SSD confusion

[Ack-Ack]

I dont know whether to buy one, what kind to buy, is it worth it,what size, whatever?

What are the Pros and Cons for upgrading a desktop now?

Let me add to your confusion...there are also hybrid SSD drives.

ack-ack

[ELD66]

Samsung are some of the best SSD's out there right now. I bought my SAMSUNG 840 Pro Series, 512gb and never looked back. However without a good motherboard, memory, and processor the speed is limited. Much like installing faster ram but it is limited to the speed of the slowest.
 Also brands from Ram builders usually work good. So Kingston, Mushkin, Toshiba ( just aquired OCZ memory), Crucial and Intel are all good solid brands. But Samsung are some of the most reliable and fastest.

ElDiablo

[Pudgie]

Interesting topic........................ .

This is why, when I built my box in May '12 I initially steered away from SSD's as I had read of & heard of all the horror stories concerning them. But as time went on & I read of the continuing improvements in the tech concerning these drives I was caught out in the land of indecision.....as others are/have been as well.

So in Oct '12 I made the decision to find out for myself & after a LOT of reading up on the various SSD's performance specs & reviews I bought 2 OCZ Vertex4 SATA III 256Gb MLC SSD's w/ the Indilinx firmware controllers installed @ $249.95 ea.
I set them both up by using a free copy of EaseUS Todo disk backup software & cloned my platter boot drive on 1 SSD then cloned my platter ghost drive on the 2nd SSD then set them up in the exact same page file configuration as I had my platter drives (took page file off of boot drive & installed/set up on the ghost drive) running natively off the Intel X79 chipset of my Asus Rampage IV Gene ROG mobo under Win7 HP 64 SP1 OS w/ no platter HDD's installed to use as back ups.

I did this to see for myself if all the bad things that I have heard said or read would happen to at least 1 of these SSD's within a reasonable period of time. I got a free copy of AS SSD Benchmark software to initially test both SSD's off fresh cloning for a reference & would test them periodically to see if they were degrading in performance.

As of today (12-7-13....approx 14 months of usage to date) I haven't had or noticed 1 issue w/ these SSD's in operation & according to AS SSD Benchmark neither drive has shown any signs of performance loss due to degradation, especially the ghost drive w/ the page file on it (getting hit w/ the writes) as I have seen less than 1% fluctuation from the initial results at any time so I don't count that as degradation. So for MY box & how it is being used (Internet, AHII\Warbirds 2013 & music--mostly thru Pandora) these SSD's are performing very well. I don't keep any data on the SSD's that is important to me so if they do blow up, big deal.

I have them mounted in hot-swappable 2.5" drive bay enclosures that are mounted in my 3.5" HDD slots in my case just behind my case's front 120mm fan. 1 enclosure is plugged in to the Intel X79's SATA III headders, the 2nd is plugged into the 3rd party HDD controller's SATA III headders (is empty at this time).

1 thing is certain......since I've owned these 2 hot-swappable 2.5" HDD bay enclosures I will NEVER go back to a 3.5" HDD period. The ease of use, no more having to remove the back case panel & wiring to install/remove HDD's is priceless.................... ................

As Gman & others have said, don't put too much into expectations concerning SSD's performance from a general consumer's perspective. SSD's do outperform HDD's in most categories from a performance standpoint but the overall EXPERIENCE derived from their usage is dependent on several factors not directly related to them (computer configuration, software type & usage, OS type & usage, etc) & so there's too many varibles to really say that by using SSD's you will notice (read FEEL here) the performance differences between a SSD vs a HDD. Where my box is actually reading/writing data to/from the SSD's vs the HDD's the difference is VERY noticeable.....otherwise no difference.

 

[MrRiplEy[H]]

As Gman & others have said, don't put too much into expectations concerning SSD's performance from a general consumer's perspective. SSD's do outperform HDD's in most categories from a performance standpoint but the overall EXPERIENCE derived from their usage is dependent on several factors not directly related to them (computer configuration, software type & usage, OS type & usage, etc) & so there's too many varibles to really say that by using SSD's you will notice (read FEEL here) the performance differences between a SSD vs a HDD. Where my box is actually reading/writing data to/from the SSD's vs the HDD's the difference is VERY noticeable.....otherwise no difference.

 

This is something that always chuckles me, people really lack basic understanding on the roles of computer components and how they can or should affect the computers performance. If someone really thinks a HDD replacement will do anything but speed up load times, he probably doesn't need the replacement in the first place.

The overall usage feel will change enormously after switching to SSD, where your brand new computer seemed sluggish to start or load applications before, after installing SSD loading things has just jumped to the same performance level you expect from the rest of your computer. The experience will not be the same using an old computer, while SSD will naturally still make it somewhat faster the slower SATA 3G bus will choke the drive badly.

[save]

I'm a SSD fan, I hate to wait.

[Rich46yo]

OK so what SSD would you fellas recommend for my gaming desktop? Its a Digital Storm Assassin, Intel i-7 950 @ 3.07 GHz, 16 gig RAM, NVidea GTX780, X58 SLI-3 MB, with a 1 Terra Western Disc. I'd want at a 500 gig SSD.

[BoilerDown]

I happen to have just read a review comparing SSD to HDD performance in games: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013/12/10/hdd_vs_ssd_real_world_gaming_performance .

[MrRiplEy[H]]

OK so what SSD would you fellas recommend for my gaming desktop? Its a Digital Storm Assassin, Intel i-7 950 @ 3.07 GHz, 16 gig RAM, NVidea GTX780, X58 SLI-3 MB, with a 1 Terra Western Disc. I'd want at a 500 gig SSD.

Best price performance point is probably the Samsung EVO drives at the moment.

[Rich46yo]

I happen to have just read a review comparing SSD to HDD performance in games: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013/12/10/hdd_vs_ssd_real_world_gaming_performance .

Pretty much what Ive heard. Im only getting one cause I need an extra drive and dont much see the point in getting another HDD.

I'll check out the Samsung. Thanks.