New Intel SSD drives are in!!!

[jkresh]

AbRASiON, I think the re release is next week, would assume that the full review would follow that. Definitely looking forward to picking up one of these drives for a windows 7 install (technet).

 

[Mongoloid]

Does anyone know if the retail box has a 3.5" mount?

 

[hammermill1]

From looking up HHDErase on google (from Old Hippie's post above), it led me to this article about enabling AHCI in your system bios to gain a little more performance from ssd drives. Ran, ATTO Disk Benchmark v2.34...then, rebooted into bios to turn the sata controler to AHCI mode (was on 'compatibility' mode, aka IDE on this Lenovo), logged into windows and ran Intel's Matrix Storage Manager from Lenovo's website, rebooted and ran ATTO Disk Benchmark again. Nice gains (below are just some stats from atto):

2 went from read/write 35/40 to 51/72 MB/sec
4 went from read/write 60/68 to 71/114
8 went from read/write 75/100 to 83/175
1024 went from read/write 55/191 to 86/200

 

[deputc26]

Originally posted by: Mongoloid
Does anyone know if the retail box has a 3.5" mount?

No it doesn't.

 

[CSMR]

Originally posted by: taltamir
an interesting "new" for me is not hearing the hard drive anymore... I hear it even over the loud video card and case fans (which I am looking into doing something about)

It's pretty easy to build a silent PC these days. For storage an SSD plus 500Gb Samsung F2 EcoGreen HD502HI or WD Greenpower series drive would be good options.

 

[imported_jor8888]

I just cloned my old HD winxp over and everything was running but took me 2 days to figure out how to get AHCI working without BSOD.

--------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 2.2 (C) 2007-2008 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
--------------------------------------------------

Sequential Read : 269.124 MB/s
Sequential Write : 85.126 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 207.639 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 85.236 MB/s
Random Read 4KB : 25.009 MB/s
Random Write 4KB : 65.984 MB/s

Test Size : 100 MB
Date : 2009/08/02 17:14:11


Only question I have is what program to run at the mean time while waiting for Trim?

 

[Mango1970]

Folks that bought this new Intel SSD drives.. are you all still applying the various changes to your OS like disabling this and that and the other thing or leaving it all default (Win7 and Vista I mean), other than making sure no defrags are run? Is there a point at all now with these new SSD drives to even bother with the many tweaks that were mentioned on the OCZ site?

Just wondering since mine is on order and hopefully on the way here.

On a side note do the Intel drives differ in performance based on size like the OCZ ones? I noted that the 30 and 60 GB are rated slower than the 120 and above GB ones for OCZ. Since the 30 and 60 ones are always on sale and cheaper I have gotten those... was just wondering about the Intel ones.

 

[rcpratt]

Not sure on the tweaks. I haven't really done any and it benchmarks like it should.

And yes, the 160GB X25-M G2 performs slightly better than the 80GB. Nothing game-breaking.

 

[Mango1970]

Great -- thanks for the reply RCpratt. Makes my life much easier when I get it.

 

[taltamir]

all defaults, the whole point of an intel SSD is that you don't have to do any of that stuff... no need to sacrifice for performance.

 

[jkresh]

mango1970 where did you order the drive from? Also did you order the 80gig intel or the 30 or 60 ocz?

 

[isp]

guess we're all waiting for them to come back in stock then huh? :-(

 

[glugglug]

Looks like the new firmware is coming real soon: http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/s...ves_by_Week_s_End.html

 

[jkresh]

would be nice, want one for windows 7 install (keep repeating myself but ...)

 

[alcoholbob]

Originally posted by: CSMR

Originally posted by: taltamir
an interesting "new" for me is not hearing the hard drive anymore... I hear it even over the loud video card and case fans (which I am looking into doing something about)

It's pretty easy to build a silent PC these days. For storage an SSD plus 500Gb Samsung F2 EcoGreen HD502HI or WD Greenpower series drive would be good options.

