SSD choice...

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09Avenger

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I just bought an Alienware M17x R4, I went for the standard 500Gb HDD as the upgrade prices from Dell were just silly. £500 to fit an SSD and take away the mechanical? No thanks Dell!
So I'll change it to an SSD myself, and keep the 500 as secondary.

I'm looking for a 480/512 drive.
First choice was a Crucial M4, as I've had one in my desktop for over a year without issue.
But I'm also considering the OCZ Vertex 4, which is only £30 more, is quite a bit faster, and has a 5 year warranty.
But, I have quite a few PC's using various SSD's, and the only one that ever failed on me was a first gen OZC Agility, and I heard a lot of people saying OCZ were not good for reliability.
Have they improved any these days? The Vertex 4 uses a rebranded Marvel chip does it not?
Which of those 2 would be the best bet? Or something else?

Thanks.
 
If you need it now, your best choices are Plextor M5P, Plextor M5S, or Samsung 830.

If you can wait a couple months, the Samsung 840 Pro may be a good choice. Right now there is some question whether Samsung has to work some bugs out of the 840 Pro, since there have been several failures reported.

I'd avoid everything from OCZ.
 
Well I did look at the Samsungs, but the price was a bit off putting,
Heres the current prices (all 512Gb)

Crucial M4............. £325
OCZ Vertex 4......... £340
Samsung 830..........£445
Samsung 840 pro.....£450 (pre order)

I don't think Plextors are available in the UK, at least I've never seen one.

Are OCZ really that bad?

EDIT, seems the Plextor M5P is available here, £405.
 
For $15, the Vertex 4 over the Crucial M4. I have both a Vertex 4 512GB and three Crucial M4 512GB's. Really doesn't make a difference except in benchmarks, but if you do like to show off your SSD, the Vertex 4 can grow your e-peen at least 1 or 2 inches longer than the Crucial M4. :p
 
09Avenger said:
Are OCZ really that bad?
Click to expand...

Even if the Vertex 4 you get works okay, do you really want to rely on a 5 year warranty from a company that has lost 80% of its value in the past few months?

OCZ stock price chart

That price you quoted for the Samsung 830 is terrible. In the US, we can usually find deals for the 830 that make it one of the least expensive SSDs available. Did you look around for any deals yourself?
 
I'd just go with the Crucial M4 or the Samsung 830, they're both good drives. I've got a 256GB M4 in my MacBook Pro and the 830 in my desktop PC. The 830 is faster in benchmarks but there really isn't a difference in day to day use.
 
The Crucial M4 is having some reported issues right now for some reason, problems with UEFI BIOS it seems.

The Sammy 830 is probably the most reliable SSD ever made, from what I can gather off the web.

I have both, a 64GB M4 (over a year) and a 128GB 830 (a month or so), and never had a problem with either. I thought the M4 was causing some lock ups, that's why I bought the 830. But after cloning to the 830, the lock ups persisted, until I did a clean install of nVidia drivers.

I never flashed the M4 beyond 0009 FW though, which may be a good thing, considering the UEFI problems started with the latest FW.
 
vick1000 said:
The Sammy 830 is probably the most reliable SSD ever made,
Click to expand...

Certainly not. The Intel X25-M G2 models are highest quality among all historical consumer SSDs. Among current consumer SSD models, Plextor is the highest quality. Samsung 830 is in the top three, certainly.
 
09Avenger said:
Are OCZ really that bad?
Click to expand...

I don't think the vertex 4's have had issues like previous revisions had, but it doesn't change the fact that many previous revisions had issues, where Crucial and Samsung have neither the general issues and more importantly don't have the customer service issues that have plagued OCZ (or the whole "changing flash chips mid production run massively and negatively affecting performance numbers without changing said numbers on the documentation" issue). Even though intel had the 8MB 320 issue, nobody had problems getting them RMAed.

So does it really matter if OCZ turned themselves around or not? Are you willing to gamble several hundred when you have several other options with much better track records and are much safer bets.
 
Vertex 4 is fine. OCZ has been great with customer service. And Crucial is about as good as it gets with customer service, every company has issues with products. Samsung is definitely not immune to this.

The Corsair GTX is an excellent performer across all benchmarks with a 5 year warranty the same as OCZ & Samsung. Samsung needs to come down in price and/or get better customer service to be considered with more weight. I don't know anyone that would notice the speed difference among the top performing SSD today. They will notice if the product doesn't work and has poor customer service, especially if you paid more.

In my opinion the rank; Taking into consideration quality, performance, and customer service.
(Taking less into account for price, as most are priced with in ~ $25 of each other in the US, except for the Samsung 840)
I don't think the small price difference will matter if you have issues, poor customer service, and/or poor performance

- Corsair GTX (great at all, 5 year warranty, higher than average customer service, proven a quality product)

- OCZ Vertex 4 (better performance where mostly used, except when you use more than 50%, 5 year warranty, great customer service, proven a quality product)

- Crucial M4 (great at most all tasks, 3 year warranty, best customer service, proven a quality product)

- Samsung 840pro (great performance at most all, 5 year warranty, customer service less than average, price is on the high side)
 
Jasonx521 said:
The Corsair GTX is an excellent performer across all benchmarks...
Click to expand...

That is not true. The LAMD controller has poor performance for QD1-4 sequential reads, particularly small- and medium-sized block sequential reads. Which is actually an important performance component for many consumer workloads.

anandtech testing results

48990.png


read.jpg
 
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Jasonx521 said:
Vertex 4 is fine. OCZ has been great with customer service. And Crucial is about as good as it gets with customer service, every company has issues with products. Samsung is definitely not immune to this.

