OCZ Vertex 450 solid-state drive
This low-cost SSD competes well with Samsung and Seagate drives
Pros
- Excellent read and write speeds
- Low cost per GB
Cons
- Other drives are faster outright
- Samsung 840 Pro is cheaper
Bottom Line
OCZ’s Vertex 450 is a strong contender in the mid-range, enthusiast solid-state drive market. It competes directly with Samsung’s well-regarded 840 Pro and Seagate’s SSD 600.
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Price
$ 259.00 (AUD)
If you’re looking to speed up an old or even a new PC or laptop, buying a solid-state drive is one of the smartest choices you can make.
OCZ’s Vertex 450 is a relatively cheap, still-super-fast SSD that is largely comparable to the current market leaders.
OCZ Vertex 450: Design and setup
The OCZ Vertex 450 is a standard-size 2.5-inch solid-state drive, measuring 99mm long, 69mm wide, and 7mm thick. It weighs 118 grams and has four screw holes in its outer edges, along with another four underneath.
This is a nice, simple and unpretentious-looking SSD; there’s a sticker on top that identifies it as a Vertex 450 and touts its Indilinx Barefoot 3 controller — although if you’ve got this far, we presume you already know what you’ve bought.
Rounded corners and an anodised mid-grey finish are neither especially attractive nor ugly. On the bottom are all the drive’s serial numbers and identifying data.
The OCZ Vertex 450, like any other modern SSD, is a SATA3 drive, and as such it has a standard SATA connector and power cable — you’ll be able to install it in any modern desktop PC or any modern laptop, as long as it’s not an ultra-portable using the smaller mSATA standard (like the Acer Aspire V7.
The Vertex 450’s retail kit includes the drive itself in a protective anti-static bag, a packet of eight counter-sunk and standard screws for case-mounting the drive, and a 3.5-inch caddy for mounting the drive in a desktop PC case. There’s also a nifty OCZ sticker.
OCZ Vertex 450: Specifications and performance
The Vertex 450 we tested was a 256GB model; it’s also available in 128GB or 512GB capacities. The 256GB model just breaks through the $1/GB barrier in Australia, with street prices hovering around or just above the $250 mark — making it equal with competitors from Samsung, Seagate and Corsair, all of which are similarly priced. Being a 256GB drive, you get about 238GB of formatted space — 15GB more than a ‘240GB’ SSD.
Sequential read speeds in CrystalDiskMark hit 494MBps, around 28MBps slower than our fastest-ever result from the Samsung SSD 840 Pro. In general, the Vertex 450’s results are near that of our class leaders, making it a strong contender. As one of the fastest SSDs we’ve tested, there’s a definite advantage in buying the Vertex 450 over any traditional mechanical hard drive, as long as you don’t mind the trade-off of less overall storage space.
Performance table
This table shows how the OCZ Vertex 450 256GB model performed against some other recent solid state drives that we've seen, as well as some thin and ultra-thin mechanical drives.
OCZ Vertex 450 | Seagate SSD 600 | Samsung SSD 840 Pro | OCZ Vertex 3.20 | Seagate Laptop Thin SSHD | Seagate Laptop Ultrathin | WD Blue Slim | |
Capacity | 256GB | 240GB | 256GB | 240GB | 500GB | 500GB | 1TB |
Thickness | 7mm | 7mm | 7mm | 9.3mm | 7mm | 5mm | 7mm |
Weight | 118g | 78g | 54g | 87g | 91g | 89g | 88g |
Flash type | Synchronous MLC | MLC | Toggle-mode MLC | Synchronous MLC | MLC | n/a | n/a |
Platters | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a | 1 | 1 | 1 |
CDM* read | 494.0MBps | 519.8MBps | 523.9MBps | 471.9MBps | 110.4MBps | 117.4MBps | 115.2MBps |
CDM* write | 473.9MBps | 458.3MBps | 500.2MBps | 312MBps | 109.7MBps | 115.6MBps | 114.8MBps |
File duplication | 240MBps | 265MBps | 265MBps | 192MBps | 46.08MBps | 38.43MBps | 44.28MBps |
Battery life | n/a | 3hr 2min | 3hr 1min | 3hr | 3hr 2min | 3hr 5min | 3hr |
Cold boot | n/a | 19sec | 19sec | 19sec | 24sec | 47sec | 35sec |
Warranty | Three years | Three years | Five years | Three years | Three years | Three years | Three years |
* = CrystalDiskMark
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