Best 1TB SSD for $200? OCZ Trion 150, maybe?

euskalzabe

euskalzabe

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
May 9, 2009
Messages
1,478
Hey all,

I'm looking to upgrade my extra HDD to a 1 TB SSD spending ~ $200.

My main drive is a Crucial MX100 (OS + programs), its performance is stellar for me. The HDD is an old Samsung Spinpoint F3 used to store my Steam game library, pictures and work files that are not-often accessed.

I've been out of the SSD news cycle since getting the MX100 but since I'm plenty happy with its performance and I don't want/need insane performance at a higher price (like M.2), would an OCZ Trion 500 get the job done? It seems to have similar specs to my MX100 despite being TLC (it's 3 years newer than my Crucial, of course) and that should be plenty faster than my HDD when loading games.

Any other options I should consider at the $200 mark? Should I keep waiting for potentially better 1TB 3D-VNAND @ $200 later this year? I've been waiting the whole 2016 and I'm getting tired of it...
 
euskalzabe said:
Hey all,

I'm looking to upgrade my extra HDD to a 1 TB SSD spending ~ $200.

My main drive is a Crucial MX100 (OS + programs), its performance is stellar for me. The HDD is an old Samsung Spinpoint F3 used to store my Steam game library, pictures and work files that are not-often accessed.

I've been out of the SSD news cycle since getting the MX100 but since I'm plenty happy with its performance and I don't want/need insane performance at a higher price (like M.2), would an OCZ Trion 500 get the job done? It seems to have similar specs to my MX100 despite being TLC (it's 3 years newer than my Crucial, of course) and that should be plenty faster than my HDD when loading games.

Any other options I should consider at the $200 mark? Should I keep waiting for potentially better 1TB 3D-VNAND @ $200 later this year? I've been waiting the whole 2016 and I'm getting tired of it...
Click to expand...
1TB just dropped below 300 recently...you won't see 200 or sub 200 for while. You will need 2TB to be common place and thats Q4 at best if not 2017
 
I have heard that the Sandisk X400 is a good deal but it's $220 at the moment. I thought of the Mushkin Reactor because it's MLC but it has been hovering around $250 for the past couple months or so. I just googled the Trion 150 1TB Crystaldiskmark scores (left) and it seems much better than what my Crucial MX 100 just scored (right) - check the comparison here.

I'm well aware that there's better performing SSDs for more money, I just don't think I'll need it. All I want is for my games to load faster than the aging Spinpoint F3 HDD, as the office files I open (small excel and word documents) won't really be hugely noticeable.

My main point is to make sure that I'm not ignoring other decent options at $200 or around that which could be better value than the Trion 150. That said, I have read 7 reviews today in several sites and they all seem to suggest that at its initial $230 price it was not worth it, but at $200 it doesn't seem like a bad deal to me... from my - limited - knowledge. I know I could buy a 850 EVO for better performance but that's a whole $100 extra. My thinking is that if the Trion is similar to my MX100, I should be happy with it, as I'm happy with the speeds that I get from the latter.
 
Last edited:
I would add that if I get a $200 1TB SSD, I could still buy either an RX 480 or the eventual 1060 and still spend about the same I would on a 1070. Not as powerful, yes, but would hold me over well for the next couple years, specially if I decide to upgrade cpu/mobo/ram this fall with Zen. Not trying to be cheap here, just trying to buy smart for a PC that's not intended to do anything more than casual 1080p gaming and regular work.
 
the OCZ Trion 150 Series 960GB is on sale for 190 on amazon right now..
just noticed.
 
euskalzabe said:
I have heard that the Sandisk X400 is a good deal but it's $220 at the moment. I thought of the Mushkin Reactor because it's MLC but it has been hovering around $250 for the past couple months or so. I just googled the Trion 150 1TB Crystaldiskmark scores (left) and it seems much better than what my Crucial MX 100 just scored (right) *snip*
Click to expand...

