Okay, as the title suggests I'm in the market for a new SSD. Currently have a Crucial readSSD 64gb which was purchased just under 2yrs ago. At the time, due to budgets and the cost of SSD's that was all I could afford. However despite the fact that I install my games onto a separate HDD, certain games have a habit of installing the DLC onto the SSD (which is just supposed to be data & OS!) I now find myself in the position of needing to acquire a new SSD of much larger capacity. I still have a budget to work to, but on looking at certain supplier websites, my budget of £120 (MAX) will buy up to 240gb! Now the question is which one? I haven't seen any recent magazine articles with comparisons (except the December issue of PC Format - which seems to lean more towards high end drives) so any suggestions within the budget would be much appreciated. Thanks
People seem to recommend Samsung or Crucial allot. I have not used them to be honest, as I have always stuck to Corsair SSD's simply because of the price and the performance. I don't think you could go wrong really with any of the brands mentioned to be honest it's just down to which falls within your price range.
With the release of the 840 and 840 pro, Samsung's 256GB 830 keeps popping up at thoroughly decent prices - around or under your £120 budget. The Samsung is faster but don't sniff at a 256GB Crucial M4 given the chance either - Amazon occasionally has them on the lightning deals page. I think the M4 was on there at £99 and the 830 at £120 just a week or so ago. Keep your eyes peeled.
What Spreadie said - hold out for a good deal on a Crucial M4 or Samsung 830 and you should just find something within your budget.
While I haven't been paying attention to all the newest models, there are some others you may keep an eye out for good price on like sandisk extreme and mushkin chronos mx or dx.
I would put them in this order: Samsung 840 Pro Samsung 830 Crucial M4 The 840 Pros are incredibly fast. However, if you can find a good deal on the 830s, I would go for that. In the US, they seem to be out of stock in many places Also, if you are considering adding multiples down the line for RAID 0/5 (SSDs in RAID 0 or RAID 5 are even faster), then I would go for the newer 840s. If you look for Crucial C300s now in the US, they retail for way more than they are worth since they aren't being made anymore.
Thanks for the comments so far. Unfortunately, the Samsung 830 or 840 are outside of the budget that has been stated - my usual supplier has them around £145 (inc vat) so are to far above the budget (I could get away with a couple of quid, but no way could I get away with £25+ above budget!) At the moment - the OCZ Octane 256gb is very attractive at £114 at Scan. And of course, the beauty is that I get free carriage with being a member on here!!!!!
I honestly couldn't say if these are any good... http://www.ebuyer.com/349959-verbatim-240gb-store-n-go-ssd-47379
The 830 is discontinued -- they are not being manufactured anymore unfortunately. The 840 is intended to replace it despite using inferior asynchronous NAND. A cheap SSD will offer you a SandForce controller and asynchronous NAND. I can't say how noticeable the issues are in the real world, but the SF controllers have had various firmware problems. They also use compression, which causes uneven performance and TRIM issues (see http://www.anandtech.com/show/6107/corsair-force-series-gs-240gb-review). The longevity of asynchronous NAND is a tenth of that of synchronous NAND.
As others have said, and since I've owned both, (64gb Crucial M4, 128gb samsung 830) I can say they're both stellar drives, so long as you can get them on your budget. Amazon usually have good deals on the lightning deals page, check there every morning and you should have yourself a good deal.
Sorry - no can do! work 9-5 and do not have access to this sort of thing at work - have access at lunch time as there are a couple of PCs in the staff lounge to surf but not on the work PC. to be honest, OCZ have usually had quite good write-ups when reviewed, but a recent article suggests that they are rationalising their product lines and withdrawing quite a lot of products. At this price for a 256gb SSD is not bad at all. I paid just under £100 2 yrs ago for a 64gb drive so to get one 4x the size for about the same price is not to be sniffed at.
jizwizard is selling an 840 in the marketplace - you'll have to be quick though. He's very decent fellow - have dealt with him several times.
I'm in the market for similar, I think it depends how urgently you need it. It's pretty likely that the Samsung 830 or the Crucial M4 will be around the 120 mark again before xmas given the recent offers, just gotta bide your time!
Samsung 830 is probably the best one available, if you can find one that is (they're discontinued). The OCZ Vertex 4 is a SandForce and the Crucial M4 is relatively slow, though both should be decent overall. Other than those, I'm not sure if I can recommend anything. The SSD market is pretty strange at the moment. No high end models have been released recently (except the Samsung 840 Pro, which is unnecessarily expensive). edit: See this thread: http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?p=3235612