Can anyone recommend a SSD for a good price?

[Gary Childress]

Looking to upgrade from a 250 GB to a 500 GB or larger SSD. Of course I'm looking for the most bang for the buck. My budget is $200 max. Does anyone have any good recommendations?

I saw this 500 GB advertised for $160.00. Looks like a pretty good deal but would like ot get opinions from those more savvy on tech than I am.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...145VQ8TDZ9okTODIF5ksDxoC7d_w_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

There's also this one for a little less:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226689

Thanks for any help!

 

[Zelig]

That's USD you're talking, I assume.

You already picked the best couple budget options, so take your pick. Either is likely to be fine. They actually run the same controller and NAND... so performance is likely to be nearly identical. Crucial has pretty good management software and a good firmware update track record, I'm less familiar with Mushkin.

Only real downside of either is lack of hardware-accelerated BitLocker encryption. (Need to move up to the Crucial MX200 or the Samsung 850 Evo for that.)

 

[Gary Childress]

That's USD you're talking, I assume.

You already picked the best couple budget options, so take your pick. Either is likely to be fine. They actually run the same controller and NAND... so performance is likely to be nearly identical. Crucial has pretty good management software and a good firmware update track record, I'm less familiar with Mushkin.

Only real downside of either is lack of hardware-accelerated BitLocker encryption. (Need to move up to the Crucial MX200 or the Samsung 850 Evo for that.)

Thanks for the reply, Zelig.

What is Bitlocker encryption and how essential would you say it is to have it?

 

[Zelig]

Full-disk encryption, so if your hard drive or PC gets stolen, the contents aren't readable. I'd rate it as essential, but it can be kind of janky to set up on devices that don't ship with TPM chips, so if you have to ask, I don't recommend you do it yourself. And you can enable BitLocker on any Windows (though not home editions) system, you just lose out on the hardware-accelerated eDrive component if you don't have a compatible SSD for that.

 

[Gary Childress]

Full-disk encryption, so if your hard drive or PC gets stolen, the contents aren't readable. I'd rate it as essential, but it can be kind of janky to set up on devices that don't ship with TPM chips, so if you have to ask, I don't recommend you do it yourself. And you can enable BitLocker on any Windows (though not home editions) system, you just lose out on the hardware-accelerated eDrive component if you don't have a compatible SSD for that.

Sounds like something mostly for laptops or tablets. This is for my big clunky desk top PC. I don't envision it as too likely it'll get stolen.

 

[Quintillus]

Crucial BX100 is the one that sprang to mind immediately for me as well. It's a really solid drive for a very good price. There are faster drives out there, but it's definitely at the sweet spot of bang for the buck, while being very low risk as well.

I've heard good things about the Mushkin Reactor as well, though I'm less familiar with it. Either one should be good. The prices are about as good as you're going to get with a well-known brand.

The 850 Evo is not a bad choice either at $164 on Newegg. I'd personally go with one of the other two over it, both because its 3D NAND is fairly new technology whereas the 2D NAND on the Crucial and Mushkin is very mature, and because on the 850 Evo's predecessor, the 840 Evo, there was an issue where the drive got considerably slower over time. While I haven't read about that affecting the 850 Evo, I'd still be a little cautious with Samsung drives given how recent it was.

 

[Zelig]

I wouldn't worry about 3D NAND, by all accounts Samsung has been rock-solid with it so far, and the 3D aspect lets them use significantly larger-sized processes (40nm TLC, vs. 16nm MLC on current Crucial drives), helping with endurance, which sidesteps the problems that were caused by using 19nm TLC on the 840 Evo.

 

[premieritzone]

ssd is too costly and no cheap option to buy, you can try SSHD

 

[illram]

That's a weird bump.

SSD prices are plummeting and hybrid drives should be obsolete, considering the affordability of 250GB+ drives.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Since SSDs are still pretty small am I correct that they need to be paired with a big HDD? When doing so, what should go on the SSD and what on the HDD? How would/should games be installed?

 

[Zelig]

Depends how much stuff you have. My PCs are SSD-only (256 laptop, 512 desktop and htpc), but I've got a media server with a dozen or so big drives to store multimedia.

If I was building a gaming PC, it would probably be SSD only as well... probably a single fast PCIe-based 512gb SSD for OS/apps/whatever, and then a secondary low-cost 2.5" 1TB SSD for game installs. If you need more than 1tb for games, then you'd likely need an HDD as 2tb SSDs are cost-prohibitive.)

 

[Birdjaguar]

So you would install all your games on a second SSD rather than an HDD.

 

[Zelig]

I would... not sure that I'd necessarily recommend that approach to other people. None of the console manufacturers have included anything other than hybrid drives in any of their consoles.

And actually, just looking at SSD specs again, seems still nobody is shipping PCIe drives supporting encryption, so I guess I'd still be stuck with SATA drives anyway.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I would... not sure that I'd necessarily recommend that approach to other people. None of the console manufacturers have included anything other than hybrid drives in any of their consoles.

And actually, just looking at SSD specs again, seems still nobody is shipping PCIe drives supporting encryption, so I guess I'd still be stuck with SATA drives anyway.

Now once more in English please.

 

[Zelig]

First or second line?

 

[Birdjaguar]

Second.

 

[Zelig]

SSDs that use the M.2 slot with a PCIe interface are much (4x) faster than 2.5" SATA SSDs.

There are SATA SSDs that support hardware encryption, rendering any data on it unreadable if your PC is lost/stolen. The hardware encryption allows it to be done seamlessly (unencrypts when entering Windows password) and without any loss of performance.

Currently, none of the available M.2 PCIe SSDs support said hardware encryption. (So encryption will require an additional password beyond the Windows login on every boot, and will cause degraded performance.)

 

[Birdjaguar]

Thanks. I understand now. Since encryption is not important to me, I will go for a "SSD that uses the M.2 slot with a PCIe interface".

 

[Zelig]

Keep in mind, I was saying what I'd do. PCIe SSDs are wicked fast, but the price : performance isn't great, and they're not available in large capacities. They're nice, but the difference between SATA SSD and PCIe SSD pales in comparison to the difference between HDD and any SSD.

 

[Seraiel]

I find Samsung Pro/Evo to be the best.