There are a couple of things at play here.
1) You are comparing performance of an older 120GB class SSD of unknown free capacity and fragmentation to a current gen 1TB drive with MUCH more internal bandwidth in a presumable virgin state. Your 120GB will be a poor comparison every time specifically by the numbers.
2) there is a difference between Tested performance and "precieved performance". Compared to traditional HDDs there is fairly little percieved performance between most SSDs and even less so between the budget drives.

That being said, for the budget minded, I've stuck with the Samsung EVO series and Sandisks offerings. Sandisk has the X-series which is marketed as an OEM quality workstation drive and their named series (Ultra II, Extreme Pro, SSD Plus, etc) that are marketed as consumer level kit. Either would fit will for your application. In fact, the Ultra II 960GB is $220 @ Amazon
 
As an Amazon Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
ncjoe said:
the OCZ Trion 150 Series 960GB is on sale for 190 on amazon right now..
just noticed.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the heads up. I have a feeling it may drop even further in the next few weeks to differentiate from other TLC drives.

Nate7311 said:
There are a couple of things at play here.
1) You are comparing performance of an older 120GB class SSD of unknown free capacity and fragmentation to a current gen 1TB drive with MUCH more internal bandwidth in a presumable virgin state. Your 120GB will be a poor comparison every time specifically by the numbers.
2) there is a difference between Tested performance and "precieved performance". Compared to traditional HDDs there is fairly little percieved performance between most SSDs and even less so between the budget drives.
Click to expand...

Good points. My MX100 has 64GB free so it's not super heavily used, although its age/fragmentation certainly put it at a disadvantage over new drives. That's why I feel that if I'm happy with the Crucial already, even a budget drive like the Trion would seem perfectly fine to me - I can't imagine performance would degrade SO much in a few months to be that noticeable - specially since once my games are installed and work files copied (~650GB at the moment) that drive remains pretty much unaltered most of the time - except little word files being written every week and the next game I happen to install in a few weeks. That's why I felt that TLC wouldn't harm my usage: I mostly read from the drive and write small amounts, other than that, the drive is idle.

The one thing I'd like to avoid is for V-NAND to explode this fall and then I will have bought a TLC SSD at the worst possible time. That's why I waited until the MX300 release, and once I saw that it was kinda disappointing for V-NAND, I started looking at budget options.
 
Makes sense, regardless of Toshiba owning OCZ, I still have a bad taste in my mouth from OCZ. So i'd personally recommend the Sandisk offerings.
 
You can get lighly used 960Gb Samsung enterprise SSDs (SV843s) on eBay for ~$240. Better/newer ones for just a bit more.

I'd take a used Samsung enterprise drive over a brand-new anything from OCZ every time.
 
Nate7311 said:
There are a couple of things at play here.
1) You are comparing performance of an older 120GB class SSD of unknown free capacity and fragmentation to a current gen 1TB drive with MUCH more internal bandwidth in a presumable virgin state. Your 120GB will be a poor comparison every time specifically by the numbers.
2) there is a difference between Tested performance and "precieved performance". Compared to traditional HDDs there is fairly little percieved performance between most SSDs and even less so between the budget drives.

That being said, for the budget minded, I've stuck with the Samsung EVO series and Sandisks offerings. Sandisk has the X-series which is marketed as an OEM quality workstation drive and their named series (Ultra II, Extreme Pro, SSD Plus, etc) that are marketed as consumer level kit. Either would fit will for your application. In fact, the Ultra II 960GB is $220 @ Amazon
Click to expand...
ugh if i recall the Ultra 2 is so blah in performance. The X____ series is new and i haven't read anything on them yet but they could be a hot buy for budgets for all I know. I won't comment on those since i have not read about them. Mix load and steady state to me are the biggest things that make or break a drive and why my 950 PRO blows my Extreme Pro out of the water and why I would cringe going for an Ultra 2
 
As an Amazon Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
Am in the same boat as OP though I am in need of a new OS drive. Currently on a 240GB Corsair Neutron GTX and would like to step up to 1TB.

Plan on dual booting Win7 and Win10 (just not quite ready to make the full departure). Any suggestions? Willing to go up to the ~$250 mark myself if the performance difference/longevity is there.
 
