First SSD!

[Alexander Lee]

Hi Everyone,

I have been having a big problem deciding on my first SSD for my recently built gaming PC.

Anyway, I have been looking at either running two 60gb Corsair force GT SSD's in raid 0 or one 120gb HyperX Kingston SSD. Please can I have any advice about which set-up you would choose and why or maybe a different drive/drives altogether?

Open to suggestions

Any help and advice is very much appreciated, Thanks.

 

[S_I_N]

either are good drives I myself would opt for the dual in raid 0 as raid 0 on ssd's is just stupid fast. Issue others will warn against will be if one fails you lose your data. Been running mine over a year no issues at all. I like raid and the performance benefits it gives.

 

[Jadarite]

I'm hopeing this link might be of some help to you from the point of budget i.e more for your money http://forum.overclock3d.net/index.php?/topic/42499-intel-ssd-cashback-offer/ that said i would go with the 120gb or higher before trying raid0

 

[Alexander Lee]

Thank you for your comments. I quite like the idea of raid for the speed of it and if problems are rare then i will probably go in that direction. Was it fairly easy to set-up?

Does anybody have any experience with the Intel SSDs?

 

[NRG!]

Thank you for your comments. I quite like the idea of raid for the speed of it and if problems are rare then i will probably go in that direction. Was it fairly easy to set-up?

Does anybody have any experience with the Intel SSDs?

I set up an intel 520 240gb as boot today and it's performing well so far. I originally had an ocz agility 3 120gb as boot but I wanted more space on c: and a 'more reliable' drive, so I've resigned the agility to hold my lesser-used steam games ;D.

 

[dipzy]

Mushkin 120gb is one of the best bang for buck SSD's out there, affordable, reliable and fast. Corsair GT's which you also mentioned are good aswell as the Kingston HyperX drives and Crucial SSD's

 

[BKCXb]

either are good drives I myself would opt for the dual in raid 0 as raid 0 on ssd's is just stupid fast. Issue others will warn against will be if one fails you lose your data. Been running mine over a year no issues at all. I like raid and the performance benefits it gives.

If your running one fast drive and the drive fails you lose your data anyway, so in both cases if you lose one you lose everthing. You do have double the chance of losing a drive though, so that and price is the only things to consider when running RAID 0. I think the speed benefits far out weigh the chance of losing a drive.

Personally I would get a bigger single drive for your first drive, than later add another just like it for a larger RAID volume later.

Second option would just dive in and get any smaller drive, if you find you want more later you can always use it to cache a large hard drive, when you buy a faster boot drive, or buy another for RAID.

Intel drives are great, my only gripe about them is the price,but with the 520 series not only do they have the fastest single drive crown , but the price is very close to the competition.

Newegg has the 240GB 520 for $345, thats $1.43 per GB , the 120GB is $180, thats $1.50 per GB, and the 60GB is $110, thats $1.83 per GB

2-60GB will be faster than a single 120, but at a higher price per GB, to get the same space.

 

[Alexander Lee]

Thanks to everyone for your help!

I set up an intel 520 240gb as boot today and it's performing well so far. I originally had an ocz agility 3 120gb as boot but I wanted more space on c: and a 'more reliable' drive, so I've resigned the agility to hold my lesser-used steam games ;D.

Would you say that the OCZ agility 3 is unreliable compared to other drives then?

Mushkin 120gb is one of the best bang for buck SSD's out there, affordable, reliable and fast. Corsair GT's which you also mentioned are good aswell as the Kingston HyperX drives and Crucial SSD's

If your running one fast drive and the drive fails you lose your data anyway, so in both cases if you lose one you lose everthing. You do have double the chance of losing a drive though, so that and price is the only things to consider when running RAID 0. I think the speed benefits far out weigh the chance of losing a drive.

Personally I would get a bigger single drive for your first drive, than later add another just like it for a larger RAID volume later.

Second option would just dive in and get any smaller drive, if you find you want more later you can always use it to cache a large hard drive, when you buy a faster boot drive, or buy another for RAID.

Intel drives are great, my only gripe about them is the price,but with the 520 series not only do they have the fastest single drive crown , but the price is very close to the competition.

