Suggestions for an SSD

[Euro_Bucks]

Currently using a 120Gb OCZ Arc 100. I couldn't say anything about its performance all I know is my PC boots faster, games loads quicker and tranfer rates are much better.

But 120Gb sure is not enough. Looking forward upgrading to a higher capacity and found this
 

Colorful SL500 320Gb

It is priced at $73.00 I mean it's the cheapest I can find. Gonna make the 120Gb as drive for OS and the 320Gb for games.
Would like to hear your thoughts. Thanks !

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

Don't know about the Colorful brand. Never heard of them.

 

I know Samsung will be better for you.

 

BUT every SSD is made about the same way. Just the firmware and controller you have to worry about.

 

I have used OCZ, Crucial, A-Data, Samsung SSD/M.2, through my years. Only my OCZ failed on me. Just couldn't read it anymore.

[Byter]

 Hi. I bought one of these http://www.microcenter.com/product/485911/240GB_3D_MLC_NAND_SATA_III_6GB-s_25_Internal_Solid_State_Drive  from Microcenter .Not sure if you have a Microcenter near you because you have to buy in store only.

I have a Samsung 850 EVO and this Inland one is nearly as fast and it's only $42.99 for 240GB. If you go to the site and see the 480GB Inland brand drive DON'T buy that one . It's a different type of SSD and very slow.

[Circaflex]

2 hours ago, Mindovermaster said:

Don't know about the Colorful brand. Never heard of them.

 

I know Samsung will be better for you.

 

BUT every SSD is made about the same way. Just the firmware and controller you have to worry about.

 

I have used OCZ, Crucial, A-Data, Samsung SSD/M.2, through my years. Only my OCZ failed on me. Just couldn't read it anymore.

How on earth can you say, you've never heard of brand a, but you know brand b will be better? That makes zero sense.

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

7 minutes ago, Circaflex said:

How on earth can you say, you've never heard of brand a, but you know brand b will be better? That makes zero sense.

You ever use a wide range of SSD's?

[xendrome]

26 minutes ago, Circaflex said:

How on earth can you say, you've never heard of brand a, but you know brand b will be better? That makes zero sense.

Pretty easy to say that Brand A whom everyone knows and their quality/reliability is high, compared to Brand B whom almost no one has heard of...

[Mockingbird]

 

49 minutes ago, xendrome said:

Pretty easy to say that Brand A whom everyone knows and their quality/reliability is high, compared to Brand B whom almost no one has heard of...

I looked it up.

 

Colorful is apparently a big manufacturer of video cards, motherboards, and SSD in China.

[+John. Subscriber¹]

I would go for a Samsung EVO if you can.

[Euro_Bucks]

14 hours ago, Mindovermaster said:

Don't know about the Colorful brand. Never heard of them.

 

I know Samsung will be better for you.

 

BUT every SSD is made about the same way. Just the firmware and controller you have to worry about.

 

I have used OCZ, Crucial, A-Data, Samsung SSD/M.2, through my years. Only my OCZ failed on me. Just couldn't read it anymore.

 

I had an Adata SX900 before and it died just 5 months after my purchase. I am using an OCZ now for years in it never failed me.

While I agree that they are made about the same way, I am more worried about the price.

 

10 hours ago, Mockingbird said:

 

I looked it up.

 

Colorful is apparently a big manufacturer of video cards, motherboards, and SSD in China.

Yes they are a huge distributor in Asia. Their video cards are pretty descent though.

9 hours ago, John. said:

I would go for a Samsung EVO if you can.

Yes it is safe to say I should get one of the top brands out there. It's just that I had to shell out a couple of bucks for that.

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

9 minutes ago, Euro_Bucks said:

I had an Adata SX900 before and it died just 5 months after my purchase. I am using an OCZ now for years in it never failed me.

While I agree that they are made about the same way, I am more worried about the price.

Well, price = product doesn't exactly work this way. You can buy a Jaguar for cheap, but it may not work right. The only thing to keep in mind is the warranty. I have a Samsung 860 PRO 256GB that has a 5-year warranty. If that ever fails within the 5 years, I can usually get a replacement.

[conna]

I would go with ADATA.  I

1 hour ago, Euro_Bucks said:

I had an Adata SX900 before and it died just 5 months after my purchase. I am using an OCZ now for years in it never failed me.

While I agree that they are made about the same way, I am more worried about the price.

