Features - QOTW: Is now the best time to buy an SSD?

[alpha channel]

An SSD is definitely a good buy, my first one, a 60GB Falcon II has been doing sterling service in my HTPC for a good few years now and the soon to be upgraded 120GB Mushkin Callisto has served me well. However an upgrade beckons and I bought a 240GB SanDisk Extreme (based on the review here as it happens) to go with the other bits of the upgrade (the Callisto's going in my laptop), so you could say I'm a bit of a fan of them.

I can't see me ever building another machine without one and right now, seeing as I've just ponied up for another one, I'd say yep a good time to buy, a good sized drive is really affordable right now.

[CCODEZ]

I got the OCZ Agility 3 120 a couple weeks ago, do not regret it one bit. Although now I think I'd likely go for the 240 version as it has more space, at the time I didnt have the extra cash and figured 120 *actually 111 -_-* would do me fine. I toyed with the cache idea but figured if I was going to get an SSD I may as well just go full bore and get one as a system drive. My old 250 WD drive was clicking like mental so on its last legs anyway, I think the SSD cache would have killed it off! lol

Basically any SSD would just eat your boot and load compared to any mechanical drive and sure you could wait 6 months for the prices to drop *maybe a bit* but then you could wait ANOTHER 6 months for another drop... were do you stop??

[Bloke]

Had a 120GB Corsair Force 3 bought for £101. Sold it and got a 240GB OCZ Agility 3 for £138.
Prices now are outstanding!

[Sacred]

Gonna hold out another couple of weeks and see if they keep dropping or hold their price but can't hold on forever! Come mid July I will be buying a couple of SSDs for a new build I've been planning for two months now cant wait!

[OilSheikh]

I am an SSD and I like it.
Currently using an Intel G2 X25-M 80GB SSD
Will be installing my new KINGSTON HYPERX 120GB SSD tomorrow.

[ET3D]

I recently bought SSD's for my desktop and HTPC, so I guess it's a good time, but really like with all technologies the longer you wait the better you are (massive disasters such as with HDD's being the unexpected exception). Still, I think that for anyone who's wanted to get an SSD the barrier to entry is lower than ever.

[chates]

I think its still worth hangining on, I've got a 120GB Vertex 2 and need to expand that for gaming so I'm waiting for at least 50p/GB or lower before I g for a 240GB drive of some variety

[Englander]

Bought a 90GB Agility 2 for £40 from a gentleman over in Classifieds, which will be being installed when it arrives shortly. This means I have now put my old 40GB boot drive from my PC into my laptop and I must say it's fantastic. Luckily my space requirements are very minimal on my laptop!

[Tattysnuc]

I'm entirely governed by my available funds - over recent years I've spent a fortune on remaining "bleeding" edge, and it's done nothing but cost me a fortune. The real world benefits of most upgrades have been negligible - most recent upgrade has been my monitor to a 30" Dell.

I've got 2 SSD's in Raid 0, and I'm sure that I paid around £1.20 per gigabyte. Until I upgrade my motherboard, processor and GPU's it's pointless me buying more SSD's because I will need to upgrade my entire platform to get SATA3, or I'd need to buy an Add In Card to give me that functionality - and that'll cost as much as my next mobo.

In short, I'm doing the sensible thing now and pushing my existing kit as far as I can. S1366 isn't THAT far different PERFORMANCE WISE to Ivybridge - it just doesn't overclock as far, and kicks out even more heat.

The same goes for my laptop and server - pointless getting an SSD for these, as laptop has only SATA 1 connection, and server is on 24/7 - data is on a raid 5 array. SSD is just a nice to have for that monthly reboot operation when Windows updates come through...

I couldn't recommend an SSD more to people, but think about what your investment buys you. Look for Cat-the-fifth's advice and follow it. You'll get some sound advice...

[khemist]

To think i paid £400 for a 240GB HyperX when they first came out!.

[Malphas]

Price per MB will continue to fall I suspect as we get on that spiral of folks buying them because they're getting cheaper, and the price falling further because of economies of scale.

Quite the opposite actually. Flash prices work as a trading commodity (e.g. like gold or brent crude) so one of the major factors is supply and demand. Right now demand as a whole for flash (which consists of much more than just SSD obviously) is higher than supply which is why it, along with SSD's have dropped in price.

[Malphas]

Ugh, demand is lower that supple I meant to say.

[Malphas]

Supply even. Where's the frickin' edit button around here?

[Valinor]

Got a 512GB M4 for Christmas last year, I see now that they can be had for around half the price it was then (around £285 on Scan). Not that I mind of course, as I've been very happy with my SSD for 6 months (and I didn't pay for it ).

[DratUK]

I took the plunge with a SAMSUNG 256GB 830 Series SSD for £150. I hope it's as good as the reviews say it is, especially the reliability. A colleague of mine has gone through three SSD's in a year and they were Intel! I hope I have better luck. OK they were all replaced in warranty, but it's the fag of rebuilding the OS and software. I think I will keep an image of the SSD on another drive just in case.
Is this the right time to jump in, well as someone else said, "when you can afford it" It should arrive by Tuesday next week, I'll let you know how it goes.

Er yes they are. Just passed on my Vertex 2 to my son (128Gb), bank of mum and dad lol. Got the Samsung 256Gb on Friday, you wont be disappointed. Very nippy and the Majician software is a nice touch. The OS optimization cuts the hassle out of disabling prefetch defrag etc

[NitrousX]

Defiantly a great time to buy a SSD, a friend from work was on the fence on buying one. As he thought it was just a gimmick and a hype thing, but last week he decided it would buy one for his Mac. After scouring the whole web for a decent SSD he bought one of the OCZ agility 3 120GB for £80, from PC World he was amazed by the speed and now his mac boots up in 4sec's plus he has trim support on it.

He said in his own words that he's glad that he waited for the prices to come down. Myself I bought a SSD for my rig a intel 520 series, I love it. So much faster and reliable than the rest of the sandforce controllers on the market currently. Will I buy another? Yes defiantly and I will put my SSD's into a raid array and watch the Iops read and write speed sky rocket!!