The Corsair GTX is an excellent performer across all benchmarks with a 5 year warranty the same as OCZ & Samsung. Samsung needs to come down in price and/or get better customer service to be considered with more weight. I don't know anyone that would notice the speed difference among the top performing SSD today. They will notice if the product doesn't work and has poor customer service, especially if you paid more.

In my opinion the rank; Taking into consideration quality, performance, and customer service.
(Taking less into account for price, as most are priced with in ~ $25 of each other in the US, except for the Samsung 840)
I don't think the small price difference will matter if you have issues, poor customer service, and/or poor performance

- Corsair GTX (great at all, 5 year warranty, higher than average customer service, proven a quality product)

- OCZ Vertex 4 (better performance where mostly used, except when you use more than 50%, 5 year warranty, great customer service, proven a quality product)

- Crucial M4 (great at most all tasks, 3 year warranty, best customer service, proven a quality product)

- Samsung 840pro (great performance at most all, 5 year warranty, customer service less than average, price is on the high side)
Click to expand...

I'd have to disagree with you about OCZ's customer service. My Vertex 2e crapped out and they won't replace it for me because I can't remember where I bought it from. Despite the fact that it was manufactured less than 3 years ago they refuse to fix it for me for any price.

Crucual on the other hand took back my broken M4 without demanding proof of where I bought it and they actually had a humble attitude toward me like they genuinely felt bad that I had a negative experience with one of their products.
 
I think it comes down to what your looking for from it.

Speed?
Vertex 4 is beastly drive with firmware 1.5 (now shipping). This one does not use a Sandforce controller so reliability, judging by reviews from numerous sites, is much better (only 8% negative on newegg compared to 17% on Vertex 3). Warranty is an issue even though its 5 years will OCZ be around that long the way they are losing money?

Reliability?
I separate this from warranty because if you lose a drive and don't have it backed up the warranty is the least of your problems.The Plextor M3P and the new M5P are generally considered the most reliable drives you can buy as they due extensive burn in tests before shipping them, and also have some other features to protect data. They are right up there in terms of speed too. Of course, you pay a little extra for them.

Value?
The Samsung 830 wins this, they offer nearly the best speed and reliability and being able to get it for $70-80 on sale is downright theft. Not sure how many are left though as the marginally better 840 will be replacing it at a likely higher cost.I'd buy one today if you like the price point. The Crucial M4 use to hold the crown and has stood test of time as a really reliable performer. Still a good deal when on sale. The new Intel 330 definitively worth a look here to despite sandforce.
 
I've been happy with both my Crucial M4 and my Samsung 830 (128MB) I really can't tell the difference using the respective PC.
 
Plextor M3 is also a good choice. You're not going to really notice the difference between the M3's and M5's in day to day usage. Save a bit of money.

There are some fantastic deals on 830's right now though that make them an easy win. Not sure if this is the same in the UK though.
 
I will also agree with JoeComp and others to stay as far away from OCZ as you can (Whether or not nagging issues with some of their newer drives are resolved, they are a horrendous company to deal with). The Samsung 830 is a great choice, and the Plextors are also very well regarded here.
 
Hi 09Avenger i live in the UK as well and have also been looking for ssd's. Iv been looking for a total of 1TB on ssd and it isn't cheap but id like to get rid of my hard drive. The best price iv found for a decent ssd from a decent retailer is - £269.00 + £4.59 delivery for a Crucial M4 from Amazon

EDIT: that price has now expired, if your still looking for a ssd let me know and il tell you the best prices iv found.
 
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ZodaEX said:
Stay away from Intel they use sandforce.
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Sandforce is not necessarily a bad controller as it is projected out to be these days. Sure OCZ had lot of issues but they were primarily Quality related, and not necessarily related to the controller. Sure a lot of controller companies have had problems of some kind of anaother including Samsungs, MArvels, indilinx and others . Sandforce is no different. I own an Intel 520 drive, and i have not had any problems at all
 
John** said:
Sandforce is not necessarily a bad controller as it is projected out to be these days. Sure OCZ had lot of issues but they were primarily Quality related, and not necessarily related to the controller. Sure a lot of controller companies have had problems of some kind of anaother including Samsungs, MArvels, indilinx and others . Sandforce is no different. I own an Intel 520 drive, and i have not had any problems at all
Click to expand...

Both sandforce SSD I have purchased had major issues. My Vertex 2e failed within one year completely stopped working. Then I bought a Corsair Force GT which also uses sandforce and the drive has been unstable since the day I brought it home, crashing my pc at random intervals. I never had any sort of issues with my non sandforce SSDs. Corsair didn't even have a bios update to fix the force gt!
 
ZodaEX said:
Both sandforce SSD I have purchased had major issues. My Vertex 2e failed within one year completely stopped working. Then I bought a Corsair Force GT which also uses sandforce and the drive has been unstable since the day I brought it home, crashing my pc at random intervals. I never had any sort of issues with my non sandforce SSDs. Corsair didn't even have a bios update to fix the force gt!
Click to expand...

Right. Sandforce has historically had a lot of issues, even non-OCZ Sandforce SSDs. Besides, the performance of Sandforce on incompressible data falls quite short of the fastest SSDs today, like the Plextor M5P or Samsung 830.

I don't recommend a Sandforce SSD to anyone.
 
JoeComp said:
Right. Sandforce has historically had a lot of issues, even non-OCZ Sandforce SSDs. Besides, the performance of Sandforce on incompressible data falls quite short of the fastest SSDs today, like the Plextor M5P or Samsung 830.

I don't recommend a Sandforce SSD to anyone.
Click to expand...

It seems like it's problem may be due to it's an overly complicated design. There are better ways to improve performance than compressing everything on the fly which ends up giving those products extremely unrealistic number on the box that you would hardly ever see in actual real world use.
 
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