Yes, it may be enough. My Windows 7 and Program Files takes about 30-40GiB as well.

But please don't expect your 120GB SSD to have 120GiB of capacity. Most 120GBs have only 111.7GiB of actual capacity. This is because of a unit conversion issue, 1GB = 0.976GiB.

While all the replies are technically correct, they have missed one important thing.

While SSDs do indeed have a write limit, that limit is currently high enough that I would be very surprised if a normal user in an unoptimised OS can completely exhaust the write limit of today's SSDs in five years, or even eight years for that matter. I can show you the calculations that supports that statement if you want.

Your SSD is much more likely to fail due to manufacturing defect or external damage (eg: lightning strike) long before it wears out from writing too much.

Really.

For your BF3, you are more likely to be bottlenecked by your CPU than to be bottlenecked by an SSD over SATA 3.0 Gb/s, check with your Windows Task Manager. If BF3 is not optimised for multi-core operations and one of your cores is maxed out at 100%, then you need a CPU with superior single-thread performance to get significant performance gains. Getting a SATA 6.0 Gb/s motherboard or PCI-E card will probably not help you in any way.

RAID-0 requires at least two HDDs or two SSDs. By treating the two storage devices as one single storage device in a particular manner, it enables you to double your performance. The downside however, is if one of the components fail, then you lose all your data in all the storage devices configured in RAID-0. It's fast, but caries a slight increase in risk and is typically not needed for home users who already have an SSD; you are still more likely to be bottlenecked by your CPU.

You mean the myitmall seller at https://forum.lowyat.net/topic/1659160? That isn't a good deal, as I have gotten a 256GB Crucial M4 SSD for about RM700~ and that seller is listing a 160GB Intel 320 for RM700. You can even get a 180GB Intel 330 for RM549 at retail.

This post has been edited by everling: Jul 27 2012, 08:23 PM

If you want to try Intel, why not the 330? I'd choose either the M4 or the 330.

Try to find the P6T page on Asus's website and it will probably have a download drivers option somewhere nearby.

While I wouldn't recommend it, not using a bracket is an option, if the SSD is located in a stable position and you are mindful of the fact that your SSD isn't fastened down.

Screwed with screws. Duct taped to a surface. Sticky taped.

Take a look at salimbest83's photo. It is an example of an SSD not fastened down.

Intel 330 or Crucial M4.

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Added on August 2, 2012, 2:19 pmThe performance bottlenecks are clear when benchmarked. But usually not very visible on normal operations like booting or running programs.

This post has been edited by everling: Aug 2 2012, 02:19 PM

The Phison controller's lacklustre random performance makes it undesirable for me. It will need to be significantly cheaper to even start being acceptable in my opinion.

This post has been edited by everling: Aug 2 2012, 02:30 PM

It might be better to get someone with an Intel-based motherboard with both SATA 3.0 Gb/s and 6.0 Gb/s ports, and then have them post the boot time benchmarks using the different SATA ports. It is straightforwardly simple and eliminates any doubts due to different hardware component performances.

H77 has two SATA 6.0 Gb/s ports and four SATA 3.0 Gb/s ports. You can do the test that I have suggested.

For Sandforce-based SSDs, use ATTO Disk Benchmark to do the benchmarking. Tools like CrystalDiskMark use random data for their tests, which Sandforce-based SSDs do not handle well.

"Used" SSDs are always a bit slower, because the NAND chips they use needs to erase "old" data first before they can write new data. Benchmarking a lot will quickly render any SSD into a "used" state. Especially with CrystalDiskMark's default setting of writing about 20GB of data per full test.

That I do not know. But I would recommend that you do at least one test run with ATTO first. If it should still show ~150MB performance on write, then there might be a problem.

Looks like everything is fine then. Read and write is hitting past 500MB/s.

This is how Sandforce-based SSDs behave. Poorly on random and incompressible data and very well on compressible data, and all the manufacturers uses the compressible data performance for their advertising.

You're welcome.

Thanks for the tip!

I also use diskpart and "clean" my SSDs, but my goal was to configure my partitions. I hadn't thought about using "clean" for restoring performance. I should try that one day on my old Kingston SSD as its benchmark performance has dropped over the years.

The performance doesn't seem to be improved.

Not all optimisations will improve raw performance. Disabling the automatic defragmentation for instance doesn't effect your raw performance, but it does improve your SSD's lifespan.

You do need to create at least one partition in order to install the OS. As for having multiple partitions, don't create them if it is in a desktop and you have HDDs. If you are on a laptop, you could create them if you like. My laptop's Windows 7 64-bit partition was only 40GB in size until recently.

120GB is more than plenty, like I said above, 40GB is spacious enough for non-gaming needs.

Intel's 330 Series is a good SSD brand for anyone new or old to SSDs. They're cheap, fast, and reliable.

This post has been edited by everling: Aug 8 2012, 09:44 AM

512GB is a bit much for the average user in my opinion. I think that 120GB to 256GB, paired with a large storage HDD, is a sweet spot between price and useful capacity.