Advice on picking an ssd

[bdwain]

I am about to build a new machine, and it'll have an ssd, but i don't know who makes good ones or what to look for.

it'll be an i7-920 processor, with an asus p6t mobo and radeon 4870 gpu. psu will be corsair 850tx or antec truepower 750 or something similar. memory will be 6 gb of ddr3 1600 mhz. os will be win7 rc for a few months, and then win7 after i'm done with the rc.

i want to get an ssd as the disk to hold all of my installed applications, and then have a wd 640gb caviar black drive to hold data and stuff.

I want it to be at least 60 gb. i'm trying to keep the cost of the ssd to no more than 150ish. i jsut want to minimize boot time and the time it takes to open stuff up.

(here is a link to new egg's ssd's)
http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=636&name=Solid-State-Disks

what are some good ssd's for my puproses? even if you can just suggest which brands make good ones, that'd be fine too.

also, i'm not totally against buying a 150gb velociraptor if that will perform around as well as the ssd (and not be way too loud). i've looked around and it seems like ssd's are way faster, but it doenst hurt to make sure.

thanks.

 

[RetiredChief]

Forget the current SSD @ 60 gig for < $180. Stay away fro cheak jmicron controller SSds. For the 60 -> 80 gig current pricing is $200 -> $250. For the #150 range get two WD 640 Blacks and put in Raid 0 config (short stroke) - gives about same performance as Velociraptor, Larger and cheaper.

Best - Intel @ 80 Gigs. C2 - $280. They just got them in and jacked the price up. should fall to $240
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3607

Next are the OCD (recommend the Vortex) and the Patriot Torqx. I bought the Torqx 128 Gig for laptop, and am satisfied.
http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Reviews/Specific.aspx?ArticleId=25727
http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Reviews/Specific.aspx?ArticleId=25610

For the Desktop I have 2 WD blk 640's in Raid 0. - Will stick with that untill SSDs come down in price.

 

[sminlal]

This is a good review of the Intel drive and how it compares to other SSDs: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3607

 

[MRFS]

There are several reasons for waiting 6-9 months
to purchase any SSD, as long as rotating HDDs
will do what you need in the meantime, albeit
not quite as quickly:

(1) the SATA/6G spec will become standard
for the upcoming generation of motherboards;
see the block diagrams for the ASUS P7P55D Premium
here:

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=769
(note that there is still a bottleneck at PCIe x1 Gen 2)


(2) SSDs with a SATA/6G interface will not likely
become widely available until Q2 2010;


(3) the best of the current flash SSD offerings
are now constrained by the SATA/3G interface
even if the device controllers had no overhead;


(4) when the SATA/6G products become available,
that event should put downward pressure on
retail prices for SSDs with the SATA/3G interface;
conversely, expect premium retail prices for
SATA/6G SSDs;


(5) also, RAID controllers supporting SAS/6G
are just now starting to appear; market competition
should also stabilize the retail prices for these
high-end controllers e.g. Intel RS2BL040 ("Big Laurel 4")
and RS2BL080 ("Big Laurel 8"):

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-6gb-raid,2388.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-6gb-raid,2388-3.html


(6) some tier 1 motherboard manufacturers are
already designing SATA/6G add-on controllers
e.g. ASUS as reported here:

http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=19975


(7) these SAS/6G and SATA/6G controllers will make
the most sense for SSDs, because the raw data rate
for the fastest 15,000 rpm SAS HDDs is still only
around 150MB/second (just saturating SATA-I).


MRFS

 

[MRFS]

p.s. Seagate's 2.5" Savvio 15K.2 supports SAS 2.0 6.0Gbps:

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/servers/savvio/savvio_15k.2/

Model ST9146852SS = 147GB

Model ST973452SS = 73GB

Both have 16MB of cache.


MRFS

 

[sminlal]

the best of the current flash SSD offerings are now constrained by the SATA/3G interface even if the device controllers had no overhead...

I wouldn't dispute anything you've said, but for most people the biggest performance benefit of an SSD is it's near-zero latency. While SATA-6 may open up some headroom for large sequential transfers, it's not going to have that much impact on small random reads, and that's where you tend to get your biggest SSD bang for the buck. So IMHO for most people there's no need to wait for SATA-6 unless they're looking for price reductions (and in this business those are inevitable, SATA-6 or not).