New Build: which SSD? Need Advice

[PolishBomber]

Hi all,
In the process of a new build and my first SSD. I've read through several of the guides here and many other places, still having a hard time making a decision. Believe it or not I'm a heavy PC user but still rocking the Athlon XP/nForce 2-based system I built 7 years ago.

Specs: asus P6X58D-E, i7-950, 3x4GB RAM and a 1TB caviar black as a data drive. I may go with 2 x gtx460 SLI or look at the gtx 570 that should be announced next week. The SSD will be for os/apps, games, and the one thing I can't do with my current PC, but want to start learning, is basic video editing and production. I also use VMware occasionally for playing around with db and server OS's.

Trying to decide between intel x25-M G2, vertex 2, revodrive and the crucial C300 120GB because it makes (some) use of sata III.

Looking for a fast PC experience overall, and I'm not sure how video editing fits into the picture since I assume it involves a lot of large sequential writes (?) while using an editing app? vmware may not be a big concern because I normally don't leave vm's running 24x7.

Is the C300 a good option overall because of the fast read times and sata III? Or should I forget sata III for now?

Is the x25 the best overall, no-nonsense choice for a snappy Windows 7 experience over the Vertex 2?

And finally....RevoDrive. I'm not a big fan of the lack of trim, which is almost a deal-breaker for ease of use reaons, but I read somewhere that a good revodrive maintenance solution would be to rewrite the entire OS drive from an image every month or so. Which is not a bad option for me actually, because I'm planning to implement a "real" backup solution for once. Making a weekly snapshot image of my C: drive is something I am planning to do anyway because I've just about had it with zero-day web page exploits/attacks. On the other hand, even with the above I wonder if the revodrive is a little too high maintenance.

Thanks in advance for any help/advice! It is Greatly appreciated...

 

[razel]

The SSD world is nearly mature. Just buy a current model and you can ignore the majority of older SSD guides and definitely ignore majority of the tweaks.

Ignore the revo drive. Buy of whatever of the 3 SSDs you mentioned that's on sale. Keep it around $1.5 per GIG. All November I kept seeing that price. Even the newly released Intel 120GB within a fews days of availability on newegg was $165 on BF. Corsair on Tuesday has bargin bin SSDs. I pinched myself when I saw 128GB for $30. It was more likely a price mistake. $130 would make more sense. Crucial also sells refurb SSDs, including the C300 for ~$1 a GIG. With Intel G3 ready in a few months prices will be even more interesting.

If you're using Win7 you dont' have to do anything, but it is safe to uncheck your SSD in the scheduled defrag. You can even change the disk defragment service from automatic to manual if you do not have any rotating disks connected.

 

[PolishBomber]

Thanks. I am probably over-thinking it...I wish you had commented on sata III with the C300's and why to ignore the revodrive, but I get your point. I have about a week left to order parts (before I'll have time to assemble the rig) so perhaps I'll take your advice and just keep an eye out for a good deal

 

[razel]

I actually just forgot. C300 is awesome if you have SATA 3 and Win7. Anandtech and storagereview have found that it desperately needs an OS with TRIM support so that the drive can recover performance. It also has a head scratching performance loss with SATA 2. I am not sure if Crucial has been addressed that SATA mystery or improved on the TRIM GC yet.

I just don't trust OCZ as a storage company yet. I like them. They're the bleeding edge guys for the overclocking DIY community. But if you have seen the SSD reviews on Anandtech, OCZ has bled themselves several times. Intel and Crucial also has goofs. Last year Intel's firmware killed some drives, but they learned. In fact after they fixed the bad firmware, they haven't released one since. Even the new 120GB is using the same firmware from last year. And they have no reason to change it, it's solid. It's great programming or it's the Blue Giant's vast QA resources.

Anyhow I don't want my storage on bleeding edge tech and RevoDrive (RAIDed SSD) is one fine example. RAIDing SSDs also isn't worth it (money-wise) unless you have a specific application that needs those eXXXtreme sequential speeds. The majority of RAID benchmarks I see don't improve enough on the singe queue random reads and it actually sometimes increases latency.

So all you need is a current model SSD. The 3 you are looking are also the top-dogs. Find it at a good price and you'll be happy.

 

[jackace]

The problem is I was out of town during BF so I missed those deals, and now I have not seen any new deals in the last week or so.

edit

The corsair deal on Tuesday was good, but it was sold out asap.

 

[Zap]

The Revodrive has had some compatibility problems with motherboards because some have had problems using it as a boot drive. Also, the current implementation was supposed to be a cheap way of getting higher-than-SATA performance but it ended up more expensive. What I mean by that is it was supposed to sell for nearly the same cost/GB as SATA drives. Also, it uses a PCI-X (not PCI Express) RAID chipset and then a PCI-X to PCIe bridge chip. That isn't the most elegant or fastest solution, but it was apparently the cheapest. For video editing, unless you're working with tiny files you probably would want a couple of fast HDDs in RAID0 since SSDs can get costly if you are editing multi-GB files and have several temp files or projects going on.

 

[Emulex]

microcenter G2 is available in abundance.

 

[jackace]

microcenter G2 is available in abundance.

Closest one is like 350 miles away.

 

[PolishBomber]

Thanks all. Yeah I wasn't sure how video editing will come into play i.e. if I'll want to use a spinning drive for the scratch disk anyway.

I could swear the crucial c300 128GB was on sale at newegg yesterday for $229 but it's back up to $260 today.

I live near a Microcenter. I've seen they have a store-brand sandforce SSD 64GB for $99 with roughly 250MB read/250MB write. That seems like a pretty good deal to me the only problem is that I was looking for an OS drive more in the range of 80GB-120GB for the long term. For 100 bucks, maybe I should just get one of those for now and upgrade next year. I know that my mobo will boot the RevoDrive, though.

Anyone have any experience with the Microcenter 64GB SSD?
http://www.microcenter.com/single_pr...uct_id=0351760

I found some writeups about it being released, but no performance benchmarks...

 

[Zap]

I could swear the crucial c300 128GB was on sale at newegg yesterday for $229 but it's back up to $260 today.

You can check Camelegg for historic pricing. Newegg has been known to change pricing by the hour, so it is certainly possible that pricing changed overnight.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

The Vertex 2 (SF 1200) is a fantastic drive. Better than the Vertex Limited Edition (SF 1500 controller SSD) When going with one, look for the OCZSSD2 2VTX(gigabyte amount) models.

 

[BBMW]

Video editing (or any other installed software) on SSD. The actual video files on magnetic?

Thanks all. Yeah I wasn't sure how video editing will come into play i.e. if I'll want to use a spinning drive for the scratch disk anyway.