 

I have deployed hundreds of ADATA SSD's. from desktop to server and only had 1 come back as a failed drive.  It was in a mirror RAID so no biggie.  Sent it off and within a  week it was replaced.  I have had 1 out of 2 Samsung SSD's come back with issues.  Dealing with Samsung was PITA.  

[ThaCrip]

As a general rule... stick to brand names if you want a SSD that will last. it's not worth gambling on a generic SSD if your only going to save a small amount of $.

 

basically if you want to play modern games the 500GB range SSD's are the sweet spot as they offer solid capacity at a reasonable price. if you want to save a bit of $ then getting a 250GB range is where it's at. Samsung/Crucial/Intel (and maybe some others if the price is right) are hard to go wrong with those brands.

 

that pretty much sums up the whole SSD stuff when it comes to your typical SATA SSD's.

 

p.s. I recently bought (it's not arrived yet) a Intel 545s 128GB SSD for $31.99 (that's the total cost) and has a 5 year warranty (along with a 72TB of written data rating. basically every 128GB the capacity increases, increases the written data to it by 72TB. so 128GB SSD is 72TB of written data and 256GB is 144TB of written data and so on) and am going to put it into a 10 year old laptop I got which is hands down the best 120-128GB range SSD I have seen for around $30 and it's competitive with the higher up SATA SSD models in all around speed and it's warranty is as good as they come outside of those special overpriced SSD's (say Samsung Pro versions) with 10 year warranties which are not worth the premium price. the SSD in my main PC is a Samsung 850 EVO 250GB (which has been pretty much the best SSD for years until fairly recently) and I have had this since May 2015 and only has 11.8TB of written data (but I largely use my regular hard drives for larger downloads of videos etc which helps cut back on the data written to it) and it's rated for 75TB of writes and will likely go well beyond that before actual failure occurs from writing to data to it. so in other words... assuming the drive does not fail from random things and dies from data written to it, your SSD is going to last a long time with the brand name SSD's.

[Euro_Bucks]

On 7/29/2018 at 12:06 PM, Mindovermaster said:

Well, price = product doesn't exactly work this way. You can buy a Jaguar for cheap, but it may not work right. The only thing to keep in mind is the warranty. I have a Samsung 860 PRO 256GB that has a 5-year warranty. If that ever fails within the 5 years, I can usually get a replacement.

Couldn't agree more. Guess I'm a bit lucky that I never had problems buying stuff from less popular brands like Biostar or Galax which I am using right now.

On 7/29/2018 at 1:17 PM, conna said:

I would go with ADATA.  I

I have deployed hundreds of ADATA SSD's. from desktop to server and only had 1 come back as a failed drive.  It was in a mirror RAID so no biggie.  Sent it off and within a  week it was replaced.  I have had 1 out of 2 Samsung SSD's come back with issues.  Dealing with Samsung was PITA.  

Too bad Adata failed my first impressions. I am from the Philippines and since they got no distributor locally. I have to send the defective one to Taiwan which will cost me half of the price of their stuff.

On 7/29/2018 at 2:51 PM, ThaCrip said:

As a general rule... stick to brand names if you want a SSD that will last. it's not worth gambling on a generic SSD if your only going to save a small amount of $.

 

basically if you want to play modern games the 500GB range SSD's are the sweet spot as they offer solid capacity at a reasonable price. if you want to save a bit of $ then getting a 250GB range is where it's at. Samsung/Crucial/Intel (and maybe some others if the price is right) are hard to go wrong with those brands.

 

that pretty much sums up the whole SSD stuff when it comes to your typical SATA SSD's.

 

p.s. I recently bought (it's not arrived yet) a Intel 545s 128GB SSD for $31.99 (that's the total cost) and has a 5 year warranty (along with a 72TB of written data rating. basically every 128GB the capacity increases, increases the written data to it by 72TB. so 128GB SSD is 72TB of written data and 256GB is 144TB of written data and so on) and am going to put it into a 10 year old laptop I got which is hands down the best 120-128GB range SSD I have seen for around $30 and it's competitive with the higher up SATA SSD models in all around speed and it's warranty is as good as they come outside of those special overpriced SSD's (say Samsung Pro versions) with 10 year warranties which are not worth the premium price. the SSD in my main PC is a Samsung 850 EVO 250GB (which has been pretty much the best SSD for years until fairly recently) and I have had this since May 2015 and only has 11.8TB of written data (but I largely use my regular hard drives for larger downloads of videos etc which helps cut back on the data written to it) and it's rated for 75TB of writes and will likely go well beyond that before actual failure occurs from writing to data to it. so in other words... assuming the drive does not fail from random things and dies from data written to it, your SSD is going to last a long time with the brand name SSD's.

