Opinion on SSDs

Hey guys,

So I was looking for opinions for an SSD I found on Newegg...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820329002

It's a decent price/GB and appears to have decent read/write speeds.

MicroCenter also has a similar SSD although the read/write speeds on it appear slower...

http://www.microcenter.com/product/397215/120GB_SATA_6GB-s_25_Internal_Solid_State_Drive_(SSD)

TigerDirect as well:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2370500&CatId=5300

Any opinions on these? Or should I go for something a little better (and larger). I'm still looking for <$0.75/GB.

 

SSDs are cool, but try to go for more well known brands. You don't want to have one fail on you. If you are using it as a boot drive, then you don't need that big of a capacity.

I recommend these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=20-171-567
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820721107

 

Sandisk, Corsair, Intel, Crucial, Samsung. IMO the best brands out there atm.
pick one.

 

Plextor brand SSDs are also very reliable.

 

The thing is, I'm not only using it as a boot drive. I plan on placing quite a few of my programs on there that take a while to load up (Photoshop, C4D, and probably Office). Not to mention my desktop at any given point can be carrying ~20GB worth of material (yeah I know a little ridiculous)... I mean my larger filed programs and storage would obviously be all HDDs (I have ~4-5TBs of space) where I can place everything else [like one for video games, one for movies, etc.], all of which I don't really care about boot times.

Unfortunately just listing names doesn't help me much... I have literally sat for hours staring at most of the names you all have listed and just can't tell much in the way of difference between any of them.

 

The best brand of SSDs would be intel, they have the best reliability coupled with excellent performance.

Btw, Read/write speeds and IOPs do not necessarily mean that much. A SSD with a lower read/write speed and less IOPs can perform just as well as one with a higher rating, in real world usage.

 

You can't go wrong with Intel go for it.

 

So something like this one?

http://www.microcenter.com/product/...d_State_Drive_(SSD)_SSDSC2CT240A4K5#tab-specs

I mean ebay has them for ~$0.75/GB... But... I don't know if I trust people on ebay. >_<

Someone said Plextor, and this is what I found: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820249025

 

I would go for the intel one, it's only $10 more.

 

IMO buy an SSD for your boot (30gigs or so)

One thing too, i walk into computer stores and hear them saying that SSD's last longer because of "no moving parts" This is an absolute lie, and whoever says that should be educated.

SSD's do not have as great heat dissipation as a regular disk hard drive. This causes them to break down faster.

The Upside of an SSD is that they are a lot faster because they use flash memory.

Long story short, if you're going to use it, install your OS on it, and put it in a raid configuration. You will have a extremely fast boot-up.



Source* I'm a current tech student studying electronics and computers

 

Intel SSDs are good if not one of the best out there selling.
If you don't play much games, you can just buy a 120GB or even 60GB SSD, it is for Windows Booting, it'll make so much difference(faster) booting time compared to a normal HDD.

 

30gig is WAY to small. 60gig minimum, even then id recommend 120g.
SSDs can last longer then HDDs, you cant rly say how long though.

raid isnt rly needed with ssds nowadays, fast enough without raid & you dont have to risk losing your data(raid0)

 

No. 30gigs is not large enough for what I run on my computer. Even though I'm not a tech student, I still understand the concepts behind SSDs vs. HDDs. I run enough HDDs that I'm not worried about space (3TBs in my main + a few others externally). However, I plan on using SSDs to create faster boot and load times into my games. If I get a second SSD (I already run a SATA II, 120GB SSD), it will be for my OS and specific programs that I want to boot quickly (like Microsoft Office when I'm in a rush to finish a project for school). :laugh: The second drive would be used -specifically- for my Steam/Origin games. Finally my HDDs will be used for my mass storage; ie: Movies/TV Shows/Renders/Pictures/Music/etc.

As stated above, 60GB will not be enough for what I plan to run. If I can get a slightly larger SSD that boots quickly and can support just about everything I can throw at it I will go with that.

As of right now, I do not run in raid. I personally am not familiar enough with computers to run a RAID without being afraid that if I botch something it will screw my whole computer up. On top of that, I would rather have it where if I need to swap out HDDs on my computer I have that option (for upgrades, etc.).

 

What kind of programs are you looking to store in the SSD?
If not big ones and not so much, 120GB would be sufficient, surely.

 

Microsoft Office, Virus Scanner, C4D, Photoshop, VCD, Skype, Trillian, etc., etc.

Steam would more than likely be on a separate SSD unless there is some reason I shouldn't.

 

I think 120GB would be close to enough though. Maybe it'll be left with a few gigabytes. If you can invest more, get the 240GB.

 

Well that's what I'm running right now (a 120GB) and that's barely fitting what I truly need on it. Haha. My adobe and just about everything else is on one of my HDDs. >_<

 

Then go for a step further Get a 240GB if you can afford it.

 

I have a pretty similar set of programs on my computer, and all in all they take about 80gb space. A 120 drive should be enough, though honestly I'd rather buy a 60 drive and wait a few seconds for photoshop to open than spend twice as much on a larger SSD. Sure it's annoying, but I've never had to wait longer than about 10 secs to open Photoshop, and that was with about 500mb RAM avaliable

 

It's getting cheaper to get larger quantities now. A 60GB is still ~$1/GB and larger formats are coming down to ~$0.75/GB. Some are lower some are higher varying on the brand. It makes more sense at this point to get a slightly larger one, just would rather it be reliable.