Sweet spot for SSDs?

G-Dubs · 2 Jan 2011 at 18:19

Looking to get an SSD in the very near future. (OS and games)

I was originally looking at the £100 bracket (C300 and vertex 2) but thought i'd ask if this is where people think the sweet spot is in the price/size/performance envelope.

If not, where is it and please give some examples of products.

siumatfung · 2 Jan 2011 at 18:23

i had a little look recently and opted to buy my mate one of those hybrid HDDs from seagate for his birthday i had a look at the youtube page on the product page but im not sure if the laptop they were using was using SATA3 or not but @£100 for 500gb i felt it was a prmosing purchase.

the c300 be really good for a pure boot drive, the OCZ better all rounder with the higher write speeds

Zarf · 2 Jan 2011 at 20:56

It all depends on how many games you have.

I'm very happy with 160GB, not had to uninstall anything yet.

I wouldn't want anything less than 60GB though for a gaming PC, and the more space you have, the less management you need to do (i.e uninstalling/moving less played games to make room for new ones, or making space when you want to FRAPS something) That's just a luxury though, small SSD's are very similar in speed to large ones, so it's a lot of extra money to pay for convenience. I'd rather have a smaller SSD and deal with a bit more management than put up with a spinner because I couldn't afford a massive SSD.

Dirk · 3 Jan 2011 at 10:07

Zarf said:
..I'd rather have a smaller SSD and deal with a bit more management than put up with a spinner because I couldn't afford a massive SSD.

What he said.

If you can wait i think the next gen Intel drives will offer great price/performance.

adrichardson81 · 3 Jan 2011 at 16:35

It's worth thinking about a smaller Sandforce now and adding a high capacity Intel later.

IIRC, the new Intels are expected to be similar performance to Sandforce, but much cheaper per gb. From the road map, it looks like the new x25 m will come in 160, 300 and 600gb flavour, so they'll be ideal for games.

ashmanuk67 · 3 Jan 2011 at 23:53

I have moved to SSD 120gig OCZ only for gaming and i think it great, very fast compared to my 400gig WD 12m cash.

was going to go for 60gig but worried about space for the games so 120 it was and i got 264Mbps compared to 63Mbps on my WD :eek:

mnc fear · 4 Jan 2011 at 01:47

Id love to get one too but worry that I would run out of space quickly

Id only need 128 or 256 for gaming but that still comes at a premium

The C300 is over £200 for a 128Gb drive

hopefully they will drop soon

The Halk · 4 Jan 2011 at 02:24

50/60GB minimum for a x64 bit build. If you don't have x64 then you don't have 4GB and memory is probably first to be upgraded rather than SSD.
100/120GB allows you a lot of space for games/apps. But not an infinate amount.
200/240GB allows you plenty of space, you shouldn't need to swap games out very often, but you will from time to time.
500GB means you've spent way too much money.

I started off with a single 60GB Vertex. Added a second and made them an array.
I then got a 100GB Vertex 2. So now I have the Vertex 2 as my main OS drive, and non-steam games go on that. The other 2 60GB drives have Steam games on it, but it does get full, so I can't have everything on it. I just archive the games off though to my storage array (RAID5 8x1TB WD RE2, on Adaptec 3805, on a server up my loft with WHS Vail and drive extender). Which means I can install them back faster than redownloading.

If you are buying a PC then I'd suggest just the £100 Vertex 2. Unless you have lots of money. The C300 is a dog at that capacity, it's only at the 128GB capacity and larger that it's good.

I'm just not sure about those hybrid drives. I'm nothing like convinced about them, and it's very difficult to effectively benchmark them to see how good they really are.