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Best SSDs For The Money: February 2012
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1. Best SSDs For The Money: February 2012

Detailed solid-state drive specifications and reviews are great—that is, if you have the time to do the research. However, at the end of the day, what an enthusiast needs is the best SSD within a certain budget.

So, if you don’t have the time to read the benchmarks, or if you don’t feel confident enough in your ability to pick the right drive, then fear not. We at Tom’s Hardware have come to your aid with a simple list of the best SSD offered for the money.

February Updates

Earlier this month, Intel launched its second prosumer-oriented SSD. Dubbed the SSD 520 (check out Intel SSD 520 Review: Taking Back The High-End With SandForce for more), the successor to its SSD 510 leverages an SF-2281 controller, which means that Intel joins a large crowd of vendors building drives based on SandForce's technology. Great, right?

But what makes this SSD any different from the others (which incidentally already benchmark very similarly)? If you only look at performance, there's not a lot different. The SSD 520 is on par with OCZ's Vertex 3. No shocker there. We already know that two SF-22XX based SSDs deliver the same performance, so long as they share a similar memory interface. Both the Vertex 3 and SSD 520 employ synchronous NAND.

It’s true that vendors like Intel can make their own optimizations, and indeed the company claims that its firmware is all its own. Overall, though, those tweaks are outweighed by firmware elements that all SF-22XX-based SSDs have in common. After all, it's SandForce's engine. And that's why we see so many similarities reflected in the benchmark results.

So, if performance isn't an attribute associated with the brand you buy, how do you sort through the mountain of SandForce-based SSDs?

Intel, specifically, claims to use higher-quality NAND skimmed from the top bin of IMFT's production. If you were previously a little nervous about the cost-cutting measures competing vendors take to compete more aggressively on price, Intel's move could be reassuring. Conveying further confidence is Intel's five-year warranty, which easily bests the three-year coverage on most other SSDs.

You do pay more for the promise of superior support, though. At the low end, a 60 GB SSD 520 runs $2.25 per GB. In contrast, OCZ's Vertex 3 is only $1.63 for the same amount of capacity. That's a fairly tough sell. After all, we haven't seen any evidence of NAND endurance issues from other SandForce-based SSDs.

Some Notes About Our Recommendations

A few simple guidelines to keep in mind when reading this list:

  • If you don't need to copy gigabytes of data quickly or load games in the blink of an eye, then there's nothing wrong with sticking with a mechanical hard drive. This list is intended for people who want the performance/responsiveness that SSDs offer, and operate on a specific budget. Now that Intel's Z68 Express chipset is available, the idea of SSD-based caching could come into play for more entry-level enthusiasts, too.
  • There are several criteria we use to rank SSDs. We try to evenly weigh performance and capacity at each price point and recommend what we believe to the best drive based on our own experiences, along with information garnered from other sites. Some people may only be concerned with performance, but that ignores the ever-present capacity issue that mobile users face ever-presently. Even on the desktop, other variables have to be considered.
  • Prices and availability change on a daily basis. Our picks will be valid the month of publication, but we can't extend our choices very far beyond that time frame. SSD pricing is especially competitive, and a $15 difference can be the reason why one SSD makes the list, while another does not. As you shop, use our list as a guide, but always double-check for yourself.
  • The list is based on some of the best U.S. prices from online retailers. In other countries or at retail stores, your mileage will most certainly vary.
  • These are new SSD prices. No used or open-box offers are in the list; they might represent a good deal, but it’s outside the scope of what we’re trying to do.
2. Best SSDs: $110 And Under

Best SSD for ~$50: Boot Drive

Kingston SSDNow S100 (Check Prices)

Kingston SSDNow S100
16 GB
Sequential Read
230 MB/s
Sequential Write75 MB/s
Power Consumption (Active)
2.26 W
Power Consumption (Idle)1.08 W

Kingston's SSDNow S100 series is really intended for industrial use, and we're told that you'll find these drives in toll booths, Redbox machines, and ATMs. While this is not a performance-oriented SSD, it is a decent choice that can breathe new life into an aging machine. Most of us tend to write less data than we read. If you want a quick way to speed up your home rig, a budget SSD is all you need because drives like this one offer read speeds that outpace conventional disks.

