The £150 SSD question

carrot1401 · 11 Feb 2010 at 10:31

Yep, I get annoyed with those 'spec me a thingywhatsit' threads to. So here's mine!

Basically got £150. No point upgrading my 4870 1gb so wish to dive into the world of SSD's as a boot drive. So where do I go? The cheap Intel X25-V which for now is out of stock? Pay £4 more for 10gb less with the OCZ Vertex? Or really up the ante with a Kingston SSDNow+ 64gb? Or when are those Corsair Reactor and Nova drives coming out and is it worth waiting for them?

So many questions, so little time :rolleyes:

Zarf · 11 Feb 2010 at 11:14

The 64GB Kingston V+ drive is pretty solid, similar performance to the Current Indilinx drives (Vertex, M225, Patriot Torx) that are more expensive.
It'll should probably outperform the yet to be released Reactor/Nova series.

carrot1401 · 11 Feb 2010 at 12:05

Does it support TRIM?

Zarf · 11 Feb 2010 at 12:19

[ZiiP]carrot;15939986 said:
Does it support TRIM?

Yep.
What might interest you is the OCZ Solid 2 60GB drive, OCUK don't stock yet but I've literally just ordered one for my laptop (< £118 delivered)
Indilinx based so you get the decent TRIM/GC firmware and small file performance, specs might seem a little low on the seller product pages, but apparently these were initial specs published whilst it was still in development and final specs are much better.

OCZ themselves list it as:
OCZSSD2-2SLD60G
60GB Performance
Read: Up to 200MB/s
Write: Up to 120MB/s
Sustained Wrie: Up to 50MB/s

I'll post benchies when it arrives, but it looks to be unbeatable value.

Luke · 11 Feb 2010 at 15:40

I have the Kingston V+ and it is excellent. Comes in on budget too.

carrot1401 · 11 Feb 2010 at 16:19

Zarf said:
Yep.
What might interest you is the OCZ Solid 2 60GB drive, OCUK don't stock yet but I've literally just ordered one for my laptop (< £118 delivered)
Indilinx based so you get the decent TRIM/GC firmware and small file performance, specs might seem a little low on the seller product pages, but apparently these were initial specs published whilst it was still in development and final specs are much better.

OCZ themselves list it as:
OCZSSD2-2SLD60G
60GB Performance
Read: Up to 200MB/s
Write: Up to 120MB/s
Sustained Wrie: Up to 50MB/s

I'll post benchies when it arrives, but it looks to be unbeatable value.

Keep me informed buddy, just seen which one you are on about and interested....

jaybee · 11 Feb 2010 at 16:27

That looks pretty good for the money. Still, some 64gb SSDs were £79 6 months ago. I can't see a catch with that....seek time under 0.1ms which is the main thing. The above spec is not what is listed on the site you bought it from though. Can you run a bench to confirm the performance? Why is it so cheap compared to elsewhere? Are OCUK going to stock these?

Zarf · 11 Feb 2010 at 16:50

jaybee said:
That looks pretty good for the money. Still, some 64gb SSDs were £79 6 months ago. I can't see a catch with that....seek time under 0.1ms which is the main thing. The above spec is not what is listed on the site you bought it from though. Can you run a bench to confirm the performance? Why is it so cheap compared to elsewhere? Are OCUK going to stock these?

The cheap 64GB ssd's in the past were jmicron based, and had serious stuttering issues caused by poor random write performance, hence the bargain bin pricing. Plus NAND is much more expensive than it was 6 months ago anyway (massive demand from smartphones, ssd's, mp3 players etc).
They are cheaper than you expect because they use 34nm Micron NAND, which is cheaper than the 50nm Samsung stuff they used to use (OCZ agility uses 40nm Toshiba NAND IIRC).
OCZ will almost certainly stock these eventually, probably trying to shift some of their old stock whilst they still can though as it's better bang for buck than the other value SSD's they sell.

I found this bench for the 60Gb on the OCZ forums, I'll be happy if I get that on my laptop:

carrot1401 · 11 Feb 2010 at 17:16

Zarf said:
OCZ themselves list it as:
OCZSSD2-2SLD60G
60GB Performance
Read: Up to 200MB/s
Write: Up to 120MB/s
Sustained Wrie: Up to 50MB/s

I'll post benchies when it arrives, but it looks to be unbeatable value.

Zarf said:
I found this bench for the 60Gb on the OCZ forums, I'll be happy if I get that on my laptop:

That second one goes along with the OCZ Spec page which now says the same as the product page. So would that be a good boot drive?? Or is it worth stumping up the extra £30 for the Kingston??

jaybee · 11 Feb 2010 at 17:28

Sorry I can't make much from that benchmark above as I normally go by average read and average write < yes I'm a noob.

So what are those figures? Also I don't get what you mean about them shifting old stock but that they are about to stock these? Are these new or old stock then? Confused is I. Sorry. Also, which Kingston are you refering to that is £30 more?

Zarf · 11 Feb 2010 at 18:26

jaybee said:
Sorry I can't make much from that benchmark above as I normally go by average read and average write < yes I'm a noob. So what are those figures?

The First row is the speed it gets on big files, so things like big game level loads and moving video files around.
The 4K row shows performance when dealing with small files, in a random pattern, this affects how responsive the system feels, things like windows boots and opening folders full of thumbnails.
The 4k64Thread is a test of how good the controller is at queuing requests, by opening 64 threads of 4k operations at once. Good controllers like the Intel and Sandforce can reorder the requests efficiently to be faster than the single threaded 4k operation.
Access time is the main reason SSD's are so much beter than HDD's at the 4k tests, a tpyical hard drive access time is 13ms, many times slower.

