Crucial C300 SATA 6Gb/s SSD Review
Conclusion
Published: 23rd June 2010 | Source: Crucial | Price: £297.26 |
Conclusion
Solid State Drives have become a mainstream part of performance PCs now and so hopefully you're all aware of the benefits it can bring to your system.
So what are the benefits that the Crucial C300 can bring to the table?
Let's start with the average, the Write speeds. 150MB/s is unquestionably fast when compared with mechanical drives, but it's only around the middle of the pack when we look at the currently available SSDs. Considering this retails at just over £300 we'd expect to see at least 200MB/s, as we do with the Nova. It's especially disappointing when we look at what it clearly the jewel in the C300's crown, the read speeds.
A famous quote says that "there are lies, damn lies, and statistics". We can paraphrase that now by saying there is quick, fast and then the Crucial C300. We get so used to hardware that edges the performance line forward in tiny increments, be it 2.8GHz, then 2.9GHz and finally 3GHz or whatever, that to see something that takes your previous expectations and obliterates them does make us stop and think.
There was a time when 200MB/s was amazing. 250MB/s seemed, well and still is, properly fast. 300, and in this case 330+ is just unbelievable. The difference it makes is nearly as impressive as the difference between a mechanical and an SSD.
The main question question is; If you have a suitable SATA 6Gbp/s motherboard, is the Crucial C300 worthy of your money? Really it depends upon your finances and your relentless demand for the absolute best. If you don't own a SSD at all then you definitely should consider the C300. The write speeds are medium, but everything, if repetition can be a hint of emphasis then everything, crumbles before the might of those read speeds.
In time other drives will combine this brutal read speeds with equally fast write speeds. But for now, despite its £300 price tag, we can easily give this our performance award.
The Good
- 340MB/s read speeds.Wow.
- Built in TRIM.
- Did we mention 340MB/s read speed?
- Crucials excellent three-year warranty.
Mediocre
- I hesitate to put the write speeds here as 150MB/s isn't poor, but in pales in the shadow of the read.
- £300+ for a 128GB drive is quite pricey, even by SSD standards.
Cons
- Nothing
Thanks to Crucial for supplying the C300. Discuss in our forums.
Most Recent Comments
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Originally Posted by name='Warzone'
Indeed but all that blazing still burns a hole in the wallet
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Ohhh the one my ex wife took off with.
did you know there is a firmware upgrade for these drives,
Release Date: 5/20/2010
Change Log:
•Improved Power Consumption
•Improved TRIM performance
•Enabled the Drive Activity Pin (Pin 11)
•Improved Robustness due to unexpected power loss
•Improved data management to reduce maximum write latency
•Improved Performance of SSD as it fills up with data
•Improved Data Integrity
I can vouch for the improvments as Im running a pair on the marvell 6gb/s controller on the RE3
Im getting 450 reads and 250 writes !!
Rick
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Originally Posted by name='fmsam'
Cheers for the review TTL,
did you know there is a firmware upgrade for these drives, Release Date: 5/20/2010 Change Log: •Improved Power Consumption •Improved TRIM performance •Enabled the Drive Activity Pin (Pin 11) •Improved Robustness due to unexpected power loss •Improved data management to reduce maximum write latency •Improved Performance of SSD as it fills up with data •Improved Data Integrity I can vouch for the improvments as Im running a pair on the marvell 6gb/s controller on the RE3 Im getting 450 reads and 250 writes !! Rick |
There are many ppl out there who are still under the impression that you cant use raid on the marvell 9128 6gb/s contoller on Rampage 3 !
Well do they really think Asus would drop such a clanger, when the board its competing against has the same chip and uses raid.
my advice to those ppl is shut up unless youve actually tried it.
http://i696.photobucket.com/albums/v...00raidsnip.png
Rick
I see you have 2 128 gb ssds i n raid 0
what knid of speeds do you get ?
No wonder you have quick speeds with raid0, I was starting to think we had missed something huge with a firmware update! Ours came with the latest FW anyways I just checked.
and crucial use garbage collection when raided and not trim, I test the drives every 3 days and they are actually getting faster, go figure !!
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