Budget SSD for LGA 775 based computers?

[gryffinwings]

Hey guys, I'm looking at getting some SSDs to replace mechanical HDDs currently in several computers and computers that do not have drives. I don't really care to place a Samsung SSD in these as I doubt it would be worth the money to do so. Most of the computers are Core 2 Quad-based that I got for cheap or are going to be upgraded to Intel Core 2 Quads and figured I'd start upgrading those, I think I'd prefer to have around 240-256 GBs of space and have an HDD as storage if I feel like upgrading storage in those.

So the brands I'm familiar with that have reasonably good prices on amazon anyways:
Kingston
Silicon Power
Sandisk
A-Data
Island Professional
Patriot

Thoughts on these brands?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Never heard of Island Professional, but the other brands have decent enough reputations IME/IIRC/AFAIK.

If you're a US buyer, the Patriot Burst for $36 on Amazon looks like a not-bad idea.

Not sure I'd be going to the effort for rigs that old though, unless I had a really good reason or a really tight budget restriction.

 

[gryffinwings]

Never heard of Island Professional, but the other brands have decent enough reputations IME/IIRC/AFAIK.

If you're a US buyer, the Patriot Burst for $36 on Amazon looks like a not-bad idea.

Not sure I'd be going to the effort for rigs that old though, unless I had a really good reason or a really tight budget restriction.

I got them for really cheap some of them like 5 dollars per computer for a lot of 8 and I found 2 on the street for free. So I am having a bit of fun seeing what they can do, buy cheap upgrades on eBay, might sell a few off after I'm done working on them. Also I am on a rather tight budget, self imposed and real life budget restricted, my primary rig is a Dell Precision T3500 which I'm working on upgrading as well, some of it is for practicing computer repair and upgrades, one of them will be to practice board repair, others to learn network stuff, one for Linux, sort of a home lab on the cheap, here are a couple of pictures of the computers I picked up:

 

[mxnerd]

For computers this old and only for home lab testing, there is no reason to spend more than needed.

Just go for SSD that's as cheep as possible. (60GB and above is enough)

Socket 775 motherboard's SATA port can only go up to 3G bps per port anyway.

 

[mxnerd]

Found some opinions about Inland Professional.

https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapcsa...d_inland_professional_120gb_sata_iii_6gbs_25/

 

[gryffinwings]

Found some opinions about Inland Professional.

https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapcsa...d_inland_professional_120gb_sata_iii_6gbs_25/

I saw that, but I thought SLC was the best, followed by MLC, then TLC. Silicon Power sells SLC versions of there SSD:

https://www.amazon.com/Silicon-Powe...ents=p_n_feature_three_browse-bin:14027457011

The Island Professional is a TLC SSD:
https://www.amazon.com/Inland-Profe..._n_feature_three_browse-bin:14027457011&psc=1

Not finding the Island Professional SSD in MLC anymore, no idea what that's all about.

Thoughts?

 

[UsandThem]

You also have other options, like the Crucial BX500 for $26.77
https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-BX500-120GB-2-5-Inch-Internal/dp/B07G3L3DRK

Or the BX300 which uses MLC for $29.84
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073W3Q96S/ref=psdc_1292116011_t2_B07G3L3DRK

Although the BX300 is only from 3rd party sellers (fulfilled by Amazon) since it was replaced by the BX500.

 

[mxnerd]

I saw that, but I thought SLC was the best, followed by MLC, then TLC. Silicon Power sells SLC versions of there SSD:

https://www.amazon.com/Silicon-Power-Performance-Internal-SU128GBSS3A55S25AC/dp/B07D7VTDNB/ref=sr_1_4?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1542064960&sr=1-4&keywords=ssd&refinements=p_n_feature_three_browse-bin:14027457011

Thoughts?

Well, That Silicon Power it's still TLC, but with SLC cache.

