Hybrid or SDD

nheather

nheather

nheather

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Building a gaming machine to go under the TV. So will be going into a Home Theatre box.

It won't be huge spec, something like this

i5
GTX 960
8GB RAM

Won't be used for Home Theatre so not too bothered about silent operation - only on when gaming.

Originally thinking SDD, but thought I would need a 500GB rather than 250GB to be safe.

But my budget has grown as I have switched from AMD to Intel.

So this has got me thinking about Hybrid drives - a 500GB/1TB would be around £100 less than a 500GB SDD so would pay for the AMD to Intel.

But I don't know much about Hybrids - where do they sit between traditional and SDD.

I should say that at the moment I have mechanical only and I don't find the loading times an issue.

Cheers,

Nigel
 
From my experience - hybrids work quite well for OS booting - can't remember exact numbers but IIRC from power on to fully loaded into the desktop on my laptop mechanical HDD took 40+ seconds, hybrid averaged 19 seconds and a proper SSD 11 seconds. Game load times are a mixed story but at best hybrid was speeding it up by about 30% over a mechanical whereas an SSD in some cases was upto 300% faster - likewise with desktop programs a mixed story but the SSD was consistently snappier with the hybrid anywhere between no faster than a mechanical to about half the performance increase of the SSD.

(This was with an 8GB SSD cache on the hybrid - might work a bit better on the drives with bigger caches).
 
Rroff said:
From my experience - hybrids work quite well for OS booting - can't remember exact numbers but IIRC from power on to fully loaded into the desktop on my laptop mechanical HDD took 40+ seconds, hybrid averaged 19 seconds and a proper SSD 11 seconds. Game load times are a mixed story but at best hybrid was speeding it up by about 30% over a mechanical whereas an SSD in some cases was upto 300% faster - likewise with desktop programs a mixed story but the SSD was consistently snappier with the hybrid anywhere between no faster than a mechanical to about half the performance increase of the SSD.

(This was with an 8GB SSD cache on the hybrid - might work a bit better on the drives with bigger caches).
Click to expand...

Thanks, think I will just bite the bullet and go for an SDD.

Cheers,

Nigel
 
nheather said:
I should say that at the moment I have mechanical only and I don't find the loading times an issue.
Click to expand...

Trust me, SSDs are better than just quicker loading times. It's just about the best upgrade you can give an old PC and I wouldn't think of building a new PC without one.

Get a 120GB SSD for your OS and a HDD for games and storage.

SSHDs aren't necessarily the best of both worlds, if you do go that way make sure you check reviews of the specific model you're buying. The performance in some cases is barely any better than a HDD.
 
What mb you have? Could get a cheap small ssd and cache your HDD? Same thing only on a larger scale
 
I'm quite inpressed with the hybrid I've got in my server.

For a media PC I wouldn't discount them, will load the OS quickly, have plenty of space for games (which benefit less from an SSD anyway) and they're cheap.
 
I have tried the Intel smart responce with a small ssd, it worked quite well tbh.
Obviously not the same as just having a big ssd but not far off.
 
I have a hybrid in my desktop and my laptop and i find them underwhelming. Performance wise its no better than my WD Caviar Black HDD. It was a bit cheaper than that drive so thats the benefit I guess. SSD is so much faster its not funny. I have a Samsung 840 Pro and a Samsung 850 EVO and they are super fast drives. I would definitely recommend an SSD if you want your boot times to be improved.
 
I have a hybrid drive to store my games. Works well after I've loaded a game a few times and it's 'learned' the files that are being used a lot.

I wouldn't have anything other than an SSD for my OS / productivity apps, though.
 
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