Best SSDs For The Money: August 2012 (Archive)

[adamovera]

Are you still holding off on an SSD upgrade? You may not need to. Vendors are cutting their prices yet again. If you're on a budget, drives under $200 sure are tempting. This may be a temporary phenomenon, though; retailers are in "back to school" mode.

Best SSDs For The Money: August 2012 : Read more

 

[adamovera]

Archived comments are found here: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-2379644/ssds-money-august-2012.html

 

[akula2]

My experience with high-end workstations by keeping Capacity vs Performance vs Saving $ in mind:

Example in Z97 non-gaming workstations, I use many dozens of:

Sandisk Extreme Pro 960GB - $490
Sandisk Extreme Pro 480GB - $270

Samsung 850 Pro 1TB - $612
Samsung 850 Pro 512GB - $339

However in a few Z97 machines, I use Mushkin Scorpion Deluxe PCIe 960GB SSDs - $760

This PCIe SSD literally thrashes the above SSDs, hence it's worth its price for the performance delivered.

For the upcoming X99 ultra workstations I'm going with many of these:

Mushkin Scorpion Deluxe PCIe 960GB SSD (main drive)
Sandisk Extreme Pro 960GB (additional drives)

Samsung 850 Pro or EVO? No. I'm won't buy anymore from this company.

NAS solution/drives to be used: Synology DiskStation DS1815+
8 x Hitachi Deskstar NAS 5TB drives with 128MB cache each.

 

[tomfreak]

I think the strong point of 850 series is its reliability, not speed.

 

[ubercake]

I'll only consider an SSD with a 5-year warranty (or longer, but I haven't seen longer than 5 years on these). Historically, the best Samsung warranty has been only 3 years. Because of this, I've never considered a Samsung SSD. After reading this article, the Samsung 850 Pro is now on my radar.

 

[Flying-Q]

@akula2 what metrics are important enough to you to justify your choices? I'm about to build a high end workstation for a client and was going with Sammy 850 Pros. Where do you see the differences?

 

[sea monkey]

Why only 850 EVOs listed as 'top value' when the 840 EVOs are still widely available and cheaper?

 

[serendipiti]

It is possible to upgrade the 840 firmware to get the write boost?

 

[QsD]

Am I reading these tables correct: larger capacity SSD's have better write performance?
Compare for example write performance in the above tables of Criucial MX100. They go up when storage size goes up (128-256-512 GB). In the 512 GB version they even come close to read performance.
Is this correct, or is it some kind of artiface of this type of testing?
Is it noticable in real life?
Why is this? I knew that, when an SSD is almost full, that write speed slows down. But also on a 50% empty drive?

 

[dennphill]

Thanks for the article and charts. If I am assembling a new PC and using an Intel Z97 board with an M.2 slot, where would my planned M.2 (2280) SSD (perhaps a Crucial M550 (SATA) 512GB (or similar Transcend or AData) or a Plexor M6e (PCIe) 512GB) fit in the charts if it's my primary/boot drive? (Maybe the Plexor is not a 'good deal'...and the Samsung XP941 (SATA) is enterprise and pretty expensive. OK, got it.) Any comments? I've asked before with no responses. If nobody really caress, just delete this post. (I'm gonna build it anyway.)

 

[Eggz]

Cool! The 840 EVO (750 GB and up) are still holding their own with the new 850 Pro - impressive! I bet the new 850 EVO will do the same for years, and perhaps longer, than the 840 version.

 

[Brian_R170]

Seriously, the <5% performance improvement of the 850EVO for 20% more money over the MX100 makes it a performance pick? It doesn't even deserve an honorable mention. I smell advertising revenue at work.

 

[Brian_R170]

In the 512GB size, I mean

 

[Jeremy Kincaid]

$69.99 120gb OCZ Arc 100? I've got one myself and everything I've read (since honestly I don't know how to test storage myself) seems to talk about how disruptive this drive is. It gives good performance for so cheap, how can you not recommend it?! I would have paid more for 8 gb of RAM!

 

[burnley14]

What about adding M.2 form factor recommendations to next month's article?

 

[Superwack]

I 2nd the inclusion of the M.2 form factor!

