Reddit reviews (OLD MODEL) Crucial M500 240GB SATA 2.5” 7mm (with 9.5mm adapter) Internal Solid State Drive - CT240M500SSD1

I bought this one didn't realize it was different
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BQ8RM1A/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

A few good SSD deals on amazon

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BQ8RM1A

Also $110 at amazon with prime shipping

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00BQ8RM1A?vs=1

Warning: mobile link, don't know how to fix

Also on sale at the same price on Amazon, in case that's a preference.

http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-240GB-2-5-Inch-Internal-CT240M500SSD1/dp/B00BQ8RM1A/ref=lp_10152137011_1_5?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1415030125&sr=1-5

I don't want to do the math to find out how much I've spent on SSDs, but it's WORTH IT.

But as for the 840 Pro jatorres suggests... considering the age of the machine it is going into, I'd look for a cheaper SSD that's still highly rated, like the Crucial M500 128GB or 240GB. link

Same deal on Amazon.ca

Just upgrade it to a Crucial M500 for $94 when some extra funds open up. You'd be sacrificing a LOT for something you can easily replace yourself a little later.

Also available on Amazon for $105.98 with free shipping.

Non-mobile link: http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-240GB-2-5-Inch-Internal-CT240M500SSD1/dp/B00BQ8RM1A

http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-240GB-2-5-Inch-Internal-CT240M500SSD1/dp/B00BQ8RM1A

This ssd is just as good and $20 less, you are seriously overpaying for yours. If you want to stick with the 840 evo I suggest lurking in /r/buildapc sales because it goes on sale for $70 every other week

This monitor if you don't need DVI: http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asus-monitor-vn248h

The M500 is $110 over at Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-240GB-2-5-Inch-Internal-CT240M500SSD1/dp/B00BQ8RM1A).

The FX-6300 is $110 over at Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009O7YORK)

This is a better GPU for the $100 price range: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202081

A 250GB Samsung EVO

The EVO is the most popular SSD right now, striking a perfect balance between price, speed, and reliability. A cheaper option is a Crucial M500 which is still pretty good, but not as fast.

EDIT: Btw these are $10-$20 cheaper on Amazon, which is why I linked there, sorry.

I'd go with a 240GB SSD.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BQ8RM1A/?tag=pcpapi-20

120GB is enough for the OS, programs and a few games.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BQ4F9ZA/?tag=pcpapi-20

The 240GB is $48 more and you can fit around 10 more games on it. If you've played a game like Batman: Arkham Origins on both an SSD and a hard drive, you can see a big difference. It's much smoother.

Can anyone tell me if it's worth the price difference over this deal?

I'm willing to pay more for better quality, but if it's negligible I want to grab the Crucial before it's up in 40 minutes.

No problem! I got this one - the 240GB variant. Any smaller and it would've been too much work to keep junk off of it in the long run, and I didn't want to pay more than that at the time, or I would've gone bigger. The 240 was the right price for me at the time.

I also got this hard drive caddy that goes into the optical bay so I could move my stock hard drive to where my DVD drive was.

Then I symlinked some of the larger folders in my User folder to folders on that second drive. This article from Matt Gemmell helped me figure that part out.

Then for good measure I put it on a Rain Design mStand and got a detached keyboard, mouse, and a powered USB hub to make it easy to disconnect it and run out the door.

I'm not sure if this SSD is any good but they've just made it cheaper.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00BQ8RM1A/

What's the major differences between that and this? Except the warranty and read/write speed.

Just as a side note, [Amazon has it for $119.99] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BQ8RM1A/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER) and is eligible for Prime.

Ordered from there because I had $60 in gift card balance.

Don't get that PSU. It is like a leafblower. I just replaced it today with a Corsair RM650 as I couldnt stand it anymore. Already RMAd it and there was no change in noise. Otherwise very good PSU.

You can get a Crucial M500 ssd from amazon for $109

A cheaper motherboard would work unless you need lots of sata ports.

Thats cool, so would it just make sense to get a SATA II 3GB/s seeing as thats the type my motherboard supports? Or would it be better in the long run to get the SATA III 6GB/s?

