SSD Novice

jasonbaldry · 9 Oct 2013 at 09:20

Hi All ,

As ever i come seeking wisdom - this time on SSD's. This is my first one, i have held out until the prices have come down and since the BF4 Beta seems to be running much nicer on my friends identical machine (except for the drive) i feel it may be the time. (im running an ancient 250GB WD)

- Dont need any more than 128GB
- Would like SATA 3 (future proof a bit)
- Be nice to get a 5 year warranty

I have seen a few and was edging towards drives with write and read speeds of 500MB+ but im sure there is more to it than that i.e cache

Any recommendations very welcome

Thanks

Dervious · 9 Oct 2013 at 10:21

Samsung 840 EVO 120GB or (I know you stated that you don't need any more than 128GB) the 250GB version.

Best to have some "breathing" space.

It should also be noted that SSD performance can reduce when they become nearly full. Samsung offer an option "over provisioning" which reserves a percentage of the SSD's capacity (10% by default) to prevent it from getting too full.

If you can afford it, I'd advise that you go for the 250GB model.

jasonbaldry · 9 Oct 2013 at 11:56

Cant really justify the 250Gb at the mo - literally all that will be installed is Windows, Battlefield 3 & 4 and maybe Office - that wont fill it will it?

rhysduck · 9 Oct 2013 at 11:59

It'll be getting close to full with BOTH Battlefields on. BF3 on mine is HUGE, I think it's near 30+gb

kefan77 · 9 Oct 2013 at 12:02

get 250GB Evo. you will not regret it.

Dervious · 9 Oct 2013 at 12:32

kefan77 said:
get 250GB Evo. you will not regret it.

Sums up my advice.

You may not be able to justify 250GB SSD at the moment, but it is likely that you'll regret going for a smaller one later.

As previously stated, you'll be close to full with BF3 & 4 + Office. If you enable over provisioning (I think it would be wise), you'll be left with not much over 100GB before you install anything.

Unless you don't have the money, I think 250GB is your best bet.

However, any SSD is better than no SSD !

jasonbaldry · 9 Oct 2013 at 16:27

eek - now quite confused

i am really not sure i can justify another 60 + quid considering i game maybe twice a week and the pc sits idle for most of the time besides, but i completely get the point.

kedge · 10 Oct 2013 at 09:27

jasonbaldry said:
BF4 Beta seems to be running much nicer on my friends identical machine

Remember it is a beta, so it won't be fully optimized, if ever

. So how was your friends game running "nicer"?, what is the difference with playing bf4 beta on a ssd than say on a standard 7200 mechanical hard drive?. When i gamed a lot i couldn't really tell much difference between the two, you could perhaps get a crucial m4 128gb ssd and a 1tb standard 7200 hard drive, install windows on the ssd and games on the other. benchmarks are benchmarks but what was the difference in frame rates when comparing your friends pc?.

Dervious · 10 Oct 2013 at 10:02

jasonbaldry said:
eek - now quite confused

i am really not sure i can justify another 60 + quid considering i game maybe twice a week and the pc sits idle for most of the time besides, but i completely get the point.

If that's all you do, and you don't see the need to install any more than a couple of games at a time, then 120GB should be fine.

I have read that the Battlefield games take up a lot of space, so you may want to check exactly how much space Windows, Office, BF3&4 require. I have a feeling it's going to be close to the capacity of a 120 or 128GB SSD. As I suggested earlier, it's probably best to assume you'll have around 100GB of actual data capacity by the time the SSD is formatted and you allow about 10% "workspace".

If it is close, you could consider using your existing HDD for your Office installation, and maybe a few other non essential files.

Neil79 · 10 Oct 2013 at 11:28

Ok i'm a good example

I had a 60GB SSD drive used as a cache for a 300GB HD, I purchased a 120GB SSD to replace the 300GB HD and to be able to use the 60GB SSD as an OS drive. Plus 1TB External Drive

Currently

60GB OS has 32GB/60GB
120GB GAME DRIVE has 60GB/120GB ( Skyrim,Path of Exile & BF4 )
1TB EXTERNAL has 300GB/1TB ( Storage, games e.t.c )

So in theory if it's just os/games for the SSD you're looking at about 90GB all in all thats total OS+Games, now BF3 used nearly 30GB which is more than my skyrim.

You're only options are

1) 60GB OS SSD
2) 120GB GAME SSD

or

1) 250GB OS/GAME SSD

Don't forget that if you're using drives like the SSD EVO 120 it will need about 11GB for over privisioning, plus factor in the pagefile usage !

jasonbaldry · 10 Oct 2013 at 14:36

cheers for all of your replies. All very helpful. I certainly have an abundance of other drives onto which i can off load installs. Id much prefer the 250 but i think i can get away with installing everything other than the OS and the game on the second drive.