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Best SSDs For The Money: August 2011

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We've added more SSDs to our database and observed a number of significant price changes in the past month. As a result, this months recommendations undergo a notable revamp. And to those of you waiting for a hierarchy table at the end, it's here!

Best SSDs: $315 To $400

Best SSDs for ~$350: High-Capacity Option

OCZ Agility 2240 GB
Sequential Read285 MB/s
Sequential Write275 MB/s
Power Consumption (Active)2.0 W
Power Consumption (Idle).5 W

If you are willing to spend more to get a better deal, OCZ recently dropped the price on its 240 GB Agility 2. At $350, you're only paying $1.50 per gigabyte. While this isn't as much of a performance-oriented SSD in light of today's more aggressive options, you're still getting a lot of bang for your buck.

Many people prefer the Vertex 2 to the Agility 2, but the only real difference is that the higher-end Vertex employs OCZ's optimized firmware to achieve better performance, while the Agility utilizes SandForce's more generic firmware implementation.

Best SSDs for ~$425: Performance & Capacity Option

Crucial m4256 GB
Sequential Read415 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 more of a performance-oriented flavor, we're torn between Crucial's 256 GB m4 and OCZ's 240 GB Agility 3. Both hover around the same price and offer similar performance. However, our recommendation this month goes to the 256 GB m4 because it's slightly cheaper per gigabyte.

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 GB hard drives. There are larger options, but the performance picture really doesn't get much better.

44 Comments Comment from the forums
  • jjb8675309 26 August 2011 11:19
    got a crucial m4 a few months ago and love it what an improvement
    Reply
  • 26 August 2011 14:40
    Where is OCZ Vertex 3, is more faster than Adata and Crucial crap and it's only 200$
    Reply
  • flong 26 August 2011 15:15
    The Crucial SSDs are interesting but they are slow compared to comparable Sandforce drives. The do well in 4k writes but are slower in all other benchmarks. I am not sure why they are recommended here. The Intel 310 is similarly slow and again and Intel has had recent reliability problems (the 8GB bug) and so they can no longer claim the to be the most reliable.

    So the Crucial and the Intel SSDs are again on this months list and I cannot follow the reasoning as to why. Here is a review of the M4 in today's Hardware Canucks. The 120GB Wildfire absolutely spanks the 256GB M4 in nearly every benchmark and it is half the size. The reviewer does say it is a good alternative to the 2281 Sandforce drives with Trim support - however the third generation Sandforce drives absolutely spank the M4 in almost every situation but non-Trim environments.

    The Kingston Hyper Extreme is now the fastest 120 GB SSD available. To be fair to Tom's, they haven't tested it yet.

    While I respect these choices, the only one I agree with is the recommendation of the Patriot Wildfire or the Mushkin Extreme for an enthusiast. The fact that they use more expensive high quality RAM sells me to them. However the Kingston Hyper 120 GB is testing as significantly faster in pro reviews and it is cheaper.
    Reply
  • flong 26 August 2011 15:17
    Sorry, I did not post the link for the review, it is here:

    http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/45718-crucial-m4-256gb-ssd-review.html
    Reply
  • 26 August 2011 17:45
    Right Now the OCZ Agility 3 is $164.99 after MIR at Newegg http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227726 and TigerDirect for $159.99 http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=557372&CatId=5300. However not for the faint of heart, you will need to do some firmware update most likely, but if you like tinkering....
    Reply
  • Max_DTH 26 August 2011 18:46
    Guys, what do you think about idea of SSD's in RAID 0?
    2x Crucial m4 64GB in RAID 0 vs Crucial m4 128GB - the same capacity, the same price.
    2x Crucial m4 128GB in RAID 0 vs Crucial m4 256GB - the same capacity, RAID is $75 more expensive.
    RAID would have higher failure rate, but I suppose that in both cases peformance would be higher (with two 128GB a lot I guess, because 256GB is not much faster than 128GB).
    I'm talking here about Intel's build in RAID e.g with P67 (RAID card would made thing pointless price-wise). Can it handle such SSD RAIDs getting most out of it?

    I know, that recommending RAID is not the same as recommending SLI/Crossfire, but is it worth considering when space and ports are not a problem (in my case actually they are, but I would cope with that for noticable price/performance ratio improvement :))?
    Reply
  • greenrider02 26 August 2011 19:39
    @Max_DTH, I'm doing two 96GB Kingston SSDNow V100+ drives in RAID0 and I've had success. At $215 for a total 192 GB I could not resist. It's not that you will have problems, it's just a risk. You have to make sure you have updated firmware and RAID controllers, and be ready to do a fresh install of your operating system. Since I keep all my data on storage drives and just put OS+programs+games(with Steam backups on the storage drives) on the RAID drives, I have no qualms with wiping the drives and starting over. It only takes a few hours. And I did get an error in my RAID forcing me to do this. From what I understand, most errors in your array will not be a dead drive and can be solved by wiping the array and rebuilding it.

    So I recommend giving it a try. Good luck!

    To the article: I don't know about recommending the OCZ Agility2 240GB, as, looking at newegg reviews, it seems that most capacities of the Agility2 and Vertex2 are prone to failure compared to their competitors
    Reply
  • cknobman 26 August 2011 19:50
    Wow grammatical and spelling errors are terrible in this piece, was it even reviewed?
    Reply
  • Lutfij 26 August 2011 19:55
    ^ forget about it being reviewed, you now have a chart to look at to compare your buy against other SSD's...talk about being greatful!
    Reply
  • Scotty99 26 August 2011 20:23
    Sooo i just got an e-mail from newegg and these SSD's are on sale for less than 1 dollar per GB, problem is they have no reviews and i would like your guys opinion on these:

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227738&nm_mc=EMC-IGNEFL082611&cm_mmc=EMC-IGNEFL082611-_-EMC-082611-Index-_-SSD-_-20227738-L0A

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227739&nm_mc=EMC-IGNEFL082611&cm_mmc=EMC-IGNEFL082611-_-EMC-082611-Index-_-SSD-_-20227739-L01C

    Also, would it be a better idea to get two of the 60gb's for raid, or just get the 120?

    Reply