However, you are forced to adopt a dual-drive configuration. With only 16 GB of capacity, the S100 only works as a Windows 7 32-bit boot drive (64-bit requires 20 GB). All of your programs and personal files need to be installed on a secondary hard drive. We've also had readers write in conveying bad experiences using drives that were too small for Windows to conduct its update operations. Be cautious if you use an SSD this small; capacity is sure to become a point of contention pretty quickly.

Best SSD for ~$65: Boot Drive 

Patriot Torqx 2 (Check Prices)

Patriot Torqx 2
32 GB
Sequential Read
270 MB/s
Sequential Write230 MB/s
Power Consumption (Active)
5.3 W
Power Consumption (Idle)0.5 W

Most first-generation SandForce-based drives are slated to disappear soon. That's because it costs almost the same to manufacturer second-gen SandForce-based hardware. The process of this phase-out is creating a few really good deals, though.

This month, Patriot's 32 GB Torqx 2 is a bargain when you consider it sells for the same price as the 30 GB Vertex Plus based on the older Indilinx Barefoot controller. Just one word of caution: Patriot is overstating the sequential write performance of this drive at 230 MB/s because it provides a single spec for all capacities. As we know, that's not how SSDs work. The actual number should be closer to 100 MB/s or so.

Best SSD for ~$80: Boot Drive

Crucial m4 (Check Prices)

Crucial m4
64 GB
Sequential Read
415 MB/s
Sequential Write95 MB/s
Power Consumption (Active)
0.15 W
Power Consumption (Idle)0.065 W

Crucial dropped the price on its 64 GB m4 by $20 between last month and now, making it cheaper than Mushkin's 60 GB Chronos ($85) and OCZ's 60 GB Agility 3 ($90). In most situations, that makes the m4 a better buy. Really, though, that recommendation depends on how you're using your system.

From a performance standpoint, the 64 GB m4 boasts superior random and sequential read speeds compared to SF-22XX-based SSDs with asynchronous memory like the 60 GB Agility 3 (read our 60/64 GB SSD round-up for more). On the other hand, the m4's write performance falls behind the Agility 3. But given our experiences with benchmarking real-world traces, read specifications remain the most important component of any consumer-oriented SSD.

3. Best SSDs: $110 To $200

Best SSD for ~$110: Performance Boot Drive

Samsung 830 (Check Prices)

Samsung 830
64 GB
Sequential Read
520 MB/s
Sequential Write160 MB/s
Power Consumption (Active)
.11 W
Power Consumption (Idle).08 W

We know that SSDs based on SandForce's DuraClass technology demonstrate different behavior depending on the data with which they're presented. That is to say incompressible data like media-oriented files and actively-encrypted partitions isn't handled as elegantly as compressible information.

In contrast, the behavior of Samsung's drive doesn't change based on the data it handles. And, as if to illustrate its all-around performance, this SSD won our 2012 Recommended Buy Award in a recent 60/64 GB SSD round-up.

Mobile Users: Honorable Mention for $120: System Drive (OS + Programs)

OCZ Nocti (Check Prices)

OCZ Nocti (mSATA)
60 GB
Sequential Read
280 MB/s
Sequential Write260 MB/s
Power Consumption (Active)
1.5 W
Power Consumption (Idle)0.3 W


Intel's SSD 310 seems to be in short supply, as we can't find it for sale at any major retailer. Fortunately, since our first look at the mSATA interface, other SSD vendors have have stepped in to fill that space. Although we haven't yet had the chance to test OCZ's Nocti, and therefore cannot officially recommend it, we're willing to give competing mSATA-based solutions a shot. Just bear in mind that this product is based on a lower-end SandForce controller only capable of 3 Gb/s speeds. Moreover, it employs MLC-based NAND.

Every mSATA SSD we've seen (including the Nocti) uses only half of its available NAND channels, which is why we wouldn't ever substitute a drive like this for a 2.5" SSD on a desktop. But our inclination here is based on form factor, not performance. mSATA lets you keep your notebook's high-capacity SATA-based conventional disk, facilitating access to the best of both worlds.

