Best SSD for < £200?

Programmer · 16 Dec 2012 at 19:55

Happy holidays everyone!

I've decided to get myself an SSD, to replace my HDD. I'm currently only using 126 GB of space, despite the fact that I have several large games and quite a few big code repositories on this drive; so I think that I can easily manage with 240 GB, or so. If I get to the point where I need more space, I can always buy another...

Here are my priorities for the drive (in descending order):

System stability: I don't want the drive to cause any blue screens or crashes. I also want as easy an installation as possible.
Reliability: I will use my HDD to back everything up but I want my drive to be as reliable as possible, because I really hate having to send stuff back!
Speed: I want the levels in my games to load quickly and I want my computer to boot up and come out of hibernation really quickly.
Silence: I suspect that this is pretty much implied, as I've yet to hear of an SSD that makes any noise what-so-ever, but I'm adding this point just in case!

A friend recommended the Crucial M4 but isn't this an older model? I've also been told that Intel's SSDs are really good, what about the 520? Another friend warned me to stay well clear of OCZ drives, as they're apparently less reliable... I've never had an SSD before and I must admit that I don't know a lot about them, so I would really appreciate your help here. I'd like to spend less than £200, what do you recommend?

wazza300 · 16 Dec 2012 at 20:07

samsung 840 pro? one of the fastest you can buy,if you wanna spend less go for the 830 version

kmax86 · 16 Dec 2012 at 21:20

i cant say much about the 840 but i have two 830s 1x 256gb and 1x 128gb and a 64gb M4. Never had a single crash or bsod related to the ssd. speeds are quite awesome too

Programmer · 24 Dec 2012 at 17:00

Well I've read a few reviews and looked at the benchmarks on Tom's Hardware and it seems that it's pretty much a toss-up between the Intel 520 and Samsung's 840 Pro. The 840 Pro is about 15% faster than the 520, in most of the benchmarks, and is apparently the fastest consumer-grade SSD currently on the market.

However, Intel put a lot of work into fixing the firmware for the SandForce controller (SF-228) that their drive uses and their priority has been reliability from the outset. This combined with the fact that Samsung's new drive has only just been released – a Google search for 'Samsung 840 Pro BSOD' also returns 2.5 times as many results as 'Intel 520 BSOD' – makes me think that I might be taking a risk, if I purchased it...

I'm prioritising reliability over raw performance here and that is what Intel is promising. So, despite the fact that the Intel 520 is both slower and more expensive, I think that I will get it!