HDD or SSD?

Hammer2001 · 13 Oct 2009 at 08:34

I'm looking to upgrade my PC in a couple of months to a Win 7 64 bit setup, using it for HD video editing, as well as general web, email, itunes, photo collections and the odd game.

It will be built around a:

I7 920
Gigabyte EX-58 UD3 Motherboard
6 GB Corsair XMS3 1600MHz CL9
Noctua NH-U12P SE Cooler

I plan to take my first steps in overclocking the CPU to maybe 3.4-3.6 GHz

I'm now also toying with the idea of buying an SSD as the operating system and Apps drive.

I currently have about 100GB on my C drive (win XP, apps and a few games), I could probably trim it down a bit, maybe to 80GB. My photo/MP3 collections and video footage I have on other drives.

I was looking at the Corsair M225 128GB, but at £220(now £250), do the speed gains really justify the extra cost?

Initially I was going to just get a Samsung F3 1TB to install the new setup on and use my existing hardrives (2 drives totalling 750GB) as extra storage.

Would the SSD drive be hugely superior?

Alternatively what about two Samsung F3 500GB setup in Raid 0, would that be better than one 1TB drive, to offset the speed differences to an SSD?

I'm also put off of SSD a bit by the talk of having to re- image the once in a while to maintain performance, and to avoid writing of lots of small files to the drive.

Your comments would be welcome.

bilston · 13 Oct 2009 at 09:19

The speed difference is noticeable and very nice. However, with Windows 7, a good fast regular hard drive would be easily useable.

If you do go SSD, you will definitely notice the drop back to hard drives, should you use a PC without the SSD!

I just got a laptop, with a slow 5400krpm drive in it, and even though I've been using a SSD for the last few months on my main machine, it's in no way painful to use the laptop because of how well Windows 7 is coded.

In the end it all just comes down to money and personal opinion, but the F3's are quick as hell anyway. If you got the money however, just splash out

Zarf · 13 Oct 2009 at 09:35

In my opinion SSD's are worth it, even at current prices. It's not a ridiculous amount of money compared to say a graphics card or CPU upgrade ... hell people spend similar amounts just to get RAM with the timings they want - which is far less bang for buck than an SSD.

If you're sure you can only slim down to 80GB, you'll need at least a 128GB drive, ideally you have 10-20GB free space to play with or you won't have room for any of your movie edits.

My advice is buy one and give it a go for a few months, the way prices are going (up for the forseable future) you'll be able to sell it second hand and get back at least what you paid for it.

linktoinsanity · 13 Oct 2009 at 09:38

SSDs are well worth the money. My main PC is so snappy when loading from the SSD. Then again, since putting a 7200K hdd in my laptop I noticed a huge benefit there aswell.

If you go for an SSD, a 128GB Corsair P128 or Crucial M225 would probably be a good one to go for. You can always use a larger mechanical drive for data storage and programs which load speed may not be so noticeable (MS Office/old & small games). I have my SSD devoted to the OS and applications/games I use a lot, with a WD Caviar Black being used for most games and other applications. That's my recommendation.

Hammer2001 · 15 Oct 2009 at 22:26

After advice on here and reading through many reviews and benchmarks, I'm convinced......SSD it is.

I managed to get one from Overclockers for £250, sadly not quick enough on the cheaper prices, but it makes me feel better that prices have gone up a bit more since I bought

Now in readiness for installing Win 7 next week. I've a question on how best to use the drive:

I intend to install the OS and majority of apps on it, but how should I handle temp files and caches of the different applications?

Should they be set to write to another drive, to minimise small file writes?

I notice Google Earth for example has it's cache set in the docs & setting folder on the C: drive. Should things like this be changed to write to a normal HDD?

ChileanLlama · 15 Oct 2009 at 22:44

You'll probably get conflicting advice here.

My opinion is leave it on the SSD...after all you want to experience the improved performance, moving all files that might be written to a normal HD kinda defeats the purpose.

The Crucial M225 has a five year warranty, it's going to be well out of date by the time that expires so I wouldn't worry about using it just as you would a normal HD and getting the best experience you possibly can.

I see a lot of people trying to avoid writing to these disks in a valiant attempt to protect them from writes...I really don't see the point of spending all that money to then slow your system down by not using it :shrug:

I just use mine the same as I did my HD and loving every minute of it

khulershaker · 16 Oct 2009 at 10:20

yeah thats the spirit - deffo get one and just use it - before you know it there will be all sorts of things available; firmwares cleaner etc to optimise the things if you want. It's the best system boost ever - do it!