To SSD or not to SSD

[DoctaSax]

So, looking at specs for a new PC, going for high-end stuff but still on the sane side.

 

Everything I'm looking at seems to push me towards having an SSD as the primary drive. Now, I hear good things about SSD performance, but I fear the limited storage capacity means I won't be installing my heavily modded games there (I wanna go a little crazy with textures 'n different profiles & what have you), and only use it for my windows & some straightforward applications. So, I wonder, is there an upside to playing these or any other games with an SSD as primary while they're not installed there? If not, is there a point to it?

 

[DeepBlueFrog]

So, looking at specs for a new PC, going for high-end stuff but still on the sane side.

 

Everything I'm looking at seems to push me towards having an SSD as the primary drive. Now, I hear good things about SSD performance, but I fear the limited storage capacity means I won't be installing my heavily modded games there (I wanna go a little crazy with textures 'n different profiles & what have you), and only use it for my windows & some straightforward applications. So, I wonder, is there an upside to playing these or any other games with an SSD as primary while they're not installed there? If not, is there a point to it?

Going SSD on my main drive meant the whole difference between crashing to desktop with skyrim every half hour to an occasional weekly crash.

 

Well worth the cost and space limitation.

[Slammer64]

Also depends on how much you have to spend DoctaSax, I got mine on sale, a 480gig Crucial SSD for $220, now combine that with my 3TB regular hard drive I use for storage, no problems.

[DoctaSax]

Money's not an issue, really. I'm just looking at specs for ready-made rigs because if I go custom I'll have to get someone to build the thing for me.

What I'm looking at looks nice on the processor, RAM & video card side, just not convinced by a 120 gig SSD to be sold on it. And PSU at 500W... I dunno. Guess I'll have to call in that favor anyway.

[RunicGray]

At the moment, I have Skyrim installed on my primary SSD, but all of my mods are saved on the external HDD through Mod Organizer. I previously had all of the mods on the SSD before using MO, but I've not noticed much difference on my end since moving them all over to the storage HDD, to be honest. But that might just be me.

 

Other than Skyrim, no other games are installed to the SSD. Programs and Skyrim on SSD, everything else is on the HDD. Setup works really well for me.

[RitualClarity]

Money's not an issue, really. I'm just looking at specs for ready-made rigs because if I go custom I'll have to get someone to build the thing for me.

What I'm looking at looks nice on the processor, RAM & video card side, just not convinced by a 120 gig SSD to be sold on it. And PSU at 500W... I dunno. Guess I'll have to call in that favor anyway.

 

Yes... you do have to call in that favor. If you got the money getting the specs right the first time is well worth the added effort ( and favors used) . Not to mention the premade computers ( for the most part) are made with OEM parts that might or might not be as good as retail parts you custom select to put together. Finally. You can build the computer.. ( or overbuild in the case I am referencing) to be able to handle future buys ( I.E. Upgrades to better graphics, duel graphics, tripple etc. )

 

Building vs buy gives you the level of customizations not available in pre-built rigs.

 

[pinky6225]

If it was me I'd save the SSD money and spend elsewhere such as on more/better RAM since the only performance gains I've heard people say they get from SSD is boot up speed

 

skyrimII is the first person I've seen say they get a stability improvement from having it.

 

If you've already got everything you want/can have in the PC then it's not gonna hurt to have SSD but i'd not have thought there would be a bottleneck between RAM and HD to improve on myself (outside of booting up)

 

[BringtheNoise]

Getting a pair of SSD's is a good choice....I recently upgraded one of my drives and now I have the following.

Primary drive = 64GB SSD Crucial M400 (Sata3) - Only the Primary OS is installed here (makes for easier backups)

Secondary drive = 240GB SSD PNY Xlr8 (Sata3) - Steam and some Ubisoft stuff

Third drive = 1TB 7200rpm spindle drive (Hitachi formerly IBM) - System swap file and some movies.

Fourth drive = 3TB 5400rpm WD Green series - Backup's, backup's, and more backups...

 

My boot time into Windows is pretty damn fast (like under 30 seconds for cold boot, and under 15 from sleep mode).

And a heavily moded Skyrim loads real quick, rarely CTD's (and that is with a lot of high res textures, sex, armor, and weapon mods).

 

Other spec's are kinda old but it still run's most games just fine...

