Which SSD

stiv121

stiv121

stiv121

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Joined
4 Nov 2009
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Port Glasgow
Going to put my christmas money to a good use and buy a SSD but I don't really know much about them and which is best so could you guys maybe point me in the right direction? :D

Got about £150 to spend :D

This looks the best with its read and write speeds and its only about £125 with the 5% off :D Leaving me £25 to spend on some games (or skyrim) =P
 
Well if it fails I could always send it back? Doesn't seem as fast on the writes as the other drive plus it is £25 more expensive :(
 
Well the M4 certainly does have a reputation for reliablity, other option would be an Agility which well doesn't. Latest FW is very stable though, most of the problems have been ironed out.

Honestly you can pretty much ignore the sequential writes, it is nothing you'd see outside of a benchmark, which you shouldn't do anyways as it kills the performance. As long as you get a current generation SSD it is going to be extremely quick, frankly just go for the largest current generation drive you can afford.
 
+1 for the Crucial M4 recommendation.

It is best to take the quoted specs with a big pinch of salt (as sandforce controller SSDs need compressible data to hit their quoted speeds) - in actual testing the Crucial M4 is usually quite a bit better than the drives using the Sandforce SF-2281 controller (like the Corsair Force 3 and OCZ Agility 3).

Here is a good comparison done by OCUK

Also, the 2nd generation sandforce drives have been known to have reliability issues- while this hasn't been the case for the Crucial M4.
 
Hmm well an opportunity has came up where I can get £100 extra (have to pay back on payday tho )

So its £150 for one or two for £255 so I could get the raid pack, would I see a big difference in speed and performance comming from a 1TB F3 ?

Can't decide! :(
 
I have had no issues with my samsung 128gb. Personally I'd go for a single larger drive over raid even though the loss of trim these days doesnt mean so much with better gc.
 
Depends on your motherboard, if you have a Z68 chipset you could Intel® Smart Response with 64GB of the M4 to accelerate the mechanical drive and use the rest of the SSD to install your games and most commonly used programs on,
 
Forget the make of my motherboard but it has the 6gb sata and that (bough it when it came out for my i7 920) I wont need to do that with the mechanical drive as Most things will be going on the SSD as I don't need 1tb of space :)


EDIT: I've got Asus P6X58D-E
 
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Unfortunately the chipsets they put on X58 boards for SATA 3.0 (6GBps) are dire, Marvell for your board. You might even seen better results using the Intel SATA 2.0 (3GBps) ports, I know I did when I had a pair of Crucial C300s in Raid 0.

With regards to Raid vs Single Drive. I recently went from 2 x Agility 3 256GB drives in Raid 0 to 1 x Agility 3 256GB drive and noticed no real world difference in performance. It was a cost saving measure really (need to update my sig).

It does really depend how much storage you need for games and softare, I found I filled up a 120GB SSD very quickly with a few recent games, so I've always opted to go for the next size up, the 256GB.

For reliablity sake, I'd get single large 256GB SSD, you might seem some offers come up in the Jan sales, so keep an eye out. So my recommendation would be a Crucial M4 256GB.
 
What about using the drives seperate and not in raid ? Because it is a good £35 more for the 256Gb version and I've heard that the increase in size makes it a little slower anyways ?
 
You could do, but thats up to you. Larger SSDs are generally slightly faster than single smaller drives, as you can see from the specs. Plus it makes things simple when you come to installing games and software.

I wasn't aware of the price difference though, what drives are you referring to in your comparison?
 
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Well I think I'll go for that then sell the other on the mm to make my money back if I don't want two.
 
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Triggaaar said:
What's mm?
If the mods were ok with that I'd be in, but I don't think there's a for sale section here or anything?
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The Members Market is where you can sell stuff but you need 90 days forum membership and 250 posts to access it.

The members market is provided as a free service to active and contributing forum members. OcUK are not liable for any deals that are done in the Members Market, you are free to buy and sell at your own risk. Please read the rules of the Members Market before you proceed to make your first sale.

Access to the Members Market forum requires two things. Firstly, you will need to have over 250 posts and have been signed up for at least 90 days. Please note that this does not mean you spam the forums simply to increase your posts, as this action will result in posts being deducted, and if you continue this behaviour, your account will eventually be banned/suspended. Once you reach 250 posts, you will need to activate your trust.The Trust system is for Members Market feedback only and not to be used for general user comments. Abusing the trust system will not be tolerated and such abuse will result in your account being suspended/ banned. Trust activation is either found in your UserCP, or you can press the trust button that appears at the bottom of all your posts.

Once you satisfy both of these criteria, Members Market access will be granted within 24hrs. Please do not post on the forums asking why you cannot access the members market, if you have any queries, email one of the forum Dons/Admins. The contact addresses are available in the FAQ. There is no buying, or selling allowed outside of the Members Market.
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superleeds27 said:
Id be tempted to buy the spare off you ;)
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Well I've placed my order, so I will be selling the spare, but unfortunately it's going to be a while before you can use the members area. Maybe you should buy a pair and sell one too :)

Surveyor said:
The Members Market is where you can sell stuff but you need 90 days forum membership and 250 posts to access it.
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I should be there soon, so hopefully an ocuk member gets the spare.
 
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