thanks for the heads up this is one of the things i am waiting for. although it might take a while to populate, at least it's here soon hahaha!

hopefully this also move us away from things like bad usb.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpxZFoNiQ10
https://github.com/adamcaudill/Psychson

I don't think the USB3.1 has a big impact.

USB3.0 already exist for years already, still many are still using USB2.0

For storage purpose, speed is not the major concern, but cost is.

There is still a wide gap in term of cost between SSD and HDD.
Accessing data between SSD and HDD, there is little noticeable difference between.

even the slowest SSD is still faster than average HDD

yes. speed is one advantage. the main thing to me is still relative data safety hehe
after the incident of failed hdd, i switched to usb sticks also. however usb sticks are slow for large files.

my simplified comparison is this: for 256gb, you need 4x 64gb usb sticks. i use sandisk ultra usb 3.0 64gb for comparison here. (there are options with faster speed but the price is quite high) the total cost is like MYR 440.00. in terms of speed, it is said to have up to 100MB/s.

now you get a 256gb ssd plus a common external enclosure, say, ssd for MYR 380.00, and external hdd enclosure, MYR 70.00. the total is about MYR 450.00. the price is almost the same. the speed for ssd in external enclosure is about 190MB/s.

this is why i think it's a viable option to me.

you can get it from ramcity.com.au. note that there is a 10% gst 'discount' for international buyers.

as for the price, it's slightly expensive (double of sata ssd's of the same capacity).

plextor's ram-based cache is relatively impressive. although it's not as good as ramdisk, and we don't need that crazy speed for everyday use, it looks better than samsung's rapid and primocache.

cheap low costing, and much better than kingston v300 (after changing to slow nand flash), and no provisioning on ssd340.

the fw update method quite dumb on ssd340, will wipe off the drive data

guess ssd340 no longer available, ssd370 now. ya, for laptop purpose it fast, cheap & good enough, though the 256GB model will double the 128gb write speed.
those scary high speed ssd really good for big large fast require database like tesco/mydin.

nice to reduce os and app load time, read speed is more important. this is a good choice to go for if budget is a concern.

oh they have a not-so-good firmware upgrade process. still, i think it's not a big deal, as long as they can deliver proper updates hehe
ah my comments about plextor's plexturbo was based on speed found on images only hehe

yeah.. maybe all implementations ram-cache with write-back (i think it's deferred write-back) are slower for some reasons. i'm not really familiar with it. for the purpose of ssd optimizations, my personal preference is still write-back.

for now, yes. currently this is the better option to get speed and to free up pcie lanes for better use (like gpu sli setups).

it's not just about multiple gpu setups. it depends on the purpose of that rig. there are some pcie-based stuff, like sound, video capture, nic, wifi, and raid/sata/usb/scsi cards, that can be added to the system to cope with needs. pci-e slots can also be used as a means to replace faulty integrated parts of a mobo.

mainstream systems (like 4790k, z97) usually have less pcie lanes than high-end ones (like 5930k, x99).

due to such limitations, different implementations are adopted by manufacturers to assign and distribute these resources that involve lane sharing (that means there are differences in the number of pcie lanes connected to each slot, something like this, http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-i...oard,3902.html). it's important to check out the mobo manuals and review sites to know more about this, then plan your rig setup ahead before purchase.

we all know the risks of using raid0. we cannot eliminate them, so just prepare for the worst:

1. use it as a boot/software drive, not storage. normally 2x 256gb should be good and large enough.
2. make sure you can recover from disasters, by keeping the latest system images outside the system. (it's much more time saving than doing fresh installs from scratch everytime)
3. store the data in hdd (non-raid), or nas.
bad power supplies will cause damage in electronics. it's better to use UPS in this case. (it's not just about ssd. every component in your rig will be affected and i don't think you wanna risk them too) laptops are relatively better. they have built-in battery for this purpose.