more snappy when multi tasking. tad faster as in less than 1-2 seconds lol.

 

[Redline Tat Ann Loa]

Sandisk Extreme PRO only for performance? Are you kidding?

 

[The_Trutherizer]

Its nice to see that SSD's prices have basically halved since I bought mine. And since performance is a subjective thing people should bear in mind that even relatively low performance SSDs still perform well enough to blow your hair back. But of course also that a system drive does not need much more than 256GB at present. Only enterprises really need massive storage with massive speed all in one.

 

[PraxGTI]

I think it is crazy that Toms rarely looks at Intel Solid State drives. We have done many SSD deployments and frankly nothing has been as reliable long-term as Intel. They are at a slightly higher price point, but it is due to a clear gap in quality between the average "consumer" drive and an Intel drive.

 

[TNT27]

would the 250gb 850 evo be better? if i get it ~ 100$ (96$ where i live right now)

 

[CRamseyer]

There is a lot to cover over the next few weeks.

I do test Intel SSDs and you will find Intel products in the reviews as comparison products. When Intel releases a new drive we will have it day 1. Intel does have a very low return rate that dates back quite a while. Other companies have also released return data that shows low return rates but none that data back as far as Intel's release.

There is a comment that says users don't need more than 256GB at present. Not all users are the same. Three of us in the house just downloaded the new Battlefield last night. The game downloads 31GB of data and then installs the game. Tack on a few other modern games and it's easy to chew through a terabyte drive.

In the same vein, not everyone uses their computer the same way. In our new SSD reviews we show different workloads so we can point out what drives work best at light and heavy workloads. Some of our advanced testing will show things not always on the surface and not always spoken about in FOB reviews that most are used to reading. Every test we publish has some degree of preconditioning involved. Seemingly routine tests like measuring sequential read and write speeds will show performance closer to what you will come across in your computer.

 

[Chris Droste]

the Crucial MX100 is ridiculously good for the money when it comes to SSDs. I was paranoid about the life of the chips since it's only crucial doing 16mm while most others are mixing and matching 19, 20, even 25mm Flash which early on seemed a lot more robust. Something about the Crucial stuff thankfully is they don't seem to suffer the same P/E penalties the other manufactures do. I got my 512GB for $209 out the door at the local Micro Center last year and other than an occasionally lose SATA cable i couldn't be happier.

 

[zodiacfml]

Nice...now that they're affordable and reasonably priced, I have set my eyes on the m.2 drives. I'm also on wait and see on NVMe.

 

[josejones]

"March is an important month for client storage. The products introduced at CES in January are hitting our lab, and the CeBIT announcements should start rolling out soon. From here, we look forward to Computex in June, when PCIe-based products will flood the premium performance market with NVMe in tow."

Are you saying we have to wait until June before SSD's with NVMe for consumers will be available? If so, then, what's this countdown clock from Intel all about then as it ends at the end of March claiming "The next revolution in solid state drives is coming in ... 14 days

http://www.intelgamingpromo.com/intel15b/ssd/notice?s=myce

 

[josejones]

M.2 and SSD's 20 to 40 Gbps with NVMe
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1843654

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/280390-32-sata-satae/page-2

 

[ilter]

I excited about samsung pls analys that.

 

[unityole]

850 pro still very decent though

 

[unityole]

samsung is terrible, well they like to use high performing number to mask whatever other little issues/problem they have.

 

[mapesdhs]

samsung is terrible, well they like to use high performing number to mask whatever other little issues/problem they have.

Wow, and I used to complain about people posting FUD on OCZ...

Dude, you couldn't be more wrong. Samsung make excellent SSDs, as oodles of owners here
will I'm sure happily attest.

That they make occasional mistakes should come as no surprise, all vendors do, including Intel.
But calling them terrible is just dumb.

Ian.

 

[c0rr0sive]

I guess Tom's doesn't read the Crucial forums about the MX100 series... Nothing but serious issues, and can't even get the firmware update that's supposed to fix issues to flash to the SSD. Probably one of the worst drives I have ever had the chance of playing with.

 

[mapesdhs]

I guess Tom's doesn't read the Crucial forums about the MX100 series... Nothing but serious issues, ...

I've never liked the way Crucial handles fw updates or s.e., but I didn't know they were having issues with the MX100.

Ian.

 

[shrapnel_indie]

One thing I'd like to see attached to any SSD review is the usable space. I'm admittedly new in the SSD market, but find it rare to find any data on that. (We know the HDD market uses base 10 (i.e. 1kB = 1000 bytes) for its rated size so we know there is a loss compared to the OS using base 2 (i.e. 1kB = 1024 bytes) and it comes as no surprise.) I seen info someplace (I forget where) on the Crucial MX100 256GB SSD that stated that what the user/consumer would see was 240GB as 16GB was reserved by the drive itself. This leaves the questions: What other drives exhibit this difference? Does the OCZ Arc 100 240GB (for example) actually offer the user 240GB of usable space, or is it less? How much space is lost on the Crucial MX100 512GB model? This info should be pretty easy to obtain (especially in testing.) But for the vast majority of cases, that data is never shared.