best ssd option for the m14x

hey guys im just ordered the m14x treading in the m11x r3 for it. i was looking at the intel 510 and the m4. i know that when it comes to gaming the best advantage is access time yes in some cases an ssd will increase your fps anyways i was wondering if anyone has any experience with the above ssd's and if i should go with 120/128 or 240/256? will i really need the extra space if all im doing is gaming. thanks again guys!

 

I'd be interested as well to see what folks say. I pulled the trigger on a kingston 96GB (since they had amazon rebates) to pair with a M17x. Now that I've switched to the M14x, I'm guessing I'll need to return that and order bigger.

 

The problem with an SSD as I see it is that is a technology who the producers does not fully understand yet - last month ( corsair was it not?) had to take back all their SSD because of a big number of errors.

Real time experience the difference is close to nothing when it comes to gaming and at the end I ended on a Cursial C300 , it won against it own follow-up at some testes the C400 ( faster win and worse gaming-load - 1 second)

Anyway - even the C300 had a bad start with all the driver issiues but that is all in the past, everything where I looked people are sooo happy with their C300 even after a year and the reason that I ended on a 2010 disk last month was simply that I asked a lot of people on a lot of different boards and they chared my opinion - with new ssd they can turn up worse over time, and I add maybe the chance for that is small but I still prefered an ssd who was on the marked for some time because like I said - the technology is still a little difficult.

But I want you to know thats my opinion, but since SSD is still at the first stage I wanted to go safe. Other may not share that opinion but all the topics regarding SSD-trouble I dediced I dont want to be one of them and my C300 is fast as lighting and all the reports say that it stays that way (Yeah, all SSD now have TRIM as a standard) - but its really ridicilous how fast it load windows and games and since Im a gamer and a student im happy as when I saw Dark Night the movie at the first time.

On a sidenote: After using SSD and like in my case - fixing my dads laptops ; I really hate HDD - god damn that is slowly.

When it comes to place 128 gig will work if you have one portal HDD usb 3.0 with it - I have a mediacenter home and on my m14x I only have games and spotify as one random movie and some schoolfiles. But 128 gig is enough if you remove old games that you not going to play anymore, but next time I going to upgrade I think I will go for an 256gig, its up to you really - how much space you are using.


But keep in mind that the 256 versions of some disk can be slower or the otherway around depending on what disk you want to go for, you just have to google the disk you desire. In my case the C300 256 were slower then the 128. http://forums.crucial.com/t5/Solid-...ificially-capped-Why-different-than/m-p/11415

You can use an extra HDD if you remove the dvd-drive but since I using this laptop at school I need as much watt accessable and as little soundproducing as possible so a portable HDD is recommended if you are used to having a lot of space.

 

SSD will not improve framerates AT ALL. SSD's won't help much with gaming except for game load times. For general windows use it will improve performance though, and having it solid state improves durability.

In many cases the SSD will improve battery life if your machine sips power at idle already (i.e. < 10W at idle), maybe giving an extra 30-60 minutes life. But not all SSD's are power sipping, some, like the Kingston SNV325, are power hungry drives, although the Kingston V+ drives are pretty decent with power. Intel, Corsair, Samsung drives in general have low power consumption at idle and better than HDD's in most cases when active.

Idle power is the most important factor because unless you're constantly moving files, is the state that your SSD will be at.

In any case pretty much any recent SSD will be worlds faster than any laptop hard drive. The marketing numbers for sequential throughput are just that, marketing. It means little to most users because most windows tasks will use smaller files accessed randomly not huge files sequentially. So even though your system supports SATA III, it will only take advantage of that speed during large sequential file reads and writes, and only will benefit coming from another SSD that can read/write at that speed. So if you find a good deal on a SATA II drive, most of which have similar 4k random performance as the SATA III drives, I'd get it.

 

HTWingNut.... While I do agree an SSD should not increase Frame rating... i have a 120gb agility 3, and it did raise my FPS while playing starcraft 3 and other games...... (could be just a coincidence but it did)

the agility 3 was fairly priced at 180 (after 30 MIR) I would have went with a 256gb but they are like 500 bucks!

I cant say wether I would notice a difference between a sata 2 or sata 3 SSD but It is worlds of difference between my 500gb 7200RPM!

Just keep in mind that these drives will be worth like 50% less in a few years... the tech is still getting worked out..... just gotta weigh out the cons and pros....

 

I agree with Htwingnut,best is all opinion, in real world performance which is what matters I think all ssds are so close in real world use.I have a year old intel that still smokes!I truly dont feel a difference between my vertex and Intel,not for what I use it for.And no, it won't make noticeable fps in games,faster loads.yes.The real world performance or (feel),is light years ahead of any mechanical hd.Imho any ssd sata2 or sata3 will feel amazing in your m14x.Congrats by the way Mightymax.

 

Just as a possible alternative, you could look into a Seagate Momentous XT drive. It's basically a hybrid SSD and HDD, and what it does is cache all the commonly used files (like windows boot, games you play a lot, applications you open a lot ect.) on the 4gig SSD partition so they load almost as fast as a full blown SSD. The upside being it has 500gigs of space so if you don't want to get a SSD and ditch the optical drive for a second HDD it's a decent compromise. On the down side it can't store everything on the SSD portion obviously and it usually takes about 4-5 times of opening an application for files to be stored on there. I think as far as benching it speed wise it falls between a 10,000 RPM HDD and an average SSD on average. I've replaced any drive I have that isn't already SSD with this drive and I'm completely happy with all of them and the speed increase is very noticeable.

