Need help choosing RAM and SSD for my HTPC build - Page 5

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/s...d.php?t=641261

People here suggest diskpart clean. I think this makes more sense

Most qaulity SSD's with TRIM are fine as is and if you run Intel RST drivers... you should be fine .

Just set BIOS to ACHI.

Even a poorly set up and non optimized SSD is light years faster than a HDD.

HDD are so slow they should be taxed, or banned against the law.

It's really not fair to punish people with their existence IMO.

I'm looking for a SATA II SSD for use in a HP Proliant MicroSever N40L (it only supports up to 3.0 GB/s anyway, I believe).

Are the Sandforce SATA II controllers OK? I know Samsung 830 and Crucial M4 are the preferred models for SATA III, but what is the best SATA II model that may be available in the $60-70 range?

The Sandforce SF-1200 controller doesn't have the problem that plagued the SATA III SF-2200. I just installed a 120gb Mushkin Callisto Deluxe in one of my pcs today. Seems fine, but then I have hardly used it so far. Also have a Sandisk Ultra 120 (another SF-1200 based drive) still in the box. I won't buy a SF-2200 model, but I wasn't concerned about the SATA IIs.

I've used a couple of Samsung 470 series, and they've been great for SATA II, although they are getting hard to find.

You can of course use a SATA III. Sometimes they are no more expensive. In case you upgrade systems later, you could take the SSD with you.

Yes sandforce controllers are excellent.
You can get a SATA II VERTEX 2 from OCZ for 69$ @newegg newegg.

The vertex 3 is SATAIII. about 20$u more.

Thanks for the input guys. Reviews for the Vertex 2 seem all over the place -- either 1 egg or 5. Not sure what to make of that. I've also seen some Patriot 60GB models for $55 or so after MIR.

I'll keep an eye out for Daily Deals at the Egg over the next few weeks. I have a bunch more research/planning to do before diving into the build, but this helps!

That Patriot Torqx 2 that you see on deep discount uses the Phison PS PS3105-S5 controller. I have no idea whether that's a good thing or a bad thing.

I think the Newegg reviews I've seen on SSDs have been some of the most worthless I've ever seen. I suspect there are a number of reasons. Some results from people not knowing what to expect and having no or little prior experience with SSDs and hence nothing against which to compare the reviewed drive; some of the problems won't show up that quickly; some probably aren't properly configured; and I suspect the biggest issue is that most people have no idea how to actually evaluate what they have and most of the tools are inadequate. But you see far too many things like "it's slower than my hard disk was" and I think you can assume that either the person is mistaken or there is something wrong with their setup because there is no way that the slowest SSD, at least today, is slower than the fastest hard disk.

But that means that both the good and the bad reviews are largely unreliable. For a large number of people it's their first SSD, and for most of the rest they probably have less than a year's experience in using SSDs. OCZ used low prices to get a very large share of the market last year, so it's not surprising you see a ton of reviews for their drives and that those reviews are inconsitent and scattered all over. For the mass market it's a pretty new technology. I think you're a lot better off looking for actual bench reviews of the models you're considering on reputable tech sites.

I have purchased five OCZ vertex 2 and 3 models from new egg and all have performed perfectly.

OCZ is usually at the top of performance.

Don't listen to all the idiots or OCZ haters.

I can remember when the vertex 2 was the hottest Ssd out there. I bought my 120gbbones model over a year ago and it works perfect.

Not sure why so much OCZ hate these days.

There's usually little or no difference between different makes using the same controller.


Not surprised it works perfectly. Most peoples' of all makes and models do. But the reason it was the hottest on the market is because at the time there were about 10% of the choices there are today, and OCZ agressively underpriced the market to grab market share.


In part that results from the fiasco over the Sandforce SF-2000 series controllers. OCZ was one of the first, if not the first, to use those controllers, and sold a gazillion of them, so they, and to a lesser extent Corsair, became nearly synonmous with the problems those controllers had (or according to some people, still have).