Yeah but hard drive accessing is here and there, not consistent. For the rest of the time the fans are doing about 2/3 of the noise and 1/3 is case resonance. The fan noise you can reduce if you have a large case and a large CPU HSF, and feel adventurous about ambient temperature. The case resonance is almost impossible to eliminate. This is coming from a guy with a Coolermaster Cosmos, 6lbs of dynamat, a Coolermaster V10 cpu HSF, and pc thrown into a (very spacious) closet.

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: Astrallite

Originally posted by: CSMR

Originally posted by: taltamir
an interesting "new" for me is not hearing the hard drive anymore... I hear it even over the loud video card and case fans (which I am looking into doing something about)

It's pretty easy to build a silent PC these days. For storage an SSD plus 500Gb Samsung F2 EcoGreen HD502HI or WD Greenpower series drive would be good options.

Yeah but hard drive accessing is here and there, not consistent. For the rest of the time the fans are doing about 2/3 of the noise and 1/3 is case resonance. The fan noise you can reduce if you have a large case and a large CPU HSF, and feel adventurous about ambient temperature. The case resonance is almost impossible to eliminate. This is coming from a guy with a Coolermaster Cosmos, 6lbs of dynamat, a Coolermaster V10 cpu HSF, and pc thrown into a (very spacious) closet.

yes... and while its true that my HDD is quieter than most fans, it has a distinctive sound and it comes on and off, so I am more likely to NOTICE it.

 

[AbRASiON]

Originally posted by: jkresh
AbRASiON, I think the re release is next week, would assume that the full review would follow that. Definitely looking forward to picking up one of these drives for a windows 7 install (technet).

Where is this info, can you provide more?

 

[AbRASiON]

Since Windows 7 is out TOMORROW for some customers, why won't intel just release the damn TRIM firmware NOW?

 

[taltamir]

TRIM has been enabled since win7 beta days... and many customers already use the RC which sends the trim command out with every deletion.

I don't know why they are holding back on it

 

[AbRASiON]

It makes no sense to me, what advantage is there in holding it back?

 

[taltamir]

make sure it is actually finished, working right, and bugfree?
My guess is that at the time of releasing the drives, the TRIM was too buggy and incomplete, instead of delaying the drives they just say "we will release it with windows 7". giving them an excuse and a way to work on it for a few more months.

 

[CSMR]

Originally posted by: AstralliteYeah but hard drive accessing is here and there, not consistent. For the rest of the time the fans are doing about 2/3 of the noise and 1/3 is case resonance. The fan noise you can reduce if you have a large case and a large CPU HSF, and feel adventurous about ambient temperature. The case resonance is almost impossible to eliminate. This is coming from a guy with a Coolermaster Cosmos, 6lbs of dynamat, a Coolermaster V10 cpu HSF, and pc thrown into a (very spacious) closet.

I didn't say every computer can be silenced easily, just that it is easy to make a silent computer these days, at least much easier than in the past with computers taking less and less power. This doesn't apply to gaming systems with actively cooled GPU fans.

A completely fanless high-performance system is still hard to do but with a very quiet PSU fan, a slow and very quiet system fan, and a quiet CPU fan that is set to turn on only when the CPU is hot, you have a system that is probably silent a couple of meters away.
Until recently the hard drive has been the hardest thing to silence, butSSDs plus the new low-power/noise 5400RPM drives (and quiet 7200RPMs too) make this fairly easy.

You still have to choose the right components of course but now it's just a matter of buying the right off-the-shelf components.

 

[jimhsu]

My SFF with 2x120mm fans (at <1000 rpm) is pretty darned silent when not gaming. Plus, the CPU stays cool - E8400 at 31C when idle.

 

[taltamir]

speaking of silent computing... what do you do for a video card? my GTX260 is too noisy. But AFAIK the other performance cards are noiser or just as noisy...

 

[AbRASiON]

Still no firmware!