Simple, scalable SSD for home PC

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  aussiepom on 24/07/2012 - 13:55

  I bought this one recently: Kingston SSDNow V+200 2.5" 120GB Solid State Drive (SSD) - SATA III (SVP200S3/120G). Purchased from mWave for about $110.

  Seems pretty good and is a SATA III drive. However, if you buy it, make sure that you apply the firmware update (available from the manufacturer's website).

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  sane on 24/07/2012 - 14:34

  I'm similar, upgrading to keep the PC going - mind my machine is older.

  I went for 128GB of SSD, since that was enough for OS and apps, and more main memory (8GB) because it helps with speed as well. I went Crucial SSD because the postings on these seemed to have less problems than others (they command a small premium). All seem to be SATA3 based, so that issue drops out.

  Next machine is due to be Haswell, middle of next year at the earliest. New socket, chipset, etc. and an emphasis on low idle power draw.

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  ESEMCE on 24/07/2012 - 15:37

  Sandisk, Samsung, Crucial or Intel seem to be the recommended brands for speed and reliability, with a bit of a Question Mark over the Sandisk with respect to reliability as they're still fairly new to market, but no horror stories that I've seen.
  I'm looking to do similar to you, OS and Apps on the SSD. I'm thinking a 120Gb ought to be sufficient, provided games go on the HDD. Keep in mind it's recommended that you fill no greater than 80% of the capacity of the drive with data, so a 120Gb drive is "actually" only ~100Gb.

  I'm hanging out for a locally available (ie bricks and mortar) unit from one of the above manufacturers and at a $1/Gb pricepoint.
  I want to buy from a shop, so if I have any issues, I can walk back in-store and hopefully have less hassles getting a replacement in the event I get a Lemon.

  Since I won't have time to install until September, I think my price target is not an unrealistic expectation the way prices are heading.

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  SHPION on 25/07/2012 - 08:43

  Don't expect a big improvement of overall PC performance just by placing ssd in case. The most notable effect you can get is faster OS and applications boot time. That's all. And difference is not such huge. Windows 7 will start in 15-20 sec instead of 30-60 sec from HDD. It doesn't worth at all to put SSD to desktop. SSD is good idea for laptop as primary drive. It consumes less power, doesn't make noise and stays cold. It brings better battery life and quietness to laptop, but it is not relevant for desktop - you sacrifice 90% of storage space for 0-50% of apps boot time.

  If you want to boost performance of you PC, the first step is put as much memory as it possible, it will make the biggest effect on overall performance.

  Next step is CPU or video card depending on your needs.

  If you stick to idea of upgrading you HDD - think about organizing RAID 0. It will increase HDD performance almost twice for all operations including your data manipulations without sacrificing space. And you can still take raid to you new PC later.

  Ideal variant is to put OS and applications with huge number of files (like office) to small SSD (60-120 GB) and have other applications, data, games and media on raid 0.

  BTW, super-reliable SSDs are actually very vulnerable for static discharges that desktop suffer often. Also SSDs demand additional OS and BIOS tuning to perform well and to stay healthy.

  Idea of putting SSD to desktop should be considered very carefully, otherwise you will lose money and storage space and gain reliability problems instead of performance improvements.