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The 840 Pro is stunning. Samsung have created a completely in-house package including both the controller and their own new 21nm toggle mode NAND. On release (Oct '12) this was the fastest performing deep queue depth consumer grade SSD available. Fast forward six months (Apr '13) and the 840 Pro still holds both the random read/write deep queue depth speed records of 384 MB/s and 326 MB/s, impressive considering how fast the SSD space tends to move. There are no obvious weak areas of performance for this drive, in-fact the 840 pro takes first place in nearly all of the speed categories and is only seriously rivalled by one drive, the OCZ Vector. To conclude, in terms of both outright performance, particularly server orientated, and value for money the 840 Pro is without a double amongst the top handful of drives currently available. [SSDrivePro]
This drive beats the rest hands down. Even the Kingston HyperX 3.0 vs. Sandisk Extreme: no contest ... The HyperX 3.0 has a very slightly faster headline read speed (240 vs 215) MB/s but looses to the 64GB extreme in every other benchmark category (512k, 4K, 4K QD32), and by a long way. The Extreme also costs at least 20% less than the HyperX. I do daily incremental backups of a directory containing 40K files and 3K folders, it takes a few seconds on the extreme compared to around 30 seconds with every other flash drive I have tested. The key strength of this drive is its real world usability. [Zefram]
This is the first solid state drive to feature OCZ's in-house Indilinx Barefoot 3 (IDX500M00-BC) controller and what a debut it proved to be. OCZ still use third party memory (Intel Micron Synchronous 25nm MLC) so unlike the Samsung 840 Pro the Vector is not built 100% in house. There have been several SSD's released recently, each slightly besting the other in some small corner of benchmark space. First the Corsiar Neutron GTX, then the Samsung 840 Pro and now the Vector which currently holds the crown for sequential write and 4K write. In terms of overall performance the Vector achieved a real world speed of 578.8 MB/s and an AS-SSD score of 1243 both are spectacular results that firmly place the vector amongst the top two or three performance SSD's currently available. In terms of raw performance the only alternative is the Samsung 840 Pro. [SSDrivePro]
This drive can be used as a combined system and storage drive thanks to its fast 7200K rpm and enormous 3TB capacity. Recently prices for all large drives have been dropping and this is currently a really good choice in terms of value for money and performance. Not only does this drive have respectable sequential read/write speeds but it also goes head to head with the various green options, consuming a very reasonable 5.4W vs 5W (idle) on average for a "green" drive. That amounts to a tiny power consumption disadvantage and a lot more speed. [Zefram]
The Core i3-3225 Ivy Bridge processor not only offers superb real world performance but also excellent value for money. For raw single threaded performance the i3-3225 scores 15.1% lower than the i7-3770K but costs less than half as much. At first glance one might assume that I am crazy for recommending a puny Core-i3 over the mighty Core-i7's but for real world consumer use there is simply no point in having 4 cores and 8 threads, they will hardly ever be used. All of the third gen Ivy Bridge Core-i3s are superb but the i3-3225 sports the slightly more 3D capable HD 4000 Graphics vs the HD 2500 offered on the other models. For real-world performance in an energy efficient package with modest on-board graphics, this is a superb choice. For most use cases including: email, surfing, watching movies, listening to music and office apps, this processor will deliver as good an experience as any other processor on the market. [CPUPro]