SomeGuy133 said:
ugh if i recall the Ultra 2 is so blah in performance. The X____ series is new and i haven't read anything on them yet but they could be a hot buy for budgets for all I know. I won't comment on those since i have not read about them. Mix load and steady state to me are the biggest things that make or break a drive and why my 950 PRO blows my Extreme Pro out of the water and why I would cringe going for an Ultra 2
Click to expand...

You just listed the difference between a budget drive and high-end SSD. The OP asked for a 1TB class to hit a budget price point. Also, are your 950 Pro and Extreme Pro both SATA?

Here's the official [H] review of the UltraII 960GB. They compare it to the 850 Evo and the OCZ drives mentioned as well. Regarding the remarks on the the conclusion page of the article, the price difference between the 850 Evo and Ultra II isn't nearly as close now as it once was.
 
Last edited:
PigLover said:
You can get lighly used 960Gb Samsung enterprise SSDs (SV843s) on eBay for ~$240. Better/newer ones for just a bit more.

I'd take a used Samsung enterprise drive over a brand-new anything from OCZ every time.
Click to expand...

My experience with OCZ SSDs has never been great. Those enterprise ones are super tempting.
 
Nate7311 said:
You just listed the difference between a budget drive and high-end SSD. The OP asked for a 1TB class to hit a budget price point. Also, are your 950 Pro and Extreme Pro both SATA?

Here's the official [H] review of the UltraII 960GB. They compare it to the 850 Evo and the OCZ drives mentioned as well. Regarding the remarks on the the conclusion page of the article, the price difference between the 850 Evo and Ultra II isn't nearly as close now as it once was.
Click to expand...
The point is mixed and ateady state. mixef and ateady state on a 959 pro isnt even sata 3.0 speeds but leagues better than even the extreme pro. If the pro was just barely tolerable for those 2 things how much worse are rhose cheap drives? Thats the point mix and steady state are the only 2 states i really look at and if an eztreme pro was blah ultra 2? Dear god
 
For accuracy's sake, I'll just point out that the Ultra 2 review was compared to the Trion 100, the drive I mentioned is Trion 150 which uses Toshiba's newer 15nm NAND.
 
I really like my Sandisk Ultra 2's, I got a pair of them (960GB) for $168 each..
 
Whoa, that's a good deal. Maybe I should wait 5 more months until Black Friday. It's not like I'm DYING to get a drive now, I could deal with stupid load times for a bit longer... If a got a price like that, it'd be a great deal.
 
euskalzabe said:
Whoa, that's a good deal. Maybe I should wait 5 more months until Black Friday. It's not like I'm DYING to get a drive now, I could deal with stupid load times for a bit longer... If a got a price like that, it'd be a great deal.
Click to expand...
camel camel camel also exists and other sites too. Thats what I always due for items that i don't need right now. I price watch them and wait for that email.
 
Thanks for that, it's a very useful tool. I just added their extension to chrome and can now also see price histories for each product. It confirmed a couple cases where I was convinced the price was lower earlier in the year. Valuable resource!
 
I just had my DATA drive fail (1.5TB Seagate spinning rust) and replaced it with a 2TB Seagate refurb for $48. Since I was going to be mucking around inside my PC I decided to upgrade my GAMES drive from my 600GB WD Velociraptor to an SSD. I had been running low on room on the Raptor so I needed an SSD larger than 600GB. Since this was technically an unplanned upgrade I didn't want to drop serious coin on it, and beside that was any modern SSD was going to blow the Velociraptor out of the water. I went with the 960 GB PNY CS1311 for $209. Currently restoring both drives from backups, we'll see how it goes.
 
Last edited:
As an Amazon Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
Mushkin reactor 1TB can be had regularly at the best price and performance per dollar.
 
Just read Anandtech's Intel 540s review today and it made for an interesting conclusion. The Trion 150 used to be much more expensive, so the ADATA Premier SP550 was a better deal despite lower performance. Intel's new drive is - as usual - too expensive for what it offers, and Anandtech shows the Trion 150 actually performs better for far less of a price. The Sandisk X400 performs much better, so it's more expensive than the Trion 150, but it's still far cheaper than Intel's drive.

