Solid State Drives, otherwise known as SSDs, are becoming increasingly popular in the PC market. Check online Crucial SSD Drive at Xfurbish. This is partly due to the constantly evolving and improving technology as well as the prices becoming more and more affordable.
Different SSD’s for your budget
- Corsair P256 256GB SSD
- Crucial M225 256Gb SSD
- Intel X25-M 80Gb SSD
- Kingston SSDNow V+ Series 128Gb SSD
- Patriot Torqx 64GB SSD
Corsair P256 256GB SSD
Quite a good sized drive this from Corsair but with a fairly hefty price tag to match unfortunately!
This SSD is one of Corsair’s ‘Performance’ range of sold state drives and this is reflected in both the speed and, as mentioned above, the price. At the time of writing, the P256 could be had for an eye-watering £501 making the cost per GB of this beast, £1.96 – pretty high even by SSD standards.
Of course, the redeeming factor of this drive is the speed. It will effortlessly move data about when performing Sequential reading and writing tasks but does tend to stutter a tad when performing Random reads and writes. This is shame as it’s these Random times that do let the drive down and mean that there are better drives to be had for similar, if not cheaper prices. In fact, the Crucial M225 256GB instantly springs to mind.
If you were just using this as your Windows system disk though, you won’t go wrong. Real-world data manipulation is a slightly different ball-game to testing operations so you’d probably be more than happy if you slipped one of these in to your shiny new build. The only other let down is the warranty on this SSD is only 2 years while that of the Crucial is 5.
Speed Tests
Sequential Read Speed: ~221MB/s
Sequential Write Speed: ~161MB/s
Random Access Read Speed: ~21MB/s
The P256 is a solid drive with some good Sequential performance, but below average Random times and not the best of warranties may warrant looking elsewhere.
Crucial M225 256Gb SSD
This M225 solid state drive from Crucial comes in it’s 256Gb form. Obviously an SSD of this capacity is not cheap but the chances are, it’ll be the only one you need in your system. This, of course, aims the M225 nicely towards laptop/netbook owners who just want to rip out their old mechanical drives and whack in something a little bit slicker.
At the time of writing, this M225 could be had for a few pennies over £450, making the cost per Gb of this beast an incredibly respectable £1.76. This is of course considerably more than you’d spend on the equivalent platter-based mechanical drive, but in SSD terms, it’s actually very good value..
Performance-wise, the M225 achieved some very respectable scores.
Speed Tests
Sequential Read Speed: ~218MB/s
Sequential Write Speed: ~159MB/s
Random Access Read Speed: ~25MB/s
The Crucial M225 comes with a year warranty as standard making this drive a pretty tough choice to beat if you’re after this kind of storage capacity.
Intel X25-M 80Gb SSD
Intel have produced a few of these solid state drives now and with each iteration comes enhanced performance and lower cost. The X25-M may exist in various versions so make sure you’re getting the latest and greatest, probably easiest done by checking the specification and looking for the type of the MLC RAM chips to be circa 34nm.
The speed of the latest X25-M is what makes this a great SSD drive. Not only are the sequential read and writes top notch but the random access write performance is quite spectacular. These sort of speeds are crying out for a new data bus as the SATA/300 standard is in danger of hindering performance if these drives improve the way they are.
With the price at writing of this SSD at a fairly reasonable £168, giving a cost per Gb of £2.10, it’s certainly not the cheapest of solid state drives but nor is it the most expensive. For the speed on offer, it seems to offer good value for money.
Speed Tests
Sequential Read Speed: ~250MB/s
Sequential Write Speed: ~81MB/s
Random Access Read Speed: ~21MB/s
The Intel X25-M comes with a year warranty as standard.
Kingston SSDNow V+ Series 128Gb SSD
The SSDNow range of solid state drives from Kingston represent a good spread of drives, spanning both the value and performance spectrums. This incarnation has the V+ moniker which should elevate it over the standard V series. The V+ series is currently available in 64GB, 128GB, 256GB and 512GB formats but expect this range to increase once the technology takes of and becomes cheaper.
What’s the difference then? Well, according to Kingston, the V+ series of SSDs uses a different type of NAND flash memory, which we assume, just has much quicker access times. It is certainly quicker than the standard V drives, with Sequential Read and Write times almost twice as fast. The RAR Read time was also exceptional for a drive of this capacity.
The price at the time of writing for this SSD was £216, giving a cost per GB of £1.69, which is very reasonable for a drive of this speed.
Speed Tests
Sequential Read Speed: ~220MB/s
Sequential Write Speed: ~175MB/s
Random Access Read Speed: ~13MB/s
Patriot Torqx 64GB SSD
Patriot themselves are touting their new range of Torqx SSDs as ‘the fastest SSDs in the world’ – a bold claim! Unfortunately, not a particularly accurate claim though as there are a good many drives that are faster than the Torqx.
Where the Torqx does perform very well in terms of performance, is with multi-threaded Random reading, and to a slightly lesser extent, writing. For single-threaded Random testing and also Sequential reading and writing, the Torqx is pretty much in the average bracket amongst it’s current peers.
Price-wise, the Torqx came in at £191 at the time of writing, taking it’s cost per GB to £2.98 – quite high. But, with a class leading 10 year warranty, this could be the SSD for you if you are going to be using applications and a platform that make the most out of multi-threaded operations. If this is the case, it’s certainly worth looking at.
Speed Tests
Sequential Read Speed: ~186MB/s
Sequential Write Speed: ~91MB/s
Random Access Read Speed: ~25MB/s
A top warranty for the Torqx will see you through it’s life and if multi-threading’s your thing, well worth a look.