Here's some examples I've been looking at

SATA 3GB/S - http://www.amazon.co.uk/OCZ-VTXPLR2-25SAT2-240G-240GB-Vertex-Internal/dp/B0085U6ZBK/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

SATA 6GB/S - http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00BQ8RM1A/ref=noref?ie=UTF8&psc=1&s=computers#productDetails

Samsung

Crucial

Yes there is room for an SSD. It (Mobo) does not have a SATA 3 port (Only Sata2?) i believe but it will still run very fast, about 200-300mb/s transfer speeds. You do not need an SSD really; It helps having it sure but its by no means a MUST. A harddrive will do just fine. If your able to pick up an SSD, go for it. Heres an SSD thats cheap and good.
http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-2-5-Inch-adapter-Internal-CT240M500SSD1/dp/B00BQ8RM1A
It's helpful to have quicker boot times, faster program loading, and quicker data access but it should not affect the quality of gaming that much.

This one for example. It's available at different sizes, but if 250 GB were ok for you, this one should have a great price/performance ratio.

I've got the 512 GB version of the predecessor and it's great.

Also on Amazon.ca if you prefer for $89.99.

The Crucial M500 240GB is on sale right now. You also get 20% off on it if you're using the Amazon credit card and input a promo code (I'm not sure if this applies to Amazon UK though).

I got my 240 for $130. Not great, but nowhere near bad. I just didn't want to wait for the prices to drop any more because I needed the extra space. Also, did you but the PNY from Amazon? There seems to be many counterfeit PNY on amazon. My SSD was a crucial 240gb and it's currently $120, and definitely worth it. It works great, and is like half the price of the samsung and intel ones.

http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-240GB-2-5-Inch-Internal-CT240M500SSD1/dp/B00BQ8RM1A/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1396888334&sr=8-3&keywords=SSD

Not for the money, no. The i7 U processor and i5 U processor are essentially the same features, only difference is clock speed - which isn't really something you'll feel a big difference on, at least not nearly $300 worth of one. Were it an i7 MQ/HQ it'd be quad-core, so there you'd see a difference, but that's not an option on this system (due to power usage).

The system has 4GB RAM soldered, true, but there's one open DIMM slot that can fit up to a single 8GB SO-DIMM in. So the max memory for the system is 12GB.

Yea you could save about ~$100 installing your own SSD, if you're comfortable doing so. From Notebookcheck's internal look, it appears the 256GB they include is the Samsung 840 Pro, which is one of the best SSDs on the market, and retails for about $220. If you were to install your own, you could get a much cheaper Crucial M500 240GB for $120.

NP. That should make a pretty good gaming machine.

EDIT: if you even want to save more money for slightly less SSD speed you could go with a Crucial 240GB instead of the samsung. Well worth the ~$30 less IMO.

The PSU is overkill for what you actually need, unless the silent part is your main purchasing factor. For only £60, you could get a CX750 that would do everything you need it to do, including future SLI.

Also, a Crucial M500 240GB would be a good SSD option for £84.

That case is hideously overpriced. For £80 shipped, you could get a Define R4 that's just as good of quality and to me looks better.

[EDIT]: With the extra £55 you just saved, you could throw in a Hyper 412S for £27.

Any of them. That one looks kind of pricey for what it is... as in this one is cheaper with a better brand.

Thats looks to be the right part, i got something similar as well but different brand for my 2011 pro (http://amzn.com/B004PR6DAA). If it interest you for about the same price, get a Crucial M500 240GB Solid State Drive instead it dramatically improves the performance of the laptop. I have it and love it, anyone i know that has an older ish macbook pro has it. http://amzn.com/B00BQ8RM1A, this as well http://amzn.com/B00G57BN1M

i got this model over on amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BQ8RM1A?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00BQ8RM1A/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1418587912&sr=1-1&pi=AC_SX200_QL40

I contacted support and canceled it at the last second and got a refund in favor for this. I just wanted a ssd to put games that don't require that much graphics on because of the speed. It's been holding up well.

cheaper ssd, unless ur planning on sli in the future, downgrade the psu, but that one is entirely up to you. you can save 30ish on the ram and ssd that are on sale right now. Get windows 8 athttp://www.reddit.com/r/microsoftsoftwareswap/ save you another 70 bucks. Theres a cheaper monitor on newegg right now.

too bad u missed the sale on g skill ram they were going for around 55$ for 2x4gb...
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BQ8RM1A/ref=gno_cart_title_0?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER for the ssd
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824009642&ignorebbr=1 for the monitor

So I decided to get the Crucial M500 240GB
http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B00BQ8RM1A/ref=ox_ya_os_product_refresh_T1

Displays as £179.95 for me. 240GB version for £92.

price matched at Amazon.co.uk

RAID for me is about peace of mind (RAID1) so the smaller the drive, the slower the performance on SSD? I have been out of the hardware game for some years and this kinda blows my mind.

