We got a request from a small company that creates and prints marketing materials for some new PC's. And they wanted them to be as fast as possible, without costing a premium. Adobe Illustrator/Photoshop and their likes are what they do all day, so you want a fast CPU (i7 for that kind of work), lots of RAM (6GB minimum, 12 recommended) and Windows 7 64-bit.
But what about the harddisk? Surely, a SSD is much better, and when they want fast, it can make a much bigger impact than all the other parts combined. But, there's SSD's and SSD's, not all created equal, and simply replacing the harddisk with an SSD of the same size can easily quadruple the price of the system, depending on the size of that hd.
Of course, there is no need for that. A smallish system disk will give you all the benefits, for a fraction of the costs. So, I started looking for the "best" SSD that fit the bill. And found out that there might be one, but I don't know which one that would be.
Some highlights:
- Intel has been king of the hill for close to a year, but their "affordable" drives are still way expensive, and suffer a lot from degradation over time. Firmware updates (TRIM) might work and not offer much of an improvement, or brick your drive.
- The drives with JMicron controllers are cheap, but really bad, as your system will suffer from pretty frequent freezes. The exception seems to be the Kingston implementation, but that only performs half way in between a fast harddisk and a good SSD. But they're cheap.
- Indilinx controllers are the current king of the hill, and as they use an embedded ARM core with quite a bit of memory, there doesn't seem to be much that makes them buckle. But they're even more expensive than the Intel ones, and easily double the price of the system even if you only use them for a smallish system disk.
- Samsung has some interesting controllers: the first ones were pretty decent until Intel came along, their current ones are in between the new JMicron Kingston's and Intel for price/performance. But the performance isn't very stable.
And the worst part is, that it's pretty hard to find out what controller is used in what drive, unless it's an Intel one. And even they like to mix some old controllers in a new batch.
Some highlights:
- OCZ is all over the place: they use them all, but fortunately seem to stick with the same type for the same model range.
- Kingston uses all of them as well, and they mix and match them in all their model ranges as well. For example: the SSDnow V-series 40 GB uses an Intel controller (but only half the flash banks), while the SSDnow V-series 64 GB uses an improved JMicron controller, the SSDnow V-series 128 GB uses a Samsung controller, and the SSDnow V+series 128 GB uses an Indilinx controller...
And performance for all of the above is all over the ballpark! How am I able to select the right drive for the right application? Because the next customer will have different priorities that I will have to translate to the right drive.
The only thing I know for sure is, that the old JMicron drives are bad, but without a batch of all the others to test for myself, that's about all I can say about it at the moment.
For example, I might simply recommend Intel and the premium that goes with that, but they're pretty bad for people that write a lot of files. And simply recommending Indilinx makes it too expensive for the majority of our customers.
So, I'm thinking of simply recommending the Kingston SSDnow V-series 64 GB for general purpose, and pick a current OCZ one with Indilinx controller if they want the best.
But what about the harddisk? Surely, a SSD is much better, and when they want fast, it can make a much bigger impact than all the other parts combined. But, there's SSD's and SSD's, not all created equal, and simply replacing the harddisk with an SSD of the same size can easily quadruple the price of the system, depending on the size of that hd.
Of course, there is no need for that. A smallish system disk will give you all the benefits, for a fraction of the costs. So, I started looking for the "best" SSD that fit the bill. And found out that there might be one, but I don't know which one that would be.
Some highlights:
- Intel has been king of the hill for close to a year, but their "affordable" drives are still way expensive, and suffer a lot from degradation over time. Firmware updates (TRIM) might work and not offer much of an improvement, or brick your drive.
- The drives with JMicron controllers are cheap, but really bad, as your system will suffer from pretty frequent freezes. The exception seems to be the Kingston implementation, but that only performs half way in between a fast harddisk and a good SSD. But they're cheap.
- Indilinx controllers are the current king of the hill, and as they use an embedded ARM core with quite a bit of memory, there doesn't seem to be much that makes them buckle. But they're even more expensive than the Intel ones, and easily double the price of the system even if you only use them for a smallish system disk.
- Samsung has some interesting controllers: the first ones were pretty decent until Intel came along, their current ones are in between the new JMicron Kingston's and Intel for price/performance. But the performance isn't very stable.
And the worst part is, that it's pretty hard to find out what controller is used in what drive, unless it's an Intel one. And even they like to mix some old controllers in a new batch.
Some highlights:
- OCZ is all over the place: they use them all, but fortunately seem to stick with the same type for the same model range.
- Kingston uses all of them as well, and they mix and match them in all their model ranges as well. For example: the SSDnow V-series 40 GB uses an Intel controller (but only half the flash banks), while the SSDnow V-series 64 GB uses an improved JMicron controller, the SSDnow V-series 128 GB uses a Samsung controller, and the SSDnow V+series 128 GB uses an Indilinx controller...
And performance for all of the above is all over the ballpark! How am I able to select the right drive for the right application? Because the next customer will have different priorities that I will have to translate to the right drive.
The only thing I know for sure is, that the old JMicron drives are bad, but without a batch of all the others to test for myself, that's about all I can say about it at the moment.
For example, I might simply recommend Intel and the premium that goes with that, but they're pretty bad for people that write a lot of files. And simply recommending Indilinx makes it too expensive for the majority of our customers.
So, I'm thinking of simply recommending the Kingston SSDnow V-series 64 GB for general purpose, and pick a current OCZ one with Indilinx controller if they want the best.
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