Best SSDs For The Money: July 2011
Detailed solid-state drive specifications and reviews are great—that is, if you have the time to do the research. However, at the end of the day, what an enthusiast needs is the best SSD within a certain budget.
So, if you don’t have the time to read the benchmarks, or if you don’t feel confident enough in your ability to pick the right drive, then fear not. We at Tom’s Hardware have come to your aid with a simple list of the best SSD offered for the money.
Not everyone can afford to spend big bucks on an SSD large enough to host their operating system and most performance-sensitive applications. That's really the idea behind caching (at least on the desktop; caching is prevalent in more enterprise-oriented environments for different reasons). In the past month, we covered two solid-state caching solutions in The Intel Z68 Express Review: A Real Enthusiast Chipset and SSD Caching (Without Z68): HighPoint's RocketHybrid 1220. By matching a small, inexpensive SSD up to a hard drive, letting the flash-based device serve as a buffer between slow, mechanical storage and system memory, you're supposed to enjoy the benefits of an SSD without sacrificing the capacities enabled by hard drives.
