Storage £300 to spend on a SSD, (which one? ordering by 5pm)

SSD for windows only. I have a budget of £300 so I'm looking to go for best performance by either 1 fast SSD or 2 in raid 0. Storage size doesn't matter as its only going to store windows (40gb+)

Simon.

 

Intel seems to get good reviews

 

I wouldn't bother with RAID 0 - don't think it's worthwhile with SSDs (if at all). £300 gets you a nice 100/128GB SSD - you may want to consider one of the new OCZ Vertex 2 drives, or perhaps a Corsair Nova.

I strongly suggest that you read all of the SSD reviews on Bit-Tech, and fill in the gaps from elsewhere - there are a number of pitfalls waiting to claim unwary SSD purchasers.

 

One thing I have always wondered with SSD's is that being so small in capacity (for reasonable prices) if I stick my OS on it and say Steam and all games on D: drive am I going to notice any difference in games?

 

Kingstons latest v series drive @ £200 for 128gb seems like a good buy right now.
Not the older model but the new one with trim etc.

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/195354

 

if you can stretch to another 30 quid then the 160gb intel fits the bill pefectly - i cant complain since i got mine, its awesome.

 

Hi, yes I can stretch to the extra £30 the £300 was a figure for you guys to work with.

Cheers,

Simon.

 

The intel drives are slower though.
70mb/sec write speeds...poo.
That's £130 more for a much slower drive (write speeds) with a extra 32 gb ...
Seems a no brainer.

 

you dont know what you are talking about.

70mb/s is for random writes - other drives give their sequential write speeds because their random writes are so bad. the kingston drives have great sequential write speeds as their random writes suck balls.

in the end 4k writes are the most important stat as you shouldnt be using an SSD as a storage drive (ie where sequential writes do matter).

here is the BT review of the g.skill falcon 2 (itself a very good SSD):

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/storage/2009/06/24/g-skill-falcon-128gb-review/6

every drive gets outclassed by the intel drive in the random speeds

 

I think you need to learn the difference between sustained read/write speeds, which are the speeds manufacturers quote, and random read/write speeds, which Intel drives obliterate virtually every drive at. And ask yourself, when your booting up your computer, or a program, or a game, are you reading one enormous file, or lots of small ones?

EDIT: In the last hardware podcast, they said that the best selling SSD in the UK by a huge margin were the Intel drives as they are good value for money in both capacity and speed. The Vertex/Corsair drives are extremely fast but poor value for money as you get a very small drive for your money.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/storage/2009/06/24/g-skill-falcon-128gb-review/7

Random writes 4 times faster than rival drives.

 

So which one?

Vertex 2

Intel x25 M

Kingston V+

 

My mate has the x-25 and loves it. Very nippy and he keeps win7 and all his games on it. He's a very happy boy and I'm currently saving up to get one myself.

 

x-25m

oh, and save a tenner on scan:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/160G...h-25-SATA-3Gb-s-Read-250MB-s-Write-70MB-s-OEM

 

Right, I'm ordering the Intel x25 160GB.

Thanks for the advise guys.

Cheers,

Simon.

 

Thanks. I'm ordering from aria for £317.
Plus i7 930,
Gigabyte UD7,
G.Skill Trident 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3 PC3-16000C9 2000MHz

Cheers,

Simon.

 

dont use google checkout on aria. they ****ed up my order with them (coincidentally a 160gb x-25m aswell) - they took the money out but wouldnt send the drive. so i cancelled and bought from scan (worked out about the same as i get free delivery from scan) and got it next day.

 

On a 32 player server in TF2 I can get in the game and be alone for about 15secs before anyone arrives. It's awesome

There are few UT2K4 maps that take 1 or 2 seconds to load. Bad Company 2 also loads quite fast although not as impressively. Crysis still and will always take forever though.

 

BC2 is cool because you can load into the map before anyone else and get any vehicle of your choice

 

Dammit, I forgot about the free delivery with scan. To late now. I didn't use Google checkout to pay.
But thanks for the heads up.
Also added +1 rep for the advice

Cheers,

Simon.

 

Ha, I will be using that to my advantage. Better not play on the same map as you tho. Lol