Can any SSD's be trusted?

[Wayfall]

Hi

I would like to purchase an SSD as right now I am running off a near 2 year old WDC blue 1TB HDD and the slow loading of programs is getting irritating now.

I'm buying a copy of Windows 7 of Amazon for the reinstall but looking at SSD's I'm seeing a lot of reviews concerning bad drivers making the performance worse on some SSD's... if WD made an SSD I would probably buy theirs outright as their HDD's are great.

Could I get some recommendations on working out of the box SSD's that don't need firmware/updates and stuff, I'd just like a working SSD I can throw windows on and then I can format my old one and throw my big programs on it.

Then I can get back to using the computer like normal.

Cheers

 

[Aspiring techie]

Some companies that make good SSDs are Samsung, Intel, Crucial, and Kingston. I personally have worked with the first two, so I know that they work very fast immediately. I haven't worked with the last two, but enough tech websites and reviews give these companies a thumbs up to satisfy me.

 

[Wayfall]

Also I have looked at Tomshardware's top picks for SSD's

Why are there so many different Samsung evo's on Amazon?

I have found these, one being of the Toms list, what is the difference?:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-MZ-75E250B-250GB-6Gbps-V-NAND/dp/B00OAJ412U%3FSubscriptionId%3DAKIAI3INFIGIMW2PG6XA%26tag%3Dshopping_rev-uk-21%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3DB00OAJ412U&ascsubtag=[site%7Cthauk[cat%7C[art%7C[pid%7CB00OAJ412U[tid%7C14504408924516759[bbc%7CLEPRIX

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-2-5-Inch-Solid-State-Drive/dp/B00P736UEU/ref=sr_1_1?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1450441287&sr=1-1&keywords=evo

 

[rhysiam]

In the early days of SSDs there were significant issues with performance degradation over time. Then going on a few years OCZ has some huge QC issues which basically put the company out of business. Things have gotten much better thankfully. We've still had a few issues in recent years such as the 840 Evo scandal... which was related to it being an early TLC device, but generally speaking, you'd be extremely unlucky to get a dud drive from any major brand these days.

Certainly in the US, the pricing of the Samsung 850 EVO is almost impossible to pass up. There are slightly cheaper drives that are much slower, and there are faster drives that are much more expensive, but in terms of a reputable, fast and cost effective drive, it's really very difficult to recommend anything else right now.

 

[RARRAF]

yeah the Samsung ones I have had have been very good but if you know anything about PC's then you need to keep the drivers fairly new

 

[RARRAF]

the answer too your question is the price is different no difference in model go with the cheapest over time price goes down on ssd's quite quickly

 

[Aspiring techie]

It appears that they are the same SSD from different sellers, but I could be wrong. Personally, I would play it safe and buy the SSD that has the most info about it (the one in the first link). I just built a computer with the 500 GB version last week. It boots up to Windows in less that 10 seconds, so you should be pleased with it.

 

[mamasan2000]

It's not like SSDs need updated firmware every week. It's maybe, MAYBE once in its lifetime. So pressing "Update"-button once isn't that hard.

Samsung is the fastest and best SSD overall.
Intel is close but pricier.
THe rest? Well, read reviews, check what the diskspeeds really are. Manufacturers like to put "up to..." a lot and those speeds are practically never achieved. Expect "up to" 4 times less diskspeed, especially on writes. Kingston HyperX Fury is one example. Cheap but also one of the worst.

Here's a decent chart
http://www.play3r.net/reviews/storage-reviews/kingston-hyperx-fury-120gb-ssd-review/5/

Also remember, the bigger the drive, the faster it usually is. More channels for data I think.
Not by a lot but it's there. That's why you can see 480 gig drives perform better than 120 or 240, even tho it's the same brand, firmware, controller etc.

 

[Wayfall]

So what SSD should I go for that's around £50-70 that I can shove windows 7 on and maybe the odd game.

Also quick query do SSD's help with the loading of game assets while playing a game or do SSD's only shorten the loading screen time?

 

[rhysiam]

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/samsung-internal-hard-drive-mz75e250bam
57 quid for a 250GB Samsung 850 EVO... very hard to make a case for any other drive at the moment.

RE your other question, most games won't benefit from an SSD outside of loading screens. Some games are actually loading assets in the background. I'm running off a slow HDD and noticed a few points in the Witcher 3, for example, where my game would pause with a loading screen and I'm pretty sure that's because it couldn't load the assets off the HDD quick enough. For sure that would not happen if I was running it off an SSD. But those kind of cases aren't common in my experience.

 

[jsmithepa]

Can any SSD's be trusted?

If u browse this site at all, the consensus is 99% GO. As long as u don't mind re-install OS+Apps.

 

[Neur0nauT]

SSDs are good for running your OS off. If it dies or you need to reformat, then its quite easy to replace/reinstall OS.

In my system, I use a small SSD as the OS boot drive plus maybe one game that I want the best performance from, then I have a secondary 1TB Hybrid drive to run programs/games from. I use my older standard HDDs for storing stuff on, and a few other SSDs for whatever else.

Windows 8.1 boots in about 15-20 seconds off my SSD, and gaming on the Hybrid drive is far better than a mechanical HDD. So consider getting a hybrid as a happy medium.