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

 

[kasialorenc]

Archived comments are found here: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-2854101/ssds-money-august-2012.html

 

[babernet_1]

Prices are all messed up.

 

[logainofhades]

Yea, not sure what is going on with your price links, but many are way off/inflated from what the prices actually are.

 

[youcanDUit]

i didn't know sandisk had 10 year warranties. wow.

 

[pelegbn]

SanDisk Extreme PRO > Samsung 850 Pro ?

 

[CRAZYSHIT]

Kingston ?

 

[kasialorenc]

Prices are all messed up.

Since these prices fluctuate so frequently, we're only able to provide you with the list prices. You'll have to click on the links to see today's prices.

 

[Ikepuska]

Can I recommend a chart like the one for GPU's putting comparable devices into buckets so that people can comparison shop based on current prices with a reasonable expectation of where a given device falls?

 

[Kahless01]

that extreme pro 480gb for $188 on amazon is a steal. might have to pick one up

 

[KenZen2B]

Are you going to updating this article in June when the 2 TB and 4 TB models come out ?

 

[Tomi_78]

M.2 offering is still poor. I've been waitng for 1TB M.2 models to show up for months. SanDisk X400 M.2 1TB was announced in CES, but so far not reviewed or listed anywhere.

Same story with promised 1TB version of Samsung EVO 850...

 

[rantoc]

Still find it amusing that the way cheaper sm951 and 950 pro beats the far-far more expensive intel 750 in typical consumer loads (low queue depths). The 750 however shines with more complex loads, suspect its due to the firmware that's more data-center oriented.

 

[Charlie K]

Really Great article here. I'm about to take the plunge and now my head is spinning, there is so much to learn. I'm the kind of person, who puts his valuables on a separate HHD, and also backs it up, so I really don't need anything having a lot of storage. I can get by with a 120GB drive, but will almost certainly go with a 220GB one, the costs are better per storage.

Samsung is hard to go wrong with, but I may just start out on the Adata SP550 series, just for getting my feet wet, and then going with the Samsung EVO line, once I find them on sale. Now I know why Samsung sold their mechanical hard drive making to Seagate a few years back. Clearly the future is in solid state.

 

[kulwant]

I'd love to see an article that shows the results of tests/benchmarks of e.g. PCI-E AHCI SSDs on older hardware - e.g. Core 2 Quad era motherboards. I'm running a Corsair Force GT SSD on a P5K motherboard with that doesn't properly support AHCI on it's SATA II port, so intrigued if adding an SSD via the board's PCIe slot is a viable option for slightly better latency, responsiveness and arguable better SSD life through proper AHCI support?

I see the existing 8GB RAM, a Quad Core Xeon X3360 and a AMD 7850 meeting all my other needs for perhaps another year or two before I finally upgrade to whatever's best by then.

 

[HumbleSage]

"Most new solid-state drives coming to market use triple-level cell (TLC) flash and target the entry-level segment. We’ve seen 1TB drives dip down to $200 with rebates and short-term sale prices. This segment brings the cost of flash-based storage down to a new customer group. Many of these products are only slightly better than hard disk drives. "

Someone explain this to me? I've always thought that SSD's were always heaps faster than HD's. Am I too assume that TLC models are pretty much just HD's with a tiny more horsepower? I've always looked at SSD's as a speed alternative. If they are going to be marketing these and we aren't getting "great" performance isn't that just bull.... ? I don't want to make the mistake of spending for SSD quality only to find I'm getting HD speeds.

 

[GM619]

The PNY CS1311 240GB should really be on this list for budget drives under $60.

 

[CRamseyer]

"Most new solid-state drives coming to market use triple-level cell (TLC) flash and target the entry-level segment. We’ve seen 1TB drives dip down to $200 with rebates and short-term sale prices. This segment brings the cost of flash-based storage down to a new customer group. Many of these products are only slightly better than hard disk drives. "

Someone explain this to me? I've always thought that SSD's were always heaps faster than HD's. Am I too assume that TLC models are pretty much just HD's with a tiny more horsepower? I've always looked at SSD's as a speed alternative. If they are going to be marketing these and we aren't getting "great" performance isn't that just bull.... ? I don't want to make the mistake of spending for SSD quality only to find I'm getting HD speeds.

TLC is great for many users. If you install a lot of software or transfer large files then you will hit date write speeds that are lower than the best HDDs sold today. It really just depends on what you do with your system.

 

[Ewitte]

The worst case scenario the cheapest SSD can easily manage 50 times the 4k io of a hard drive which is most of the perceived system responsiveness. Hard drives drop down to like .1-.3MB/s.

 

[alan1476]

Where does the Kingston Savage 960 fit in?