Need help picking a SSD

[Perfectionist]

Ok, I am planning a new watercooled system, at the moment looking at Corsair Extreme Series X256 (256GB) - It's what Scan are using on Jellyfish

I found this which is kinda worrying: http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=138534

I would say they're definitely not something to advise a normal user to install/use... seems like there's a lot of specifics with regard to partition offsets, wear levelling, and many other SSD attributes that could end up reducing performance or causing undue stress in the end.

£533.57 @ pchardwareuk via googleFroogle, +£40 markup on Scan @ £571

Here's a review/benchmarks:
http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.ph...=367&Itemid=60

240MB/s read
170MB/s write
(64MB cache)

I haven't bought a SSD before, wondering if any competitors are worth looking at for example OCZ Vertex Turbo which is 200MB/sec read and 160MB/sec write (64MB cache)

and then there's stuff that claims to have read speeds "up to" (god I hate it when marketers say that, it's totally meaningless meaning it could hit that peak once every blue moon but be 3/4 or 1/2 or less even that speed normally) 770MB/s and write "up to" 640MB/s... which is more than 3x the speed
http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/4-/11993141/Product.html

SATA is the bottleneck? These new ones seem to plug into PCI-Express slots
http://www.google.co.uk/products?q=ocz+256gb

[nibbler]

I would get a crucial - they have been getting great reviews + save a lot of money. Clicky.

[scaryjim]

The OCZ ridiculously fast PCIe x16 drives are manic - but essentiallhy they're just several SSDs on a PCIe raid controller. If you've got the money by all means get one: they're a bit pricey for my tastes though (Also you can probably match or beat by price by getting several lower spec drives and RAIDing them yourself).

All the "specifics" your quote worries about are generally handled internally by the drive controller: no need for you to concern yourself with them. If you want something to last and you're going to be using Windows 7, look for a drive that support TRIM in the firmware (but not the latest Intel one that's being bricked by a firmware update, obviously ). I'm afraid I'm too poor for an SSD so I've not really researched this much, but no doubt someone wll nip in after me with the critical details about which drives do support TRIM now...

[watercooled]

From what I know the SSDs that use RAID of some sort aren't as good to use as boot drives because the controller takes time to initialise so basically it would take longer for a system using one of them to boot than one using a single SATA SSD.

[Perfectionist]

sounds like something that would be fixed given the cost, hmm

true, it's double the price, but the PCI-E ones are 3x the speeds if those "up to" figures are actually accurate

[GheeTsar]

Don't get a Vertex Turbo - the increase in price doesn't go anyway towards justifying the mark up on a normal Vertex. Intel SSDs are generally regarded as the best in terms of real-life usage, but the relatively low write speeds do put people off. OCZ do have superb customer support on their SSDs - just check their forums. The same can't be said about Intel.

[Champman99]

Anandtech's rule of thumb is depends on your budget and capacity needs - although the articles conclusion is based on US pricing, I would suggest Intel is more favourable here as the Indilinx drives seem to have an extra price premium anyway -

Intel if you need 80GB or 160GB
Indilinx if you want 64/128/256 GB

This is of course assumign Intel get the issue with firmware fixed and we have Trim support soon

Both are decent controllers - if you want an indilinx drive then you want to get OCZ or SuperTalent as they are Indilinx's prefered partners. Crucial are also OK.

Heres the article: http://www.anandtech.com/storage/sho...spx?i=3667&p=9

I think its a good read overall, the guy seems to be a bit of an SSD expert.

Here is a post which summarises the controllers used in various drives, very useful for navigating the bafflingly confusing model names ( eg 40GB Kingston V series is Intel controller, but 64GB is the dreaded JMicron)

http://forums.overclockers.com.au/sh...d.php?t=781651

[Perfectionist]

Any other thoughts on the PCI-E ones? Perhaps slower starting up might be worth it if they really are 3x faster than SATA:

From what I know the SSDs that use RAID of some sort aren't as gaood to use as boot drives because the controller takes time to initialise so basically it would take longer for a system using one of them to boot than one using a single SATA SSD.

Not sure how long we are talking about here

[Perfectionist]

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Pho...CI-e,7719.html

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/....html#t1779187
Devices like the OCZ Z-drive which go into the pci-e slots are essentially tuned hardware raid controllers with SSD's attached. The manufacturers use the pci-e slot. (in the case of the Z-drive it's a 8x slot) to overcome the 3 Gb/s limit with the SATA interface. 3 Gb/s is about 300 MB/s where the z Drive does somwhere around 500+ MB/s of data throughput.

Found this also that looks interesting: http://hothardware.com/Articles/Fusi...-Match/?page=1

I'll go out on limb here a bit and say that a couple of years from now, things might look very different for SSD technology and that the SATA interface itself might very well be approaching its twilight years.

though the price difference on those ones is a lot more rather than the 2x cost of OCZ OCZSSDPCIE-ZDP84256G Z-Drive P84 256GB ("Read: Up to 770MB/s Write: Up to 640MB/s") @ £1149.99 versus Corsair Extreme Series X256 GB ("240MB/s sequential read and 170MB/s sequential write speed") @ £533.57

not sure why the price is so high (7x approx) for this one when it's roughly the same speed just 2x the space: http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/4-/11993103/Product.html

Any thoughts on this stuff?

[watercooled]

There was a good review in last month's CustomPC of loads of SSDs if you an get hold of a copy. They also mention things like support/firmware updates etc.

[Perfectionist]

hmm any reviews of PCI-E ones? most seem to not say a word about em cos they're new, Scan aren't even selling a single one

[watercooled]

Well they review one PCI-E one, a G-Monster PhotoFast.

[Jace007]

Intel TRIM has been causing Data corruption on its SSD - But their SSD are just the best. lov em

[Perfectionist]

Yeah I heard about that, I'm guessing it got quickly fixed though? Don't have any at the moment

[user1453]

Personally if I was going to buy an ssd tommorow it would be an OCZ vertex due to teh performance and that it supports trim

If I could wait a few months I would wait till intel fix there trim firmware and buy one of their gen 2 ssds

I would not buy anything that does not support trim

Note currently I beilieve trim does not work with drives in raid arrays and any drivers other than the default windows 7 drivers

[Perfectionist]

What is trim in layman's terms, what is so important/great about it? Is that the controller (I'm not totally sure what a controller is in this context tho)? I mean, the drives have 3x the speed, I don't get it:

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardwar...ches-z-cards/1

OCZ says that the drives feature 256MB of local cache, as well as four Vertex controllers in RAID 0 configuration, to boost performance. OCZ reportedly made the decision to use an Indilinx controller in its latest Vertex SSD drives, which we assume is the same controller used in the Z-Drive.

http://hothardware.com/Articles/Fusi...Match/?page=10

Fusion-io's SSD technology circumvent the looming SATA bottleneck

[..]the SATA interface itself might very well be approaching its twilight years.