SAMSUNG 830 Series 2.5-Inch 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive $90 shipped at Amazon

Quote from jsmith13 : Yes, but raid 0 won't have trim support so you have to weigh that consideration.

TRIM now works in Raid0
as long as you have the intel RST 11.2 driver, TRIM is supported for RAID 0 on 7-series chipsets only


For windows 7 and 8

Quote from homeless76 : Is Samsung better than intel 330?

Short answer, Yes. Explained more below.

Quote from wangcho78 : I guess but I only care about reliability and not speed. I don't think it matters too much if my window boots 10 sec vs 12 sec. Then again..I can see geeks caring about every little details. I'm just excited to own my first SSD!!!

The Samsung 830 is by far the most reliable SSD even over the Intel 520/330 or Crucial M4, as can be seen by the Samsungs having the best reviews of any of them on Newegg, etc. Primarily because of having the least failures.

Quote from wangcho78 : I'm not sure why this deal has more repped points then the Intel 330 256g for $109... $20 and double the capacity seems no brainer for me. oops... $109 is for 180 gig drive. This is still better bang for the buck.

Apart from reliablility, as other's have mentioned; the Samsung 830 still has nearly double the IOPS and random read speeds of either the Intel 330 or 520, so this is still above the Intel 520 performance. Though technically the Intels can get slightly higher write speeds, slightly slower installs that are still 3-4x the speed of a traditional HDD are acceptable given that once things are setup and installed you spend much more of your time reading data, such as playing games.


Overall, either is fine. But gamers who want the best performance should get the Samsung 830. If you are using this as a solo drive in a laptop then you might want to stick to the Samsung 830 for reliability. If you just want to get your first SSD and are more concerned with having the extra space for say games and have a standard HDD for all your actual data/media then maybe you don't need to worry as much about reliability; if your SSD happens to die/wipe then you haven't lost important data and can (semi-)happily reinstall windows in about 6-7 minutes and not have lost your personal files.

Quote from akwizeguy : Anyone want to chime on if theres a REAL WORLD difference in performance btw the 128gb and 256gb variants for a casual computer user/gamer?

After viewing several benchmarks I would say that you will probably get about 20% faster sequential writes, such as when copying a movie or installing most games. Sequential read speed is about the same on both so you shouldn't see any difference on media or opening games that use large files. The random read performance looks to be up to about 30-35% higher so you could see potentially see about 25% shorter load times on certain applications or games that use small scattered files, World of Warcraft you would see faster load times but not most FPS.

Overall, not much real world difference, limited to particular scenarios not likely to matter to a casual user.

Quote from PerpetualEnigma : After viewing several benchmarks I would say that you will probably get about 20% faster sequential writes, such as when copying a movie or installing most games. Sequential read speed is about the same on both so you shouldn't see any difference on media or opening games that use large files. The random read performance looks to be up to about 30-35% higher so you could see potentially see about 25% shorter load times on certain applications or games that use small scattered files, World of Warcraft you would see faster load times but not most FPS. Overall, not much real world difference, limited to particular scenarios not likely to matter to a casual user.

Thanks a bunch! Was just looking to upgrade from an old 60gb Agility 2 on a desktop. Space isnt an issue, but if there was a significant performance difference btw the 128/256 would opt for the 256. But thanks again!

Quote from MagicBlueMan : Great drive. But just so everyone knows it is not as fast as its bigger brother, the 256 GB model. The 256 GB and 512 GB are exactly the same speed, interestingly enough. And the 64 GB is slower than this 128 GB model. All of them are still very fast though.

In most cases, smaller ssd s of the same model are slower. Less flash chips internally to write in parallel to=slower.

Quote from akwizeguy : Thanks a bunch! Was just looking to upgrade from an old 60gb Agility 2 on a desktop. Space isnt an issue, but if there was a significant performance difference btw the 128/256 would opt for the 256. But thanks again!

Yeah, the performance hit on the 64GB is horrible, but not so much on the 128GB... 2x 128GBs in RAID-0 majorly outperforms a 256GB in both read and write, nearly double each. Not the case with 2x 64GBs in RAID-0 vs a 128GB where the writes should be identical and read would still be about double, but that is only assuming you have a new z77 or other Intel 7 series board and can enable TRIM, otherwise performance would be bound to degrade even more and counter any advantage of RAID-0 with 2x 64GB drives.

Tks , getting this instead of the 180g intel

I have a 3-4 year old laptop: Compaq 8510p.

Would this be 'compatible' with it? Would I need any other 'parts' or 'adapters' to install it on the laptop?

Any advice would be much appreciated, thanks.

I just went ahead and purchased it -- don't want it to sell out.

Quote from PerpetualEnigma : The Samsung 830 is by far the most reliable SSD even over the Intel 520/330 or Crucial M4, as can be seen by the Samsungs having the best reviews of any of them on Newegg, etc. Primarily because of having the least failures..

Don't forget that people who have great experiences are less likely to leave bad reviews, especially when it comes to DOA, defective, or failing products. Until Newegg starts posting sales numbers of products (which is NOT likely) you are doing a lot of assuming, and you know what they say about that!

Quote from DJsDA : I have a 3-4 year old laptop: Compaq 8510p. Would this be 'compatible' with it? Would I need any other 'parts' or 'adapters' to install it on the laptop? Any advice would be much appreciated, thanks.

Yes, It will be compatible, the existing HDD and this SSD have a standard SATA interface, if there is anything such as a proprietary cable you simply unplug it from the existing HDD, similarly you remove any thin metal/plastic mounting that is screwed into the HDD and attach that to the SSD so it can be properly secured.

Your laptop's motherboard is almost certainly only SATA II so you will only get 2.5-3 times the data transfer speed of your current HDD because of that limitation, instead of 5-6 times faster. Granted this will still be a huge notable improvement.

Lastly, if your computer came with a Windows disc that you plan to install all drivers manually or recovery discs to automatically re-install Windows and all software onto your SSD then you are good to go; but instead if it has a recovery partition built onto the HDD for re-installing windows then you should use the built-in option to burn your recovery discs before swapping out your HDD with a SSD if you have not already burned those discs. Your other alternative would be if you use a SATA to USB adapter cable and cloning software such as Norton ghost or Acronis to copy your existing HDD's Windows install to the SSD. If you want to go that route then spend the extra $20 to get the 128GB laptop upgrade kit for $110 on both Amazon and Newegg, that will include everything you need to clone if you don't have discs available or prefer not to have to re-install all your programs and files.

Quote from SpeedEuphoria : TRIM now works in Raid0 as long as you have the intel RST 11.2 driver, TRIM is supported for RAID 0 on 7-series chipsets only For windows 7 and 8

Samsung also does background garbage collection on their SSDs so even if you don't do software raid and you go with a hardware raid controller they will still more or less maintain their performance.

Out of all the current SSDs, if I build a hardware SSD raid array today (which I do plan on doing in the future) I would be going with the Samsung drives. They offer the best combination of performance and features that would best benefit me for a RAID array.

Own this, got it at the same price as this long back.

Windows 8 boots in 10-15 seconds max and 1080p plays silky smooth, I have a Dell Studio, 3 yrs old, core 2 duo, 4gb ram.

The best thing to go on my laptop, he is really fast and happy these days

how does this ssd compare to plextor in terms of performance? i know plextor has the 5 yr warranty...