So I should just suck up the extra $60 and get a pair of these.

Why not buy from Amazon?

Consider the Crucial M500 256gb SSD. It's only $103 right now from Amazon

I have one in my system, and it runs flawlessly. They're replacing them with the new M600 line, and thus clearing out stock on-hand.

They were also the go to drive for many large companies for their fleets of IT hardware.

? On the US store I see

• Crucial 240GB
  
• SanDisk
  
• Samsung
  
  Unless you have a coupon code of some type, the prices Amazon displays include any ongoing sales, FYI.

MX100 on Amazon is $109.99

Perhaps you meant the M500? $79.99 at Newegg & Amazon

Yeah I'll probably just bite the bullet and get either this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Crucial-CT240M500SSD1-240GB-Internal-Solid/dp/B00BQ8RM1A/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1419279139&sr=8-1&keywords=m500+256gb

Or the 500gb version. We'll see what money allows!

It seems like that 120 GB SSD is expensive. Here is a 240 Gb SSD for $79.

Edit: Is that just European pricing?

Get the 240G ssd (http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-2-5-Inch-adapter-Internal-CT240M500SSD1/dp/B00BQ8RM1A/ref=sr_1_6?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1420021869&sr=1-6&keywords=ssd) for an extra $16 you get double the space.

Also, you can get the 2014 razer naga for like $60.

Yes. I'd stick with Samsung or Crucial. I use a 840 Evo in my build. Works great.

http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-2-5-Inch-adapter-Internal-CT240M500SSD1/dp/B00BQ8RM1A/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1417640223&sr=1-1&keywords=crucial+m500+240gb

SSDs are easy to use. Make sure you have an extra SATA6/3 cable and a SATA power cable to run the drive. You may have to buy the SATA6 cable. The Samsung Magician Software is very easy to use and does a great job at keeping the drive tuned up. Do a YouTube search for Samsung Magician software and check it out. The Crucial drive is also good.

You'd have to reinstall windows onto the SSD.

Its a pretty good deal IMO not as good as the black friday/Cyber monday deals, but its a worthwhile investment being that you'll have significantly quicker boot times and games load relatively quicker.

http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-2-5-Inch-adapter-Internal-CT240M500SSD1/dp/B00BQ8RM1A/ref=sr_1_10?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1417625378&sr=1-10&keywords=ssd

A suggestion on a HDD, its double the size for only 2 dollars more.

http://www.amazon.com/WD-Blue-Desktop-Hard-Drive/dp/B0088PUEPK/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1417625246&sr=1-1&keywords=1+tb

In case you didn't see it ... Crucial M500 for $73
http://smile.amazon.com/Crucial-2-5-Inch-adapter-Internal-CT240M500SSD1/dp/B00BQ8RM1A/

> Also, I have an I5 4670, should I upgrade that while I'm at it?

Should you buy a yellow Fiat and three thousand hot pockets? I don't know man. If it's not good enough upgrade it. Chances are it still is.

> Any recommendations on what I should upgrade to while there are some sales going on?

There are some 240gb SSD's going for like 80 bucks USD right now. I think the Crucial M500 is your best bet.

Thanks so much! I want to mod Skyrim, hook up to a TV (wirelessly?), and take remote access of it. I just bought one of these SSDs. I think I can still cancel. What do you think? Lots of people were even getting two

Edit: also are there things/brands this SSD won't connect to that I should take into consideration while continuing to shop?

Is this one better than the one at amazon?

http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00BQ8RM1A/ref=gb1h_tit_m-3_0002_32a7033b?smid=A3DWYIK6Y9EEQB&pf_rd_m=A3DWYIK6Y9EEQB&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_s=merchandised-search-3&pf_rd_r=1GSBC1KBE5ESSDSVFHKF&pf_rd_i=6054205011&pf_rd_p=1988780002

Would this SSD work with that build? http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-240GB-2-5-Inch-Internal-CT240M500SSD1/dp/B00BQ8RM1A/ref=zg_bs_1292116011_5

I don't know how worried you are about pinching your pennies, but you could get a Crucial M500, 120GB for $15 less. Alternatively, you can get a 240GB M500 for only $30 more. This would increase you write speed from 130MBps to 250MBps.

I've been looking around and found the following:

Optical bay enclosure:

SSD option 1

SSD option 2

Would these SSDs work?

This is the only one I see, Crucial M500 240GB list $129.99 on sale $109.99.