AMD A8 3850 (quad core 2.9Ghz 64bit cpu), 8GB of 1333 DDR3 cas7 crucial, Windows 7 64bit home premium, AMD R7 265 2GB vid (Vid is new it's basicly an ATI HD 8770 down clocked by 100MHz).

 

 

Also on the question of build -vs- prebuilt.

Some places like Newegg and Tigerdirect offer to build it if you buy all the parts from them.

 

 

 

 

If it was me I'd save the SSD money and spend elsewhere such as on more/better RAM since the only performance gains I've heard people say they get from SSD is boot up speed

 

skyrimII is the first person I've seen say they get a stability improvement from having it.

 

If you've already got everything you want/can have in the PC then it's not gonna hurt to have SSD but i'd not have thought there would be a bottleneck between RAM and HD to improve on myself (outside of booting up)

 

 

 

Load times....

For dungeon's, for scripts, and for the main skyrim area....

 

For stability they say to add a couple of hundred Milliseconds to the Script engine load option in the INI.

With an SSD drive offering fast read speeds from the drive this is not required as much (but it still helps with very heavy mod lists).

[RitualClarity]

@Pinky6225

 

My games in general have become more stable. The modded ones even more so. The loading times have been greatly reduced. I can play until my fingers hurt and my hand cramps before any sort of problems or crash will occur. Often times a simple reboot can solve that and I can play my games ( skyrim included) for 3, 4, 5, 6 hours without stop without any crashes or problems. SSD's for the Main OS is just plain awesome.

 

I do agree with you with money issues and getting better components with the savings. You can always add SSD's later.

 

@ btn2k3

I use two Samsung 256 HDs. One for the OS and one for the Gaming.. That is a great experience and not to much in the cost.

My third drive is a 2tb 7200 Hitachi

forth, and Fifth 4tb 7200 Hitachi hard drive. ( I like storing things.. what can I say )

 

@DoctaSax.

If you can get a larger SSD. 400 or 500 gig hard drives are a little pricey but not extravagant. You can load the primary programs and Fallout, Skyrim ( if you have it) and perhaps one or two more modded games in the main sSD along with Steam. The rest of the games ( regular games) can be loaded into any standard 7200 HD that it fits. I can guarantee you will never go back to Mechanical for any program ( or game ) ever again once you start using SSD's for them.

[RunicGray]

 

If it was me I'd save the SSD money and spend elsewhere such as on more/better RAM since the only performance gains I've heard people say they get from SSD is boot up speed

 

 

Yes, but that's the point - with your PC, you can upgrade the components all you want, but there will be a point where one outdated part will drag everything else down. In a lot of cases, this is the HDD. You can have all that RAM and processor, but your PC will only be able to access that information as quickly as the HDD allows. Because the HDD has physical moving parts, it is limited by their capacity to move.

 

"Boot up speed" is an understatement. Programs that might have taken full minutes+ to open now take seconds, as if they were just another browser window. I used to wait ages for Photoshop to open, lamenting in anguish if I accidentally opened it. Now, it's no different than opening Windows Picture Viewer for me - boom, it's just there. You know those moments when you would leave the PC to restore from a restore point and made yourself a brew or caught some TV while it did its thing? Forget it, those moments are gone - in the time if took you to stand up, sit down in another chair and flick the TV on, the PC has already finished the restore and is now waiting on you.

 

It sounds to me like DoctaSax has looked at RAM already. If he hasn't, he should definitely invest in that, yes. But if he already HAS, then there is no reason not to get an SSD to make the PC better all-around.

[DeepBlueFrog]

Skyrim, and before that Oblivion, are very file intensive games.

 

I always observed that when file access was disturbed by other processes,like virus scan or windows update downloads, the game was more prone to crashes.

 

I have the feeling there is some hard coded timeout limit that cause crashes when file resources are not retrieved fast enough.

 

Because of that, it makes a lot of sense a SSD would reduce the problem. RAM helps too for the same reason - it reduces the need for file access.

[pinky6225]

 

 

If it was me I'd save the SSD money and spend elsewhere such as on more/better RAM since the only performance gains I've heard people say they get from SSD is boot up speed

 

 

Yes, but that's the point - with your PC, you can upgrade the components all you want, but there will be a point where one outdated part will drag everything else down. In a lot of cases, this is the HDD. You can have all that RAM and processor, but your PC will only be able to access that information as quickly as the HDD allows. Because the HDD has physical moving parts, it is limited by their capacity to move.

