I'm looking to join the SSD crowd and am looking at either the Corsair Force Series 3 120GB or the Crucial M4 128GB. Both are on sale at £105.95 from my local store (Overclockers.co.uk) I've read things to suggest the M4 might be better, but then there was also mention of firmware problems also. Anybody offer some advice? Thanks
Unless you have an incredibly heavy write usage that will gain from the SF's compression increasing nand longevity - out of those specific two, the M4. Very simply the basic F3 (non-GT) uses async nand which is slower irl. Otherwise, 'if' you did need to go for a SF, that's an expensive price for a async nand SF - both the Mushkin & OCZ variants have been around £95-96 of late from places like eBuyer... ...& with some e-tailers, you can get cash back through topcashback.co.uk (i don't like the async nand SFs btw - the sync nand ones are *much* better)
What do you know of the PNY professional SSDs PocketDemon? They seem quite keenly priced at the moment...
Thanks for the reply, I live just round the corner from Overclockers so was going to buy it in the morning as I have a day off to get everything installed on it. I'm just planning normal usage for it, installing Windows 8 and some games (Aion \ Guildwars), i have a number of other drives I'll be using for storing video and music.
I like crucials after sales support. I had a funny c300 drive that when I sent to them, they just sent me a brand new m4. No reciepts, just straight of the serial number. For that reason I will stick with them.
i hadn't seen them, but a quick check & they use imft sync nand which nominally places them alongside the (normal) V3, Force 3 GT, Kingston HyperX, etc as the mid range SFs... (with the toggle nand SFs above them - both in terms of min nand rating &, particularly with the 120GB models, speed) i say 'nominally' since, as SF themselves make & release the f/w (other than with the intel 520 which was an intel/SF collaboration that's temporarily exclusive) & whilst there 'can' be minor tweaks one way or another (although much of that can be put down to statistical error in testing), there's no real difference between them... [NB this is different from the way companies that use, for example, the Marvell controller work - with them, it's up to the individual company to write & release their own f/w.] [Edit] Quick search &, whilst the b/ms used are *very* ltd & non-representative of real life, it appears to test effectively identically to a HyperX so... [End Edit] ...other than 'if' you happened to perceive (or discover) that one company was using shonky components or had better customer support than another. Well, i've no idea about PNY's customer service... My understanding is that, in the event of a drive failure, OCZ's RMA turnaround is usually no more than a fortnight... Corsair's, on the basis of RMAing a single PSU-to-4x SATA cable for my HX1000, took over 2 months to get a replacement sent... ...but i've no idea if that's typical. & beyond that... ...well, other than Seagate being a bit shonky then i don't tend to have problems with tech (other than the occasional DOA HDD) so i can't really comment. Anyway, other than not knowing how good, bad or indifferent they are for that reason, i can see no immediate reason not to save money & buy one of theirs if it's cheaper... ...well, @ £95 on (evil) Scan then that's a damn good price... ...though i'm not sure that the manufacturer warranty is 5 years since Dabs & whatnot all have it listed as 3.
Crucial gets my vote - never had one of their SSD's fail in any of our works machines yet. Already had a Corsair one fail so now try to avoid them. Kingston also worth a look.
It is kinda weird actually. Kingston are more or less the biggest ram manufactures. But Corsair and Crucial are the two company's I've dealt with, and both I would recommend highly. Poor old Kingston eh?
Don't have one myself, but been doing some reading into it. Seems like the M4 is the safe bet, provided you update the firmware. Which hopefully should not be difficult at all by the looks of it
Oh - & just as it's pretty new info, OCZ have a new f/w for their 6Gb/s SFs up as of about 36 mins ago... So i'd expect all the SFs (other than perhaps the intel 520) will have a new one over the next days - stability fixes (for those who need it) & minor speed improvements.
If you buy a new M4 from Scan it will come with the following sticker: So no need for an immediate firmware flash, it's already up to date.
Remember to use http://ninite.com/ for super-quick installation of multiple programs. Hope this helps
No it's not - the latest M4 f/w is 000F... ...it's been out for just over a fortnight. Having said that, the main reason for having mentioned the new SF f/w is that it adds further stability fixes (as does the 000F for the M4) - if you're happy with the current f/w on your SF then it becomes choice... Having said that, the changelogs aren't always complete - some alterations being kept 'secret' for who knows what reason - so my personal opinion would be to update anyway... ...though, if you wanted to be on the safe side, leave it about a fortnight so that other people can test them in case there's an extra issue introduced.
Thanks I hadn't seen that, but I'll stick with 0309 for a while as I don't think 000F will change much for me!
