It's easy to forget that lower-capacity SSDs are also usuallyslower. Today we're testing the most prolific 60/64 GBconfigurations to gauge where they fall in the big picture. Weemerge at the other end with a recommendation based on our testing,too. So, there's this huge deal being made about the prices of harddrives in the wake of flooding in Thailand. Indeed, we struggled to fit as much capacity into our most recent SystemBuilder Marathon series as we did in the past, even after increasing all of our budgetpoints. But even in spite of those spikes, magnetic storage remainsincredibly affordable. A 2 TB Seagate Barracuda Green drive, forexample, sells for about $135. At almost $0.07 per gigabyte,that s still very cheap compared to solid-state storage, whichgenerally require that you pay at least $100 for 64 GB. You should know by now, though, that we still consider the massivepremium on SSDs worth paying. And there's a smart way to go aboutadding solid-state capacity without breaking your budget. We're bigproponents of using SSDs and hard drives together to handledifferent storage tasks. That's why, even though we sometimesreview massive 256 and 512 GB drives, the models we spend our ownmoney on are usually between the 64 and 128 GB range. There's one issue that bears mention, though. The lower-capacitySSDs we prefer aren't as fast as the big ones that most drivevendors submit for reviews. We know why that's the case on verysmall SSDs, like Intel's old X25-V, which only sees five of 10available NAND channels populated. However, why do evenfully-configured architectures still exhibit performance varianceup and down the capacity scale? From our round-up of Crucial m4 SSDs : "...simply exploiting every channel isn't enough to saturate themall. The number of packages residing on each channel matter. Thenumber of memory dies in each package matter. The density of eachdie matters. And the firmware-level modifications a company likeCrucial implements to help control performance scaling up and downthe stack matter." Nevertheless, we're comfortable enough with the performance we'veseen from 60 and 64 GB SSDs that they continue serving as anentry-level point in our lab and office builds. But that doesn'tmean you should just take our word for it. Instead, we wanted tograb solutions based on Samsung, Marvell, and SandForce controllerhardware to show you exactly what you can expect when you make thatvery understandable compromise on capacity to get in the door withsolid-state storage. Perhaps surprisingly, the number of choices is fairly small. We endup with a 64 GB Crucial m4, a 64 GB Samsung 830, and two 60 GBdrives based on second-gen SandForce controllers. Why just two ofthose SSDs, and not a model from every vendor sellingSandForce-based hardware? We're glad you asked. First, we actuallyhave a round-up of SandForce-based drives in the works. But that'snot the complete story... The e-commerce company in China offers quality products such as Indoor Led Light Bulbs , E27 Led Lamps Manufacturer, and more. For more , please visit Indoor Led Light Bulbs today!
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