Still not convinced by these SSD's

[shine]

Oh, and lastly, my wd green is almost silent. In fact I'm a silence freak so it probably is completely silent to most people

Dude, that's some attitude you've got there.

I'm telling you, my WD green is pretty near silent. And I should know, since I'm the one sitting next to it

But hey, you'd know better, right?

You HDD may be near silent bout our SSD's ARE silent. If you were a silence freak you would have an SSD. Oh and I have both a WD green and SSD so I can tell you that a HDD regardless of label is not silent.

 

[FrenchTart]

Dude, that's some attitude you've got there.

I'm telling you, my WD green is pretty near silent. And I should know, since I'm the one sitting next to it

But hey, you'd know better, right?

Yup. The HDD forum here seems particularly friendly.

 

[FreeStream]

You probably just got the speed boost from a fresh install.

I've seen a decent SSD side by side with my short stroked F4s and the loading times were the same for pretty much all games. I really don't care about boot times and didn't notice any difference for general app loading either.

I'm sure that there are cases where SSDs are great but people generally inflate the differences between SSDs and normal hdds.

Errr, no. I carbon copy cloned OS X from the VR to the SSD, and OS X doesn't suffer from this reinstall speed up as much as Windows does...

So no, it wasn't a fresh install.

And besides, I ran [using the same install, block for block] my G2 160Gb against my VR, everything is a hell of a lot quicker.

Adobe opens in 1/4 of the time, Lightroom opens instantly, XCode compiles much quicker, system updates install quicker. Even little things like going into system preferences or something, you can clearly see the difference.

SSDs *are* worth it, as I said before the 7200RPM disk in my MBP does my head in, and that is only 20% slower than my VR!

Edit:

Don't be foolish, your drive is nowhere near silent and your post only illustrates your ignorance about your own machine. Have you even tried a decent SSD?

No... unless you have dog level hearing.

I have four of them in my media server, even when they are seeking I have to put my ear pretty close (~ft) to them before I can actually hear anything over my 20dB fans...

Once the case is on, and especially when it's under my desk, I can't hear them at all!

 

[FrenchTart]

I can't comment on OSX as I don't use it on any of my home systems...or in fact, any mac stuff. So... *shrug*

I've not really seen those kind of differences on Windows though.

 

[ubersonic]

I recently downgraded from a 60GB OCZ Vertex2 to a 600GB Velociraptor as I was having to keep almost all my games on a mechanical drive anyway.

I now have 10x the space and apart from boot time (which is irrelevant as I never turn it off) the is no noticeable difference whatsoever, a benchmarking tool could probably find it but im only human and I dont notice microsecond differences.

 

[Izi]

Developing programs?

Can you be a bit more specific. I do lots of development and can't imagine SSDs making much of a difference to anything I do....

Any program which needs to be compiled?

You clearly don't do 'lots of development.'

 

[topdog@OC]

Not all development regardless of how much of it you do has the same IO requirements; let's leave it at that without trying to poke eachother's eyes out.

 

[JasonM]

SSD will help on all software development - the thing is unless the project is large with lots of resources you may not notice that much.

For small'ish development, for example for typical web-site with a pretty simple business layer project, then providing computer and HDD's are good spec, the differences will not be that significant.

On my machine here 8GB / I5 750 / Weston Digital RE2 HDD - i have a pretty advanced car classified site with plenty of code and is n-tear (4 levels). I can do a clean build on this in 5 seconds (timed) on the RE2 drive, SSD will make the build much faster, but given it's already at 5 seconds any quicker will hardly change my life.

On a large project thats into minutes to build, then SSD would be well worth while.

 

[MumboJumbo]

Decided to go sli instead. Think I'm going to wait till christmas to see what SSD's are offering then. I think I might wait till I can get a decent 200-250GB SSD for <£200. Though I doubt that price point will be around till next year.

