To SSD or not to SSD

[zzz72w3r]

SSD load time vs. HDD is very noticeable even if one does not care about benchmarks.  It's not a luxury component anymore and for testing mods in Skyrim SSD is practically a necessity.

 

Depending on one's economic situation favors might be more valuable than spending more for a rig.  There are still some very good custom built PC outfits around, Endpcnoise and Pugetsystems have good reputation for building premium rigs for adults rather than the "extreme" teens.  It's up to individual to decide how much the labor is worth whether in self-built, calling in favors or paying for commercial services.  There is also nothing wrong with Dell or HP boxes nowadays.  PC are so well built today that problems are almost always software related rather than hardware.

 

EDIT: someone mentioned the K-chip.  If you do a lot of video transcoding then Intel Quicksync might be worth it.  For retail chips you only get the integrated GPU on the K-chip.  The little bit of harmless OC I do is just bonus (OC tool bundled with retail MB brands like Asus are hassle free and very stable).  However, don't bother if you don't want the headache that is Virtu in order to get both discrete and integrated GPU working at the same time.  

[JetMX]

I use SSD as a primary drive with Windows installed. And it loads really fast. Also I recomend you to install any program that you are using for work on SSD. For example Photoshop, 3DS Max, etc. The loading time is much better than HDD. But all games and movies I still put on my HDD.

[Guest corespore]

Yeah, I'm running a A10-5800K chip in my rig and getting cataylist control to properly sync my GPU and CPU processors without loosing stability was a complete pain, three days of endless tweaking for only about 3 FPS boost, I still can't decide if that kind of trouble is worth it. The chip works just fine without any OC. There's also the factor of cooling, if you OC you'll almost need a better stock cooler, which adds even more cost to factor in. 

[Halstrom]

SSD rocks, boot up speed, Windows stuff & Games, I have a 500Gb Laptop SSD in a cradle in my Tower. Now I get annoyed if I hear the noise of my second HHD whirring to open a folder or picture, gotta wait a couple of seconds. Just go the best you can afford. My second HHD is only backup stuff really.

[prideslayer]

Bit late to the party, but I'm still one of the few non-SSD holdouts. I have 8 drives in my workstation; 4 are 2.5" 1TB drives in a single 5.25" hot-swap bay, 4 are 3.5" 1TB drives fully internal. The 2.5's run two 1T RAID-10 volumes, the 3.5s a single 2T RAID-10 volume. The setup was dirt-cheap, 5T of space, and runs plenty fast enough. All hardware may fail, so even if I went SSD I'd still run RAID-10 on a real controller, and I simply can't justify the expense of doing that with SSDs.

 

The PC is always on so boot time isn't really a concern, and 32G of memory means that after being on a day or two, everything I use frequently is in the disk cache, so I wouldn't personally benefit all that much from SSDs anyway.

 

I have.. abnormal requirements though, obviously. Just providing a different perspective.

[hentaijin]

I got a 240 GB PNY SSD for $90 on rebate, not the highest end SSD but it performs amazing compared to my 2 GB HDD I use to store everything that doesn't need to load instantly(like shows,movies, some games, backups, applications that don't need super speed, or take up a lot of space, like adobe suite)

 

SSDs are VERY affordable now and if you have at least $100 to spend you can probably find one to suit your needs. I would say my 240 GB is a bare minimum for me.

[DoctaSax]

 

I have.. abnormal requirements though, obviously. Just providing a different perspective.

 

Don't I know it - I'm still sore from last time. :/

[prideslayer]

 

I have.. abnormal requirements though, obviously. Just providing a different perspective.

 

Don't I know it - I'm still sore from last time. :/

 

Rub some dirt on it, buttercup. It's gonna get worse before it gets better!

[Halstrom]

Yeah, if you want a crap load of storage space then HDD's are still more economical as you are probably only accessing the stuff stored on them occasionally or using them as backups. But if you want speed for gaming & the stuff you do every day, SSD's seem the best way. I can hit the on buton, and by the time I sit down I'm ready to log in. Don't have to dick in to start the computer before making breakfast, one of my old early 2000 XP PC's, has around a 3 minute boot up and I only keep it for the old SCADA/PLC software that refuses to install on anything but XP.

[LaEspada]

one of my old early 2000 XP PC's, has around a 3 minute boot up and I only keep it for the old SCADA/PLC software that refuses to install on anything but XP.

 

That's how felt like until I bought my very own computer when I finally saved up enough money from my first job in my first year of high school.