Best SSDs for ~$140: Performance 90 GB

Corsair Force GT (Check Prices)

Corsair Force GT
90 GB
Sequential Read
555 MB/s
Sequential Write505 MB/s
Power Consumption (Active)
2.5 W
Power Consumption (Idle)0.6 W

Last month, OCZ broke new ground by pricing its 90 GB Vertex 3 at $140. In 2011, you could also get a second-gen SandForce-based drive, but you had to buy a lower-end model like the Agility 3, armed with slower asynchronous memory. Compare that to the Vertex 3, which employs more performance-oriented synchronous memory.

Prices shuffled around a bit this month. The 90 GB Vertex 3 now sells for $150, while the 90 GB Force GT drops to $140. As a result, Corsair gets our recommendation. When it comes to SandForce-based drives, don't dwell too long on the vendor specifically. At the end of the day, NAND is what determines the performance of these drives, not the brand manufacturing them. Both the Force GT and Vertex 3 employ synchronous memory, which makes them functionally equivalent.

Best SSDs for ~$170: Performance 120 GB

OCZ Vertex 3 (Check Prices)

OCZ Vertex 3
120 GB
Sequential Read
550 MB/s
Sequential Write500 MB/s
Power Consumption (Active)
3 W
Power Consumption (Idle)1.65 W

Although OCZ loses its recommendation between $140 and $150, the 120 GB Vertex 3 also dropped $15 this month. That's pretty good in light of the fact that slower drives based on asynchronous memory, such as Adata's 120 GB S510 and OCZ's 120 GB Agility 3 sell around the same price. As a result, the 120 GB Vertex 3 with its synchronous memory easily wins our approval.

On a side note, this is the same SSD that earned our 2011 Recommended Buy award, and it's easily one of our favorite SSDs. It performs near the top of the 120 GB SandForce-based crowd, and 120 GB is just enough to let you install your operating system and several apps without worrying about available capacity.

4. Best SSDs: $200 To $300

Best SSDs for ~$200: Performance Alternative 128 GB

Samsung 830 (Check Prices)

Samsung 830
128 GB
Sequential Read
520 MB/s
Sequential Write320 MB/s
Power Consumption (Active)
.15 W
Power Consumption (Idle).08 W

Samsung's 830-series SSDs are arguably the fastest MLC-based consumer drives available right now, generally outpacing Crucial's m4. If you look at retail prices, the 830 only commands a $5-$10 premium over the m4, which is why we consider Samsung's SSD to be a better deal.

Best SSDs for ~$200: Premium Performance Option

Mushkin Chronos Deluxe (Check Prices)

Mushkin Chronos Deluxe
120 GB
Sequential Read
560 MB/s
Sequential Write515 MB/s
Power Consumption (Active)
3 W
Power Consumption (Idle)1 W

Mushkin's Chronos Deluxe is on par with OCZ's Vertex 3 MAX IOPS and Patriot's Wildfire. These are some of the fastest 120 GB desktop SSDs we've ever tested. All three demonstrate what SandForce's newest controller can do matched up to Toggle DDR flash. If you're willing to pay a little more per gigabyte to get better performance, we highly recommend one of these drives.

Best SSDs for ~$270: Reliable Option

Intel SSD 320 (Check Prices)

Intel SSD 320
160 GB
Sequential Read
270 MB/s
Sequential Write165 MB/s
Power Consumption (Active)
0.15 W (Typical)
Power Consumption (Idle)0.1 W (Typical)

We continue to believe that Intel's SSDs are some of the most reliable you can buy. Our opinions are shared by data center managers in the enterprise world, who we've polled about their own experiences with solid-state technology. Almost exclusively, they let us know that they lean on Intel drives.

As such, we recommend Intel's 160 GB SSD 320 for anyone willing to sacrifice the performance of a SATA 6Gb/s interface in favor of a more mature controller with several new firmware-enabled nods to data security. The ability to map up to one die's worth of failed blocks to redundant flash is an example. Additionally, on-board capacitors keep the drive running for long enough to write cached data to nonvolatile memory in the event of a power loss.