 

"Boot up speed" is an understatement. Programs that might have taken full minutes+ to open now take seconds, as if they were just another browser window. I used to wait ages for Photoshop to open, lamenting in anguish if I accidentally opened it. Now, it's no different than opening Windows Picture Viewer for me - boom, it's just there. You know those moments when you would leave the PC to restore from a restore point and made yourself a brew or caught some TV while it did its thing? Forget it, those moments are gone - in the time if took you to stand up, sit down in another chair and flick the TV on, the PC has already finished the restore and is now waiting on you.

 

It sounds to me like DoctaSax has looked at RAM already. If he hasn't, he should definitely invest in that, yes. But if he already HAS, then there is no reason not to get an SSD to make the PC better all-around.

 

 

I will admit my knowledge of PC's was acquired awhile ago so it may be outdated but from my understanding applications shouldn't read from the HD they should be reading from RAM as the information is meant to be loaded before its needed by the CPU so things like the CPU, RAM speed/amount, bus speed on the motherboard, GFX will all have bigger impact than the PC's ability to read from the HD to RAM.

 

So outside of booting (and application load if your loading a lot of stuff as it starts up) your speeding up part of the PC's operation that isn't going to be the speed bottleneck, with the current price of SSD that could be the difference between getting a good and a great GFX or using SLI/crossfire (admittedly if your already building a shit hot PC and have the best GFX money can buy then it won't matter) which i would have thought would give a more tangible gain to your gaming experience

[DoctaSax]

Yes... you do have to call in that favor.

Favors are more precious than money, but yeah.

 

 

If it was me I'd save the SSD money and spend elsewhere such as on more/better RAM since the only performance gains I've heard people say they get from SSD is boot up speed

Yes, but that's the point - with your PC, you can upgrade the components all you want, but there will be a point where one outdated part will drag everything else down. In a lot of cases, this is the HDD. You can have all that RAM and processor, but your PC will only be able to access that information as quickly as the HDD allows. Because the HDD has physical moving parts, it is limited by their capacity to move.

 

"Boot up speed" is an understatement. Programs that might have taken full minutes+ to open now take seconds, as if they were just another browser window. I used to wait ages for Photoshop to open, lamenting in anguish if I accidentally opened it. Now, it's no different than opening Windows Picture Viewer for me - boom, it's just there. You know those moments when you would leave the PC to restore from a restore point and made yourself a brew or caught some TV while it did its thing? Forget it, those moments are gone - in the time if took you to stand up, sit down in another chair and flick the TV on, the PC has already finished the restore and is now waiting on you.

 

It sounds to me like DoctaSax has looked at RAM already. If he hasn't, he should definitely invest in that, yes. But if he already HAS, then there is no reason not to get an SSD to make the PC better all-around.

 

Yeah, ram's not an issue.

 

Right, so I went from "does it make a difference, even if your heavy stuff is on a different drive?" to "well, I just need to get me a bigger SSD, and make up a component wishlist". That's the kind of attitude adjustment you can expect around here

[RitualClarity]

Go large or go home....lol.

 

Seriously. Small or large an SSD is a great addition to your computer. It makes a big difference in performance and responsiveness.

 

I agree favors are more precious than money however your personal time, convenience  and piece of mind is worth a lot of money.. ( well my peace of mind and convenience is worth a lot of money to me ). Most computer stores do build the computers from the parts they sell for a reasonable charge.. for the most part. Microcenter, Frys, Tiger ( if you can find a store near you) Not to mention various private computer repair shops can do the task as well. No favors needed if you got the money.

[lordofthedread]

In 2014 and beyond this question is outdated, a new rig must contain a SSD even if it is only a small one for the system and a few programs, the people that are not in favor of getting one probably never owned one.

[Dubhorizon]

To absolutely definately SSD. Just google SSD vs HDD and read a couple of articles.

 

Also

[Rayblue]

Recently installed and used an SSD drive in a friend's server. Much needed because he's running a diskless setup for his business.

 

In some ways having an SSD is very good, especially for games demanding a great deal of file access, but then as far as data recovery is concerned, well... when the drive borks without warning. Unless you afford to do periodic file backups and monitor your SSDs, you can't recover files in a bricked SSD.

