I got it locally and brand new. I'll benchmark it to see how it goes, but honestly the real world performance is what matters to me in the end and so far it's been up to my expectations when it comes to boot time and launching applications. I have this SSD in my old PC as well so I may RAID them or something in the future if that's possible.
Very true, the real world performance surely matters but the gap was huge which was actually affecting the real world performance when copying/pasting files. It's not just for benchmarks like processors and overclocking really but giving you the results of real world for the speeds of reading and writing.
Take a look at this thread to see what I am talking about:
http://www.pakgamers.com/forums/f139/[unboxing]-samsung-850-evo-500gb-230512/ (See at the bottom of the post, I was merely getting around 178 MB/s speed when I am supposed to be getting 450 MB/s on that drive so that's a HUGE gap in my opinion.
However like you said, boot times and all are great and if you plan to RAID them then it's no biggie. I just wanted to let you know about it since I also ignored it and used it for a year without knowing and didn't want it happening to you as well if you get a good deal on them so you could sell them or something instead of passing on it. I'm using SSDs for OS, Gaming and Work so I can compare the results and everything thoroughly.
Anyways, like I said very clean purchase and welcome back to PC gaming
Let's connect on Steam and we can have some fun together someday.