Just figured Id toss that out there for people who want a faster drive but need more storage than most SSD's offer. Also a 256gig SSD will run you $500ish where as the Momentous XT 500gig can be had for $90-$110 on newegg depending on when you catch the deals. Just my .02!

 

Only games that use persistent loading from the HDD may see an increase in fps, or prevent lag or pauses when entering a new "area". Games like WoW might benefit. But there is no way Starcraft 2 will benefit unless you are running out of RAM and caching off the hard drive. But if your system has 4GB of RAM you shouldn't have that problem unless you're using 3GB of RAM for other stuff at the same time. And in that case, 8GB RAM cost ~ $60, a lot cheaper than an SSD.

Yep. I've run through at least a dozen different SSD's, and other than possibly faster boot times by seconds, it won't make much difference.

You can find 256GB SSD's for $300-$350 on a deal. Most 256GB drives are slower, however, but again, in real world use won't be noticeable. I scored a Western Digital SiliconEdge Blue 256GB SSD brand new for $200 during a NewEgg deal buster, but that's rare.

The Momentus XT is definitely a good alternative. I used one for a good six months or so and does improve load times and your most commonly used apps. Otherwise it acts like a regular hard drive for everything else, and also writes are not improved by the 4GB NAND chip. It does have 32MB of cache though, compared with 16GB of most other hard drives (even WD Scorpio Black), so that helps with write speeds a bit. And if you want one that is completely silent with pretty much no vibration, get the 250GB version because it's a single platter drive instead of two like the 320GB or 500GB versions.

 

ahhh lucky you got in on that deal! it was up for a whole 3 minutes!, I saw it was all excited and then bam its gone

 

Yea, that's a really good deal man. Even though 256 might be a little slower compared to the 128 version it's still tons faster than a 7200 RPM HDD.

*Edit* I'm looking on newegg and the cheapest 256gig SSD is like $430 where are you seeing them for around $300? Guessing random sales? If you can hold out till black friday that's where you save a TON.

 

eBay.

siliconedge 256gb | eBay

 

You're my hero. I hardly buy from ebay I anymore so I never even looked there lol thanks!

 

I don't buy there much either, but sometimes it's the best place for something like this. Most of those are probably people that gobbled up the Newegg deals. If I was smart I would have bought a bunch, but I happened on the sale at the last minute and didn't have my cc with me, only used my Newegg account which didn't have much available credit.

 

I got an intel 120gb 320 from BB,the sales supervisor was cool,but not too smart.Lol he gave it to me for 149.us cuz the box was a little dented.He said I should get a larger 7200 rpm theres not much difference in speed and they are real hard to install.Lol I really don't mean to laugh but I'm going back tomorrow to dent a few more if theyr'e in stock.By the way its pretty fast,and sooo easy to get up and running.I never thought I'd say this but,"thank you BB management"

 

lol @ joegreen1967. Good move. I guess BB's idiocy helps customers sometimes then! I would have bought ten myself! lol.

 

Yea BB's computer dept. knowledge is usually quite lacking. Good buy!

 

HTwingnut LOL,I just bought the last one I would've got 10 if they had them! I paid the same cuz it was the last one and I had receipt,not that they asked for it.I'm not trying to act like an a@@ but hey every dollar counts.right?And the manager!? Was the one who agreed I should get a 7200 since theyr'e just as fast as ssds.Lmao!I just got the slower ssd.LOL.Also the intel seems to be the easiest to convert in our m14x i noticed the newest firmware,I think BB just got these,and they only had a couple,but according to the geek s...d experts they dont sell alot of ssds.For what it's worth I'm happy as he$l I was getting annoyed with the 2 minute boot times,now it's about 17 seconds.Amazing! Client, you said it!I was shocked I didn't expect them to be geniuses but an ssd not that fast.my 12 year old knows better.Again not being an a$$ but you should know something about your products,I understand most are underpaid people just trying to make some $$$ but hey If it helps us get a better deal on tech,thanks BB.

 

The only two I would consider would be the 510 series or the m4, so you got that part down. if you have the cash you could go for the 510. I love my m4 and havent had any problems with it. Other SSD have some minor issues, so I would stick with those two

 

i also took a look at intel ssd's and the 320 160gb is cery tempting
by the way HTWingNut ur avatar is the the best ive seen by far lmao

 

When you install an SSD aftermarket, do you start from scratch as far as programs and drivers, or is there some way to clone everything over really quickly?

 

I think most people start fresh, it's a lot more hassle to clone a bigger drive to a smaller one even if all your info on the bigger one would easy fit on the smaller SSD. I think it has something to do with the volume file size of the original hard drive. But yea I know it's possible to go from a bigger to a smaller but it is a ton more hassle.

 

i would recommend a fresh install.... its takes a bit of time but it is well worth it..... i usually reformat every 2 years or so.... makes the computer a "like new feel"