 

Which is why documents and media goes to the regular 500/1tb drives, and I leave the SSD to handle  the OS and programs only.

[AstarteN7]

As people have already pointed out, the SSD question as of 2014 is not a question at all in terms of gaming. Even if you decide to spent the money on better ram and such which can only improve so much because you have a tech(HDD) that is about two decade old and is well past its due date.

 

 

[Guest]

Give the pc "do it yourself" idea another thought or two... I had never built my own PC, but due to limited money and higher power desired for gaming I decided to go for it... and I am glad I did... I built it from component boxes to working system in less than 8 hours, with zero experience, and a lot of careful reading to insure I did not screw it up.

 

check out this site for a series of builds tailored to different budgets and different needs.. it is really helpful.  http://www.hardware-revolution.com/

 

Oh, and I added a 500 Gb Samsung SSD later as my primary storage ... lots of empty space still and I have a LOT of software and 5 full games loaded too.

[Sunja44]

I read the "money is not an issue" phrase somewhere above, so just get a

 

Samsung SSD EVO 1 TB

 

The most feelable performance boost I got as I installed my first SSD as a boot disc over a year ago. The performance boost is an ultimate one when it comes to booting your system and while playing games where you have frequently to (re)load large clusters of data. No other system upgrade will give you a bigger general performance boost, no RAM, CPU or other upgrade (when your rig isn't one from the stone age).

 

With the above SSD you won't have any space problems ever. The EVO even has some of the best performance test results.

 

I need my additional non-SSD Seagate 2 TB drives in my PC only for my photoshop files (.raw files) and as a backup for all my Skyrim and Oblivion mods. My 8 TB NAT I use as as a media server for numerous music, videos and other stuff, which needs a lot of space.

 

 

 

 

 

[DoctaSax]

When I said it's not an issue, I meant it's not much of an issue (in that I don't have to go either more ram or ssd, for instance). With higher-capacity SSDs, the prices I'm seeing are bound to drop drastically over the next couple of years, so perhaps I'll go with the crucial 512gB mx100 for the moment, add & replace with bigger & better when that starts to normalize a little. Right now I want/need new everything - upgrading a part later on is bound to hurt less.

 

Now I'm pondering the following:

- evga GTX 770 is where I'm leaning video card wise - but... 2gb or 4gb? Any noticeable difference?

- intel i7-4790... K or no K

 

 

[RitualClarity]

I would go with the 4gb versions if possible of the graphic cards. This will allow you the all important EMB and such if you ever decide to do this. Good for mods so I hear. I wish I got the 4gb version of my 670 when I got it. .. Finally Gopher has a 4gb version of 670 as well. ( explained during a video if memory served me correctly about some Skyirm memory limit )

 

As for the K or no K. If the price are the same or close.. Why not the K. If you aren't ever going to overclock then go for the non-k version as far as I know there is no reason unless you need it unlocked. My friends in retail pretty much only sell K to people that overclock or might overclock unless again the sales price is so close where it don't matter then get the more expensive one. ( helps with resale) Who knows you might decide play with overclocking later.

 

 

[Guest corespore]

I keep a HDD as my primary for windows and what-not but i have my Skyrim on a SSD and my only regret was not going full SSD when i had the money. They are orders of magnitude faster, quieter, and use only a fraction of the power to run. They are beginning to even match HDD in lifespan. The only drawback is capacity but honestly how much disk space do we really use? 

If you can go SSD for your primary i would say jump on that offer as fast as you can. 

EDIT: i wouldn't go with a K chip unless your specifically planning on overclocking, and if you can get the 4 gig model video card that will cover almost every one of your gaming needs for a couple of years atleast. 

[DoctaSax]

Cool. I wasn't gonna oc - it just seemed a tad faster. I'd spring for it if it'd make enough of a difference, but if not doing without helps me justify the 4gb.

[legendarytoyou]

If you got the cash I say go for it.  Solid State Drives live up to their name.  Hell if I had an extra $500 I wouldn't hesitate to get one.

 

EDIT:  Actually after doing some hunting there a lot of SSD's that while I would probably only use them for a straight OS and a few games are sporting some actually good prices.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147193

 

This little beauty for example sports 256gb and a rock bottom price of $229.99.  Not bad I might consider that myself =D