are ssd's worth it?

[sadistic_stevie]

I'm doing a pretty large pc upgrade and i have been advised to get an ssd. i was just wondering if they are worth. If you have any advice on getting one it woudl be great thanks?

Sorry if this has been asked before I had a look but couldn't see anything. If it has could you link me there?

[Doherz]

Tell us your specific usage. Then we can give the best advice. SSD's are doubtless a good upgrade but for it to be worth it for you we need to know more.

So tell us what your PC is used for and what sort of parts your looking to upgrade too.

[ed^chigliak]

If you want something small, fast, low powered, reliable, silent - Yes. If you want cheap or high capacity - No.

[Saracen]

It depends on what you're looking for, in my opinion, and on your sense of value for money.

Will they make your PC boot faster and feel "snappier"? yes,

Will they give any overall gain in productivity for most generic, office-type tasks? No.

And there's a variety of scenarios in-between.

So a lot depends on exactly what you do, what you're after and your value for money system. They are certainly an expensive way of adding capacity, per GB, so the reason for adding them has to be other than that.

[kingpotnoodle]

My experiences... currently with Intel 320 SSDs in both cases.

In my Core i3 HTPC I was impressed with the boot speed, and Media Centre is snappy, guide data and reading the indexes for media has made it nice and responsive in comparison to 5400rpm 2.5" drives, it's even better over the OCZ Onyx I tried first.

In my laptop I am honestly underwhelmed, the difference from the 7200rpm 2.5" and the SSD is minor, boot and sleep/resume is a bit better but everything else feels much the same really. Battery life slightly improved.

Reason I think is that in the laptop the 1.3GHz Athlon is the bottleneck. My Windows installations are very well maintained and crap free already, I'm totally anal about keeping my systems in order, so that helps reduce disk contention.

My desktop is currently a 2x 500GB 7200rpm arrangement, and is pretty snappy apart from loading games where I do notice some drag. I'll probably use an SSD in my next desktop build to help with that.

Is it noticeable better? Yes if the rest of your system is fast and you want to do heavy lifting jobs beyond web and office or things which benefit from fast small random reads.

Is it value for money? Depends on your priorities, it could be argued on a tight budget you'd get more benefit from a faster graphics card if you're a gamer, or by using the money to jump from dual to quad core. There are more important things than a few seconds of loading time here and there, I think an SSD is best seen as an upgrade for the PC that otherwise has everything that could make it faster at what it usually does.

[sadistic_stevie]

Thanks for the help so far guys.

My PC is mostly used for gaming. my current plan though its not set in stone is.

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/2tb-s...cache-85ms-ncq
http://3xs.scan.co.uk/ConfigureSystem.asp?SystemID=1202
taking the 2nd selection in all the options for above

I already have a nvidia gtx460 I upgrade to recently

This is the ssd my friend suggested
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/120gb...rce-controller

[eyezpy]

Personally I would go for a different SSD than the one your friend suggested which is a SATA 2 SSD.
One that can take advantage of the SATA 3. At lease something like OCZ Agility 3, Corsair Force 3 or Crucial m4.

[ratbasket]

My experiences... currently with Intel 320 SSDs in both cases.

In my Core i3 HTPC I was impressed with the boot speed, and Media Centre is snappy, guide data and reading the indexes for media has made it nice and responsive in comparison to 5400rpm 2.5" drives, it's even better over the OCZ Onyx I tried first.

I'm glad you said that, I was looking to get a ssd as a boot drive on my htpc as well and you just helped confirm my decision

[sadistic_stevie]

Personally I would go for a different SSD than the one your friend suggested which is a SATA 2 SSD.
One that can take advantage of the SATA 3. At lease something like OCZ Agility 3, Corsair Force 3 or Crucial m4.

thanks for the advice I'll look into that. if you have any links that would be great though i'm sure I can find them myself.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I would look at this:

http://forums.hexus.net/hexus-hardwa...34nm-test.html

Even though the latest OCZ SSDs are usually faster I would go with one of the Crucial or Intel ones.

[shaithis]

You just need to weigh up the cost vs load times. It's a very personal choice.

The only time I ever feel cheated is when playing online and you have to wait for others to finish loading.....the 4 letter words can start flying!!

[sadistic_stevie]

thanks a for all the advice some interesting stuff I'm going to be ordering the lot in a few days so just making my final decisions. thanks for the advice if anyone has any more I'd be really grateful

[Zak33]

I'm doing a pretty large pc upgrade and i have been advised to get an ssd. i was just wondering if they are worth.

yes

just that... get one for the boot drive for your Operating system and key apps

life with an ssd is lightning fast

[Sputnik]

For what it is worth, I wished I had bought the Crucial C300 drive rather than the OCZ Vertex2. Sandforce looked good at face value but, now I think differently about it. I'm tempted to buy a Crucial M4. If only just to see the difference between the 2.

[yuan.li]

For what it is worth, I wished I had bought the Crucial C300 drive rather than the OCZ Vertex2. Sandforce looked good at face value but, now I think differently about it. I'm tempted to buy a Crucial M4. If only just to see the difference between the 2.

why exactly???

i was thinking of getting a vertex 2......

[shakerist]

SSD's are worth it, why, because your only going to live for so long, and I dont think its a good idea waiting for your pc to boot up, its a waste of life

Get the fastest drive you can