I never read anything about this. It would be easy to just use more Nand chips if you wanted to make it larger I assume

@zon2020. I have never seen an OCZ drive not place at the top for performance in any review.

I paid $255 for my 120gb vertex 2 ... this was probably two years ago. They were not the cheapest at all. I bought it cause it was best at several places including tomshardware.com which I respect.

The vertex 3 max iops I have now is even faster significantly than my original.

usually every review I see has the OCZ vertex3 as the fastest or best value.

Tomshardware still has it reccomended for the upper class and high performance tier.

I would be curious to see any ssd with same controller as vertex3 normal beat it or benchmark better. It has bested the majority of drives I have seen... including the beloved sanding 830 that's gets so much love on this forum and costs more.

And... I would be curious to see any ssd at all beat the VERTEX 3 MAX IOPS ever. Nothing even near its price comes close.

I didn't say others were faster, I said "There's usually little or no difference between different makes using the same controller." I should have added to same controller same size and same type NAND.

Sandforce controller-based SSDs usually benchmark the best. Some questions have been raised whether that is in part a function of shortcomings in the benchmarks, but I have no basis on which to evaluate that issue.

And yes, they generally benchmark better than the Samsung 830 by a very small margin. But Tom's this month simply grouped similar performing drives in their evaluation, and made their "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", the final category confirming that if you get an SSD of the same size with the same controller and same type NAND you should expect essentially the same performance. Indeed, in another recent SSD roundup, Tom's explicitly explained including only two brands of Sandforce-based drives as follows: "As mentioned, we're benchmarking two different SandForce-based drives to help simplify this story a bit. The reasoning here is sound: two SF-22xx-based SSDs of the same capacity will perform almost identically, providing that they both employ the same NAND interface."

They have the same amount of memory, it's the way the controller uses the memory as "overhead" and reports the available memory, but it's my understanding that you really don't have any more memory available for use with other controller-based SSDs. You're not getting a truly larger capacity SSD, at least as I understand it.

If you had found a 120gb drive of any make for $255 two years ago, it would have been by far the cheapest available of that size. In the middle of 2010, the bargain basement Kingston SSDNow V+ was $319, Newegg wanted $369 for a Corsair Nova V128, a Plextor PX-128M1S was over $400, and a 160gb Intel X25-M was just about $500.

Funny that OCZ uses sandforce in the highest end products considering it owns its own controller chip mfg called inidix.

They use those in the cheaper drives they make I think

Actually is was not that long. More than a year. December 2010.

I do remember it costing more than other drives

I would love to read and learn a little more about this if anyone has a link

They only bought Indilinx last March, after most current models were probably already designed or in production. And actually, its new Octane line uses its new Indilinx Everest controller although the performance reportedly falls short of the Sandforce based Vertex 3. And they have a new Indilinx based "Petrol" line that uses slower NAND. There is supposed to be a new Vertex 4 using a new Everest 2 out in June.

Indeed, Sandforce has recently been acquired by LSI, which will probably bring more credibility and stability to Sandforce.

OCZ and others used to use the Indilinx Barefoot controller in earlier lower performance drives.

That's part of the reason I came here.

The reviews I am most interested in are the longevity and reliability reports. I know SSDs are going to be the fastest and most power-efficient option, but since this'll be for a WHS2011, I want to set it up and not have to worry about it bonking out on me in a year's time.

Intel is generally regarded as being the most rock solid option.

It's preferred in enterprise world.

It's not cheap. It's not best performance. But everyone claims it's reliable.

The statistics in general about SSD are good. They have no moving parts.


If it works good when you get it- it should last that way for a long time.

I have bought 5-10 OCZ's and they all worked great. Mostly 60GB and 120GB sizes.

I actually installed one in every PC in my office.

I won't let an employee use an HDD based system. I feel it is cruel and wrong.

Seriously- I often wonder why the world even tolerates pc's with HDD's for the OS.

The performance difference is so extreme to me I often have trouble explaining it properly.

Get an SSD you won't be sorry.

There is nothing you can do to improve the speed and performance of your system better than an SSD.

