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The SSD market is extremely competitive right now and extremely confusing for people looking to purchase a new drive. Should you get a C300 256GB? At the end of the day it is all going to boil down to how much money you have (or want) to spend.
If you are looking for a performance SSD configuration without spending over £200 then we still believe that the Intel X-25 40GB drives in Raid 0 is the most viable and cost effective purchase. With the new Corsair 40GB Force drive due out shortly this is going to spice things up even more. KitGuru will have a full indepth analysis of this drive shortly.
There are some instances when 80GB will not be enough, even for a boot drive and this when the larger, more expensive drives come into play. The Crucial drive we reviewed today is without a doubt the fastest SSD we have tested in our labs to date. It is also the only single drive to outperform the Intel Raid 0 configuration in benchmarks such as ATTO – this is no mean feat and showcases the incredible capabilities of the Marvell 88SS9174 BJP2 controller. We strongly feel this controller is leading the way now and has stolen the performance crown from the SandForce units.
As would be expected, the blazing performance and large storage capacity comes with a hefty price premium, and a rather wallet sapping one at that. In the UK right now the drive costs around £550 inc vat directly from Crucial. Is it worth it? We think so, but if you are working with limited funds then this is going to be way out of your shortlist price point but you hardly need me to tell you that.
Another important point to make is that KitGuru has found that many of the 6Gbps Sata connectors on modern motherboards are not allowing the maximum throughput and we would strongly recommend that you seriously contemplate buying a Highpoint RocketRAID 620 SATA controller from an online retailer, it really is in a class of its own right now. Unfortunately this is going to add another £40 to the overall cost.
KitGuru says: Performance enthusiasts with deeper pockets will already be online ordering a few of these for a Raid 0 configuration. Yes, we envy you. If you're feeling the need for C300 speed, YOYOTech was holding stock here when KitGuru went to press.
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