Best SSDs for ~$280: Performance Option

Mushkin Chronos Deluxe (Check Prices)

Mushkin Chronos Deluxe
240 GB
Sequential Read
560 MB/s
Sequential Write520 MB/s
Power Consumption (Active)
3 W (Typical)
Power Consumption (Idle)1 W (Typical)

Wow. Mushkin is on a roll this month. From a performance standpoint, the 240 GB Chronos Deluxe is one of the hottest buys that we've seen in some time. OCZ's Vertex 3 MAX IOPS and Patriot's Wildfire use the same Toggle DDR NAND, but cost substantially more. The difference is almost too good to be true. On Newegg, the 240 GB Vertex 3 MAX IOPS sells for $480, while the 240 GB Wildfire commands a $410 price tag. In comparison, the 240 GB Chronos Deluxe only costs $280. That's $1.16 per gigabyte, a fantastic bargain.

5. Best SSDs: $300 To $400

Best SSDs for ~$310: Performance & Capacity Option

Crucial m4 (Check Prices)

Crucial m4
256 GB
Sequential Read
415 MB/s
Sequential Write260 MB/s
Power Consumption (Active)
.15 W
Power Consumption (Idle).10 W

If you're looking for a higher-capacity SSD with a performance-oriented flavor, Crucial's 256 GB m4 is a solid purchase. Last month, OCZ's 240 GB Vertex 3 put up stiff competition, but the m4 wins hands down thanks to a $50 price drop.

If you want to weigh each model's performance strengths, the comparison gets a little trickier. In a desktop environment, most data written sequentially tends to be compressible, favoring the Vertex 3. When it comes to reads, the two drives perform similarly. But once you take into account that the m4 also offers more user-accessible space and a lower price, we think Crucial's drive is the clear victor.

Best SSDs for ~$360: High-Capacity Option

Samsung 830 (Check Prices)

Samsung 830
256 GB
Sequential Read
520 MB/s
Sequential Write400 MB/s
Power Consumption (Active)
0.12 W
Power Consumption (Idle)0.08 W

At the 240/256 GB capacity point, Samsung's 830 is the fastest in our internally-generated trace, outpacing the 256 GB m4 by roughly 20%. Yet, getting this performance advantage requires that you pay an extra 15%. SandForce-based drives make for a good comparison, too, but the 256 GB 830 outperforms the 240 GB Vertex 3, while only commanding a 3% premium.

For some people, that's a justifiable reason to spend a little more money on Samsung's prosumer-oriented SSD. Others might find it smarter to set aside that cash for a faster processor. In our opinion, you should try to balance performance as much as you can.

For most enthusiasts, this really tops out the budget, especially since we imagine that you'll want even more storage for user data, necessitating a couple of 1.5 or 2 TB hard drives. There are larger SSDs out there, but the performance picture really doesn't get much better.

6. Tom's Hardware's SSD Hierarchy Chart

We understand that SSD prices make it difficult to adopt the latest technology. Maybe that's why you aren't too keen on blowing a few hundred dollars on solid-state storage, especially when you can spend the same amount and buy four 2 TB hard drives or a high-performance processor. That's why it's important to put things into perspective.

Over the past five years, CPU performance has hit new and unforeseen heights, and processors are increasingly spending time waiting on data from hard drives. This is what makes storage today's most glaring bottleneck. Overcoming it requires an SSD.

As a point of comparison, a file operation completes 85% faster on a low-end SSD than it does on a high-end hard drive, but there is only an 88% speed difference between a high-end hard drive and a high-end SSD. That why you shouldn't let less aggressive benchmark results at the low-end deter you from making the switch. You don't have to have the best SSD to get great performance relative to a hard drive.

This hierarchy chart relies on information provided in our Storage Bench v1.0, as it ranks performance in a way that reflects average daily use for a consumer workload. This applies to gamers and home office users. The chart has been structured so that each tier represents a 10% difference in performance. Some rankings are educated guesses based on information from testing a model at a different capacity or a drive of similar architecture. As such, it is possible that an SSD may shift one tier once we actually get a chance to test it. Furthermore, SSDs within a tier are listed alphabetically.

