Excellent and needed guide as so many people are still unfamiliar with SSD basics. Surprised not to see Intel's drives not getting any recommendations as they are buyers favourites.
Originally Posted by Ph4ZeD Excellent and needed guide as so many people are still unfamiliar with SSD basics. Surprised not to see Intel's drives not getting any recommendations as they are buyers favourites.
While there's nothing wrong with the Intel Drives (as stated in the article), bar slow sequential writes we feel there are better options elsewhere now. If you were to spot an Intel X25-M 80GB for £100 though, you'd snap it up no doubt.
Have an Intel 160Gb G2 on my notebook, and I don't think on replacing it for these faster drives. My notebook can't even push the SSD (I have an ICH8ME SB)... Anyway it's wayy better than a 2,5" HDD :)
Maybe I'll buy one of these Corsair Force Series to my Q6600 and put my GsKill Falcon I in my server...
The C300 is tempting me too. I'm finding squeezing my games on my 80GB Intel difficult, and £113 for a SSD with 355MB/s read speeds is hard to turn down. Problem is that my motherboard doesn't support SATA 3 :(
That crucial is really tempting... especially since i have the Gigabyte x58A ud3r...
Does anyone know if the 2 sata 6gbps ports on the board would be fine, or am i better off buying the expansion card as well?
Originally Posted by Hereisphilly That crucial is really tempting... especially since i have the Gigabyte x58A ud3r...
Does anyone know if the 2 sata 6gbps ports on the board would be fine, or am i better off buying the expansion card as well?
The expansion card will be worth it, we've played around with some of the built in SATA 6Gbps of various boards and they've not been so great
The expansion card will be worth it, we've played around with some of the built in SATA 6Gbps of various boards and they've not been so great
Have you had a go with the said gigabyte board? Any idea at what performance drop i would be looking at (i.e. if its a few % i'll save my money)
Cheers
I'll be looking at C300 performance with a variety of Mobo's soon hopefully. We were genuinely surprised to find plenty of boards which carried SATA 3 (6Gbps) ports just were not up to the task. Until now the highpoint is the only one we're confident can do the business.
Originally Posted by Baz I'll be looking at C300 performance with a variety of Mobo's soon hopefully. We were genuinely surprised to find plenty of boards which carried SATA 3 (6Gbps) ports just were not up to the task. Until now the highpoint is the only one we're confident can do the business.
FYI, the price for the Corsair Rector 60GB on the last page is incorrect, it's actually £116, plus it's not the cheapest in the UK. Scan have it in stock for much cheaper:
Originally Posted by Baz I'll be looking at C300 performance with a variety of Mobo's soon hopefully. We were genuinely surprised to find plenty of boards which carried SATA 3 (6Gbps) ports just were not up to the task. Until now the highpoint is the only one we're confident can do the business.
The reason to get an SSD is random performance, particularly random read. Sequential performance is a much smaller win over mechanical drives, and shouldn't be a big factor in choosing which drive to get. IMO anything >150MB/sec read/write is more than enough (the OS can optimize sequential reads easily with read ahead cache), unless you spend a large fraction of your day waiting for large contiguous data transfers. Even then, RAID over mechanical drives would be a cheaper and better option: you can double read bandwidth with mirroring, and only pay 2x/GB.
And for this reason I still would find it difficult to recommend a non-Intel drive. Until competitors are able to outperform Intel on random read, it has the edge.
Originally Posted by smc8788 FYI, the price for the Corsair Rector 60GB on the last page is incorrect, it's actually £116, plus it's not the cheapest in the UK. Scan have it in stock for much cheaper:
I'm surprised the Wester Digital drive is not on here. I believe it uses the JMF612/618 controller with WD's firmware. I bought the 128gb version from Newegg the other day for 219, it was the performance/price I could deal with.
If anyone wants some benchies, I'll do one when I do my fresh install once I get it tomorrow. Send me a PM with the applications you want me to test. I'll use HDTach and whatever else I can find.
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ReplyGlad to see the corsair is "perfectly fins"
:D
Good guide, will be taking notes.
OCZ too, but yep, in UK those three are the most reliable options for stock and decent pricing.
While there's nothing wrong with the Intel Drives (as stated in the article), bar slow sequential writes we feel there are better options elsewhere now. If you were to spot an Intel X25-M 80GB for £100 though, you'd snap it up no doubt.
Maybe I'll buy one of these Corsair Force Series to my Q6600 and put my GsKill Falcon I in my server...
Does anyone know if the 2 sata 6gbps ports on the board would be fine, or am i better off buying the expansion card as well?
wasn't far off / the same as an add in card.
I've ordered the add-in for my maximus formula, but i went with the 64gb C300 for now.
first SSD and want to find my feet first.
The expansion card will be worth it, we've played around with some of the built in SATA 6Gbps of various boards and they've not been so great
Have you had a go with the said gigabyte board? Any idea at what performance drop i would be looking at (i.e. if its a few % i'll save my money)
Cheers
Great, i'll look forward to that read, thanks!
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/60GB-Corsair-Reactor-Series-128MB-DDR2-25-SATA-II-USB-20-Read-250MB-s-Write-110MBs-Retail
I've just placed an order for a 64GB C300 myself, but as it's not in stock I may consider changing it for the Corsair drive now I've read this.
Could you link the highpoint on Scan?
Im guessing its http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Highpoint-RocketRAID-620(RR620)-2-channel-Internal-PCI-e-v2-x1-to-SATA-6Gb-s-RAID-controller(card) Seems to be the only highpoint card i can see.
And for this reason I still would find it difficult to recommend a non-Intel drive. Until competitors are able to outperform Intel on random read, it has the edge.
Could try crucial's website direct? (Plus quidco ;-))
I wish we could see a few mac tests now you have established the best value SSD's around :)
Its linked in the guide on the last page but here it is again.
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Highpoint-Rocket-620-(R620)-2-channel-Internal-PCI-e-v2-x1-to-SATA-6Gb-s-non-RAID-controller-card
If anyone wants some benchies, I'll do one when I do my fresh install once I get it tomorrow. Send me a PM with the applications you want me to test. I'll use HDTach and whatever else I can find.
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