 

[josejones]

All of these SSD's will soon be obsolete due to the new NVMe interface that will come out next year allowing the flood gates of full performance from SSD's and M.2. SATA is now the new VGA.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/280390-32-sata-satae

 

[Eggz]

All of these SSD's will soon be obsolete due to the new NVMe interface . . .

F'realz! Check out the stated NVMe performance specs for Intel's current server product

PERFORMANCE
SEQUENTIAL READ : UP TO 2600 MBPS
SEQUENTIAL WRITE : UP TO 1250 MBPS
RANDOM READ (100% SPAN) : UP TO 450000 IOPS
RANDOM WRITE (100% SPAN) : UP TO 50000 IOPS

Only $2,600 on Amazon for anyone interested.

Note: Amazon doesn't mention the "NVMe," but it is listed with that interface on Intel's website (linked above).

A Samsung drive using NVMe also did even better in testing, which you can see here.

 

[strongdc]

I think there's something wrong with the charts. They don't have stats for Samsung 850 EVO.
Also, the 512GB chart has 2 set of stats for 840 PRO both 512GB with MDX controller.

 

[Jaroslav Jandek]

@QsD for the same reason that you get better performance with RAID in stripe mode. They use more of the same modules as the smaller SSDs and can distribute the writes to more modules.

 

[The_Icon]

I don't generally no longer like samsung, but hot damn, their SSDs are absolutely the finest of the crop.

 

[Ubrales]

Good reference material! Good article!

 

[Brogan]

Quote:
PERFORMANCE
SEQUENTIAL READ : UP TO 2600 MBPS
SEQUENTIAL WRITE : UP TO 1250 MBPS
RANDOM READ (100% SPAN) : UP TO 450000 IOPS
RANDOM WRITE (100% SPAN) : UP TO 50000 IOPS
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

I get way better than that now with my 850 Pro + Samsung RAPID mode enable. (well, except for the 450,000 Read IOPS - that's insane if correct)

 

[Eggz]

Quote:
PERFORMANCE
SEQUENTIAL READ : UP TO 2600 MBPS
SEQUENTIAL WRITE : UP TO 1250 MBPS
RANDOM READ (100% SPAN) : UP TO 450000 IOPS
RANDOM WRITE (100% SPAN) : UP TO 50000 IOPS
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

I get way better than that now with my 850 Pro + Samsung RAPID mode enable. (well, except for the 450,000 Read IOPS - that's insane if correct)

Yeah, that's what I was pointing to mostly. Transfer speeds are rarely a deal breaker. Also, check out the Samsung NVMe drive I linked. It's better than the Intel in every way. So crazy! Can't wait for that standard to mature.

 

[akula2]

@Flying-Q

If your client insist, go for Samsung 850 Pro SSDs.

However, I wouldn't buy Samsung 850 Pro anymore because it's overpriced vs the close competition from SanDisk Extreme Pro. Plus, SanDisk offers 10 year warranty and it's highly reliable. No wonder why I buy many USB and Memory card products from this company. Also note that if you're buying 240/480GB SSDs, SanDisk Extreme Pro beats Samsung 850 Pro at least on 50% parameters.

In a nutshell, I don't see any reason why I should spend $120 more per TB on Samsung 850 Pro vs negligible performance gains. Now, when I build 20 more Z97 high-end workstations (scheduled for the next week): 20 x $120 = $2400 saving. It's a decent money not to ignore.

If you observe many reviewers closely, only few of them add SanDisk Extreme Pro SSDs as comparison in Samsung 850 Pro reviews. It's obvious reasons (sponsored/paid), isn't it? Point is, one shouldn't simply form an opinion what many online reviewers say.

To me, the best performing with the best value is from SanDisk Extreme Pro models - over 60 SSDs of different volume as on tonight.

If your client is interested there is one more extreme SSD which offers gigantic performance:

Intel SSD DC P3700 400GB
http://ark.intel.com/products/79625/Intel-SSD-DC-P3700-Series-400GB-2_5in-PCIe-3_0-20nm-MLC

I'm considering 800GB/1.6TB models against Mushkin Scorpion Deluxe PCIe 960GB SSD for the upcoming X99 builds.