 

[BubbySoup]

From a gamers perspective, I would still edge on the side of saying they are not worth the outlay over some other piece of hardware (new screen, SLI/Xfire etc). Don't get me wrong, I love the boot times and the fact that I can click on an app the moment the desktop appears and it's pretty much up and running in a second or two, but for games it's a little meh.

It's funny to think I actually paid through the nose for a relatively small drive, just so I can spend time juggling my games around because I can't install them all to my SSD and just leave them there, and the gain? Slightly faster load times, maybe a few less slight hitches if things were being streamed off the HDD, nothing as impressive as adding/upgrading a graphics card or getting a bigger/nicer screen.

I will say one area where they shine is MMO's. If you play WoW, Rift, EQ2 or AOC then you do see an improvement in your gaming experience. Of course, MMO's tend to be even bigger than your usual games, leaving you even less room for other titles ...oh dear.

 

[MumboJumbo]

Yeah if I played mmo's I'd be tempted to get an SSD then. The load times every 10min on HL2 are really irritating me at the moment though haha.

Definitely going to look into getting one around christmas as I think it's just about the last thing I can do to improve my pc now.

 

[DeathStorm]

Dude, that's some attitude you've got there.

I'm telling you, my WD green is pretty near silent. And I should know, since I'm the one sitting next to it

But hey, you'd know better, right?

You gave your opinion as fact, it's your opinion that your drive was almost silent, now it's near silent. Fortunately we can tell exactly how silent the drive is by simply looking at its technical specs where it's clearly not silent.

I freely admit 99% of people wouldn't care about that little noise and if you're happy with that great! I wish you all the best in the world but you should understand that's merely your opinion on the matter and others have different standards.

Yup. The HDD forum here seems particularly friendly.

How would you like me to politely word he's wrong?

No... unless you have dog level hearing.

I have four of them in my media server, even when they are seeking I have to put my ear pretty close (~ft) to them before I can actually hear anything over my 20dB fans...

Once the case is on, and especially when it's under my desk, I can't hear them at all!

You do realise that by drowning the noise out with other noises it's not silent right? I could stab my ears with a pencil but it wouldn't make those drives any quieter!

 

[ubersonic]

You do realise that by drowning the noise out with other noises it's not silent right? I could stab my ears with a pencil but it wouldn't make those drives any quieter!

SSD's aren't silent either, they make a buzzing noise that's too quiet for a human to hear, they are how ever inaudible, just like a HDD that's being drowned out by the case fans, if you can't hear something you cant hear it, how much you can't hear it by is pretty irrelevant.

 

[JasonM]

It's funny to think I actually paid through the nose for a relatively small drive, just so I can spend time juggling my games around because I can't install them all to my SSD and just leave them there, and the gain?

Create a small'ish (say 4GB readyboost drive on your SSD). Then run some games that constantly re-load levels from HDD. You won't notice any different the first time you load the game, but anything after you'll be significantly faster. Please try it and you'll see the difference.

 

[BubbySoup]

Create a small'ish (say 4GB readyboost drive on your SSD). Then run some games that constantly re-load levels from HDD. You won't notice any different the first time you load the game, but anything after you'll be significantly faster. Please try it and you'll see the difference.

Not thought about trying that. I shall give it a go over the weekend, thanks!

 

[FoxEye]

How would you like me to politely word he's wrong?

Since you've been so polite I'll just state the facts.

The tech specs of the drive don't take into account that most people will have their hdd inside an enclosed PC case, which blocks some noise.

They certainly don't take into account the fact that my drive makes no direct contact with said case (in fact it's held securely in one of the 3.5" bays with bungee cord).

As has been said, they also don't account for the fact that most users, even most "quiet PC" users, will have at least two low-rpm fans. Mine are either controlled by SpeedFan or fed 7V instead of 12V.

Now I'm a fan of "quiet PCs" but I do everything with an eye on my bank balance. Hence you won't find me buying £150 fanless PSU, a £50 heatsink or indeed a £200 SSD.