==

Here is 120GB MLC SSD (with SLC cache) on Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/addlink-120GB-2-5-inch-Internal-Solid/dp/B07C87X3VK

 

[VirtualLarry]

Honestly, don't think too hard about this.

A good match is an Intel Series 320 (aka "G3") SATA2 SSD, or a G2. They came in 40/80/160/320GB sizes.

They used to be cheap all over ebay. The supply may be dried up by now.

Otherwise, just buy the cheapest/largest one for the $$$ that you can.

I've been buying Team Group L5 Lite 3D NAND (the metallic gold cases), and Silicon Power A55 Ace SATA6G SSDs. Both have SLC cache, and possibly DRAM buffer. Plus, they're among the cheapest new SSDs that you can get.

Passed up some L5 3D 120GB SSDs for ~$20, bought some 240GB for ~$30, and snagged a 480GB for ~$55.

For your purposes, a 120GB should be fine. I already have a large stock of 120GB, don't need more, and more modern drives are a bit more crippled at smaller sizes like 120GB than older MLC drives. That's one reason that, even on a budget, you want the largest 3D NAND SSD that you can reasonably afford, in order to have the most parallelism and SLC cache. (There's a reason that Samsung no longer produces a 120GB V-NAND mainstream consumer SSD.)

 

[whm1974]

I'm not sure about and is probably not a good idea to put money into any system that is old enough to have a Floppy drive. Hell when is the last time anyone even seen a modern computer sold with one?

 

[UsandThem]

I'm not sure about and is probably not a good idea to put money into any system that is old enough to have a Floppy drive. Hell when is the last time anyone even seen a modern computer sold with one?

Based on what he stated he bought them for ($5 per PC), and what he wants to use them for, I think it's a smart and very cheap way to accomplish their goals.

 

[whm1974]

Based on what he stated he bought them for ($5 per PC), and what he wants to use them for, I think it's a smart and very cheap way to accomplish his goals.

I will admit that I have a strong bias about upgrading systems that are that old.

 

[UsandThem]

I will admit that I have a strong bias about upgrading systems that are that old.

They're the best for tinkering with IMO. They are cheap, so if you damage something, it's not a big deal. It's what I did when my kids wanted to play around and see how things worked. That way I didn't have to worry about them damaging something worth hundreds of dollars.

Now I wouldn't pay that much for such an old PC, but for $5 each, heck yeah!

 

[whm1974]

They're the best for tinkering with IMO. They are cheap, so if you damage something, it's not a big deal. It's what I did when my kids wanted to play around and see how things worked. That way I didn't have to worry about them damaging something worth hundreds of dollars.

Now I wouldn't pay that much for such an old PC, but for $5 each, heck yeah!

Well for something like that I would do the same thing, as long as it still has usable performance.

 

[gryffinwings]

You also have other options, like the Crucial BX500 for $26.77
https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-BX500-120GB-2-5-Inch-Internal/dp/B07G3L3DRK

Or the BX300 which uses MLC for $29.84
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073W3Q96S/ref=psdc_1292116011_t2_B07G3L3DRK

Although the BX300 is only from 3rd party sellers (fulfilled by Amazon) since it was replaced by the BX500.

Thanks for the information, I'll definitely be looking at these for at least one of my machines.

Honestly, don't think too hard about this.

A good match is an Intel Series 320 (aka "G3") SATA2 SSD, or a G2. They came in 40/80/160/320GB sizes.

They used to be cheap all over ebay. The supply may be dried up by now.

Otherwise, just buy the cheapest/largest one for the $$$ that you can.

I've been buying Team Group L5 Lite 3D NAND (the metallic gold cases), and Silicon Power A55 Ace SATA6G SSDs. Both have SLC cache, and possibly DRAM buffer. Plus, they're among the cheapest new SSDs that you can get.

Passed up some L5 3D 120GB SSDs for ~$20, bought some 240GB for ~$30, and snagged a 480GB for ~$55.

