Best Bang for buck SSD solution?

[cl0ck_ed]

Hi, as ssd are starting to reduce to affordable prices what is the best bang for buck setup? As it is possible to get two smaller drives for the same price as a more expensive larger version, is the best bet raid?

The main problem with raid 0 is data loss if a drive fails, but as ssd's are far more reliable with no mechanical components raid 0 seems the way forward.



I want to know which SSD's would you buy for 300 notes?

• 2x 64GB G.Skill Falcon II SSD Solid State Disk MLC (64MB cache, 220MB read/110MB write speed)
  
• 3x 64gb Kingston v series 100mb/s read, 80MB/s write
  
• 3x 32gb corsair CMFSSD-32D1 extreme 220MB/s read, 135MB/s write
  
• 4x 32gb kingspec microsata ???? KSD-MSA18.1-032MJ 172MB/s read, 99MB/s
  

As far as i'm aware raid 0 of two identidal drives doubles read and write speeds and access times stay constant. Therefore 3x corsair extreme should achieve 660MB/s, 405Mb/s read and write respectively, with a capacity of 96gb.

Three kingston v series capacity 192gb, 300MB/s 240MB/s.What is the best solution?Thanks

Ed

 

[tinytomlogan]

the firmwares do not yet support TRIm in a raid config so if you want to leave it once installed get a single drive.

Id also suggest getting Vertex drives, the main reason being OCZ seem more commited than the other manufacturers atm about getting the firmwares spot on.

edit re-raid. If you start pumping too many drives in to a raid 0 you will need to start looking at buying a decent pcie raid card aswell to help manage all that rapid data.

 

[cl0ck_ed]

the firmwares do not yet support TRIm in a raid config so if you want to leave it once installed get a single drive.

Id also suggest getting Vertex drives, the main reason being OCZ seem more commited than the other manufacturers atm about getting the firmwares spot on.

Thanks for the reply. After further reading it seems quite complex purchacing ssd's and you have confirmed the problem of TRim with the drives getter filled with data and having to clean the blocks before writing.

Samsung drives seem to have problems in 4k random write, and the corsair and kingston (drive that oc3d reviewed) and many others are rebranded samsung mlc.

You are spot on, advising me that the ocz vertex are good drives, they use Indilinx mlc which seems to be very good. The intel ssd'd still arrive as the top dogs, if i'm correct.

 

[tinytomlogan]

firmware commitment is whats important now, the ocz's are cheaper too

 

[cl0ck_ed]

firmware commitment is whats important now, the ocz's are cheaper too

I've had a look last night and found that the Intel X-25m 80gb is better value than the OCZ Vertex series 60gb. It's 2.3/Gb for the intel and 3.2/Gb for the OCZ! Can the ocz be found cheaply anywhere? This Gen 2 Intel SSD had the new 34nm chips reducing its cost for the public. Also I saw a review on two 40gb Kingston SSD's in Raid 0 compared to the Intel 80Gb SSD and the single drive wins in IO performance and random reads which makes the drive faster in real world situations.

@TTL do you have any experience with the Intel X25-m drives? Would one of these be a good choice?, they have released Trim for them in firmware update.

 

[tinytomlogan]

Already said OCZ are the best single drives to be buying now dude.

 

[Ham]

Where exactly are the vertexs cheaper? Most places they are a fair chunk more expensive.

 

[cl0ck_ed]

Found these benchmarks and it shows that SSD's do help in real world useage but the VelociRaptor it snapping at their heals. I was amazed how little of a difference the SSD's make over the 10000rpm drive. If I compline all the startups times: win7 startup, ps4 +1.5GBfile, crysis Demo you get:

VelociRaptor : 120.7

OCZ Vertex : 93.1

Intel X25-m : 98.5

WD Green 1TB : 157.3

So from this data the best case scenario for the SSD compared to the Velociraptor and the 1TB drive is a 30% and 70% increase in performance respectivley. Is the price of an SSD worth the extra 30% performance compared to the Velociraptor?

Price = Storage X Speed

Therefore:

Velociraptor: 150GB X 1 = 150

SSD: 80Gb X 1.3 = 104

From this i can conclude that SSD's are still not competitive for the general PC user, yes the PC would be 30% faster for the general user and if the SSD is solely used as a Boot drive with Apps and games then it could make the system quicker. The 150GB Velociraptor will be a good option at 125 pounds but a 30% faster SSD eg the X25-m 80gb is 182 pounds which makes it very competitive for at boot drive.

Back to the price equation ignoreing storage capacity as used as a Boot drive: Price = Velociraptor Cost X SSD Speed Increase

125 X 1.3 = 163

Therefore you can get this 30% speed increase for a Boot drive for a 20 pound premium which is making me very tempted.

