SSD selection

[L1amrob]

Im building a system for a friend, but he wants to buy from his local shop but they only have OCZ ARC-100 and Kingston V300 both with 480Gb so thats fine. What do you guys recon?

 

[drescherjm]

Neither.

 

[wtourist]

Kingston SSDNow V300 they switched, about a year into production, to cheaper slower asynchronous NAND. Built with a Sandforce controller.
These are fairly reliable, but are slow in some usage and benchmarks compared to other SSDs.
It was a year after introduction, with people complaining thir SSDs were not performing to review sample specification before Kingston grudgingly admitted change. They still weasel performance specifications.
OCZ went bankrupt, their SSD assets were acquired by Toshiba. There have been mixed reports, possibly related to change over.

Your location is not listed. In the USA amazon or newegg usually have the best pricing. There are six or eight entry level SSDs worth considering at a good price. Research reviews.
Usually, unless sale pricing is dramatic Samsung 840/850 EVO or Crucial MX100 are preferred brands.
http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-MX100...pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1423404971&sr=1-6&keywords=ssd

 

[evilsofa]

It's going to be hard for us to choose the lesser of the two evils. Get the prices from the local shop and report back. If they are exorbitant, you may be able to persuade the friend based on cost.

 

[DejaWiz]

Skip those SSD offerings from the local shop...yeah, it's nice to support local businesses, but if they offer an inferior product, then there is no reason to settle. Crucial MX100 all day long.

 

[mwroobel]

Samsung and Intel are our go-to SSD's lately. Avoid OCZ like the plague (until Toshiba cleans house and gets a new design and CS team in there, and we see results) and Kingston (and PNY) have pulled some bait-and-switch moves as noted above. If the local shop can't / won't get you what you want shop elsewhere.

 

[lukart]

Like someone said, stay away from Kingston.. Big V300 fiasco!

But I do not agree with the OCZ being bad. From what I been seeing they know their past faults and they are on to them like dogs. Their returns are much lower and even if you had any problem with your drive they will ship to you a new unid for free! If that's not a good service, I dont know what a good service is

 

[DejaWiz]

Samsung and Intel are our go-to SSD's lately. Avoid OCZ like the plague (until Toshiba cleans house and gets a new design and CS team in there, and we see results) and Kingston (and PNY) have pulled some bait-and-switch moves as noted above. If the local shop can't / won't get you what you want shop elsewhere.

Depending on the Samsung model, I disagree. Evo = TLC NAND = hell no.
And depending on the Intel model prices (if price is a concern) = maybe. Usually the Intel drives are priced much higher than the competition. Sure, their validation process is probably better than the competition, but solid brands use very good validation methods.

Crucial MX100 series offers a hell of a bang for the buck, especially as an alternative to the Intel 530/730 series.

PNY never pulled a bait-and-switch move like Kingston did. They have openly stated that they use multiple controllers for their more budget oriented lines like the Optima series in order to keep prices low...incidentally, they also openly advertise the use of superior synchronous NAND in that particular SSD line (this is all right there on their own web site product page), unlike Kingston which silently switched to asynchronous NAND with their V300 line without telling anyone, and now this model no longer performs as advertised.

 

[leedreamer189]

Don't think Kingston is worth considering, but OCZ now uses Nand from Toshiba, it's worth looking into.