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The prime mediocre

The prime mediocre

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Nov 9, 2012
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Hey everyone, I'm looking to add a boot SSD to my system. I'm deciding between three different drives:

-a 120GB Samsung 850 EVO for 90USD
-a 256GB Crucial mx100 for 110USD
-a 250GB Samsung 850 EVO for 140USD

I'm using the drive for Windows 8.1 and all my programs, plus a few games (maybe 50GB at a time, max (I don't play many current games, so 10GB Dark Souls II install would be the largest)). I mostly want to know if the 120GB EVO will be enough. I plan on sticking with this SSD until prices come down and I can replace my mechanical terabyte drive, so I'd appreciate the performance and warranty.

My system: http://

Thank you for any input.
 
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Well, we don't test that where I'm at, but based on personal experience with a Z97 chipset at home, I'd say that unless you're moving data that causes the drives to max out their queue depths or your reads and writes are mostly sequential data, you won't see a significant performance gain from RAID 0.

The reason is that all SSDs hit peak performance when all of the available NAND channels are being used and that generally happens only when the queue gets fairly deep. Normally (or at least my normally) that doesn't...
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Performance-wise, you won't be able to tell the difference between any of the three. Yes, it's measurable, but in real-world use, you won't see it. Personally, I would go with one of the two larger drives because you can't make a 120GB driver bigger. Price to performance, I would recommend the Crucial drive, however take that with a grain of salt because I was part of the design team.

-DT
 
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Cool, okay. After seeing the 128GB mx100 for $61, I'm thinking of just getting a small drive. I'm not really expecting to fill up even the ~60GB left after windows, programs, and reserved free space (even knowing that the actual space will be near 110GB). Is that foolish? Is there a lot more data I'll inevitably need?

Thank you for the info!
 
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If I could answer that question, I'd be running the marketing department! :pt1cable:

My gut feeling is that if you're looking at 110GB of data that you know of, that gives you less than 10% margin for error. It's another 50 bucks for double the space, but if money is tight, then go with what you can afford.

-DT
 
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Well, we don't test that where I'm at, but based on personal experience with a Z97 chipset at home, I'd say that unless you're moving data that causes the drives to max out their queue depths or your reads and writes are mostly sequential data, you won't see a significant performance gain from RAID 0.

The reason is that all SSDs hit peak performance when all of the available NAND channels are being used and that generally happens only when the queue gets fairly deep. Normally (or at least my normally) that doesn't happen with a desktop computer. Your mileage may vary.

If it were me, I'd forgo the 2x 256GB drives, get a single 512GB drive and then not worry about what happens to my RAID 0 array when one drive eventually goes bad. Also, the 512GB drive is the sweet spot for write performance in the MX100 line.

-DT
 
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