It's very interesting to see how products change price to remain competitive at different points of the year when newer/better products are released. I guess my choice now is - do I want to pay less for the Trion 150 (since this drive will mostly do reads, and it scores well in that department) or do I want to get the better X400 for a bit more money. Maybe waiting for the next sale that could drive the X400 closer to $200-220 would be a smart idea. I'd probably go for the X400.

At least I've learned something very clear in the process: buying an SSD is very much a constantly moving target, unlike GPU/CPUs that stay in their "position" for longer periods of time.
 
As an Amazon Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
I think some of this is due to the fluctuation in the price of flash and the differences in prices could be due to contract prices at different times.
 
Last edited:
euskalzabe said:
Good luck, keep us posted please!
Click to expand...

Well, I'm certainly satisfied with the price/performance ratio of the PNY!

as-ssd-bench PNY CS1311 960GB 6.24.2016 10-14-56 PM.png

as-ssd-bench Samsung SSD 850 6.24.2016 10-17-29 PM.png
 
hey ryom, why are the seq #'s so low on both ssds ?
I see numbers usually 490 -450....
 
Older mobo, on SATA 2.0

Update: I've moved them to my SATA 6gbps ports just for you. Real world performance difference felt... Zero :D

I also put the two drive screenshots side by side for easier comparison. Gotta say the PNY is doing hella good versus the 850 EVO for the most part. Read access time is the only glaring weakness. Some other benchmarks show the EVO is really good at mixed read/write performance, not sure how the PNY would stack up to that.

PNY CS1311 vs Samsung 850 EVO - MBps.png

PNY CS1311 vs Samsung 850 EVO - IOps.png
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: ncjoe
like this
Here is my opinion on low process TLC NAND (basically current planar implementations). I think the onus should be on the manufacturers and by extension the media to make convincing arguments that it will not be affected by read slow down due to cell charge decay/drift. If the only mechanism that is able to combat this is periodic data refreshing then it needs to be disclosed how often this is done.

Until then I'm not going to consider TLC NAND if you have near cost difference options like the Mushkin Reactor.

Fresh state benchmarks are not disclosing the real problem with TLC NAND at these low process sizes. And no those write to failure "endurance" tests are basically useless and misleading as well, good marketing though.
 
thanks ryom for re-doing the drives with sata 3 ...
that pny drive looks good....
 
Ryom said:
Older mobo, on SATA 2.0

Update: I've moved them to my SATA 6gbps ports just for you. Real world performance difference felt... Zero :D
Click to expand...

This should be the take away from this thread. Under most circumstances with casual use, there is very little difference in perceived performance between SATA2 and SATA3 and/or most modern SSDs. i.e. What the butt-dyno feels.
 
Update: just bought an OCZ Trion 150 480GB in the end. Today on Prime day, the price went down to $87, and with $50 I had in gift card balance, I spent $37 total. For 480GB... doesn't matter that it's not the best performer, at that price I'll be more than happy having it as a game library SSD :)
 
euskalzabe said:
Update: just bought an OCZ Trion 150 480GB in the end. Today on Prime day, the price went down to $87, and with $50 I had in gift card balance, I spent $37 total. For 480GB... doesn't matter that it's not the best performer, at that price I'll be more than happy having it as a game library SSD :)
Click to expand...

I'm using one of those for games, works like a charm, better then my crucial MX 100 that kept disappearing from my system.
 
just as my 2 cents i got 5 200 gig sas ssds off ebay for $200 throw them in raid 0 and get close to 1500 mb/s read and write
 
euskalzabe said:
Update: just bought an OCZ Trion 150 480GB in the end. Today on Prime day, the price went down to $87, and with $50 I had in gift card balance, I spent $37 total. For 480GB... doesn't matter that it's not the best performer, at that price I'll be more than happy having it as a game library SSD :)
Click to expand...

Sounds like a great deal! Enjoy the speed!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top