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OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6g

S

S-mac-k

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 30, 2011
72
0
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Anyone got one of these yet? I just purchased one & am only reading good things. Please someone confirm I've done the right thing? Says it's the fastest SSD out there.

I need reliability & speed. Hard combo in this day & age hey.

Got the optibay also so gonna stick the HDD in there for now until SATA II drops considerably.
 
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As in SATA II SSD's
 
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Nobody then? Jeez, thought someone mighta been able to have some input on this. Obviously not...
 
not sure about your the new mercury extreme, but I heard Vertex 3 Sata III is really fast. I doubt you will see any knoticable difference between those 2 at all. With speeds upto 550 mb/s, difference between the 2 will be a matter of 1 sec...
 
There is a thread in here titled OWC in UK. The OP just got one and posted some thoughts within.
 
haha

huythanhv2 said:
I'm running 6Gbs OWC 120gb on SATA 2 MBP 2010 and it's fast. That's all I can tell =)
Click to expand...

that is a waste of money, 6gbs is sata 3 standard using it on sata 2 will cut down the specs to that of 3gbs SSD. Even though 4k uncached read will be a little faster, but the cost of 6gbs SSD compared to 3gbs SSD is a lot higher, and not worth the money if 4k read is the only thing better. Besides, for a regular user, increase in 4k read won't give you any noticeable improvement. A good 3gbs sata 2 will be just as good on your mac, shoulda saved the money and get your self a bigger SSD (in capacity). :)))))

Of course if you want to take it out and put it in a new macbook pro later on, then it is a different case.
 
Cpt.N00B said:
that is a waste of money, 6gbs is sata 3 standard using it on sata 2 will cut down the specs to that of 3gbs SSD. Even though 4k uncached read will be a little faster, but the cost of 6gbs SSD compared to 3gbs SSD is a lot higher, and not worth the money if 4k read is the only thing better. Besides, for a regular user, increase in 4k read won't give you any noticeable improvement. A good 3gbs sata 2 will be just as good on your mac, shoulda saved the money and get your self a bigger SSD (in capacity). :)))))

Of course if you want to take it out and put it in a new macbook pro later on, then it is a different case.
Click to expand...

Do the new 2011 MBP's have SATA III in the optical bay?
 
frankieboy said:
I'm a little concerned about the OWC 6G power consumption in a laptop. Its a big leap up from their 3G drives.
Click to expand...

That is interesting. For comparison, I looked up power usage on the Intel 510 SSD I installed. From this pdf it shows:

//Intel 510 SSD Power Usage//
Power Consumption Active1 380 mW
Idle2 100 mW
Click to expand...

Versus the OWC 6G from your link:

//OWC 240GB 6G SSD//
Active: 3700mW (3.7W) expected maximum draw
Inactive (DIPM): less than 2000mW (2W)
Click to expand...

The OWC uses almost ten times the power when active and 20 times the power when idle. That seems odd. Maybe different testing methodology?
 
Weaselboy said:
The OWC uses almost ten times the power when active and 20 times the power when idle. That seems odd. Maybe different testing methodology?
Click to expand...

It's not a mistake. It's the new sandforce controller. I'm putting off getting one atm, battery life is more important to me than a faster HDD.

The vertex 3 is really high too.

ocz_vertex3_240gb_power_values(1).png
 
Locodice said:
It's not a mistake. It's the new sandforce controller. I'm putting off getting one atm, battery life is more important to me than a faster HDD.

The vertex 3 is really high too.

ocz_vertex3_240gb_power_values(1).png
Click to expand...
Don't forget you are also getting almost double the speeds, and how do they compare against spinning HDD's in power?
 
Locodice said:
It's not a mistake. It's the new sandforce controller. I'm putting off getting one atm, battery life is more important to me than a faster HDD.
Click to expand...

It's not the controller. It's the type of memory used. See the MPG article cited above.
 
altecXP said:
Don't forget you are also getting almost double the speeds, and how do they compare against spinning HDD's in power?
Click to expand...

While it is true that "work" is being finished quicker, IMO the big problem is the idle power consumption. I've been debating whether to keep my 240GB vertex 3 for that exact reason. It's a very noticeable drop in battery life for my untethered usage pattern of MS Office, itunes, web browsing. My old X25-M gets me about 8-9 hours and the vertex 3 gets about 6-7. Given my usage, the drive should be idling most of the time so that's why the idle numbers are so important. Another way of looking at it is when I just let my laptop sit at the desktop, the X25-M shows estimated battery life as 15 hours and the vertex 3 shows 10 hours. Of course this is not a realistic setting but it does point out the big difference in idle power consumption.