I got your point. I think I'm good with the 320Gb as I need $ I could save so I could upgrade my GPU (I have a Ryzen 7 1700 paired with a GTX 950).

Games installed currently are mostly online games e.g. Dota 2, Overwatch, PUBG, BF4, Fortnite also getting ready for BF5 release. Not into single player games right though I miss it.

[Astra.Xtreme]

Samsung is the golden standard of SSDs and it's absolutely worth the extra cost to go with a reliable and proven product.  Prices aren't that different than the low-end brands.

Nothing will p*ss you off more than penny-pinching with a crappy brand, having it suddenly die, and have all your data disappear.  The aggravation of that isn't worth the risk.

[spaceelf]

Only internal SSD I've had die out of somewhere around ten of them (mostly OCZ) over the years was from physical damage to the connector, not problems with the drives.

 

So many of these data loss scenarios seem anecdotal...of course you're going to have a problem with a drive sooner or later, but in general unless you're seriously thrashing the drives or not updating the firmware they last.

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

 

Colorful is a huge brand in China where they are known for their motherboards, etc., but less well-known outside of the Asia-Pacific region.

A search of the "Where To Buy" section on their website  at https://en.colorful.cn/channels/51.html reveals one distributor in Europe (Germany) and no distributors at all in the Americas.

 

If you are in the APAC region and can easily get warranty service from them, then I'd say go for it.  Otherwise, you may be taking a bit more of a risk (and certainly higher shipping costs) if you need to RMA the drive and are in another part of the world.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

[LaP]

Looking at their website and reviews of their products on youtube it looks like a pretty big company. I would not worry too much.

 

I'm looking at their MBs and GPUs and honestly it's sad they don't sell in north america it looks like a serious company. Apparently Newegg will start to sell their products soon.

 

 

It's worth investing in Samsung or other top brands for the OS main SSD but for storage they are too expensive imo. My storage SSDs (gaming and studio/idea/netbeans/... projects) are crucial and adata.

 

If they fail i have two backup anyway. One on an external hdd. On top of that backup the projects are all on private git repo and i can re-download my games easily and the saves are in the cloud these days.

Edited July 30, 2018 by LaP

[LaP]

Well the video i posted is from 2014 just realized that lol so forget it never seen their product on Newegg which is strange ... still looks like a good company to me.

[ThaCrip]

16 hours ago, Euro_Bucks said:

I got your point. I think I'm good with the 320Gb as I need $ I could save so I could upgrade my GPU (I have a Ryzen 7 1700 paired with a GTX 950).

Games installed currently are mostly online games e.g. Dota 2, Overwatch, PUBG, BF4, Fortnite also getting ready for BF5 release. Not into single player games right though I miss it.

 

Yeah, I got a 1050 Ti 4GB and I suspect that will last me quite a while as I am in no rush to leave 1080p as it's good enough for me and a 1050 Ti 4Gb is solid enough for 1080p level gaming. off the top of my head... I am not sure how my GPU (1050 Ti 4GB) compares to the 950 but I would imagine at the very least it's a more energy efficient version as I would guess performance wise our GPU's probably ain't that far apart either way.

 

but yeah, if your a little low on $ it's all about making the most efficient use of what you do got and in that regard it's not worth upgrading your SSD as I am assuming what you currently have is 'fast enough' and 320GB, while not a lot of space, it's passable as I figure for anyone who games a 250GB range SSD will be the bare minimum worth buying even though lately the 500GB range SSD's are the sweet spot for storage space/price combo but if you already got something decent it would be wise to hold off as long as you can as prices will continue to decline and if you wait long enough you will probably start seeing 1TB range SSD's become in that reasonable price ranges (i.e. $120-ish and less)

 

p.s. but it's kind of funny between you and I as we are sort of reversed in that my GPU is better than my CPU (i.e. i3-2120 CPU (dual core but Windows see's it as a quad core which it's hyper-threading tech is what's keeping it afloat) vs a 1050 Ti 4GB GPU) where as in your case, your CPU beats your GPU. like my CPU is clearly my bottleneck for gaming performance where as with you it's reversed. but I am not all that worried as there is not many games I play and the ones I do, my PC plays well enough. so until games start truly requiring stuff beyond those mid-range i5's or so, ill likely continue to have playable games on my setup as while some games don't run too well on my computer all one really needs for single player games is around 30fps+ for it to be good enough and that's what happens on some games I play even though some run well over 30fps as I basically consider a perfect gaming experience to have 60fps+ as even between 30-60fps, say 45fps or so, is still more than good enough as things don't really start to suck til you get into the low 20's and lower as that's when things are starting to become unplayable especially if it lingers in the low 20's (or lower) often because if it's largely around 30fps (say high 20's to low 30's) it's passable.

