Some advice please gurus :)
My PC is based around the ASUS Rampage Formula (http://uk.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_775/Rampage_Formula/#specifications) motherboard so is Sata 2. I'm currently running off a pair of Velociraptors in Raid0 but these are nearly 4 years old and pretty noisy so I want to change them out for a 256GB SSD.
I'm not ready to replace the PC just yet so I'm looking for advice on which SSD to get that will work in my current rig (obviously at lower performance) but fly when I eventually upgrade.
Big shout for the Crucial M4 from personal experience, but it's showing its age and no longer fastest.
From what I read, the current fastest SSDs seem to be:
Corsair Performance Series Pro (but not their other ranges)
Intel 520
Samsung 830
PC Pro did a survey a month or so back if it helps, but I'm sure more learned folks than I will post more here soon!
Quote from: TeaLeaf;356020Big shout for the Crucial M4 from personal experience, but it's showing its age and no longer fastest.
From what I read, the current fastest SSDs seem to be:
Corsair Performance Series Pro (but not their other ranges)
Intel 520
Samsung 830
PC Pro did a survey a month or so back if it helps, but I'm sure more learned folks than I will post more here soon!
All what TL stated are good SSD's, tho as the states teh m4 is starting to show its age. (hence mine has been moved from main rig to laptop)
addition to TL's good list, is the OCZ Vertex disks. preferably the Vertex 3 (vertex 4 gets hammered in performance when it has less then 50% free space)
Whats your budget like and how much space are you looking for?
Tho my flavor atm is the Mushkin Chronos deluxe.. 240Gb SSD with sub 120Gig speeds at low costs (relative) only downside is the power consumption compared to other SSD's (averaging around 0.3watts load, where Chronos sucks 3 watts peak (still LOW in my world)
no you wont notice the high speeds when connected to a Sata 2 port (it will MAX out the sata2 connection tho), but when you upgrade or buy a sata3 controller, it sky rockets ;)
You can now get a 128 gig SSD for less than £50 but dont be fooled as SSD's vary greatly in write speed and particularly continuous write.
The M4 gets my shout, I recommend them to everyone after seeing the benchmarks of one of my friends with one (he is very happy with it). I have had issues with my Corsair as once in the blue moon the BIOS doesn't detect it but overall still happy with it as its just a minor inconvenience.
The PCI-E based SSD's (REVO-DRIVES) can be picked up cheaply at the moment if you keep an eye out. This will get round the SATA2 limiataions if you are worried about changing your MOBO and want to go faster.
DZ
Thanks for the useful info guys. I've gone for the 240GB Mushkin :thumb:
Quote from: OldBloke;356083Thanks for the useful info guys. I've gone for the 240GB Mushkin :thumb:
nice work mate :)
Quote from: OldBloke;356083Thanks for the useful info guys. I've gone for the 240GB Mushkin :thumb:
I hate you, im not able to locate it in stock anywhere in DK... -.-
prolly gonna try a German shop later today, as those disks are just mad
Quote from: OldBloke;356083Thanks for the useful info guys. I've gone for the 240GB Mushkin :thumb:
Installed and most things re-installed and working. Considering I'm running this on SATAII this thing really impresses. I'm now so tempted to do the full upgrade earlier than planned to get the maximum performance :g:
Quote from: OldBloke;356303Installed and most things re-installed and working. Considering I'm running this on SATAII this thing really impresses. I'm now so tempted to do the full upgrade earlier than planned to get the maximum performance :g:
What Kind of specs have you got ob and what sort of improvement did you see? I was thinking of getting a ssd to squeeze some more juice out of my current desktop pc as the q6600, 8gb ddr2 and bfg 680i sli are certainly reaching the end of their life with regard to playing bf3 but everything else seems to play fine.
Quote from: GhostMjr;356307What Kind of specs have you got ob and what sort of improvement did you see? I was thinking of getting a ssd to squeeze some more juice out of my current desktop pc as the q6600, 8gb ddr2 and bfg 680i sli are certainly reaching the end of their life with regard to playing bf3 but everything else seems to play fine.
I'm running W7x64 in 4GB using an E8500 @3.16GHz on the ASUS Rampage Formula mobo. GFX is catered for by a GTX460 with 1GB.
Windows starts (and shuts down) about twice as quickly as it did before but remember ...
- I didn't take timings before rebuilding so it's a finger-in-the-air job
- As a fresh rebuild it would be quicker even on the old setup
I can't judge any gaming speed increases as Steam happened to be the only casualty of the rebuild (support ticket in, waiting for a response) but things like unpacking large zip/rar files is super fast.
OB, a good hint for steam...
Use something like Steam splitter (or just make junctions) if running more than one HDD and install Steam on the NON SSD Drive. This will enable you to put the games that need the speed on your SSD and all games not selected will automatically DL to the NON SSD HDD.
I have this running with my 128 gig SSD and 1TB 7200 RPM drive. All retro and games where I dont care too much about loading times (single player etc) I put leave on the 1TB 7200. Games like ARMA, BF3 have a junction to redirect to the SSD for faster loading times.
You don't need to fill up your SSD with any old crap in which case.
I wish steam would actually enable this feature at some stage.
Hope this helps.
DZ
Quote from: DrunkenZombiee;356311OB, a good hint for steam...
Use something like Steam splitter (or just make junctions) if running more than one HDD and install Steam on the NON SSD Drive. This will enable you to put the games that need the speed on your SSD and all games not selected will automatically DL to the NON SSD HDD.
I have this running with my 128 gig SSD and 1TB 7200 RPM drive. All retro and games where I dont care too much about loading times (single player etc) I put leave on the 1TB 7200. Games like ARMA, BF3 have a junction to redirect to the SSD for faster loading times.
You don't need to fill up your SSD with any old crap in which case.
I wish steam would actually enable this feature at some stage.
Hope this helps.
DZ
Good info DZ. Thanks.