BTW this is hooked up to a 2011 15" 2.3.
 
Weaselboy said:
That is interesting. For comparison, I looked up power usage on the Intel 510 SSD I installed. From this pdf it shows:



Versus the OWC 6G from your link:



The OWC uses almost ten times the power when active and 20 times the power when idle. That seems odd. Maybe different testing methodology?
Click to expand...

The 510 doesn't seem to be much better than the Vertex 3. This is interesting though, I am having the hardest time trying to figure out whether to go with the Intel 320 or the new OWC 6g! I am a student so I need good battery life and reliability first and foremost. I just feel like I'm wasting my 2011 MBP's SATA III interface if I get the 320. My workload isn't heavy so I don't even know if I would see a difference in the SATA II and SATA III anyway.

EDIT: The article I linked also throws in a spinning hard drive in the power consumption benchmarks showing that even the Vertex 3 uses a little over half the power of a spinning hard drive under load.
 
kobyh15 said:
This is interesting though, I am having the hardest time trying to figure out whether to go with the Intel 320 or the new OWC 6g! I am a student so I need good battery life and reliability first and foremost. I just feel like I'm wasting my 2011 MBP's SATA III interface if I get the 320. My workload isn't heavy so I don't even know if I would see a difference in the SATA II and SATA III anyway.
Click to expand...

I would not be overly concerned about all the power rating business. Like you said, it is still far less than a HDD.

Unless you are doing a lot of data intensive work, I doubt you will notice any speed difference in normal usage among the newer SSDs. I would go with what you think will be most reliable and is supported on your machine.

You should read over the OWC SSD thread about six months of firmware updates trying to fix a sleep/hibernation issue. Also, OWC still offers to way to update OWC SSD firmware unless you install Windows under bootcamp. Intel SSDs have, at least according to forum posts here, been very reliable and they have a boot CD updater that will work on a Mac.
 
Weaselboy said:
I would not be overly concerned about all the power rating business. Like you said, it is still far less than a HDD.

Unless you are doing a lot of data intensive work, I doubt you will notice any speed difference in normal usage among the newer SSDs. I would go with what you think will be most reliable and is supported on your machine.

You should read over the OWC SSD thread about six months of firmware updates trying to fix a sleep/hibernation issue. Also, OWC still offers to way to update OWC SSD firmware unless you install Windows under bootcamp. Intel SSDs have, at least according to forum posts here, been very reliable and they have a boot CD updater that will work on a Mac.
Click to expand...

It's hard to fight the urge to get the biggest and baddest even though you may not use it. The only time I would ever really transfer large files is initially loading everything on the drive, after that nothing too large at all. Intel's toolbox is another selling point. I love Intel, so it's a tough choice. I've been researching for a long time, and I know how loved the Intel drives are around the forum. I just keep thinking that OWC has their stuff finally figured out, but I don't know.
 
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I'm actually having regrets buying the 6G & I haven't even installed it yet. Having an easter break here & it still hasn't arrived but I can already boot up with this 500GB 7,200rpm in around 10/15secs. I haven't installed my 8GB of RAM either. It's already a rocket ship as standard & now it's going to be a monster & I don't think I need it?

Think I'll have future proofed it for a few years to come. I got caught up in the who can boot quickest craze I think? I'll boot quicker than most out there & I don't even need it & could have saved £350!

Joke
 
S-mac-k said:
I got caught up in the who can boot quickest craze I think? I'll boot quicker than most out there & I don't even need it & could have saved £350!

Joke
Click to expand...


The irony is none of us shut down our laptops when we don't use them, we just put the lids down and let them sleep.
 
S-mac-k said:
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I'm actually having regrets buying the 6G & I haven't even installed it yet. Having an easter break here & it still hasn't arrived but I can already boot up with this 500GB 7,200rpm in around 10/15secs. I haven't installed my 8GB of RAM either. It's already a rocket ship as standard & now it's going to be a monster & I don't think I need it?

Think I'll have future proofed it for a few years to come. I got caught up in the who can boot quickest craze I think? I'll boot quicker than most out there & I don't even need it & could have saved £350!

Joke
Click to expand...

10 to 15 seconds with a 7200 HD? I doubt it.
 
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