[ThaCrip]

16 hours ago, Astra.Xtreme said:

Samsung is the golden standard of SSDs and it's absolutely worth the extra cost to go with a reliable and proven product.  Prices aren't that different than the low-end brands.

Nothing will p*ss you off more than penny-pinching with a crappy brand, having it suddenly die, and have all your data disappear.  The aggravation of that isn't worth the risk.

 

Yeah, Samsung seems to be the measuring stick in general as the 850 EVO seemed to be the general 'go to' drive for roughly 3-4 years or so as nothing seemed to top it overall which seems to have shifted to the 860 EVO's now.

 

still, if one is trying to get maximum efficiency from their dollar... it's possible, depending on price, to go with another brand like Intel/Crucial and the like as the key is if you can find a drive that's in the ball park of the general Samsung's (850/860 models) speed but at a noticeably reduced price, that would make the alternatives overall better for some people, especially those who are a bit more $ conscious. like if I was only saving $5-10 I would probably go with the Samsung over the competition but if your going to save $20 or so I might start to seriously consider a different brand, especially with something like Crucial which the last I knew they had capacitors in their SSD's so if you get a sudden power outage it's supposed to lower the risk of data loss etc (as it can finish a write if it was in the process of writing data during the power outage) which Samsung does not have the last I knew.

 

but with that said... to state the obvious, like you just did, it's not worth going with a generic brand to save a small amount of $ as if one does not want to gamble with a unreliable SSD then always stick to the names brands. hell, a good measuring stick is brand name in combination with warranty length as 5 years seems to be the standard among the better brands as if you see a drive with 3 years chances are your gambling on reliability especially if it's from a obvious generic brand. because you can see some drives, something like PNY for example, has some slight brand recognition, as it's better than those no total name brands, but is not quite up to the standards of Samsung/Intel/Crucial and the like. so to gamble on say a PNY type of brand, if the price is cheap enough (as in minimal risk to your wallet) I would say 'maybe' on something of that sort but if you want safe, which is what I suggest, then stick to Samsung/Intel/Crucial and the like. but those brands like Patriot/Teamgroup/Silicon Power and the like I just straight up avoid unless you got money to burn and they are nearly giving them away and you want a toy to play around with etc. because even for someone who wants a basic boot drive, say a 120-128GB range SSD(anything smaller ain't worth buying, period), you see some around $30 lately and the vast majority ain't worth gambling on except I got lucky and found a Intel 545s 128GB SSD hours before the sale ended for only $31.99 (I just received it July 30th) which is hands down the best SSD I have seen for around $30 as that seems to be in the ball park of the former gold standard Samsung 850 EVO. but that Intel drive is now back to $52.49 on the same site (Newegg) I got my Intel 545s 128GB SSD from. like you can routinely see that Teamgroup brand offer 120GB range SSD's for a bit under $30, which looks great as it seems they are almost giving them away, but it's worth paying the extra $3-5 or so for a noticeably better brand name when the brand names occasionally go on sale in the $30-35 range. with that said... for most people I would suggest getting a SSD no smaller than around 250GB as the 250GB and 500GB range SSD's are clearly the sweet spots right now as the 250GB is likely good enough for most people (and the cost is quite reasonable) but for the gamers they are better off shelling out extra $ for the 500GB range (anything higher than the 500GB range is simply too expensive currently). but for someone who wants a really cheap solid SSD I suggest waiting til a decent brand of the 120-128GB range SSD's go on sale and then nab one as for a decent brand with a 3-5 year warranty you don't have much to lose given a decent brand and worst case scenario you lose $30-ish which is not the end of the world. but come to think of it... it makes me wonder if the manufacturers of those cheap drives almost hope that being some of their SSD's are roughly $25-30 that when they fail, someone won't bother making a warranty claim on them due to the cost to send the drive back along with ones time.