For your purposes, a 120GB should be fine. I already have a large stock of 120GB, don't need more, and more modern drives are a bit more crippled at smaller sizes like 120GB than older MLC drives. That's one reason that, even on a budget, you want the largest 3D NAND SSD that you can reasonably afford, in order to have the most parallelism and SLC cache. (There's a reason that Samsung no longer produces a 120GB V-NAND mainstream consumer SSD.)

Thanks for the information, I'll take a look, I think SATA II had a max transfer speed of 300MB/s, so even cheap ones would be fast enough I suppose.

I'm not sure about and is probably not a good idea to put money into any system that is old enough to have a Floppy drive. Hell when is the last time anyone even seen a modern computer sold with one?

Not going to lie, at least one has a floppy drive in it, not a big deal. Good for use with my old Pentium II machine for old DOS games.

They're the best for tinkering with IMO. They are cheap, so if you damage something, it's not a big deal. It's what I did when my kids wanted to play around and see how things worked. That way I didn't have to worry about them damaging something worth hundreds of dollars.

Now I wouldn't pay that much for such an old PC, but for $5 each, heck yeah!

Yeah, cheap as heck, some I found on the street for free, so it's not like I'm spending loads, the plan is to upgrade most of them to Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600, Q9650, Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6800 eventually.

Currently got an Intel Xeon X5675 (30 USD) for my main rig on the way to upgrade from the W3520. A pair of E5645s (20 USD) for one of the server racks. Upgraded a Dell Optiplex 745 from an Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 to an Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 a couple of weeks ago for 10 USD, it's my Linux box. Most of the computers I'm running have mechanical HDD, except my Dell T3500.

Well for something like that I would do the same thing, as long as it still has usable performance.

For the stuff that I do, I don't think I will have any issues with performance. I'm just messing around.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Here's a benchmark of a BX500 120GB SATA 2.5" SSD, in a G3258 CPU OCed to 4.0Ghz (40x multi) in a Biostar H81 board, connected to a SATA6G port.

 

[killster1]

I saw that, but I thought SLC was the best, followed by MLC, then TLC. Silicon Power sells SLC versions of there SSD:

https://www.amazon.com/Silicon-Power-Performance-Internal-SU128GBSS3A55S25AC/dp/B07D7VTDNB/ref=sr_1_4?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1542064960&sr=1-4&keywords=ssd&refinements=p_n_feature_three_browse-bin:14027457011

The Island Professional is a TLC SSD:
https://www.amazon.com/Inland-Professional-120GB-Internal-Solid/dp/B076XMH2JT/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1542064960&sr=1-1-spons&keywords=ssd&refinements=p_n_feature_three_browse-bin:14027457011&psc=1

Not finding the Island Professional SSD in MLC anymore, no idea what that's all about.

Thoughts?

Another vote for the crucial bx500

id go with a major brand and i wouldnt worry about the price as you are going to reuse it many times or you are buying lots of them?

either way upgrading old pc is not anything anyone will want. sure fast hd but on a pII? why bother.. no point in upgrading anything other than for practice or giggles, no one wants to use a slow old computer when fast old computers exist for a few $$ more i5 8400 box for 300? 8250u laptop for 300? I have a whole wall of old computer motherboards dfi abit asus asrock 478 hybrids with cpu that are imo to slow for anyone i respect to use! even have a really nice looking dfi x48 with c2q of some sort (lapped) but its to slow / power hungry to be used by anyone i know.

 

[VirtualLarry]

even have a really nice looking dfi x48 with c2q of some sort (lapped) but its to slow / power hungry to be used by anyone i know.

LOL. I still have a BNIB DFI X48 ATX board, and a BNIB Q6600 from Microcenter.

 

[killster1]

LOL. I still have a BNIB DFI X48 ATX board, and a BNIB Q6600 from Microcenter.

im sure those will be collectors items..id buy them off you for my wall hehe bnib isnt my style tho