Ships from and sold by Amazon.com

http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-240GB-2-5-Inch-Internal-CT240M500SSD1/dp/B00BQ8RM1A/ref=sr_1_1?srs=9094657011&ie=UTF8&qid=1398617467&sr=8-1&keywords=crucial+m500

I'd get this http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BQ8RM1A/

Save $30 by going with the Crucial M500 240 GB.

Could cheapen to a sem-modular PSU like the Corsair CX 600 as well.

Cheaper motherboard for sure. CPU cooler wise get the CM 212 EVO. ~$30.

Why not double your space for $30?

http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-240GB-2-5-Inch-Internal-CT240M500SSD1/dp/B00BQ8RM1A/

That sucks. I hope that you kept good backups.

The N56VZ is compatible with any standard 7mm or 9.5mm 2.5" SATA SSD. Currently, your best option is probably the 250GB Crucial M500. I'm normally more inclined to recommend the Samsung 840 Evo, but the M500 is a bit less expensive right now while offering very similar performance and quality.

... or buy it on Amazon limit: as many as you want.

Plus free shipping.

• Step 1 - Buying a new drive.
  
  This is a good choice (WD Blue 1TB) for $60. If you want an SSD, this is a good choice (Crucial M500 240GB) for enough space and close to your budget.
  
  
• Step 2 - Find a sata cable.
  
  Your motherboard (the large circuit board everything is attached to) would have had such extra cables with its packaging. If you can't find any, along with the hard drive order one (doesn't matter if it's cheap).
  
  
• Step 3 - Open your computer case.
  
  Install the new hard drive in an empty space. Check your old hard drive - how it's installed, and install it in the same way in an empty space in the Hard drive caddy. You'll be needing a cable from your PSU to your hard drive. Logically if you follow the power cable from your old Hard Drive it would have an extra extension that you can use. Also, connect the sata cable we talked about in step 2. Using one end (doesn't matter which) connect it to your new hard drive, the other one to your motherboard.
  This is a good indication where in the motherboard you can connect it to. DO NOT REMOVE THE OLD HARD DRIVE -yet.
  
  
• Step 4 - Boot your computer.
  
  Make a partition to your NEW hard drive. If you don't know how, here's a guide for windows 7. Make the partition big enough to hold the data you want to copy, but be sure to leave AT LEAST 40-50GB of space for the rest. If for instance you bought the 240GB (~220GB) ssd, make a partition of 100GB. So you will have two partitions, one with 120GB and another with 100GB. Copy all your data to the 100GB partition.
  
  
• Step 5 - Remove your old drive.
  
  Open your computer, remove the cables from your old hard disk. Don't forget to remove the SATA cable that connect to your motherboard. Pay attention to not remove the cables of your new hard drive though.
  
  
• Step 6 - Install windows.
  
  Pop the windows dvd and begin the windows installation. When prompted where to install it, choose the partition where there is no data. If for instance in the previous step you created a 100GB partition and copied your files there, choose the other one (120-140GB) for your windows installation. After installation, you have two choices: Either copy the files from the 100GB partition to the 120-140GB one, and then "merging" it (so you will have one partition only) or leave it as is.
  
  You can save yourself a lot of trouble if you could find an external usb hard drive (or big enough flash drive). If you can find such a device, you can skip step 4 and step 6's partition merging. Just pop the usb drive, copy the files, then step1>step2>step3>step5>step6 (minus partition stuff)

I think amazon ships to Ireland for free?
But if not you should be able to get something similar from dabs for slightly more money.
Anyway just take this as a general guide and ask again just before you buy as prices change all the time.

ASRock 960GM/U3S3 FX Motherboard £41.08

Corsair Builder Series CXM 430W Modular Power Supply
£36.73

Gigabyte AMD R9 270 OC 2GB Graphics Card £131.98

WD 1TB 3.5 inch Internal Hard Drive - Caviar Blue £42.99

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium OEM £59.99

Zalman T3 Mini M-ATX/M-ITX Tower Case £19.36

AMD FX6300 CPU £80.99

Total: £413.12 = €493.93

This build should play most new games at 60FPS high settings and gives great value for money.

When you have €100 spare get this SSD. Well worth the money in my opinion. Or if you can't get that much money together get this 120gb, €60 one. But its worse value for money as the euro per gigabyte is worse.

>All of those things that you mentioned, some of which may trickle out in the next few months, or boards that are capable of accepting them (i.e. Broadwell/Maxwell-ready motherboards).

Maxwell-ready motherboards? Maxwell is the same PCIe 3.0 as before. There's no such thing as a "maxwell-ready" motherboard.