However the bungee cord and fittings cost me about £4, SpeedFan cost me nothing, the quiet fans I have cost about £10 each, and I have a quiet SeaSonic-built PSU and a quiet Gigabyte GTX460.

In that setup, there would be no benefit -- no drop in noise levels -- if I switched out the WD green for an SSD.

And when I turn my machine on (it's under my desk btw), most people will say "is it on?" because they don't hear it. It does make a noise (not a harsh or irritating noise), but it's so quiet as to be acceptable to all but the most noise sensitive people.

So there you have it... for everyone who doesn't need actual silence, an SSD is not essential for the purpose of having a quiet PC.

 

[Luke_Bowman]

Any situation involving SSD, just wait and continue waiting if price is the problem. SSD prices will drop very fast through 2011

 

[DeathStorm]

SSD's aren't silent either, they make a buzzing noise that's too quiet for a human to hear, they are how ever inaudible, just like a HDD that's being drowned out by the case fans, if you can't hear something you cant hear it, how much you can't hear it by is pretty irrelevant.

That's a painful bit of logic, you could equally make the argument that if you wear ear phones then the drive is now inaudible! You've changed nothing about the drive simply your perception and that's of no concern to anyone but you.

 

[UrbanTerror]

Been using my first SSD (60gb Vertex 2e) for a few days now. My thoughts? Not worth £85, it its nice though.

It was quotes like A SSD is the single biggest improvement you can make to any PC, that spured me on to buy it. Another quote I read on these forums is far more accurate 'Windows feels a bit more snappy'. That is all.

The drive is preforming correctly. Ive been into PC's since my P75 + Windows 95. Benchies all check out, I researched install procedure and updated firmware as always.
Im mr average OCUK member I guess: Some gaming, some surfing, bit of photo editing and some movies.

A bit of a 'meh' purchace tbh. Dont belive the hype.

The technology is quite new, When you get some decent sized storage for your cash SSD's will be brilliant. Untill then dont feel like you are missing out

 

[DeathStorm]

The tech specs of the drive don't take into account that most people will have their hdd inside an enclosed PC case, which blocks some noise.

That would be because the drive has nothing to do with your computer case so attempting to measure for it would be a waste of time.

They certainly don't take into account the fact that my drive makes no direct contact with said case (in fact it's held securely in one of the 3.5" bays with bungee cord).

They're not measuring how much the drive would vibrate in your case, they've measured how noisy the drive is.

As has been said, they also don't account for the fact that most users, even most "quiet PC" users, will have at least two low-rpm fans. Mine are either controlled by SpeedFan or fed 7V instead of 12V.

Now I'm a fan of "quiet PCs" but I do everything with an eye on my bank balance. Hence you won't find me buying £150 fanless PSU, a £50 heatsink or indeed a £200 SSD.

However the bungee cord and fittings cost me about £4, SpeedFan cost me nothing, the quiet fans I have cost about £10 each, and I have a quiet SeaSonic-built PSU and a quiet Gigabyte GTX460.

None of which has anything to do with how much noise your hard drive makes.

In that setup, there would be no benefit -- no drop in noise levels -- if I switched out the WD green for an SSD.

Pull the power out of the drive and take a measurement, it probably will make a very small difference but even if it doesn't you're only talking about your personal situation. Following your advice if I had a machine without fans the hdd would stick out easily.

And when I turn my machine on (it's under my desk btw), most people will say "is it on?" because they don't hear it. It does make a noise (not a harsh or irritating noise), but it's so quiet as to be acceptable to all but the most noise sensitive people.

So there you have it... for everyone who doesn't need actual silence, an SSD is not essential for the purpose of having a quiet PC.

I never said it was, I merely pointed out your claim your drive was almost silent was pretty misleading and still is. You can argue however you want but if you really care about noise then an SSD is about as good as it gets and clearly the better choice in this regard.