Newegg has the 240GB 520 for $345, thats $1.43 per GB , the 120GB is $180, thats $1.50 per GB, and the 60GB is $110, thats $1.83 per GB

2-60GB will be faster than a single 120, but at a higher price per GB, to get the same space.

Looking at it I might get a 120gb drive as suggested and then maybe another later on... What drive would you choose if you were buying a 120gb drive to eventually run in raid?

I do like the look of the hyperX 120gb but im not sure whether it is worth spending another £40 over the agility 3 or that Mushkin drive? Will the performance increase be noticeable do you think?

 

[fluffy88]

Here is a review of the HyperX (link). It's a very good performer but if you jump to the conclusion you will see that they suggest the Samsung 830 & the Crucial M4 are better options as the Samsung offers better performance/price and the Crucial is an extremely good drive, although maybe slightly slower, for a lower price.

Also a review of the Samsung 830.

As far as the OCZ drives go, they had huge problems with them when they were launched, although a latter firmware fixed many of the issues with the drives personally I would stay away from them and I think other most people would too.

I've always found dabs the best for SSD prices

Crucial 128GB m4 SATA 6Gb/s 2.5" Solid State Drive - £124.99

Samsung 128GB 830 Series SATA 6Gb/s 2.5" SSD Laptop Kit + FREE Norton Ghost 15 - £139.99

Kingston 120GB HyperX SATA 6Gb/s 2.5" Solid State Drive - £144.99

Intel 120GB 520 Series 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s 25nm MLC 9.5mm SSD - £144.99

Shipping Free!

Total £554.96

 

[Alexander Lee]

Thanks for the post, I think I will either go corsair or kingston on these but thanks for the suggestions. Does anyone have any experience of the Corsair Force 3 120gb? for an extra 5mb/s on both read and write it seems like it may not be worth it for the GT model which is priced about £20 more or £40 more on 2 drives, is that the only advantage of buying the GT version? ( Apart from the nice red colour

)

 

[fluffy88]

Just coz they have high read/write speeds on the product description doesn't mean the drive will reach those speeds or if it does, that's a best case scenario and you will only get those speeds under certain conditions.

What's more important when looking at an SSD or any part is to look at a few review sites to find actual performance benchmarks and comparisons to other SSD's.

From my travels I haven't seem many people suggesting the Corsair as one of the best drives, the Samsung 830 and Kingston HyperX are two of the top performers and come recommended by most.

 

[Alexander Lee]

I think I will be going for the Kingston HyperX drive then, but first I will look online at some more benchmarks. Thanks for your help.

 

[BKCXb]

I can care less what the sequential read/write speed is on a drive in benchmarks, 50Mb up or down won't make a real world difference.

What the drive will spend 98% of its time doing(when active) is 4K reads, thats the spec you should look at when deciding between 2 drives.

 

[Alexander Lee]

OK thanks, I will have a look again at that factor as I was mainly interested in read/write before.

 

[Tortuga]

I just lost my OCZ agility 2 128gb today. I am RMAing and deciding to go with the Tried and True Crucial M4. Probably not as fast as the newer sandforce drives, but It is frustrating to lose a drive, I will sacrifice speed for reliability in my old age.

Also, a separate thought, the Patriot Pyro is at a super friendly price right now on the egg, if you want to go the sandforce route. Which I am pondering myself, I could grab 2 of those at the cheap price of 1$ per gig.

 

[Alexander Lee]

Thanks for your comment. I am unsure about the crucial m4 drives as the speeds appear to be a fair bit lower than other drives. I know I should be looking at real usage performance figures but it still puts me off a bit. Although from reviews online I have seen that they are particularly fast at booting windows apparently so am still unsure.

 

[Tortuga]

The crucial will be a little slower than the new sandforce drives, but what it lacks in speed it makes up for peace of mind. Its one of the lowest returned drives, aside from intel. But even a slow SSD will be a huge upgrade from no SSD.

 

[tharionos]

corsair force gt hands down got one of them beauty's myself

but as said above their are more also equally as good ssd's out their

 

[Alexander Lee]

In order to try and get the highest speed possible I think I will probably go for the GT drives in raid 0... Does anyone have any experience with two 120gb GT SSDs and recommend against that set up?

 

[Jamsand]

Some older game drivers do not like raid