Spec me a SSD!

King Damager · 18 Mar 2011 at 13:14

Ok, well as you may have noticed from my signature, the only thing that's actually missing at the moment is a SSD!

Budget is about £100, and only really looking at a boot drive for 7, and maybe a couple of apps.

Have been looking around really.

Originally was looking at the Crucial c300, but am a bit concerned about the stutter issues they've been having.

Was thinking therefore of waiting for a c400, but it all depends on how long it's going to be until release date, does anyone have any more info on this?

I was looking at these, because in all honesty the slower write speeds don't really matter, as yeah, I'll be writing to these once and reading from these god knows how many times.

However, as current boot time is something like ten minutes, realistically any SSD is going to be a massive speed increase, and I've been looking at the Vertex 2E 60GB or the Corsair Force F60, and was basically wondering what people's opinions on this were?

At the moment leaning towards the F60 over the 2E if I were going to pick one because I believe they have a lower fail rate...

Also as a plus, the F60 is on sale this week, so that's nice

But yeah, what do people recommend really?

kd

ssmacc · 18 Mar 2011 at 13:40

I'd also like to know peoples thoughts on this, all i can answer is that the c400 is (initially at least) 120GB min. as such this is way out of a £100 budget.

I’m assuming your motherboard is SATA III, I’m leaning towards the c300 as the write speed doesn’t matter for a OS drive (as you point out).

Unusually Overclockers seem relatively expensive for SSD’s…come Overclockers lets have some deals!

King Damager · 18 Mar 2011 at 13:51

Ah, didn't know the c400 will also be limited to 120GB as well as a min

But yeah, I'll be on 6GB/S Either Marvell or Intel controlled (got to choose which one of those to plug into as well)....

And yeah, OCUK, do seem relatively expensive for SSD's :s

Although I guess when you take into account no need to pay for postage and the extra customer service it works out better or something...

kd

ssmacc · 18 Mar 2011 at 14:39

I did read "Next Gen" 60 and 80GB drives are coming (from Intel at least), but I think these are a month or two off at best, depends if you can wait, I’ve been waiting for ages already and am very close to hitting buy...

King Damager · 18 Mar 2011 at 14:43

Yeah, been in exactly the same situation, but this is obviously the last component of the new build, so quite wanting to get it sorted now

But yeah, still not sure whether to go for the F60 or the C300

kd

~Mike~ · 18 Mar 2011 at 14:59

However, as current boot time is something like ten minutes...

That's very slow...what is causing your slow boot time?

King Damager · 18 Mar 2011 at 15:07

Mike306 said:
That's very slow...what is causing your slow boot time?

Oh, a bunch of things tbh, boot to login is about a minute or something, and boot to desktop is about ten. I really need to do a clean install if I wanted to get this machine nice and new, but as I'm building a new one from scratch soon, I can't really be bothered with fixing this one for now...

kd

Chiribo · 18 Mar 2011 at 15:45

You could just run msconfig and disable a load of stuff there to speed up your performance.

As for SSD advice, use the Intel ports, they're meant to be better. As for which drive itself, I have the 128GB C300 and had no issues with it. Vertex 2E gets recommended a lot around here. Rarely noticed the Corsair one get mentioned actually.

In terms of prices do shop around. When I was building my SB system OcUK came up to nearly a grand. A competitor came up to about £900 and that was after I included a £130 sound card which was not part of the selection on OcUK basket.

sybaris · 19 Mar 2011 at 18:44

I have a 60GB Vertex 2E. Very happy with it. I haven't measured the benchmarks simply because its fast and I really don't care about shaving off nanoseconds here and there. It does the job and fast. Win 7 64 boots in about 8 seconds (after post finishes)