Should I buy SSDs for my desktops?

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#631172 27-May-2012 19:44

More RAM is always the rule. It has been right from the very start. Like when we got our VZ200 with it's optional 16K RAM expansion. Now that made it fly. Shame about the mass storage. The tape drive sucked immensly.... Below is a pic of the VZ200 with the 16K RAM module attached. Ah... the memories... Typing in programs out of a book for hours to find they didn't work....

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alexx

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#631179 27-May-2012 20:02

hairy1: Just looking at the prices it looks like 64 GB is the way to go as SATA III goes through the rough from 128 GB up.... Hmmm...

I just got a Crucial M4 64GB SSD for my new linux machine and I'm loving it.
But the price per GB is making the 128GB look like much better value these days.

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Benjip

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#631214 27-May-2012 21:38

Definitely go for it. I installed a Corsair Force GT (120GB) in my iMac a few weeks back. Was a bit of a challenge taking apart the 27" iMac (since it's all so tightly packed), but the difference has been incredible. From powered off to the Lion desktop in about 10 seconds. All apps (including CS6) open in 2-3 seconds if not instantly.

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#631328 28-May-2012 10:24

Isnt speed of SSD's determined by sata connection hence as the original post said MOBO's are two years old, would the have 6gb sata or only 3gb?

if only 3gb sata, I agree with fret - ram is way to go to get best bang for buck

timmmay

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#631353 28-May-2012 10:48

3Gbps SATA is still faster than most SSDs can deliver, it won't be a significant bottleneck. Most of the gain from an SSD is reducing latency rather than increasing bandwidth.

I have a 60GB SSD for my OS, Win7-64, Photoshop, Office, lots of other apps and an iTunes library but no games. I use about 50GB of the SSD from memory, with no hibernate or paging files. I could reduce that quite a bit if I wanted to, I think.

I also have a 120GB SSD for my image caches, swap files, photoshop scratch, etc, and I put my email on there so if the hard drives are idle I don't need to spin up a disk to check email.

Overall SSD is a nice way to increase the boot speed and snappines of the system. RAM first makes sense, 8GB for most people, 16 or 32GB for media producers.

freitasm

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#631354 28-May-2012 10:49

More RAM should be the first upgrade, regardless of you looking at an SSD or not... These days 8GB is the minimum for a comfortable experience - that's what I have on my laptop. My desktop has 16GB - and the SSD.

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#631362 28-May-2012 10:54

8GB is a good amount for most people. I have 16GB because I work with a lot of raw images. Once I've culled my images down to the set my customer sees they're around 10GB, so in practice they're cached in RAM and don't have to be read from disk more than once. If I got a higher megapixel camera I might have to go to 32GB.

RAM's cheap.

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#631373 28-May-2012 11:24

freitasm: More RAM should be the first upgrade, regardless of you looking at an SSD or not... These days 8GB is the minimum for a comfortable experience - that's what I have on my laptop. My desktop has 16GB - and the SSD.

If I had a choice of upgrading 4gb to 8gb, or from a mechanical drive to an SSD, i'd go for the SSD upgrade.

I have a spare desktop with 2gb ram too -- and that experience is perfectly comfortable.

But, ram is so cheap, why not?

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#631555 28-May-2012 16:36

SSD's are great. They do tend to go pop without absolutely any warning. I had a Vertex 2 night before shut the system down, next day turned it on no dice literally 1 year old that day (happy anniversary

) but that's what backups are for! I wouldn't quite trust them as much as a regular HDD at the moment. I do have to say though I couldn't go back to a regular HDD for my normal boot drive I didnt even wait for the RMA for the original vertex 2 went straight down and got a new crucial m4.

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#631577 28-May-2012 17:32

If your motherboard supports it, I would recommend using Intel Smart Response. It uses the SSD as a cache for the HDD. Instead of spending time deciding what should go on the SSD and what on the HDD, I just let the software figure it out based on my usage.

For choosing an SSD I forwent some speed in favour of reliability. I was *this* close to buying a Vertex 3 when they first came out, but then lots of people were starting to see failures (though I believe that has since been rectified after a number of firmware updates), so I got the more established Intel 510 instead.

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#631591 28-May-2012 18:25

Unquestionably. SSD for the WIN. I just put two into a mirror on my Proliant Server and put my SQL and Email system on it, and my God what a difference it made.

At home I have 4 x 120GB SSD's in a Raid 0 and in my Z Series Sony, I have 4 SSD's in a RAID 0.

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#631595 28-May-2012 18:28

timmmay: 3Gbps SATA is still faster than most SSDs can deliver, it won't be a significant bottleneck. Most of the gain from an SSD is reducing latency rather than increasing bandwidth.

I have a 60GB SSD for my OS, Win7-64, Photoshop, Office, lots of other apps and an iTunes library but no games. I use about 50GB of the SSD from memory, with no hibernate or paging files. I could reduce that quite a bit if I wanted to, I think.

I also have a 120GB SSD for my image caches, swap files, photoshop scratch, etc, and I put my email on there so if the hard drives are idle I don't need to spin up a disk to check email.

Overall SSD is a nice way to increase the boot speed and snappines of the system. RAM first makes sense, 8GB for most people, 16 or 32GB for media producers.

Well, that is true if you are talking single drives, but once you get more in a RAID then it starts to need more bandwidth from the controller. I went from a 3Gbps controller to a 6 and I went from 550MB/s to 1020MB/s :)

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#631601 28-May-2012 18:59

It's a moot point really because whoever can put more than one SSD on a rig

a) is not using a two years old desktop and
b) already put some additional RAM

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#631611 28-May-2012 19:26

RAID 0 with an SSD sounds risky. Also I read the Intel disk controller on motherboards can't keep up with raid'd SSDs, you need a better controller to do it.

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#631622 28-May-2012 19:47

rphenix: SSD's are great. They do tend to go pop without absolutely any warning. I had a Vertex 2...

This is an interesting thread where they are testing SSD write endurance.
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?271063-SSD-Write-Endurance-25nm-Vs-34nm

if you go to the most recent page in that thread (at the moment page 181) you will see the latest status of endurance tests currently running, with the Crucial M4 64GB and Kingston 40GB X-25-V closing in on 1000 TiB and the Samsung 830 at about 1500 TiB of writes. On the previous page you will see some of the ones that didn't meet their MWI ratings. You might be able to see a pattern there...

By the way, I believe that the Kingston 40GB X-25-V is a repackaged Intel... not all the Kingston SSDs are lasting that long. The Intel SSDs seem to be doing quite well of course.

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