geekhack
geekhack Community => Other Geeky Stuff => Topic started by: dotancohen on Wed, 05 September 2012, 06:24:10
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I'll be in the US for a day in early October, so I'd like to take the opportunity to acquire an affordable SSD drive for the OS:
http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=636&name=Internal-SSD&Order=PRICE
There are quite a few drives available for ~$50 USD. Of course, the SSD market is full of lemons, and I'm getting deeper and deeper into confusion googling the available SSDs. For about $50 USD (+- $10) which of the Newegg SSDs would the Geekhack community recommend? It will be running a Debian-based home Linux distro (~12 GiB) and I'll put the Windows 7 VM on it as well (~30 GiB). All my personal files I'll keep on spinning platters.
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You can get 120GB SSD's on sale every now and again. I recommend an OCZ Vertex 3 or 4. Newegg had them on sale for $80 last week sometime.
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Small ssd are poor value for $/GB. I recommend to look at larger ones 120GB+. For $20 more you can get twice the size, or sometimes on sales they can even be same price or cheaper than smaller sizes. Personally I would buy anything but OCZ, they have the highest fail rate in the industry.
Many of them are the same when you get down to it, use same sandforce controllers and nand from same source, all made in same 2-3 factory probably. Only a few are really different like Crucial and Samsung.
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like for a physical store location is when you want to buy? where are you going to be exactly, some states have good retail stores that have internet prices like the store "frys", just say which state and county/borough/city you'll be in and we'll find you a store to goto first (since you'll be limited by actual physical store location and time).
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I've got the 120 GB version of the Intel 520 SSD and it's been perfect.
http://www.amazon.com/Intel-Series-2-5-Inch-Solid-State-Drive/dp/B006VCP9G6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1333687067&sr=8-1
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Noooooooooooooooooooo.... No OCZ.. don-t do it.... stop right there.
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I'd just get a Crucial M4, although I suspect they're a bit more than $50. I would second everyone else's comments about getting more than 64GB too. I'd go for 128GB at least, although I think 256GB might be the best $ per GB at the moment.
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The most important thing here is that you wait for black Friday, because it's going to get Super cheap.
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I've got the 120 GB version of the Intel 520 SSD and it's been perfect.
http://www.amazon.com/Intel-Series-2-5-Inch-Solid-State-Drive/dp/B006VCP9G6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1333687067&sr=8-1
^ This
Intel SSD's really rock, just waiting for prices to come down on some of the larger drives.
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Word on the professional street seems to be that Samsung's 830 is the most reliable option for consumers. It's also fast, but not quite top-notch. That's why I got a Sandisk Extreme 240GB myself, which is supposed to be one of the fastest SATA3 drives currently out there.
The price difference between 64 and 128 GB models is indeed rather small, and 128s are often on special offer. So based on reviews and other reliable sources, I'd recommend a Samsung 830 or Sandisk Extreme series in that capacity.
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Now I personally think people should stop complaining about the OCZ being that unreliable. YES I do agree that initially it had some issues, BUT they did update the firmware. FOR me I had 5 Vertex 3 and all of them were actually fine.
But Intel is the best way to go for SSDs. They to tend to go 1:1 GB:$ on sales
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But Intel is the best way to go for SSDs. They to tend to go 1:1 GB:$ on sales
Intel isn't the best, just one of the best. And you can easily find top-of-the-line SSDs for a MUCH better price than $/GB.
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I also suggest a Crucial M4. The controller is really high quality. I've had mine for about a year with no issues or hiccups at all.
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For what it's worth, mine is OCZ and it's worked perfectly since I've had it (~9 months). Newegg has a lot of those shell shocker deals and similar sales, always check those first imo
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I wouldn't recommend 64gb ones. I would get 120 at bare minimum. I'm using an 120gb Intel 520 myself, and i don't have enough space lol. But it depends what you want, if you're just gonna put OS that's fine, but you can't fit more than that. 64gb would go down to like 50gb of usable storage. after OS, you can possibly fit one game, and you need to leave 10gb at least free for your SSD's life longevity.
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Keep an eye out on http://slickdeals.net/ there's constant deals being posted on there. I have a samsung 830 and love it, just wish I had a sata 3 mobo.
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I really like my Kingston Hyper X, I got a 120 gb for around 70 bucks through a local sale. I absolutely love it.