Samsung 830 256gb, OCZ MaxIOPS 240, Patriot Wildfire 240 or Corsair GT

[ChrisDC650]

I plan on purchasing an SSD next Wednesday for my rig. I would love some opinions on which SSD I should purchase. The choices are the Samsung 830 256GB SSD, Crucial M4 240gb, OCZ Max IOPS 240GB, Patriot Wildfire 240GB or the Corsair Force GT 240GB. I would love the fastest drive possible for under $500 and of course something that is compatible and fully stable with my rig.

My rig specs:
Core i7 2700k
ASRock Z68 PROFESSIONAL GEN3 motherboard (Comes with two Intel SATA ports)
8GB of RAM
1TB Samsung F3 HDD
AMD Radeon 7970
Corsair AX1200

 

[JohnnyLucky]

If reliability and stability is a major concern, then I recommend Samsung. Samsung was awarded contracts to supply Dell, Sony, Lenovo, Apple and other off the shelf brands with OEM versions of their 470 Series SATA 2 3Gb/s ssd's. Eventually the 470's were released for retail sale to consumers. There have been no major issues reported. The 470 has an absolutely stellar record.

Then Samsung released their 830 Series SATA 3 6Gb/s ssd's as successors to the 470. The first ones were OEM versions for Dell and the other off the shelf brands followed by release of retail versions for consumers. The ssd's are Samsung's own design with their own components and firmware. It looks like Samsung got it right again.

Here is a link the to ssd database:

http://www.johnnylucky.org/data-storage/ssd-database.html

Scroll down to the brands and models you are interested in and then click on the links to the technical reviews.

 

[enewmen]

This is related to another thread I started.
Thanks for the info!

 

[ChrisDC650]

If reliability and stability is a major concern, then I recommend Samsung. Samsung was awarded contracts to supply Dell, Sony, Lenovo, Apple and other off the shelf brands with OEM versions of their 470 Series SATA 2 3Gb/s ssd's. Eventually the 470's were released for retail sale to consumers. There have been no major issues reported. The 470 has an absolutely stellar record.

Then Samsung released their 830 Series SATA 3 6Gb/s ssd's as successors to the 470. The first ones were OEM versions for Dell and the other off the shelf brands followed by release of retail versions for consumers. The ssd's are Samsung's own design with their own components and firmware. It looks like Samsung got it right again.

Here is a link the to ssd database:

http://www.johnnylucky.org/data-storage/ssd-database.html

Scroll down to the brands and models you are interested in and then click on the links to the technical reviews.

thank you for your reply. I've been pretty busy so sorry for not thanking you sooner.

I'm leaning toward the samsung but I've read reports about how the samsung slows down drastically over time because of the way it handles garbage data. is that true?

BTW, should I purchase a smaller SSD (120-180GB) and save cash over the 240GB+ SSD? I'm mainly going to game and encode a few movies here and there.

 

[JohnnyLucky]

I am positive there was a follow-up review published by one of the review sites. If memory serves the site had been using a Samsung drive for quite some time and there had been no problems. I'll see if I can find the review and post the link when I get the chance.

Tom's Hardware has 470's in their lab that are still working quite well.

I have a 470 256GB ssd installed in my own rig for 4 months that is humming along.

A 120GB ssd is pretty much the sweet spot for most users. Plenty of room for Microsoft Windows 7, applications, uitilities, and some games. Use a hard disk drive for storing data, folders, files, backups, movies, and games you don't play very often.

 

[JohnnyLucky]

I'm guessing you are probably referring to the review over at AnandTech:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4863/the-samsung-ssd-830-review

Anand filled up all the available space and then ran a write torture test. I don't think it represents real world performance. It's not something users normally do. Anand did state "If you are running under a TRIM enabled OS performance does restore to peak quite nicely after a TRIM pass".

Here is the long term performance review I was referring to:

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1618/1/

Legit Reviews used common real world applications and did normal things with the ssd.

 

[ChrisDC650]

Best answer selected by ChrisDC650.

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey