"Best" Overall SSD for ~$100

I haven't really been following the SSD scene since I bought my Intel X-25M 80GB SSD for my Thinkpad T500, which I have been very happy with. As my Thinkpad X120e will be arriving very soon, I am leaning towards getting an SSD for it as well, however, I am loathe to spend more than $100 (or an absolute max of $120) on it.

Here are my main criteria:
1.- Reliability: I don't want to have to fiddle with various firmware or tweaks just to get an SSD to work
2.- Price: as stated previously
3.- Capacity: I need 40GB at the very least, although the more the merrier

In terms of speed, the faster the better, given the previous three points. Read performance is far more important to me than write performance, as I don't anticipate writing a ton of data to my X120e--I just need a "snappy" computer.

Another concern is power usage. I'd rather an SSD extend my battery life rather than cause it to suffer.

So far, I've been considering:
Intel X25-V G2 40GB: reliable and can be found for as little as $85, but relatively slow for an SSD
Crucial C300 64GB: larger size and very fast read performance, but has some issues in W7 from what I've read?

If some more experienced users could weigh in on the two listed SSDs under consideration or suggest other ones in my price range, it would be very much appreciated!

 

At this price point the Samsung 470 64gb was the only option for me using the exact same criteria as you are. I picked it up for $95 on sale at newegg. Intel 40gb is on the really small end. Crucail C300 is a power hog, dunno about any other issues. The Corsair F60 was tempting because of the performance but I decided against it since Sandforce reliability doesn't seem to be at the level of Intel, Samsung, et al and rma's don't always seem to be very efficient with the Sandforce oem's.

 

the x25-v is not really slow. i use one for my media center. feels the same as all the other intels. yes, writes are slow. but except if you write something big onto it from a gblan or esata, you'll never notice really.

and how much BIG things can you write onto it? yes, not much.

 

That C300 is gonna be your best bet for ~100. Unfortunately I cannot recommend the brand that starts with O and ends with CZ. There's also a Corsair Force F40 for ~104 on Newegg, still 34 nm.

 

If you have another $30 there's currently a X25-M (new) on ebay for $150, buy it now, free shipping, pretty decent price for a Gen2 Intel.

Intel SSDSA2MH080G2K5 (80 GB, SATA 2/SATA SSD) Hard ... - eBay (item 140519398251 end time Mar-10-11 05:57:47 PST)

 

Thanks for the replies so far

The Samsung 470 looks interesting, particularly since many people seem to say the power consumption is particularly low. Its random read performance seems a bit worse than the Intel X25-M, although I haven't seen a comparison with the X25-V.

Interesting to know the C300 is a power hog. It may be out of the running then, we'll see. The issues I'm referring to with the C300 are these: C300 Disk Freeze-ups in Windows 7 - Crucial Community

I'm not too concerned about write speed, but purely coming from specs, the X25-V seems to be quite a bit slower than the X25-M. Are random reads the same speed?

Also, how is power consumption on the X25-V drive? I've heard mixed things, with some people saying the Intel drives are really good in that regard, and others saying otherwise.

The Corsair Force F40 seems to be an interesting option. Its performance seems to trump the X25-V in pretty much every regard, except 4K read/write. Any word on its power consumption?

Unfortunately, that's more than I'm willing to spend. $120 is already pushing it. Thanks for the suggestion, though--I have one of these drives and it's fantastic

 

i don't know about power consumption, as it's in a mediacenter. it's all lowpower there, but no clue.

i think the read speeds are a bit slower, could be true. i just never noticed it on the system at all.


hm a used 40gb intel is available for 50$. nice price

 

For sequential write performance on Sandforce drives, take the benchmark values and subtract about 35%. Once the drive has been completely written to (which won't take long with a 40GB boot drive), Sandforce drives suffer a sequential write speed drop that TRIM can't fix - the only way to restore original performance is to secure erase. And then there's the Duraclass technology that throttles write speeds to preserve NAND lifetime.

With the C300, keep in mind that most of the numbers on the web are for the 256GB version which is naturally much faster since it has far more flash channels. Then again, until Micron gets the bugs ironed out, it's not really an option anyway.

Now that I think about it, Intel is the only vendor that's been completely upfront and honest about what you're getting when you buy a particular SSD model...

 

been reading this thread and now curious to which ssd to pick for gaming and editing programs? how big should i get?

 

Hm right, about performance: The intel numbers are at least a given. As Peon said, other smaller ssds are slower than bigger ones, too. But often not really benched.

 

That would be a steal--where are you finding that? Lowest on eBay that I can find is $89 shipped (USA), for a new drive.

Interesting. Do the Samsung drives exhibit this behavior as well? As I understand it, Samsung uses their own controllers.

 

wasn't a new drive. was a used one. which i still would get, depending on the target usage.

 

People fundamentally misunderstand Sandforce - their goal is actually to make the flash cells last as long as possible. The fact that Sandforce drives also happen to be extremely fast is merely a desirable side effect of that goal. With the 2000-series controllers, they've finally given their partners the option to disable all of the lifespan preserving technologies (RAISE, Duraclass, etc), but that's not within the scope of this discussion.

The Sandforce issue is actually a problem with Sandforce's implementation of TRIM not being aggressive enough (again, to minimize write amplification and maximize drive longetivity), so it shouldn't affect any other controller.

I have no clue about Samsung drives. Despite the fact that Samsung sells more SSDs than anyone, nobody really pays attention to them since they're not competing on performance. As a result there's very few reviews for modern Samsung drives.

 

Storagereview reviewed the 470 a little while back and gave it a glowing review. They did review a 256 GB version, though. I vaguely remember a review of what I think was a 470 in a Mac (so no TRIM), showing that it had the best sustained rates after extensive use, but I can't seem to find it again, and I remember there were complaints about it on the forum I found it linked from that the reviewer was somewhat biased.

As for Sandforce, it's a dual goal of delivering the best possible performance regardless or in spite of NAND quality (which is related to making flash cells last as long as possible, as lower quality NAND would naturally usually not last as long), and the best "real world" OS/boot drive (which is part of why they focus on compression and IOPS, since most OS files are compressible, and IOPS for the obvious OS boosts). They're really kind of designed to be "performance drives for the average user", so to speak.

 

I thought most Samsung SSD don't have TRIM but have a good GC to compensate?

Was Crucial's issues with the C300 that widespread? I've worked with so many 64 GB drives, never seen an issue (though anecdotal evidence on my part).

 

Samsung 470 definitely have TRIM, older models they didn't add until late, and many OEMs didn't support an updated BIOS with TRIM.

I would also recommend the 64GB Samsung 470 for ~$100 price range.

 

$100 for SandForce SF-1222 64GB SSD from MicroCenter. I have 3 and they are all running at full advertised speeds (if you use compressible data to bench them). Pretty sure they are just rebranded A-Data S599 drives

Micro Center - Micro Center 64GB SATA II 3.0Gb/s 2.5" G2 Series Solid State Drive (SSD) With SandForce 1222 Controller 122663

 

Thanks for the feedback, everyone--I ended up sticking with the tried-and-true, getting an Intel X25-V 40GB from eBay for $70 shipped.

 

Was that brand new price or used? Brand new X25-V 40GB can float around 79-89 on sale.

 

That was supposedly "lightly used"--I'm not too concerned, as I got my X25-M used as well. The cheapest new X25-V I could find was around $89, so I figured saving $20 would be worth it in this circumstance--could go towards a RAM upgrade later on

 

The Intel drives have the lowest failure rate of ANY brand SSD. They are all I am using right now.

 

+1

in the rare case that it would fail in some form, it wouldn't be that much money spent. and most likely, it'll be no problem at all. i would've done the same.

 

Samsung 470 Series 64Gb,,,

Cheers

3Fees

 

An update on the situation--the eBay seller who sold the Intel X25-V to me backed out, saying he advertised the wrong item somehow. In any case, I ended up buying a used (26 power on hours) Samsung 470 64GB SSD for $104 shipped.

 

Didn't consider the X25-V 40 GB brand new? But the Samsung drive looks good.

 

Brand new from eBay, the lowest price I found was $89 shipped for the X25-V. $15 more for roughly the same performance, reliability, and power consumption (from the reviews I read, plus users' feedback here) and ~24 more GB seemed worth it to me. Plus, I'm not too concerned with new/used for SSDs.