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Hi folks.
I'm currently building a new PC and have been following other communities most recommending SSD just for the OS, and HDD for other applications and games.
Is it worth buying an SSD just for OS alone, or save the costs and put it towards better hardware?
I would have to say yes, depending on your budget? If you have minimal funds, a hard-disk might be your only option, however. Ideally an SSD should be big enough to hold your most often used programs too. Having the OS on an SSD improves boot times no end, and greatly enhances system responsiveness. Larger SSDs usually have better performance, due to having more NAND packages on board.
What SSDs do you recommend, the maximum budget is between £50 - £60.
I was originally planning to purchase a 1 TB drive. Should i forget that, increase the budget, and get a decent sized SSD altogther?
It all depends on your budget, the way you use your computer and your budget. Did I say budget twice there? It is really important to recognise what your budget can and can't afford, SSDs are not first on the list when you are building a new system, or even doing an upgrade.
You have a couple of options that could increase performance significantly over a standard hard drive if you want to upgrade your SSD. You can get a cache SSD like SanDisk ReadyCache which is cheap and improves system performance significantly. You could also get yourself a Hybrid SSHD from Toshiba or Seagate but I prefer the cache option, gives you more cache space and doesn't require any new installation or use of mirroring software.
Of course the full speed and most expensive option would be to choose from the wide range of SSDs available. My first choices are SanDisk, Intel, Crucial and OCZ. Make sure you get the newer OCZ drives because they are only getting back to making good drives after Toshiba purchased them, there older drives have a bad reliability record.
When buying an SSD it is best to have only your OS and installed programs on it because those are what benefit from it the most. Games and media do not benefit much from an SSD. I have a 200GB SSD that can fit my games and OS on it, but none of my documents or media are on it.
120GB SSD for OS and applications, 1 TB HDD for games? Does that sound right? It's all new to me!
I would get this SSD myself:Quote:
Originally Posted by MGP
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Crucial-CT12...words=m550+ssd
But if you could stretch your budget to £85, you could double the capacity:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Crucial-CT25...ords=mx100+ssd
You'll probably need a hard disk as well, depending on how much storage you use?
I'm getting back into PC gaming after years away because of the console, although the console lacks the typical RTS games i like such as Tropico 5, the up and coming Sims 4, etc, FPS and Racing games i play are on the consoles.
I was thinking of 128GB SSD for OS and applications, and perhaps a 500GB/1TB HDD for games. However, I'm not sure if i can get away with just a 256 GB SSD for all of my needs such as OS, applications and games, and the 512GB SSD are out of my budget i beileve.
If your maximum budget is £50-60 then I would recommend the SanDisk Readycache. It can be used with any HDD you want so you can get something off ebay or gumtree for cheap to increase the amount of storage you have.
If you are not comfortable using the cache drive than I would get the SanDisk Ultra Plus. I have the same drive in a laptop and it is really good value for money.
Don't stretch your budget, there is no need to. The two options I gave you above, or the MX100 (128GB) Jimbo recommended, would be perfect for almost any need.
Thanks for the quality advice, certainly answered my question. i think i'll do just what you folks have recommended.
Going for the 128GB SSD and either 500GB/1TB HDD will do the trick!
Amazon have the 512GB MX100 for £149.99 and the 1TB M550 for £300, I am torn between the two. With the M550 I can run everything off the one SSD and then stick my storage on another drive and I have two 1TB drives standing by, with a 500GB drive I might have to split software over two drives and I'm not keen on the idea.Quote:
Originally Posted by MGP
My issue is, right now I can't make my mind up about which way to go! At least in your case you budget is somewhat helping you be narrowing your choices.
I personally wouldn't put everything onto one drive. Since getting multiple drives, and now using storage spaces, I wouldn't go back. I've had a couple drives fail on me and dislike the idea of only having one drive in a system, especially when you are going to spend as much as you are; I'd much rather get 2x 512GB drives and make a storage space or just use the separate drives for different things.
Reliability is the only thing that is concerning me from some of the stories i've been reading lately from other communities. I've chosen to go with the 128GB SSD for OS and minor applications, whilst using the 1TB HDD for games and other media.
As with any digital storage, you should back up your data regularly. Crucial (& Marvell who make the controller) have a pretty good track record for reliability. If you want even more peace of mind though, the latest Sandisk & Samsung SSDs both have 10 year warranties, but both are a lot more expensive than Crucial SSDs.Quote:
Originally Posted by MGP
Which models have the 10 year warranties? I don't mind paying the premium for peace of mind.
The Sandisk Extreme Pro range, like this:Quote:
Originally Posted by MGP
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/240gb...0mb-s-520-mb-s
Scan don't list a 128Gb version...I'm not sure there is one even?
Or the Samsung 850 Pro range:
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/128gb...k-90k-iops-max
My preference would be the Samsung. Although both SSDs have a 10 year warranty, there is a data limit too, so the warranty would be for which ever is reached sooner. You'll need to Google the exact warranty details, I can't remember what the data limit is (something like 80Gb a day springs to mind...basically you'd be thrashing the drive quite a bit to exceed that on a daily basis).
I personally wouldn't put too much stock on a 10 year warranty...I mean, how many of us are still using 10 year old PCs? In 10 years time we'll probably be buying 20 Terabyte SSDs for the price of current models, so I doubt such a long warranty will be that much use. The technology is pretty durable anyway - I'm still using an 80Gb Intel X-25 G2 SSD which I bought 5 years ago, & the software says it's only used 5% of it's write / erase cycles.
That's a hefty premium to pay! I think i'll stick to the original idea.
Yep, I think the Crucial range offer the best value vs performance at the moment...Quote:
Originally Posted by MGP
The warranty of the drive indicates how confident a company is about the quality of the product that they have produced. HDDs used to have 10 year warranties and some even longer. I expect SSDs to have 10 year warranties as standard soon. I suspect the only reason it hasn't been done before is because the companies didn't want to deal with returns that long after selling a product.
Buying a standard SSD can work out well so long as you take care of it. They work differently to HDDs so you need to make sure you have spare space on it at all times to give it area to use for wear leveling which impacts both performance and durability of the drives. Anandtech covered it a while ago in this article, still applies to SSDs today because they work in the same manner.
My 256GB Crucial m4 has only 200GB available for me to use to make sure I give it the best chance to keep itself functioning at peak performance without wearing out cells too quickly.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6489/playing-with-op
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3690/t...rformance-loss
I bought a SSD just for my OS but never used half of it so now it's games+software as opposed to just software
Depends on the budget :) I recommend SSDs for any casual user now, as they don't need TBs of storage and it improves the snappiness and feel.