Also I don't get what you mean about them shifting old stock but that they are about to stock these? Are these new or old stock then? Confused is I. Sorry. Also, which Kingston are you refering to that is £30 more?

I meant that nobody would want to buy OCUK's other cheapish (<£150) drives (like the corsair x32, reactor, nova) if they were stocking the Solid2's at <£120 so they are probably trying to sell as many of their old stock as they can first.

the Solid 2's are new drives, announced in January and only just becoming available.

The Kingston that's £30 more is this one http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-007-KS&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=910
Confusingly Kingston do both a V+ and V- series, and this is the revision2 of the V+ series using a Toshiba controller.

[ZiiP said:
carrot]
That second one goes along with the OCZ Spec page which now says the same as the product page. So would that be a good boot drive?? Or is it worth stumping up the extra £30 for the Kingston??

The Solid2 would be a good boot drive. It's difficult to tell exact performance for the kingston, as most AS-SSD benchmarks i've seen are for the 128GB drive, which obviously has better berformance.
From what i can tell, the Solid2 64GB has better 4k performance, but is slower in sequential writes than the Kingston, and for £30 less is definitely the better buy.

jaybee · 11 Feb 2010 at 20:23

That's a very nice post there Zarf, thanks for the time to explain that. Hmm....I can see the solid2 SSDs being very popular when more people start to hear about them. I keep saying in threads all over this forum I won't buy an SSD. Too much...need a 128gb minimum etc...but I'm still trying to talk myself into getting this 60gb @ this price point. Hmm...decisions.

jakspyder · 11 Feb 2010 at 21:54

im in the same situation. so will be keeping an eye on this. also zarf, cheers, informative read there

roadie · 12 Feb 2010 at 11:14

Perfect timing for this thread with my imminent need to install my Retail copy of Windows 7 instead of the RC candidate which is currently running off an original 74Gb Raptor. Thanks! I have seen:

60Gb OCZ Solid 2 - £117
64Gb Crucial M225 - £135
60 Gb Corsair Reactor - £150
80Gb Intel X25-M - £165

Which of these do you guys reckon is the best option? Are there any others that should be considered before the end of the month in terms of performance for the £? Seems like from Zarf's post, the 4k and access times are most important for how I'll be using the drive.

The drive will be used purely as a boot and everyday application drive. Games and media each have their own separate disk.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

jakspyder · 12 Feb 2010 at 13:17

god damn student loans, huge student overdrafts and my childish impulse buying nature! 128gig crucial ssd in the post!

i hear good things about the crucial drives and the ocz ones too.

jaybee · 14 Feb 2010 at 18:58

Any more thought on this SSD? See the stock levels where this is available are gradually creeping down, so it is being snapped up.

roadie · 15 Feb 2010 at 13:03

The Solid 2 seems to have shot up in price from where it was cheapest. Now it seems less of a "bargain", although it is still around for under £130. It's an intriguing drive with the Indilix controller and the small Intel MLC flash.

I've seen a benchmark of the Corsair Reactor. Doesn't look too great in comparison to other drives at the same price point. It will also not receive firmware updates in the future, and its warranty is less of its rivals.

I quite like the look of the Kingston SSDNow V+ 64Gb drive. The new Toshiba controller and MLC flash appears to perform well and it seems to come in under £140.

carrot1401 · 15 Feb 2010 at 16:36

roadie said:
The Solid 2 seems to have shot up in price from where it was cheapest. Now it seems less of a "bargain", although it is still around for under £130. It's an intriguing drive with the Indilix controller and the small Intel MLC flash.

Sod that now then

roadie said:
I've seen a benchmark of the Corsair Reactor. Doesn't look too great in comparison to other drives at the same price point. It will also not receive firmware updates in the future, and its warranty is less of its rivals.

I quite like the look of the Kingston SSDNow V+ 64Gb drive. The new Toshiba controller and MLC flash appears to perform well and it seems to come in under £140.

How do you know about the firmware relating to the Corsair? May just end up waitin for this new Kingston 30gb thing!!

Duff-Man · 16 Feb 2010 at 00:15

roadie said:
Perfect timing for this thread with my imminent need to install my Retail copy of Windows 7 instead of the RC candidate which is currently running off an original 74Gb Raptor. Thanks! I have seen:

60Gb OCZ Solid 2 - £117

64Gb Crucial M225 - £135

60 Gb Corsair Reactor - £150

80Gb Intel X25-M - £165

Which of these do you guys reckon is the best option? Are there any others that should be considered before the end of the month in terms of performance for the £? Seems like from Zarf's post, the 4k and access times are most important for how I'll be using the drive.

The drive will be used purely as a boot and everyday application drive. Games and media each have their own separate disk.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

From those choices - the intel 80Gb without a doubt. The random read and write performance is unmatched by the others.

jaybee · 16 Feb 2010 at 09:59

roadie said:
The Solid 2 seems to have shot up in price from where it was cheapest. Now it seems less of a "bargain",

[ZiiP]carrot;15966263 said:
Sod that now then

Indeed, gone up by £21 at the cheapest place I could find it within a day. How bizarre. That's atleast decided for me then...basically wait.