System drive dead, looking for an SSD

So I have this ASUS motherboard and I need to replace my Windows system drive.

I was looking at the OCZ Agility 3 but I noticed it is 6gbs but the motherboard is listed at 3gbs.

I'm guessing that 6gbs is SATA III and 3gbs is SATA II, correct?

Will I still be able to use this drive, but I just won't have the full speed of it?

I'm not really in a financial position at the moment to up grade my motherboard, but if there's a nice one you know about that is relatively cheap ($80-$100) feel free to recommend that as well.

And to tie it all up I have the AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Deneb, so the board would need to be compatible with that as well.

But hopefully, I would be able to find a 120GB drive, at that very nice price point the Agility 3 has and avoid replacing the motherboard as well.

Thoughts? Ideas?

Thanks!

Maybe this board....?

I would not worry about the data transfer speed for the OS. The performance gain comes from the extremely short access time on SSDs. The OS uses mostly 4K blocks and the fancy numbers you see in the specs do not really apply.

If you want an OCZ, I would suggest a Vertex rather than an Agility which has had it's problems. Other good options are the Crucial M4, Samsung 840 Pro and the Intels. But even all the others will do the job. I have not really heard of any SSD to be a complete failure. I use a $60 Mushkin 60GB and that works very well too. Now who has ever heard of a Mushkin SSD. I use it in an external USB3 caddy and run my virtual systems from it. The others are 3 OCZ Vertex, 1 OCZ Vector, 2 Intels and 1 Crucial M4 - mixed Sata II and Sata III depending on the system. The 2 oldest are from 2008 and going strong.

Yes,
SATA II = 3Gbs
SATA III= 6Gbs

You'll never notice a difference in performance between the two. Just the SSD will make you head swim with speed.

kbrady1979 said:

The good thing about SATA III is that it is backwards compatible with SATA II. You won't get the full Sequential Read/Write speed of SATA III, but that is fine. The speeds that actually make a difference will be the same pretty much. Go ahead and get a SATA III SSD and later on, you can grab an updated motherboard. The SSD will stay with you for quite awhile! What are you looking at spending for the SSD?

About $100.

whs said:

If you want an OCZ, I would suggest a Vertex rather than an Agility which has had it's problems. Other good options are the Crucial M4, Samsung 840 Pro and the Intels. But even all the others will do the job. I have not really heard of any SSD to be a complete failure. I use a $60 Mushkin 60GB and that works very well too. Now who has ever heard of a Mushkin SSD. I use it in an external USB3 caddy and run my virtual systems from it. The others are 3 OCZ Vertex, 1 OCZ Vector, 2 Intels and 1 Crucial M4 - mixed Sata II and Sata III depending on the system. The 2 oldest are from 2008 and going strong.

That's what I ended up looking at. Will probably get this one, even though it doesn't have an adapter for the drive bay...I guess it can just dangle.

That's what I ended up looking at. Will probably get this one, even though it doesn't have an adapter for the drive bay...I guess it can just dangle.

That's a good one. Don't worry about the adapter. I use self stick Velcro dots (or tape) to fix mine in the bay - or wherever there is room.

I have a bunch of adapters but never use them. Too much fuzz.

Yep, that`s the one I ordered.

OCZ Vertex 4 VTX4-25SAT3-128G Solid State Drive - Newegg.com

kbrady1979 said:

Go ahead and get a SATA III SSD and later on, you can grab an updated motherboard. The SSD will stay with you for quite awhile!

whs said:

If you want an OCZ, I would suggest a Vertex

Britton30 said:

Just the SSD will make you head swim with speed.

It arrived and I just finished installing Windows.

O.M.G.





I probably should have got that Vertex 4 listed above...but there's always going to be something a little bit better. In a month or so I'll be rebuilding this guy anyway and I am going to be adding another SSD.

I want all my drives to be SSD, this is absolutely incredible. Everything is instant.

Now, if only my 2TB of internal and 1TB external storage was all SSD.

I am one happy person right now.