solid state upgrade

sofaking

sofaking

sofaking

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9 Feb 2010
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19
I’ve been considering upgrading my boot drive to solid state with a clean install of windows 7. I’ve done a bit of research on the web but still a bit confused as to the best methods to gain optimum performance from the drive.
I was wondering if it is necessary to have a controller for the solid state drive or simply just plug it into the mobo as normal. If a solid state controller is required, where does this slot into? PCI express?, if so, my mobo is Asus P5k3 deluxe and it only has 2 pci express 1 slots, both of which are being used by two graphics cards however I am willing to sacrifice one slot and just have one graphics card.
I'm not to worried about storage size of the solid state as I only want as boot drive, the storage aspect can be handled by my existing sata drives.
Any advice on what type of drive and if a controller is really required would be appreciated.
PS I'm not too concerned about costs for this as I need optimum performance
thanks
:)
 
All SSD's comes with a built-in controller and only requires power and sata connectors and can be connected to mobo the same way you connect a mechanical hard drive.

PCI express is only required if you choose an OCZ Revo SSD or other (expensive) PCI based SSD's.

Choosing which SSD to buy is entirely dependent on your "Taste" if budget is out of the question, as they all have similar performance under normal desktop usage.

I have tested and used Corsair P128, OCZ Vertex and Vertex 2, Crucial C300 and Intel X-25M and the only noticeable difference between them are "Benchmark figures", although i'm more inclined to favor Intel because of it's "Toolbox" application which has a drive enhancement feature and TRIM command.
 
So what is the best 64gb ssd that one should buy for an OS+apps drive (SATA II)?

And which one would be the best for up to 128gb ?
 
^^+1 for Crucial C300 64Gb, was amazed how easy it was to install and how fast it is and future proofed as I'm only on sata 2, so a speed boost to come when i upgrade to sata 3.:D
 
I'd go for the C300 aswell - The Intel utility is a bag of spanners and ONLY works if you use standard MS or intel drivers. Besides that, I find it a tad pointless having a TRIM feature in a utility when the drive is supposed to do it automatically itself! ;)
 
TBH I have gone for the OCZ Vertex 2 due to the great one day only price that it was available for but I will be twinning this with a larger C300 (or the fastest 128gb SATA 6gb/s) in the new year.

IIRC Windows 7 is essential for TRIM support, automatic defrag and prefetch disabling ...
 
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