Best SSD's ?

[Oreo]

Which are the best SSD's for under £250 ? Any size between 60gb and 120gb is fine, i just want to put Windows 7 on it and a few key apps that i use alot.

So which are best ? ofcourse i want as high read/write speeds as possible, but not if they have other issues or break etc.

Hit up your reccomendations

Oh, also.. i actually have no more HDD slots available, can i just lie this on the bottom of my case?

 

[Luke]

The ocz vortex series is supposed to be great. I think ocz is pretty much the leader in ssd's right now. Other then intel's really high end ones, but those are really expensive.

Yeah you could lay one on the bottom of your case, they don't vibrate so it would not make any noise. They don't get hot either, so should be fine. Although if you did not want to do that you could get an adapter for the drive bays. to turn it into an hdd bay, which in turn you could but a 2.5 adapter in for the ssd lol.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

SSDSA2MH080G2C1 - 80GB Intel MLC-Flash, 2.5" SSD, SATA 3Gb/s, Read 250MB/s, Write 70MB/s, OEM - Scan.co.uk

The Intel X25-M G2 is just about the best SSD on the market. Since SSD's don't have any moving parts I don't see any problems with it sitting on the bottom of the case

 

[Oreo]

Thanks, yeh i heard OCZ were good but wanted to check.

PJ, if those intel are so good, why is there write speed half that of the OCZ drives ?

 

[Puddle Jumper]

Sequential write speeds aren't what matters, random read and write speeds of small files are more important. When you are using your system it writes far more 4kb files than it does multi gb ones. If you don't believe me look at this anandtech article.

AnandTech: Intel X25-M G2: Dissected and Performance Preview

Back when the Intels cost well over $300 the Vertex was the drive to get because it was cheaper, not because it was faster. Now that the X25-M's price has drooped there is no reason to go with OCZ.

 

[Oreo]

So sequential write is only used when you are copying several 100mb files around ?
So are random read and random write used for stuff like opening applications, such as Firefox etc ? what about loading large programs such as the O/S and Games - is it still fast then ?

 

[Puddle Jumper]

Random read and write speeds are largely responsible for how fast and responsive a system feels. Loading games and applications would be dependent on read speeds, whether they are sequential or random may come down to the situation. Most SSD's have great sequential speeds, at this point they are limited by the SATA II interface. In addition to that the X25-M G2 has the top random read performance of all the drives they tested so either way you are covered. Intel has also confirmed that they will release a firmware update for the X25-M G2 enabling TRIM (explained in the anandtech article below) once Windows 7 is launched so that is is another advantage to going with one of their drives

Since you are using this for a OS drive sequential writes would be the least important criteria since you will rarely be writing very large files to it.

This article is pretty long but it goes into a lot of detail on how SSD's work and what to look for in one.

AnandTech: The SSD Anthology: Understanding SSDs and New Drives from OCZ

 

[Luke]

SSDSA2MH080G2C1 - 80GB Intel MLC-Flash, 2.5" SSD, SATA 3Gb/s, Read 250MB/s, Write 70MB/s, OEM - Scan.co.uk

The Intel X25-M G2 is just about the best SSD on the market. Since SSD's don't have any moving parts I don't see any problems with it sitting on the bottom of the case

Nice. I didn't realize the price had dropped that much. I would go with this one over any ocz, unless you find one for a really good price.

 

[veedubfreak]

I'm using the vertex 120gb. Windows 7 boots in about 20 seconds from the time i hit the power button.

 

[Slaymate]

I'm using the vertex 120gb. Windows 7 boots in about 20 seconds from the time i hit the power button.

And that's fast if his EVGA mobo is like mine. It takes close to 20 seconds before my PC even posts after pressing the power switch