''Dropping an SSD into your new Windows 7 box will help performance across the board, as all three of the above benchmarks show substantially better performance with an SSD. Loading a huge file in Photoshop will be quicker, as will loading levels in Crysis. We're seeing performance gains of about 2x over a 7,200 RPM hard disk, roughly 1.5x over a high-end 10,000 RPM hard disk.''

What are your thoughts on this? For a Boot drive the SSD's seem quite competitive but another drive would need to be purchased for storage. If you already have enough storage space an SSD would be a great way to speed up your system by up to 70%. But as I have two WD 6400AAKS's short stroked in Raid 0, i'm not sure if I will even see the 30% increase compared to the Velociraptor.

Do you think I will see a performance increase compared to my Raid array? I could be wasting 180 notes on very little noticeable difference.

EDIT: Found this interesting graph, as the SSD would be almost full with OS and apps the drive would perform differently to an empty drive. Have a look:

View attachment 4029

 

[noobieocer]

if you worried you wasting money then dont get it, mechanical drives do the job fine and have more space. as for performance you will see a difference when you change from raid0 to single ssd. i was also pondering should i get a ssd and went on xtremesystems forums and one guy upgraded from raid0 raptors to a single ocz vertex and he said he saw a huge difference.

now with statistics like timing a few seconds don't seem much but if you opened office word up and on a ssd drive and loaded up instantly and on a mechanical drive it took extra 5 seconds in front of you you go whoa that machine is fast....

ssd is not a a must have product, but a product that will make that lil difference that makes a machine great.

 

[Sihastru]

Be careful when you're buying something that says that it does "up to" and not "average" or "sustained".

Maximum sequential read/write transfer rate is not what you're looking for when you're buying performance HDDs/SSDs for OS+Apps. They are obtained when reading/writing large continuous files (large blocks). What you need to look for is the small 4K block performance. Random 4K read/write performance is what makes your OS boot faster and what makes your Apps load faster.

For very small files, it takes longer to find the file on the disk then to read it. For large files it takes less time to find the file on the disk then to read it. Reading performance is more important then writing performance.

For everything else larger and cheaper mechanical drives are just as good. In the SSD arena, the best consumer SSD on the market is the Intel X25-M G2. If you look at it's specs it doesn't look like the best, but it does a lot of things better then most other drives. The TRIM command support is very well implemented on them. Other manufacturers might say that they have implemented TRIM support but don't expect the same performance improvement that Intel drives get. (Intel's TRIM is not the same as other manufacturers' TRIM, because the implementations in the firmware are different).

 

[cl0ck_ed]

Be careful when you're buying something that says that it does "up to" and not "average" or "sustained".

Maximum sequential read/write transfer rate is not what you're looking for when you're buying performance HDDs/SSDs for OS+Apps. They are obtained when reading/writing large continuous files (large blocks). What you need to look for is the small 4K block performance. Random 4K read/write performance is what makes your OS boot faster and what makes your Apps load faster.

For very small files, it takes longer to find the file on the disk then to read it. For large files it takes less time to find the file on the disk then to read it. Reading performance is more important then writing performance.

For everything else larger and cheaper mechanical drives are just as good. In the SSD arena, the best consumer SSD on the market is the Intel X25-M G2. If you look at it's specs it doesn't look like the best, but it does a lot of things better then most other drives. The TRIM command support is very well implemented on them. Other manufacturers might say that they have implemented TRIM support but don't expect the same performance improvement that Intel drives get. (Intel's TRIM is not the same as other manufacturers' TRIM, because the implementations in the firmware are different).

Thanks, great reply. rep'ed Yes the X25-M G2 drives do seem the best atm with the lowered price brought to the consumer through the use of the 34nm fab process. I saw a review of the kingston 40gb which is the same drive as the Intel X25-V 40GB and it seems to perform well for a boot drive but nothing else. My windows 7 and program files are 27GB so i may get one of these new drives for the boot. In the review the difference between the value 40GB and the mainstream 80GB in real world situations was very little. The 80Gb drive is better value per GB but the extra 40GB would need to be filled with apps and games to be worth while spending the extra cash. The Intel 40Gb also supports Trim which would make it perfect for a Boot drive.

 

[cl0ck_ed]

Update, the 40gb Intel and rebranded Kingston drive look like THE best value boot drive atm. The kingston SSD doesn't have Trim support yet but will do soon with a firmware update. And at 85 notes it is one of the cheapest drives per GB.

Look at the boot time comparison, note this is xin xp and isn't optimised for SSD's like Win 7 is.

 

[tinytomlogan]

Thing is dude ALL the companies are having TRIM problems, and I might add none of them really work yet.

