Going SSD, need suggestions - Page 2

830s are discontinued. The 840 non-Pro looks like an excellent value though. I'm thinking that's what I'll put in my Steam box in the next month or so.

It looks like the 840 Pro is the successor to the 830. The 840 is less expensive because it uses less expensive technology.

The write speed is half of the pro, that's why the price difference. Write speed isn't a big deal for a drive that's holding games.

samsung 830.

Yes, because the 830s aren't discontinued and are so easy to purchase, as we already discovered in this thread.

Read, then post. That is the correct order in which to do things, not post, then think about reading, but then skip it.

What do you mean? I haven't had a problem finding them at all. I've just been waiting on a deal to knock the 64gb down from $80. They've been in short supply because they're in high demand. Unless there's a different Samsung 830 you're talking about:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147133

Gotcha. Why such a big SSD? Why not just use a smaller SSD for your OS and primary apps, then get a larger, cheaper, mechanical storage HDD? More cost effective and practical--unless you're limited on physical space inside your case.

I'm wondering why you didn't heed my advice in post #4 of this very thread for the very drive you're speaking of, for the very price point you asked in the opening post.

"What do you mean? I haven't had a problem finding them at all."

I love how your link goes directly to an "Out Of Stock" item, negating everything that you said before it.


"I'm wondering why you didn't heed my advice in post #4 of this very thread for the very drive you're speaking of, for the very price point you asked in the opening post."

Because 40 posts and a month later he is still hemming and hawing over which one to get, wasting all of our time. He has taken so long on this really simple decision that the drives he started out looking at are being discontinued.

Everybody, do yourself a favor and unsubscribe from this thread. It isn't likely to ever resolve.

Not at all. It just shows that they're selling out as fast as they restock them. They were in stock last night and most of today. They'll get more. It's the holiday season when supplies run low and demand runs high.

I look at SSD's this way.

If you move from a hard drive to ANY SSD, you will usually go "omg"...especially if you have a bunch of crap that starts up with windows......the things that keep the spinning circle or hourglass for your Luddites on the screen a lot longer than it should be.
Best part about an SSD is coming to a desktop within 20 seconds or so and then immediately being able to launch apps, with a HD you're waiting for the platters all the time to finish what they are doing, etc.

I haven't yet had the pleasure of moving from SATA II to SATA III on an SSD but I'm not sure if you really notice the speed increase or not when you are already at 'absurdly fast'.

If you are like me and LIMIT how much crap boots up with windows when it turns on, then even a slow SSD will blow your mind.

I know there are people who do SSD in RAID, and I salute them.

This response is delayed by three weeks, purely because the picture was not fully formed back in November. Now it is.


"It looks like the 840 Pro is the successor to the 830. The 840 is less expensive because it uses less expensive technology."

After watching the 840s review for a couple of weeks, the standard 840 looks far more like the direct replacement to the 830. The 840 Pro is in a bit quicker class overall than the 830 ever was. This also makes sense in retail as the 840 is a bit cheaper than the 830 was, but the 840 Pro is significantly more expensive than the 830 was.

Is it cheaper to manufacture than the 830? Yes, TLC is cheaper to make than MLC. You get 33% more states (read: storage) for the same material cost. This is a good thing, as we are rapidly hitting the point where SSD cost is dictated by material cost more than anything else. The controller between the two variations of the drive is the same though.

As long as you aren't starving your system with something ridiculous like only having 8GB of RAM, then I would say that an end user would be very hard pressed to tell the difference between the two drive variations, or between either 840 and the 830. Day to day use means a lot of reading and not too much writing, which all three drives are about the same at. Even in the case of writes, having enough RAM means Windows can take it's time on writes without effecting the user experience. Unless your goal is to run a server hosting 100GB database files to 100 users, or you really like copying large video files from one SSD to another, the 840 Pro is a waste. Any extra money spent on the Pro variant would be better spent elsewhere in your system or environment with more effect on the user experience. A vanilla 840 plus a new keyboard or even a new garbage can for the office is a better spend than an 840 Pro by itself.

Just make sure the ssd is your first boot drive. If you had had it installed during the installation of the ssd then you would have a bootloader right now... If you have problems then use the hdd dock and use disk cleanup to remove old windows files, then you should be able to insert the hdd into the computer properly.

I agree with macks. Most likely, Windows on the mechanical drive was installed while your MB was using IDE. If you switch to AHCI and boot from that mechanical, it will BSOD. Just switch the boot order.

Also remember the setting you are using when installing OS in SSD.
The first time I use SSD I made a stupid mistake, not opening AHCI and try to set it back when installed XD

Windows knows what's up, you don't need to worry about fiddling with write caching options. You should move to Windows 8 though. It's $40 for another week and is far better optimized for SSDs than Windows 7.

I really don't know about Windows 8? I tried a couple of times from beta till now a could not find a reason to switch from Windows 7. On another note if you want to install Windows 7 this link will describe the best way to do it.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1156654/seans-windows-7-install-optimization-guide-for-ssds-hdds

Hope this helps. Also the below link will allow you to download many useful programs with no attachments.

http://ninite.com/

Over the last couple of weeks we moved my girl's "iTunes and Chrome" machine over to Windows 8 and a Samsung 840 SSD. Playing around with her PC a bit, I'd say that the standard 840 is just as snappy as the Crucial M4 in my machine. I'm sure we could benchmark it and find some write-speed deficiencies in the 840's TLC compared to the M4's MLC, but none of that effects the user experience at the end of the day.

I'm hoping that we'll see 128GB drives drop off as the base-line shortly with 256GB drives taking over the ~$100 price-point. I could see myself giving up half my storage to drop a pair of mirrored $200 500GB SSDs in my system for my data drive. That really just means having less Steam games installed that I'm not playing anyway. Plextor is releasing TLC based drives shortly, hopefully creating a bit of competition in that market segment. This will likely drive Samsung's prices down as they make everything in house, versus Plextor's sourcing of flash from others.

Just popping in to say that the dirt-cheap TLC-based non-Pro Samsung 840s are a fantastic value. Highly recommended.

I just ordered this Kingston 120 SSD.

The 500g 840s are real tempting. I would like to get another ssd, but I'm aiming for 500 or 512g. The other benefit of the higher capacity, is they have higher write speeds for some reason.

I have 2 128g drives now, each with a different version of windows on it. I'd like to get my steam games on a 500g.


Then I check my email and find a 20% off samsung SSD drives code from newegg...
Lets see, $384 for 840pro or $240 for the 840.

Is 12g and an extra 200mb/s write speed worth $144.

Or not...I was in the process of adding it to my cart and promo code is no longer active. 48hr code, only took 7hours....
Edited by Yrd - 3/4/13 at 8:40pm

Well you can get the samsung 840 pro right now for $376. I think I've decided it's not worth the extra price over the non-pro for me.

Non-pro is $263, can't bite, until it's back to that original deal I posted.