Looking for ~$250 SSD

I'm looking for a SSD for my new laptop. Willing to spend around ~$250. This is not a hard limit (up to ~$300 is workable), though of course less is better. I need it to be at least a 120GB hard drive as I want Windows as well as all of my games and programs to fit on it. The laptop does support SATA III, although I don't really need a SATA III drive. Sequential speeds don't matter too much to me, mostly just random reads. I mostly want it to improve boot up and loading times, and just to make Windows snappier. Reliability and lifetime is definitely important.

Suggestions?

 

If I am not mistaken, loading times depend on sequential read performane. I might be wrong though. Well for around 250 bucks, the best options are Crucial M4, Intel 510, Crucial C300. Also other choices are Vertex 2, agility 3. But I don't know which one will be best since I am also looking at one of the various options available right now for purchase.

 

I always value reliability most in a product so I'm mostly an Intel guy for SSDs. I'd also be comfy with a Crucial SSD.

 

If reliability is a priority I suggest Samsung 470, Crucial or Intel. They have the lowest failure rates on Newegg.

 

120 GB Intel 510 series (SATA III) or
160 GB Intel 320 series (SATA II).


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Get a laptop that has a fast UEFI. Most of the boot time is in the POST. Any SSD will get you in Windows fast after the post.

 

I was looking at the Intel 510, but looking at benches on anand, it looked like it is pretty bad for random reads...

 

We should make a sticky/FAQ in this subforum Phil. There are many people who are asking the same and not reading the other threads

No offence to you OP

 

In the end that actually doesn't make too much real life difference. Not from what your posted use will be anyway.

 

intel 320 160 gigs will fit in a 300 budget and get you where you're going fast and reliably.

 

This is what I am leaning towards. I checked out my desktop computer and 119gb's of space is being occupied by just windows and the program files + data folders. I'm sure I could clean up 10-15gb's, but even then that's close to the usable 111ish gbs in on a 120gb SSD. And I've heard having an SSD more than 80% full long term isn't good for it.

Plus my model of laptop (M14x) seems to have stability issues with SATA 6.0 Gbps. Without RST installed it is unstable, and with RST it sometimes throttles down to SATA 3.0 speeds. So the 320 series only being SATA 3.0 doesn't seem like too big a deal.

 

if you can trim 10-15 gigs on your own you might do alright with a 160 gig. you can knock off 10-15 gigs by disabling hibernate, system restore, pagefile and reducing/disabling recycle bin. you also say you have data folders. does that need to be on the main ssd or can you get by with and external hdd/sdd? i spent yesterday backing up all my stuff on dvd's so i could get by with a 32 gig external sdd.

 

When I said data I meant the "program data" folder.

I'll be moving my 500gb HDD into the optical bay, which is where I'll keep all of my music, pics, vids, etc.

120gb MIGHT be enough, but it would probably be a pain to have to constantly clean it up and maybe have to uninstall games to install new ones, etc. 160 is probably a better idea.

 

I did exactly this^^^ use my ODD bay to hold my hdd, put my ssd in the hdd bay, run my os on the ssd, save my data to the hdd. Also, the Intel 320 is 25nm vs 34 for the 510. Which IIRC means a difference of 3000 write cycles for the 320 vs 5000 for the 510. Also the 510 has a higher sequential read by a large margin. Not everyone will use this or need this, but I do for my daily work, so just something to think about. I still have not seen anyone write about their ssd having an end of life due to write cycles, but also they have only become mainstream in the last year or two. It used to be the big issue ( a year ago) so I made my buying decision based on this information. But I still have not read about ssd's dying because of end of write cycles. So Who really knows. However, being the cautious type, I bought my latest ssd because of the 34nm nand and the sequential speed, as this is what I most worried about.

 

The current crop of SSds will last atleast 3-4 years before they die a natural death. You dont have to worry about SSDs dying on you- unless its related to other issues, not end of write cycles. Face it, in that time we will already have moved on to the next shiny thing. So, looking at the life of an SSD is almost a non-issue. Just make sure it is reliable enough not to fail due to other causes like firmware, controller issue etc.