Of course we'll have Broadwell-ready boards with the 9-series chipsets, but the problem with that is with a $2000 budget you're well in (and past) 4670K/4770K level (or their tweaked replacements) and there's no way Broadwell will bring anywhere near a big enough performance boost to justify an upgrade there.

As for the rest: as I already stated in the initial reply, PCIe 4.0, SATA Express, and DDR4 are all slated for release well after June 2014, and even if they were, none of them will really be all that revolutionary for the end user.

>Yeah, there's no definite date, but it's likely that some new 800-series GPU will come out between now and then

Well, no, you're just pulling that out of a hat. The current information/rumours point to Nvidia waiting on the 20nm node at TSMC to be ready for large scale production before they release the desktop 800-series chips. That could be anywhere from mid-summer to even early 2015. We just don't know. With the relatively recent release of the 780 Ti and Titan Black it doesn't look like Nvidia is planning to replace their high end lineup anytime in the near future, especially with AMD's ability to compete in the gaming space crippled by miners driving the prices up and supply down.

>or at least that prices on existing components will drop as well.

Prices fall in CPUs and GPUs because of 2 main things: competition and replacement products. Both hold their price (ignoring the crypto-mining for now) until their respective company decides to reduce it to boost sales or to re-position the product to be more competitive.

Intel CPUs pretty much maintain almost exactly the same price from a month after release to soon after the release of the new line, and even after that prices don't really drop by much either. A prime example would be the i5-3570K - still $216 even this long after being replaced.

> If he has a few months to buy, and is not in a hurry to have it now, what is the benefit of buying now?

The benefit of buying now is having a great gaming machine for those few months versus having no gaming machine. Your justification for waiting was "there's a bunch of really awesome new stuff definitely coming out between now and then so you should wait", but you've so far gotten to "prices might fall a bit" (which is always true, plus sales) and some speculation on Maxwell maybe coming out.

>I just bought a laptop with a 770m at the end of January, and I got a great deal on it, but 6 weeks later I could have gotten an 870m laptop for $150 more.

So if you'd waited 6 weeks you could have spent more to get more power? What you got was basically a clock boosted GTX 670M, and the 870M is basically a clock boosted GTX 680M. Three name generations and we've still got the same GK104 chip at the heart of the high end, just with higher clocks on each release.

>edit: PCI-E SSDs. Will any consumer ones be out for a reasonable price by June? I dunno. Which is reason enough to wait to find out.

As I already said, consumer SATA III SSDs are already fast enough that PCIe SSDs are at this point more of a curious blip on the consumer radar. They had some brief fame near the end of SATAIIs life before SATAIII really took off as they allowed users to bypass the bottleneck without buying a new board. As of now they really only get used for enterprise and data center workloads. Consumer-oriented PCIe SSDs are basically just two SSDs and controllers mounted on a single board in RAID0. The Asus ROG Raidr for instance is two bog-standard Sandforce SF-2281 controllers connected up to 128GB of NAND each and connected together with a Marvell RAID controller. That'll run you $350. Alternatively you could just grab three Crucial M500 240GB drives and run them in RAID0 with Intel's onboard controller which would give you triple the storage, and about twice the speed, for only $330. Plus $20 to buy some beer with to celebrate getting better performance for less money.

If you can stretch to a 240-256GB SSD then it'll give you plenty of space to have the OS, your apps and all but your biggest files on the SSD. Then you can use the HD just for media files etc. This is a nice pain-free option. With a 120GB SSD you may find yourself juggling to ensure you don't fill up the SSD (Keeping in mind that most SSDs perform best if you stay under 80% or so usage).

This is a very decent 240GB SSD for less than the 120GB Sandisk in your list. (The Samsung 840 EVO benchmarks a little better than this one, but they are roughly comparable).

just putting it out there that crucial m500 is about $10 cheaper on amazon

http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-2-5-Inch-adapter-Internal-CT240M500SSD1/dp/B00BQ8RM1A/ref=pd_sim_pc_7?ie=UTF8&refRID=1S98YK0EJT502H7FHRQX

I'd go for the crucial 240GB Kingston got a bit of a bad rep recently. It's a few quid cheaper on amazon too

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Crucial-CT240M500SSD1-240GB-Internal-Solid/dp/B00BQ8RM1A

Well here's one $86. Still a stretch?

http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-2-5-Inch-adapter-Internal-CT240M500SSD1/dp/B00BQ8RM1A/ref=sr_1_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1417957200&sr=1-3&keywords=256+gb+SSD