New SSD: WD SiliconEdge Blue 64Gb or Crucial C300

[jonmcguffin]

Looking for some help deciding what SSD to purchase between the two I list above...

Both drives seem to retail for between $140 - $150 delivered. Both drives are 64Gb drives which I think is plenty for a good Win7 64-bit boot drive along with all my applications.

Both are MLC drives, both support TRIM.

WD SiliconEdge Blue
advantage: Faster read spec's than C300
disadvantage: Don't know the chipset, doesn't support SATA-III, & slower write performance than C300
Write - 250Mb/s
Read - 170Mb/s

Crucial C300
advantage: Supports SATA-III 6gb/sec which would seem to matter in an SSD
disadvantage: Uses Marvel/Micron controller of which I've never heard of and read performance is less than half of SiliconEdge Blue.
Write - 355Mb/s
Read - 70Mb/s

I've installed one 64Gb Kingston V series drive in the past and though I was satisfied, the drive has a tendency every now and then to 'pause' where my computer will essentially freeze for a second or two before it continues on. I've read about this briefly elsewhere but this is flat out unacceptable as far as I'm concerned. I don't buy a screaming fast drive to have little pauses and jitters while I'm working on a video editing project or doing something in Photoshop.

So I'm really hoping neither of these drives for this new build will exhibit this type of behavior and hoping you guys can help me out!

 

[TemjinGold]

Honestly, I wouldn't recommend either. The WD is pretty subpar and the Crucial has had reports of reliability issues. If you can scrape a bit more cash, I'd check out the $199 Intel 80gb deal.

 

[jonmcguffin]

Checked on the 80Gb Intel offering and it seems to be around the $225 mark.. What about these other two drives are so sub par? Theoretically speaking, all these drives should basically blow the doors of a traditional HD, what different does it really make to have one just a little faster than the other?

I'm mainly wanting something that is a little bit future proof and was frankly hoping somebody else could chime in on this stuttering thing I occasionally see using the Kingston drive..

 

[TemjinGold]

http://www.frys.com/product/5833623?...namitedata.com <--- $199 till 7/15.

Anyway, you are correct in that either will blow the doors off a spindle drive. If you must go with one of the two, I'd do the Silicon Edge. The Crucial had lots of reports of the drive dying early in life.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Reliability is what you really want in an SSD drive, just look at my sig (in red) Or course I got a replacement but after the while it took me to customize the install, i'll wait for the Firmware to be proven before i go ahead on an install with the replacement. The Intel 80g G2 came in 2nd in the read and write random 4k IOPS just behind the OCZ Vertex LE

 

[LokutusofBorg]

If your biggest concern is not having those pauses you describe, then you really should go for the most reliable, solid SSDs on the market, which are the Intels.

The WD uses the JMicron controller, the first generation of which caused the notorious stuttering drives. The Silicon Blue is nowhere near top of any heap in performance.

The Crucial drives had some firmware problems that have pretty well been worked out, but the lower capacity versions of the C300 line just aren't up to snuff. If you were buying a 256GB drive, then I'd say Crucial would be a very good buy. But you're not.

 

[beginner99]

Get the intel g2 80 gb drive. It's not much more than the other too but the most rounded one in terms of performance and reliability. Plus it's also rather on the cheap side.
The WD is a no go if stuttering is an issue. I don't own one but it's known it uses a modified version of the Jmicron controller (that was in your kingsto drive).

 

[sub.mesa]

If you guys are interested in actual performance, do not look for sequential numbers - look for random IOps instead. That makes much more sense for the function of the SSD ; as a system disk storing your OS.

SSDs are perhaps twice as fast when dealing with large files, but hundred to a thousand times faster than HDD when accessing small files (random I/O). Random IOps therefore is your target.

CrystalDiskMark and AS SSD are highly recommended benchmarks for the Windows platform. I will add that JMicron SSDs actually are at the bottom and the Micron 6Gbps controller is one of the fastest SSDs right now, even beating the superior Intel controller by a small degree. But i would never recommend a JMicron SSD. They might die really quick and though their sequential speeds are alright their random IOps is too low to justify its price.

 

[adamantinepiggy]

The 64G C300 might write slower than it's larger sized series siblings, but it reads just as fast. You will always be doing a lot more drive reading than writing (in real world normal usage), especially on the smaller sized drives used mainly for boot OS and applications only.

 

[razel]

I don't buy a screaming fast drive to have little pauses and jitters while I'm working on a video editing project or doing something in Photoshop.

I suggest identifying what exactly was causing the pauses and jitters and killing your productivity. Video editing and 'doing something in Photoshop' usually do best with ridiculous amounts of RAM and processing.

For perspective, my co-worker's graphics workstation is still an XP machine, lots of RAM, standard hard drives and he never complains about not getting things done or being slow. His experience and computer knowledge has thought him how to eliminate bottlenecks. He splits file read/writes work between his local drive and across fast NAS gigabit drives set for him.

I suggest identifying where your pauses are coming from so that your money can be better spent. If you're doing alot of sequential writes, which the Kingston V series could slowdown on... adding a great 7200 RPM rotating drive maybe best. If your PC is writing alot to the swap and running out of RAM, then RAM is what you need.