This review is also available in German.

SSDs have been around for quite some time and the prices have dropped to levels where most users can afford such a device. It's still not cheap, because Apple is eating up 1/3 of the flash-market. But at about €150,- you can purchase the G.Skill Falcon II 64GB drive. Of course, the faster a drive gets the more you have to cash out for it.

The Falcon II 64GB is spec'd at 220MB/s read-speed and 110MB/s. While the write speed is not impressive and fast hard drives can match it, any SSD has a big advantage. It contains only non-movable parts, so no heads have to be moved and access times are about 150 times faster. This is what gives SSDs the edge over HDDs, but the advantage comes with a quite heavy price tag.




Testbed:

Motherboard:
MSI 790GX-GD70 (provided by MSI)
AMD 790GX/SB750
MSI P55-GD65 (provided by MSI)
Intel P55

CPU:
AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition (provided by AMD)
Intel Core i5 750  (provided by Intel)

CPU-Cooler:
Scythe Kama Angle (provided by Scythe-Europe)

Memory:
G.Skill 4GB Kit PC3-12800 (provided by G.Skill)
1333MHz CL7-7-7-21 CR1T 1.30V

Graphics Card:
MSI R4850-2D1G-OC (provided by MSI)

Power supply:
PC Power & Cooling Silencer 500W (provided by PC Power & Cooling)

Hard disk:
Samsung F1 1000GB RAID-Edition (provided by Ditech)
G.Skill Falcon II 64GB (provided by G.Skill)

Case fans:
SilenX iXtrema Pro 14dB(A) (provided by PC-Cooling.at)
Scythe DFS122512LS

Case:
Cooler Master Stacker 831 Lite (provided by Cooler Master)