Hi, I'm thinking of buying my dad an SSD for Christmas - around 120GB. Was wondering what one is the best to get without breaking the bank? Thanks
Can you indicate what the target computer is? We can better inform if you tell us the laptop model or the computers motherboard. Generally speaking the Crucial M4 128GB is a very decent offering. For a long time now ebuyer.com have been offering around a tenner off of one using the code CRUCIAL128.
Hi, Sorry should have been more specific. It's a desktop PC. Not sure on the exact motherboard. Its a AM2+ board anyway running a phenom 550. Hope that helps!
To find out the exact name of the motherboard you can use a hardware monitor. You can download one from the link below: http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html Just load the program and the name of the motherboard should be at the top. Do you know if the motherboard has any SATA III ports? If not, download the program above and let us know the make/model of the motherboard .
I've checked the motherboard and it's a Asus M3A79-T Deluxe motherboard. Can anyone tell me if the Crucial M4 128GB will work with this board or if there is a decent alternative? Many thanks
hmmm the m4 runs at 6gb however that motherboard doesn't seem to support it, so you will be limited to the sata 2 speed
Any SSD will be restricted to the sata 2 speed on that motherboard, in reality that only affects sequential read/write speeds, everything else is well below the ceiling of sata 2 in any case. So unless you're doing large sequential reads you'll never really notice whether a 6Gb SSD is on a sata 2 or sata 3 port. Random read/writes which are of primary concern in day to day general use are nowhere near the saturation point of sata 2 and so an M4 shouldn't be ruled out at all. My M4, for example, is on my sata 2 port because the marvell controller of the sata 3 ports have not been confirmed to support TRIM which I believe is more important that restriction on a theoretical maximum sequential speed.
Because it turns out a positive result from querying TRIM does not actually mean that TRIM is definitely enabled in some cases. It's been a pretty well debated topic regarding marvell motherboard sata 3 controllers and they haven't provided a definitive answer as to whether it supports it or not.
I did too until I read countless articles around the marvell chipset on my motherboard and it turns out the sata 3 can throw back false positives. A tad annoying after I bought it partly because it was sata 3 and I read those articles after the fact. Anyway, an M4 is a good choice even on a sata 2 port if that what the OP goes for, I went for one partly on price but also because Crucial have been good with firmware improvements and my old M225 is still in great nick after a couple of years so I've found them reliable, oh and there's a fairly good warranty to boot. If you can hit the crucial site at the right time they often have discounted prices too (I would imagine christmas may be another time for this) - I coupled that with a cashback site and also used a discount code so it worked out about £1/1gb.
