Having a hell of time deciding on a ~120 GB SSD

[jktstance]

My 1TB WD Caviar died and I'm looking to get a combo of an SSD for Windows and games and a normal HDD for data storage. HDDs are cheap and I'm not too concerned about finding one, but there are a ton of SSDs out there and it seems that all review sites favorite different ones.

I'm using an Asus P6T motherboard, which uses SATA 2 I believe (3 gb/s).

I'm looking at the ~120 GB range.

OCZ Vertex 2 32 nm

Intel 320 series

OWC Mercury Extreme (not on Newegg for some reason)

Corsair F120

Any other suggestions?

 

[tecmo34]

I would go with the Vertex 2 32 nm version over the others. Next, I would go with the Intel 320...

 

[JohnnyLucky]

What do you do with your pc? gaming? productivity? professional work?

What is your budget for a ssd?

 

[jktstance]

What do you do with your pc? gaming? productivity? professional work?

What is your budget for a ssd?

Mostly games. I'm looking in the 120 GB range. Newegg has the OCZ Vertex 2 3.5" drive for $180 after rebate, which is pretty good. The 2.5" model has the 34nm and 25nm type, but the 34nm version costs $30 more, whereas the 3.5" model is the 34nm technology (as far as I can tell).

I would like to keep it under $250 and very high speeds are not a requirement as I only have a SATA 2 board.

 

[tecmo34]

The Vertex 2 is still my recommendation, though outside of system speed & load times, it will provide little benefit is gaming. You won't see FPS increase but you will see inceased speeds in loading of the game & maps.

 

[genjaguar]

I have pretty much the question...however I have an ASRock Extreme 4 which has both Sata II and Sata III ports. Which would you recommend getting for this motherboard. I also want a 120GB one but would like it to be in the $200 range. Is a Sata III drive wroth getting or is it better to get an older SSD. I'm not sure if new ones are coming out that will drp the prices some or what would be the best buy right now.

Does Sata III have a big advantage over Sata II for the higher cost?

 

[cyberaptor]

I also have the same question as I am looking at buying an entirely new system on Friday. So far for SATA II the OCZ Vertex 2 (285 MB/s read, 275 MB/s Write, 250 MB/s sustained write) has the best ratings from all major sites and consumer reviews for both performance and reliability.

For SATA III the Vertex 3 also seems the way to go as it has the new Sandforce controller (2200), just double check what controller your mobo has as there are some compatibility issues trying to reach the advertised speeds with some of the Marvel controllers.

The difference between them is speed (SATA III read/ writes at nearly double the speed of SATA II, 550 MB/s Read, 500 MB/s Write) and price ($179.99 w/ rebate for the 120GB Vertex 2 and $299.99 for the 120GB Vertex 3).

Tom's Hardware features the Adata SSD's in many of it's builds (speeds are on par w/ OCZ with slightly lower costs), but according to many consumer reviews, reliability tends to be an issue. Adata has also just released their new SATA III SSD featuring the new Sandforce 2200 controller, but I cannot find sites that are selling it yet and no idea on price.

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/adata_announces_new_sandforce-driven_ssd_line

That said, you can get 2 60GB SATA II SSD's in RAID 0 and get superior performance compared to a single SATA III drive and save yourself $100. However, when it comes time to upgrade, you have to purchase 2 new drives instead of one.

And in writing this out, I think I just answered my own question of what to get: I am going to go with the 120GB SATA II OCZ Vertex 2. Bang for the buck, $1.49/ GB with the rebate. The Vertex 3 would be $2.49/ GB.

Vertex 2
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227590

Vertex 3
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227706

 

[jktstance]

If you go for the Vertex 2, make sure you get the 34nm version.

 

[cyberaptor]

Newegg doesn't say which is which, this is the link to the one I was considering:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227551

So how can we tell if it is 34nm or not?

 

[jktstance]

Newegg doesn't say which is which, this is the link to the one I was considering:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227551

So how can we tell if it is 34nm or not?

That's 25nm. 2VTXE is 25nm, 2VTX should be 34 nm. At that deal, for $160, I would probably buy it though.

I ordered my 3.5" 2VTX yesterday and it was the same price as that one ($180).

 

[genjaguar]

What is the difference between the 25nm and the 34nm? And would it still be a good time to buy a Vertex 2 now...or is it better to wait a bit for newer ones to come out for price drops or get one of the newer SATA III drives(I know I saw someone recommend the c300 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148348&cm_re=c300-_-20-148-348-_-Product since sometimes it drops in price below $200). Not sure if the prices would drop more since a new batch just came out.

 

[cadder]

this is the link to the one I was considering:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227551

Look at the user feedback- would you feel good about a product where 1/3 of the buyers rated it only one or two eggs?

I've also been looking at buying a couple of 120GB SSD's, but these would be used in laptops. I've narrowed it down to Crucial C300 and Intel 320 due to their much better user feedback.

 

[jktstance]

Look at the user feedback- would you feel good about a product where 1/3 of the buyers rated it only one or two eggs?

I've also been looking at buying a couple of 120GB SSD's, but these would be used in laptops. I've narrowed it down to Crucial C300 and Intel 320 due to their much better user feedback.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of 1-2 egg reviews are people complaining about DOA products. If that happens, Newegg will replace the drive, so I don't think those reviews are a fair indicator of a product's performance (though DOA deliveries sure are annoying!).

 

[JohnnyLucky]

jkstance - What do the unusually high DOA's signify? Production problems?

 

[geofelt]

There is much hype with SSD benchmarks. Fast sequential reads and high IOPS seem to be the performance metrics.
Unfortunately, that is not what we normally do. The OS does mainly small random reads and writes. It does so at relatively low queue
lengths.
The actual drive response times are what matters, and those response times do not differ much among all SSD's.
The SSD gives you much better response times compared to even the fastest hard drives.

Newer drives tout the benefits of 6gb sata, and they do show up well in synthetic benchmarks.
But how many apps do you run that do sequential processing?. If it is enough to make a difference, you probably
can't afford the price for the capacity you need.


As to which brand, I think the safe choice today is Intel. They have had much lower return rates in the past:
http://www.behardware.com/articles/810-6/components-returns-rates.html

My take is, get the capacity you need and don't look back. A SSD makes everything feel so much quicker.
Look at the Intel 320 series today.
In a year, expect the prices per gb to be much lower.

 

[cadder]

Unfortunately, the vast majority of 1-2 egg reviews are people complaining about DOA products. If that happens, Newegg will replace the drive, so I don't think those reviews are a fair indicator of a product's performance (though DOA deliveries sure are annoying!).

A lot of them are DOA, and I do not want to receive a DOA product either. I'll choose a product that seems to have fewer instances of DOA.

A lot of the 1 and 2 egg reviews also seem to be for drives that fail in the first week or first month. I don't want to buy one of those either. Building a computer and using it for a month and then have a drive fail would be disastrous in our business. We maintain backups so we wouldn't lose data but to take another day to repair a machine, reload software and reconfigure software represents a big loss in income because we have to pay the employee for this whether they are producing work or not.

As for the "newegg replace" part, I bought some RAM and they would not replace it, they referred me to the RAM manufacturer. The RAM manufacturer would not replace it either, instead requiring me to update my motherboard bios, keep sending them information about the system, etc. We needed this machine to run in our office so we had to buy other ram and get it going right away.

Whatever I buy from newegg, I try to select the products with the highest user reviews.

 

[ahthurungnone]

Vertex2. Period. Read the reviews. There's no comparison unless you're going to utilize SataIII.