There are several drives that we're going to intentionally leave out of our hierarchy list. Enterprise-oriented SLC- and 512 GB MLC-based SSDs are ignored due to the extreme price they command (and the difficult we have getting samples in from vendors). Furthermore, SSDs with a capacity lower than 60 GB are left off because of the budget nature of that price range.

SSD Performance Hierarchy Chart
Tier 1
Mushkin Chronos Deluxe 240 GB
OCZ Vertex 3 Max IOPS 240 GB
Patriot WildFire 240 GB
Samsung 830 SSD 256 GB
Other 240 GB second-gen SandForce SSDs with Toggle NAND
Tier 2
Adata S511 240 GB
Corsair Force GT 240 GB
Kingston HyperX SSD 240 GB
OCZ Vertex 3 240 GB
Other 240 GB second-gen SandForce SSDs with Sync ONFi NAND
Tier 3
Crucial m4 256 GB
Intel SSD 510 250 GB
Mushkin Chronos Deluxe 120 GB
OCZ Vertex 3 Max IOPS 120 GB
Patriot WildFire 120 GB
Samsung 830 SSD 128 GB
Other 120 GB second-gen SandForce SSDs with Toggle NAND
Tier 4
Corsair Force 3 240 GB
OCZ Agility 3 240 GB
Patriot Pyro 240 GB
Other 240 GB second-gen SandForce SSDs with Async ONFi NAND
Tier 5
Intel SSD 510 120 GB
Crucial m4 128 GB
Tier 6
Adata S511 120 GB
Corsair Force GT 120 GB
Kingston HyperX SSD 120 GB
OCZ Vertex 3 120 GB
Samsung 470 SSD 256 GB
Other 120 GB second-gen SandForce SSDs with Sync ONFi NAND
Tier 7
OCZ Agility 2 240 GB
OCZ Vertex 2 240 GB
Tier 8
Corsair Force 3 120 GB
Intel SSD 320 300 GB
OCZ Agility 3 120 GB
OCZ Solid 3 120 GB
Patriot Pyro 120 GB
Samsung 470 SSD 128 GB
Other 120 GB second-gen SandForce SSDs with Async ONFi NAND
Tier 9
Corsair Force 3 60 GB
Crucial m4 64 GB
Kingston SSDNow V+100 128 GB
Intel SSD 320 160 GB
OCZ Agility 3 60 GB
Patriot Pyro 60 GB
Other 60 GB second-gen SandForce SSDs with Async ONFi NAND
Tier 10
Intel SSD 320 80 GB
OCZ Agility 2 120 GB
OCZ Vertex 2 120 GB
OCZ Solid 3 60 GB
Other 120 GB first-gen SandForce SSDs
7. For Reference, SSD Versus HDD: Power And Performance

Do you transcode video, copy large amounts of data, or run your own Web server? If you consistently perform I/O-intensive tasks, SSDs are a great way to improve speed. But even if you only browse the Internet, SSDs still offer tangible benefits in performance and power. Take a look at the CPU utilization and power consumption results from one of our recent reviews:

A disk-based drive will always consume more power absolutely. At the system level, an SSD increases power consumption because CPU and memory utilization rises in response to increased I/O activity (they're not sitting there, waiting on a hard drive to send data). But remember that an SSD-based configuration will always finish those operations faster. You see that reflected in the charts above. At the end of the day, an SSD lowers power consumption. This is why performance and power go hand-in-hand.

PCMark Vantage (x64)
HDD Suite
Average
Power Rating (W)
Actual
Power Used (mW)
Average
CPU utilization (%)
Completion Time (mm:ss)
Kingston SSDNow 100 V+
0.68514.78:06
OCZ Agility 2
1.418610.97:54
Intel X25-M
1.424210.810:17
OCZ Vertex 3 Pro
1.620715.17:41
OCZ Vertex 2
1.926913.98:28
Seagate Momentus 5400.6
2.242610.411:40
OCZ Vertex 3
2.3
305
15.1
7:50
G.Skill SATA II FM-25S2S-64GB
2.636913.58:40