Thats why I said get OCZ Vertex as they seem to be the most commited to getting the TRIM issues sorted, they are deffo well ahead of the others firware wise and thats the point. The kingston will be running like a mechanic drive inside a month of regular use.

 

[TJS]

Just got done reading the thread, lots of good info, in a bit of a quandry though. I'd like to get a couple SSD's, been eye-ballin' the Corsair Reactor 60GB SSD's because the R/W seems the best to go with the price (I buy from Newegg). Then again I figure I might go with 3x500GB WD Black and RAID 0 the lot of 'em... should make them pretty fast as a bundle. (Had 3 Samsung Spinpoint 160GB drives in a RAID 0, them puppies were hummin' and never had a problem in 2 years usage.) Which sounds better, the 2 SSD's or the 3 HDD's? I have a 1.5TB external drive for storage purposes and honestly don't use much of my systems HDD's for anything other than video games and 5+GBs of music.

Got another question one of you stallwarts might have an answer for... 6GBs SATA III. My motherboard, MSI P55-GD85 LGA 1156 Intel P55 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard, has 2 6GBs SATA III connections, and the manual says its a 'hardware' RAID as opposed to the RAID coming from the chipset (Intel Matrix if I'm not mistaken). I'm guessing that the 'hardware' RAID is faster than the Intel Matrix RAID, can anyone confirm or deny that for me? Also, if the 'hardware' RAID is faster could I use the 6GBs SATA III connections with SATA II SSD's, I know I won't get the 6GBs speed but I could (hopefully) get the 'hardware' RAID benefits.

I bought an Alienware laptop ($4K) for all-purpose, its fully loaded, but for gaming... it falls short. I'm used to the speed of a desktop, so I'm putting a new one together...

-Intel Core i5 661 @3.2GHz (going to see if I can at least hit 4.2GHz ;} ja rly)

-MSI P55-GD85 LGA 1156 Intel P55 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard ($230, but should be soooo worth it!)

-GEiL 2x2GB DDR3-2133 RAM (el cheapo ones but I'll keep my fingers crossed they don't explode o.0 )

-Chieftec SMART case (Mid-size case with EATX room inside, sturdy... and comparatively cheap.

-Ultra LSP 750W PSU (Way more power than I'll need... which is the way I like it.)

-el cheapo DVD burner (seen one, seen 'em all, Blu-Ray is too expensive to justify when I have three other BD players.)

-Tuniq 120 Extreme HSF ('cause we all like to jack up the juice, baby! ;]

*MSI Radeon HD 5870 VD (It's not a 5970, but for $300 less it definitely gets my vote... and should kick amazing butt.)

*SSD/HDD (still debating)

Thank you for your answers in advance, glad to be back on board!

-tom

PS: lots of new names, still got some of the gents from a few years back runnin' around? Frag, Mr. Smith?

 

[cl0ck_ed]

Ok, from what I have gathered, SSD's very very expensive per GB capacity. Therefore if you are on a budget then you will only want to store parts of your system that you want to speed up. This will more than likely be your operating system files program files and maybe some of you favourite and most frequently used games. RAID isn't advised for SSD's atm as TRIM is not supported for Raid SSD arrays. TRIM is what defrag id for HDD's. SSD's will get slower and slower without TRIM enabled, therefore single SSD's drives are the way to go for the time being.

Secondly, the boost in performance for HDD to SSD is considerable, but the performance difference between each SSD models isn't. The same way upgrading a HDD to a newer HDD doesn't yield much of an improvement.

The best bang for buck setup atm is to get a single SSD for operating system and programs, and get a single large capacity HDD for storage. A storage drive doesn't need to be fast, just the operating system drive.

I could squeeze into a 40-60gb drive for operating system etc, you may need more. As for storage a 1Tb or 2 Tb will suffice i'm sure.

As for which SSD to go for, I would get the cheapest you can but take note which controller the item has. The Intel 40gb value drive seems to be a steal, IIRC they will be bringing out an 80Gb model, the 80-160gb Intel mainstream drives are also very good. OCZ needs an honourable mention also, but in the UK they seen to be overpriced in comparison to competition.

Try not to over fill your SSD!!

Hope I have helped, if you have any other questions don't hesitate to ask.

 

[lasher]

What's the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow?

Sorry couldn't resist

 

[cl0ck_ed]

What's the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow?

Sorry couldn't resist

What?

 

[lasher]

Sorry monty python. Anyhow back on thread........

 

[TJS]

Is that a European swallow or a South African swallow?

(Always good for a laugh, I haven't watched MPATHG in some time... gonna have to pop it in again soon. ;]

I think I'll go with a couple OCZ 64GB Vertex's, one for the OS and my music, the other for video games. My external drive can house my mpeg's and other odd assorted esoterica.

Thanks for the feedback, gents!

TJS