In fact I would take a $500 PC over a $3000 PC, if the cheaper had SSD and the more expensive did not. And- My everyday happiness with it would be much greater.

That's the problem. This technology is new and changing fast enough that you can't get "longevity and reliability" data from Newegg reviews. Most of the current models didn't even exist a year ago, and it's really been the last six months or so that prices have come down to make sales really take off. I bet that at least 80% of the comments are from users for whom this is their first SSD. And with each generation of drives, reliability, speed, and expected life goes up.

I don't believe you will find meaningful differences between brands that use the same controllers. That's where most of the issues arise, not with the memory or the case. There have been three widely publicized issues in the past year or so. Corsair had some BSOD problems (separate from the Sandforce problem, even though they use the Sandforce 2200) which was apparently fixed by a firmware update. Crucial recently has had a problem with the M4 and has released a firmware update that's supposed to fix it. And there is the infamous Sandforce SF-2200 bug that randomly hits some units from various brands using that controller, is difficult or impossible to reproduce in the lab, and has (to my knowledge) yet to be isolated or explained. Some brands, notably OCZ, have released firmware updates, but since no one knows the cause, there is scepticism whether that fixes it. Most people with these drives never see the problem, but even the most reputable tech sites agree it exists. Beyond that, I doubt you will learn a thing about reliability, speed, or anything else reading Newegg reviews of SSDs. Well, maybe you can learn which ones come with cloning software or mounting brackets, and which ones look good, but that's about it. When systemic problems arise, they are pretty quickly publicized on tech websites, not on Newegg. And apart from the few systemic issues, these are really reliable devices.

The best indication of reliability you'll likely find is that some companies like Intel and Plextor have started giving 5 year warranties.

I always thought that some companies were just conservative in the rating because the reserve was used as overhead.

I know OCZ claims that the drive is a bit larger than advertised so that when sectors or chips go bad or fail it deactivates them. After time this is normal. But the drive continues to perform the same and still have the advertised capacity.capacity

I think it's just reserve. The actual chip sizes are the same inside.

Believe me, I take the reviews with a grain of salt. I've seen the same thing with WD drives. I've purchased 10 over the last several years in all flavors -- blue, black, and green -- and sizes and never had a problem. Reading through the reviews on Newegg would make it seem like they're possibly the worst product ever manufactured.

I have zero experience with SSDs, and just thought seriously about using one in the last couple of weeks when researching how to build out this server.

Again, I appreciate the opinions and viewpoints.

I'll just share my own current thinking.

I'll buy any Samsung.

I'll buy Marvell-controller based SATA III (and have been particularly partial to Plextor).

I'll buy Sandforce-controller based SATA II from any reputable manufacturer.

It's interesting that for the past year, buying SATA III drives has been pretty simple. Either you bought a Marvell 9174 based unit (primarily Intel 510, Crucial M4, or Plextor M2S or now M3S), or you bought one of many Sandforce SF22XX based units. It's getting more complicated now. You now have the Samsung 830 with its own Samsung controller, you have a couple of new OCZ models with the Indilinx Everest controller, and the new Patriot Torqx 2 models use the Phison PS3105-S5 controller. Both Indilinx (now owned by OCZ) and Phison made 1st generation controllers a couple of years ago, but these are their first SATA III offerings. I assume we'll see both in offerings from other SSD brands (although it's unclear whether Indilinx will still supply others or will only supply OCZ).

So now there's more competition, but there's also less predictability and more risk. How will these new controllers function? Will there be bugs? Will there be good product support? Who knows.

Well said and all true.

Basically my take on it all boils down to this:

Get Intel if you want reliability at expense of performance or cheap price. They cost more and perform slower.

Get Samsung if you want pretty good performance, ok price, and ok reliability.

Get Vertex3 MAX IOPS if you want best possible performance.

The vertex3 standard seems the best blend of the price/performance/reliability ratios. But everyone's mileage may differ.

Aside from that- none of the others seem to really separate themselves from the pack in one area or another... so it really does not matter.