Choose Smarter: Ten... Sata 3 SSDs • The Register

OCZ RevoDrive 3 X2 240GB 

It’s an SSD Jim, but not as we know it. OCZ’s RevoDrives are not like your standard SSD, as they forgo the standard drive enclosure and SATA 6Gb/s interface. Instead this SSD storage is built on a PCB (or PCBs) that use the electrical interface of a 4X PCI-E slot on a motherboard. This gets around the potential bottle neck of the standard SATA interface and also offers the promise of huge data transfer rates in the future.

The RevoDrive 3 X2 240GB card is basically two 60GB standard SSD’s complete with both SandForce controllers mounted on a PCB, with a another two 60GB drives and pair of controllers mounted on a daughter card. It's an impressive performer and can easily be found for £100 less than the OCZ list price, if you shop around. Our full review is here.

Reg Rating 80%
Price £570
More info OCZ

Patriot Pyro SE 240GB

Sitting between the high-end Wildfire and Wildfire SE series and the standard Pyro family, Patriot’s Pyro SE drives are designed to offer a better price/performance mix. The Pyro SE ups the ante by utilising faster synchronous NAND flash rather than the cheaper, slower asynchronous flash that the Pyro range uses.

Both Pyro ranges and indeed the Wildfire drives use the SandForce SF-2281 controller.  The flagship 240GB Pyro SE drive comes with quoted sequential read/write figures of 550MB/s and 520MB/s respectively.  As with the standard Pyro, the SE version is also available in 60 and 120GB capacities and Patriot provide a 3 year warranty. It's an impressive performer too, but with a price to match.

Reg Rating 80%
Price £280
More info Patriot

Plextor PX-M3P 256GB 

Probably better known its range of top notch optical drives, Plextor also has a range of SSDs that are constantly evolving. The latest drives to hit the shelves are the Pro versions of the M3 series. Just like the standard M3, the Pro version uses 24nm Toshiba Toggle NAND, 512MB of cache and a Marvell 88SS9174 controller – the BLD2 version.

The Marvell controller, plus the updated firmware the Pro uses, gives it improved performance over the standard M3 version.  Indeed its read/write figures ranks among some of the best on test. And Plextor not only bundles in a mounting bracket and disk cloning and backup software it also backs the drive with an impressive 5 year warranty.