[Euro_Bucks]

On 7/31/2018 at 2:39 PM, ThaCrip said:

 

Yeah, I got a 1050 Ti 4GB and I suspect that will last me quite a while as I am in no rush to leave 1080p as it's good enough for me and a 1050 Ti 4Gb is solid enough for 1080p level gaming. off the top of my head... I am not sure how my GPU (1050 Ti 4GB) compares to the 950 but I would imagine at the very least it's a more energy efficient version as I would guess performance wise our GPU's probably ain't that far apart either way.

 

but yeah, if your a little low on $ it's all about making the most efficient use of what you do got and in that regard it's not worth upgrading your SSD as I am assuming what you currently have is 'fast enough' and 320GB, while not a lot of space, it's passable as I figure for anyone who games a 250GB range SSD will be the bare minimum worth buying even though lately the 500GB range SSD's are the sweet spot for storage space/price combo but if you already got something decent it would be wise to hold off as long as you can as prices will continue to decline and if you wait long enough you will probably start seeing 1TB range SSD's become in that reasonable price ranges (i.e. $120-ish and less)

 

p.s. but it's kind of funny between you and I as we are sort of reversed in that my GPU is better than my CPU (i.e. i3-2120 CPU (dual core but Windows see's it as a quad core which it's hyper-threading tech is what's keeping it afloat) vs a 1050 Ti 4GB GPU) where as in your case, your CPU beats your GPU. like my CPU is clearly my bottleneck for gaming performance where as with you it's reversed. but I am not all that worried as there is not many games I play and the ones I do, my PC plays well enough. so until games start truly requiring stuff beyond those mid-range i5's or so, ill likely continue to have playable games on my setup as while some games don't run too well on my computer all one really needs for single player games is around 30fps+ for it to be good enough and that's what happens on some games I play even though some run well over 30fps as I basically consider a perfect gaming experience to have 60fps+ as even between 30-60fps, say 45fps or so, is still more than good enough as things don't really start to suck til you get into the low 20's and lower as that's when things are starting to become unplayable especially if it lingers in the low 20's (or lower) often because if it's largely around 30fps (say high 20's to low 30's) it's passable.

 

I have no plans leaving 1080p too considering how damn expensive monitors 1440p and above. It would also mean spending more $ for a video card upgrade to get descent fps.

The GTX 950 I have right already served its purpose, did its job pretty well. The reason I'm planning on upgrading is I am experiencing noticeable tearing on PUBG at high settings.

Also preparing on the next Battlefield release.

[spaceelf]

45 minutes ago, Euro_Bucks said:

I have no plans leaving 1080p too considering how damn expensive monitors 1440p and above. It would also mean spending more $ for a video card upgrade to get descent fps.

The GTX 950 I have right already served its purpose, did its job pretty well. The reason I'm planning on upgrading is I am experiencing noticeable tearing on PUBG at high settings.

Also preparing on the next Battlefield release.

Good call.  1440p has cost me a lot more than I should've ever spent on hardware.

 

It might be a different story next year or 2020 but right now it's fairly uncomfortable.

[adrynalyne]

On 7/30/2018 at 8:37 AM, LostCat said:

Only internal SSD I've had die out of somewhere around ten of them (mostly OCZ) over the years was from physical damage to the connector, not problems with the drives.

 

So many of these data loss scenarios seem anecdotal...of course you're going to have a problem with a drive sooner or later, but in general unless you're seriously thrashing the drives or not updating the firmware they last.

Had a Kingston die after a month of use. Lost all data. I definitely did not thrash the drive. 

[spaceelf]

1 hour ago, adrynalyne said:

Had a Kingston die after a month of use. Lost all data. I definitely did not thrash the drive. 

I said in general, not in every case.  Hell, most of them survive thrashing just fine (for a while, anyway.)

[ThaCrip]

On 8/1/2018 at 2:29 PM, Euro_Bucks said:

The GTX 950 I have right already served its purpose, did its job pretty well. The reason I'm planning on upgrading is I am experiencing noticeable tearing on PUBG at high settings.

Maybe I am mistaken but to my knowledge general image tearing can be fixed by turning ON V-SYNC. I realize that with V-SYNC on that it will cap the games frame rates to your monitors refresh rate but if you got a 60Hz monitor that will still give you 60fps which is liquid smooth/perfect anyways.