That computer still running strong today, albeit with a graphics card updated and a new 2TB external hard drive. And is so quiet now that it won't wake up a sleeping baby except for the keyboard pressing, but taht's different type of noise.

 

To comment on the current topic.

 

SSD or Hard drive? As of right now, probably stick with hard drive until SSD technology has improved enough to last for longer and cheaper. Unless you like working in an situation where the information has to be as quick as possible. There's no real at-home siutations where a SSD is better economically than a hard drive. While I do appreciate the fact they are many times faster than a hard drive. As of right now, I will not purchase them simply because of the much higher cost and lower space compared to a hard drive.

 

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Simply put, when you are going to be on a computer, how long are you going to be on it? I highly doubt anyone really sits down only to say at a compute for less than a minute that a SSD would make the world of the difference but rather when you sit down at a computer you're going to be on it for 30+ minutes. Those meager extra seconds of booting doesn't mean anything when your going to be on for an extended period of time like most people who get on a computer regularly.

 

just my 2 cents.

 

 

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Another thing

 

even if I did buy a SDD and put my OS and games on it to be as fast as possible my Skyrim installation alone is already over 30 GB from mods. That would already be 1/8 of the disk space of a 240 GB SSD. They don't have enough space available at this time to be feasible.

[Fuzaki]

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.

 

Exactly what I'm doing. Seems like there isn't an issue as Skyrim boots almost instantly.

[tenzan]

Even if you never put Skyrim on it, it's worth it overall. If you're skeptical, try a friend's comp, better yet if he has a newer game installed.

[legendarytoyou]

 

 

I have.. abnormal requirements though, obviously. Just providing a different perspective.

 

Don't I know it - I'm still sore from last time. :/

 

Rub some dirt on it, buttercup. It's gonna get worse before it gets better!

D:

[Ashkandii]

as you've read the posts above SSD is the best option

but your obviously dont wana go buy a 500gB or 1tb SSD so i'd say

get a 500gb WD blue with a 120gb or 240gb SSD

alot of space and still get the nice SSD power

[Halstrom]

I brought my 500Gb SDD of E-Bay for around $500 2 years ago, and have my old 200Gb HDD installed as well, basically 700Gb is a crap load of data, if you're not using it for work or something you probably have a data hoarding problem and need to start deleting crap as you probably have more data than you will ever use

 

I can see it now a reality show "Cyber Hoarders"

40yo Jimbo, has cluttered up his Alienware PC in his parents basement with over 5000Tb of 80's Game emulators, Porn, Motivational Posters, LOL cat screensavers, Zombie survival guides and YouTube 9-11 clips he thinks the Government will change online if he doesn't keep backups. The desktop on 4 monitors is so cluttered he forgets which screen to look for things on and hasn't been able to find his G-Mail shortcut and Password.txt since 2001, the neighbours complain about their TV reception getting lost and lights dimming when he attempts a defrag.

[DoctaSax]

I already settled on a 512 g ssd as primary that I can probably get cheap, and a 3TB regular secondary drive for data & lighter progs. May cannibalize my current pc for its 2 1TB HDs too, work in some redundancies. And I still have an external one or two lying about.

Ehm, yeah, I have a bit of a hoarding problem. Then again, 500 gB is really not that much these days. My primary right now has more than that on it, and that's just progs & games. Sure, some of it can be culled & is just a matter of not bothering to clean things out more. Still.

Speed has come to matter more to me than it used to - not just PC boot time but program boot time is annoying as fuck to me. Especially when you have to go in and out of games to test shit, & load up programs like the geck, the EDITs, wrye, that all read in a bunch of gigs at once. I also routinely spring for a decent all-around file manager rather than have windows explorer make me jump through hoops to get to the folder I wanna be at. You're not just saving time there, but aggravation too.

[Dubhorizon]

My SSD is a mere 250gb and It does exactly what I need it for. Windows, Skyrim and few more games that i usually uninstall to make space for a couple more games. That's it. 250gb SSD is very cheap these days.

[Guest carywinton]

I have not gone the way of the SSD's yet, the Solid Sate architecture is good and has been proven to be reliable thus far, but for my use the GB/Price ratio still has not made it feasible for the over 20TB of storage I run here, yes I have drive letters nearly reaching "Z", what happens after letter "Z"? Stay tuned and I will let you know when I get there, presently at letter "O".

