Stuck Between Three SSD's!

[TokeR]

After reading a very helpful review that I found in Onethreehill's post on ~120GB SSD's I've determined what SSD's I'm very interested in but I'm having a little bit of a hard time deciding on which one to get.

The choices I have are between the Corsair Force Series GT, OCZ Vertex III and the OCZ Vertex III Max IOPS which range between the $255-300AUD price point.

I plan to use whichever drive I get as my OS drive that I will probably have my currently most played game installed on as well and a few other bits and peices.

Seeing as my last SSD (OCZ Vertex Series 96GB) bricked on me without any warning, One minute my PC's running fine, I do a restart and it's gone! I'm not sure how I feel about OCZ but I have equally mixed feelings for Corsair which I know and love as a PSU & RAM developer but don't know anything about as a SSD developer..

What are your general opinions? They are all very similar with slight perks over the other. Price is not such a big deal to me as I came into this willing to spend $300.

However the most expensive one is the Max IOPS one and I am only willing to spend the extra ~$30 if "Max IOPS" is worth it and I don't know much about that.

Any feedback would be appreciated!

[dandelioneater]

I use a corsair force ssd in my laptop. They seem to work fine. For what its worth, I would just get the least expensive out of those 3. I don't think you'll notice a performance difference between any of the above ssd's. You'll get that quick, snappy, feel with either of them. my 2sense

[Beastylemon]

Each of them uses synchronous NAND Flash, so they would all be the same.
cept for Max IOPS which uses toggle chips which is just a tad faster

BUT, know this, that the new firmwares were released fixing MANY BSOD problems, including mine.
(sandforce found a problem so they sent a fix to all companies to incorporate it in their own firmwares)

I own a Force 3, and an Agility 3.

I took in consideration that in the corsair forums, there are threads for the Force GT series for problems not in the Force 3 SSD's

And also in the OCZ forums, its the same thing with The vertex 3's, and not so much problems on the Agility/Solid series

All in all, the new firmware (2.15 for OCZ & 1.3.3 for Corsair) SHOULD even out the reliability question here.

ALSO Corsair IS the BEST for RMA's just in case anything happens

EDITED: Galcobar corrected my mix up between synchronous and asynchronous

[Galcobar]

Force 3 GT and Vertex 3 use synchronous ONFI 2.0 NAND, while the MAX IOPS version moves to Toggle NAND. Asynchronous NAND is used by the Force 3 and Agility 3 drives.

Something to keep in mind is that all of the drives you listed are based on the same Sandforce 2281 controller, so the GT and Vertex 3 will be effectively identical in speed. The MAX IOPS does gain some advantage with its superior NAND, but all three are subject to the same reliability questions around the SF-2281 controller. It's as yet too early to say whether the two-week-old firmware is the panacea everyone hopes, though it definitely has been an improvement.

Corsair does have a better reputation for customer service if something goes wrong.

[TokeR]

Thanks guys, really appreciate the help.
I definitely agree with the approval of Corsair's RMA Service, I broke the hard drive bay door off my 800D and they got a new one to me without any more questions within a week and I wasn't even expecting them to replace something I broke from being clumsy.

I'm thinking the Force GT may be the one as you've all mentioned the superior support, it's the most affordable and will perform pretty much identically to the higher priced Vertex III and I don't think I will notice the improvements of Max IOPS.

I'm trying to make the best decision here because my last SSD died on me and I bought it mainly on how it was cheaper than other OCZ drives at the time and someone had told me OCZ makes really good SSD's.

I think equally to speed/performance reliability is very important. So hopefully the new firmware will work things out for the Force GT?