Which 128GB SSD for older laptops?

[taisingera]

I have two older laptops from 2011 and use them for watching video, browsing and a bit of document editing. Both of these laptops have spare bays that I can put hard drives in for mass storage so that is why I am looking at 128gb sata ssd. I realize that 128gb sdd are slower than 256gb but they will be faster than the 7200rpm drives. Any recommendations for 120/128gb ssd? Is that Mushkin Triactor 3dx any good and does it do HMB because I see it with SMI2258 but it says external Dram?

Looking to spend only 35 max for each drive.

 

[VirtualLarry]

HMB? Host Memory Buffer? On a SATA drive? LOL. That's for NVMe SSDs ONLY, because they are connected via a high-speed, low-latency, PCI-E connection.

SATA's a little bit slow, and sector-oriented, for that.

(AFAIK. If there is a HMB drive for SATA, please let me know.)

That being said, SATA SSDs with DRAM cache for the mapping tables ARE a bit faster than those without, especially for random writes. An SLC caching portion of the drive will also speed up writes, and lower write amplification slightly.

I like the performance of the Adata SU800 Ultimate drives, even the 128GB capacity units were fairly speedy to my experiences. (I use them in my personal rigs.) They were a first-gen 3D NAND drive, and have DRAM and SLC caching.

They aren't the cheapest, though.

Recently, Newegg has been running sales on the PNY CS900 SATA SSDs, 120/128GB for $29 or so. I picked up a few at the beginning of this month, but I have yet to actually try one out. I bought them based on price, and the fact that I trust PNY more than Team Group or Silicon Power. (Although I do have a Team Group 480GB L5 Lite 3D NAND SATA SSD in this laptop I'm currently using.)

Edit: I thought that you were talking about a 128GB Mushkin TriActor 3DX. Now I realize, you're talking about the 500GB model for $79.99 on Newegg ShellShocker today. That's really not a bad deal. I've seen the Team Group L5 Lite 3D NAND 480GB models for $69.99, on a sale, but for the price, that Mushkin's not bad. (If you can stand Mushkin, I had a failure with one of their rather older SandForce 2nd-Gen drives, probably a firmware issue. Those were kind of buggy, though. Modern drives with Phison or SMI controllers should be more stable.)

Another budget-oriented drive that you should keep an eye out for is the Toshiba / OCZ TR200 240GB SATA SSDs. I've seen them as low as $39.99, I think, or at least as low as ~$43. Normally, they go for around $60. I've used a couple, not extensively / daily though. They are DRAM-less, so they should be cheaper.

 

[PliotronX]

If the SU800 runs out of stock, the SU655 gets my vote

 

[taisingera]

I might go for the SU800 because it has the dram cache and a SMI controller. The SU650 is Maxiotek controller and dramless.

If you look at the Mushkin website on those Triactor 3DX drives, they say they use SMI2258XT which is dramless but down below they have external dram listed as 1/10th the capacity of the drive. I can only find one review on these Mushkin anyway on Newegg.

 

[UsandThem]

My vote would be for the Crucial BX300 because it uses MLC NAND, and generally performs better than the other really small SSDs.

https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-BX300-120GB-NAND-Internal/dp/B073W3Q96S

https://www.anandtech.com/show/11766/the-crucial-bx300-480gb-ssd-review-back-to-mlc/9

The smallest capacity of the Crucial BX300 may prove to be the most popular and most competitive. There are other 120GB drives on the market that are priced a bit lower, but the BX300 has the advantage that it uses 3D MLC NAND, doesn't use a DRAMless controller and uses all four NAND channels on its controller.

EDIT: I didn't see the $35 price limit, so disregard this post.

 

[PliotronX]

Well there aren't a whole lot of choices with DRAM in the price range and the SU655 I threw into a Vostro 200 at an office does just fine. The CS900 may have DRAM and if it does its between that and the SU800. I just know that when drives have been on the market for a while, they suddenly dry up in stock and prices shoot up (exception being the 850 Evo, that thing got so much mileage) so while the SU800 is a good choice now, who knows in the near future..

 

[Ratman6161]

A couple of years ago I did such an upgrade on several old laptops. I used the cheapest drives I could find since the laptops were only going to be used as spares. Compared to the same machine with the old 5400 rpm disks they came with, it was like getting a he machine. Evens those cheap SSDs were light years improvement.

Lesson learned: for basic tasks definitely go cheap. Don't over think this.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Lesson learned: for basic tasks definitely go cheap. Don't over think this.

Yeah. Now that I think about it, I seem to recall that the CS900 is also DRAM-less, so it would make sense if PNY is making them their low-cost leader.

If you want a PNY SSD with DRAM and a warranty, check out the HP S700 Pro drives.