 

If you need help on a PC, with building it, or purchase, just let me know it is the primary business I do here. A 4GB 5DDR Video Card is a must, most current games and even some older ones will use it and the Next Gen games will definitely want to "pig" it up. Unfortunately a 64Bit OS is now pretty much required due to RAM limitation of a 32Bit OS, I run 16GB here and it is quite sufficient. The primary Motherboard Manufacturer I use here is usually ASUS, I currently run an ASUS M5A99X EVO with a 1100T Processor. Yes it's an AMD/ATI platform and it does very well. All of my parts come from Wholesale suppliers like Ingram-Micro, CDW or ASI, just to name a few, so pricing is usually very good and will give you a good idea of what you should be paying.

Kind Regards,

CaryWinton

 

shameless plug... http://www.pctechhelp.net

My Corporate Site.

[Arhon]

I would definitely wait for this year to end first before i upgrade my PC( only thing missing is a new CPU and a SSD) because who knows, maybe something new will be released next year or at the end of this year.

[Helgar69]

 

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.

 

 

 

 

[Helgar69]

While a lot of peeps tend to go enormus with these ssd's, i didn't. I went with a 250 gb and try to keep it clean as i can by deleting downloaded stuff off it and running trim every week or so or after a lot of deletions. This is my system Armor case, hot area lots of space for fans 4 right now, Gig mobo x58 extreme, new vid card R9 270x 4 gig 3 fans, 6 gig 3 channel ram, CPU i7-920, (this might be the bottle neck to my system, not sure though) 700 watt power supply, ahci system redux from raid 5, now running ahci with a 2 TB hard drive and the left overs from raid 5 system 3 hards drive running 80 gigs each. OS is win 7 ultra 64bit.  one spare hd 80 gig if i need it i got the room to use it. I try to keep all main files for games and such off hte C: drive as it is my main boot drive and use the others as my game drives. i have never updated my bios for cpu. Was wondering if someone has for this chip ?? Let me know. But the cost of everything for me to change this over to AHCI, i waited as my son and daughter directed for my b day so they incurred some of my cost of me. ssd on sale $140 or something like that samsung ssd, the 2 TB hd was a nother good item 120 amazon. When i changed everything over from raid 5 it was taking almost 5 mins to boot up. Now les then one minute so i recommend to anyone to change to ssd for boot only, and keep it clean, but remember they dont have the life span of your hard drives today so make a back up and save it to one of your older hard drives and make a bootable flash drive to rescue your system if you need to, a little prevention goes a long way to saving money in the long run. Have a Blast time to play the game and stop trying to study it.

[Uriel]

For me, SSD has only one downside: running Skyrim from one increases you chance to CTD right after the loadscreen. Not SSD's fault ofcourse.

Otherwise SSD is a must. It makes things smooth.

 

[Ramses]

Use a SSD for your main C:\ drive for Win7x64. For 'storage' drives, (games, movies, music, etc.) use old platter discs. They're plenty fast enough.

 

Disable your page file (set it to 0mb, seriously) and watch it fly.

[Minoumimi]

if it was cheaper id think about, new tech is so cheaply made... i wouldnt trust my 6000 + hours of modding to be installed on a product i dont trust

And Mostly need my 2tg space on my pc =o those tens of thousands of unfinished meshes and all other mods for nv-obli and skyrim are taking 1tg alone

all gameplay video's i still did not upload yet

my hundreds of website backups

and a gazillion Pictures  i have only 400gig left

id kill for a format Aaaa

But ya same has when the first hdd 1tg came out...it was pure shit...the 500gigs with Cache was way better

So I always tend to go for a lower more solid number Drive, meaning if i want a solid 1tg ssd

i will wait they release 2tg ones or Stop experimenting and have a proper proven 1tg drive

[Laird Leporidae]

Look I haven't read all the responses to your question, so I am probably repeating what someone has said earlier.  

BUT

I am gonna say it again anyways.

 

SSD's are AWESOME

 

I mod skyrim, so I keep skyrim (and the creation kit etc) on my SSD all other games I either load to a seperate drive or initially load to the SSD and then move them to another drive and create a symbolic link (MKLINK) to them so that as far as the game is concerned they are where you installed them.  I have watched youtube vids where people skip the loading part of the CK because of how long it takes, and I don't have to do that.  

 

Sure space is a problem (but when isn't it)

Moving games about and creating symbolic links is a pain, but it's worth it for the sheer speed.

I would advise about moving your desktop and mydocuments using mklink, especially on windows 7/8, there are already links there and things start breaking.  Just get used to not using your desktop and documents folder so that it does no eat up space needed for other things.

 

Back in the day (before SSD's) I used to install a crap load of RAM and create a RAM disk, used to load battlefield maps before anyone.