This has several tests, but the ones I find particularly revealing are the sequential and 4K random benchmarks. However, to really see how this SSD stacks up against the competition, subjective impressions won't do, so I put it through the AS SSD benchmarking tool. Windows boots in seconds, as does almost any application, and you'll never be the one holding up the start of the match in Assault Squad 2. Compared to running Windows from a hard disk, the BX300 has the same huge performance benefit as any SSD. I plugged the SSD into my test system (an AMD Ryzen 7 1800X processor plugged into an Asus Prime X370-Pro motherboard with a 16GB Crucial Ballistix Elite DDR4 RAM kit), and in a couple of clicks (well, maybe five) and a reboot, the system's Windows installation had been copied over flawlessly to the new disk. This special, cut-down version of the software lets you clone your current Windows installation straight to the new SSD. There's a stick-on plastic rectangle in the box that will bump up its thickness from 7mm to 9.5mm, as some laptops have fatter drive bays, and there's also a slip of paper suggesting you download Acronis True Image. The BX300 is a standard 2.5in SATA3 model, so will fit in most laptops and PCs – no special M.2 motherboards required here. It's also a useful £14 cheaper than Samsung's market-leading 850 EVO. Fortunately, this particular capacity has maintained its figure over the intervening weeks, making it just as great value as it was before the Christmas bloat. Push things up to 480GB, however, and you'll pay £121 (just 25p/GB) or $135 (28 cents/GB). As a result, I'd recommend waiting for this to fall back down to this sort of price before you consider picking one up in this capacity. Two weeks ago, it was just £65, working out at a far more reasonable 27p/GB. The 240GB version is much more like it, although its current price of £79 (or $75) still feels like it ate one too many leftover turkey sandwiches over the holiday. Even at its previous price of £44 (now £54), it worked out at 37 pence/GB (or 41 cents/GB if you're in the US), which is the kind of figure I expect to see on premium drives. A 120GB drive is also a bit too small to be particularly useful – that's the capacity Crucial sent me for testing, and I couldn't even fit Doom and The Witcher 3 on it at once. As such, the 120GB model isn’t especially good value at time of writing. Now I'll be upfront - prices pre-Christmas were much better than they are now, with almost all storage capacities costing around £10-15 less. We've extolled the virtues of SSDs in our best of roundup, but Crucial has sent me a potential bargain for review: the BX300. They're silent, too, and take up less room in your case. They're (still) not cheap, but they're the best way to make your PC feel fast and responsive. If you're still running your programs and games off a hard disk, do yourself a favour and get an SSD.
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