Cheap SSD as main "boot"/OS drive in Desktop PC?

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Mad Scientist
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#880735 18-Aug-2013 21:40

if you even think about an SSD, do it. there is no downside (apart from $). they last as long as anything especially if you were a home user.

they have different speeds though, some as faster with certain conditions, some not so fast, but you probably won't notice too much unless you want to do a lot of research into potentially meaningless numbers.

the suggested Samsung 120gb is probably your sweet spot, but don't get smaller ones.

you will feel like your mazda has a v8 bolted onto it :D have fun!

richms

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#880742 18-Aug-2013 22:06

Look up making junctions if you want to move things off the SSD onto another drive. Total livesaver for apps that are a pain to move and large like adobe creative suite etc, you can move off the infrequently used ones and they will still work just fine, except really really slowly since they are coming off the HDD not the SSD.

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#880764 18-Aug-2013 23:02

freitasm: Don't just copy a HDD into a SSD as suggested. In an ideal world when you install Windows 7/8 it will detect a SSD as system disk an install support for TRIM, a very important feature that is more important than storing temp files in other drive.

Installing on a SSD will also disable some services that aren't needed anymore because they existed to make HDD faster, which is not something you need to do with SSD.

Also if you install a SSD in your system you should enabled AHCI on BIOS to support TRIM, and if the system was previously installed on a HDD with AHCI off then you won't have this on the SSD. You can turn AHCI on/off but need to install drivers.

Overall, if you are installing a SSD as a system disk, install fresh, don't use an image of an existing HDD. And don't worry about moving temp files to HDD because that will make the whole system pretty slow. The number of writes needed to kill the flash memory is pretty high and you probably won't have this problem for years. TRIM support is just to level the utilisation so that problem doesn't occur.

Windows 7 and 8 automatically use trim for SSD's if AHCI is turned on.

If you had AHCI off when you originally installed Windows for some reason, you will need to turn it on in bios and make one registry change in windows to turn the ACHI service on, that is it.

There is no need to do a fresh install imo.

The Samsung and Intel software allow you to tweak other system setting like write cach etc.

freitasm

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#880768 18-Aug-2013 23:16

Actually the change will install drivers. Yes, pretty simple to do it but a fresh install will be so much... Cleaner.

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DravidDavid

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#880772 18-Aug-2013 23:37

After reading this thread, I changed my BIOS to AHCI. Windows installed all drivers and it works. Maximum write speed sunk to the bottom of the sea and is slower to boot.

I opened the PC, changed the controller and got better than normal speeds. Changed back to IDE and saw a 100MB/s read increase just by reverting back over prevous IDE speeds.

Windows went from benching thr SSD at 7.2 to 7.8...Not thatt it means much. I tested trimm was enabled long ago with a simple prompt command. That was in IDE mode.

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#880801 19-Aug-2013 08:14

Did you install the Intel ssd drivers (for ssd drives in general but gotten from Intel site)

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DravidDavid

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#880821 19-Aug-2013 09:23

Not so sure the Intel drivers would do me much good. My drive is a Mushkin Chronos 480GB SSD.

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#880843 19-Aug-2013 10:00

I put an SSD in a 2nd hand PC I got recently. It was 80GB and I'd call that the bare minimum.

Awesome setup, would recommend to anyone. I honestly don't know of any other bang for buck option that returns the visible results quite like this one. Starts to bring some of the iPad instant on type vibe to PC's.

I kept the OS on my original drive, so if the SSD ever dies I've still got a bootable machine, albeit out of date from the SSD setup.

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#880898 19-Aug-2013 10:58

freitasm: Actually the change will install drivers. Yes, pretty simple to do it but a fresh install will be so much... Cleaner.

A clean install is the ideal best option but it depends how much time you want to spend reinstalling all your software and configuring everything back from default to how you like it (of course that's much easier on Windows 8 than Windows 7).

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#880899 19-Aug-2013 11:00

DravidDavid: After reading this thread, I changed my BIOS to AHCI. Windows installed all drivers and it works. Maximum write speed sunk to the bottom of the sea and is slower to boot.

What motherboard do you have?

If it's an older Intel chipset motherboard you will probably need to install the Intel RST (Rapid Storage Technology) for best results in Windows.

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#881246 19-Aug-2013 21:17

If you are in any doubt about a SSD, I have 2 basically identical aweful old AMD based machines here, 780G chipset, one has issues and I have to underclock the video to get it to be stable, and has a SSD in it, the other is a HDD based one with twice the ram at 8 gigs and a faster CPU.

The worse one with a SSD, applied all windows updates, hibernated a virtual machine, rebooted, logged back in, opened the browser again, opened the VM back up, and was all usable before the other machine even got to update 6 or 7 out of 12 to get installed pre-shutdown. Thats on a basic intel 520 series 120 GB SSD, there are much better performers available now.

edit - sorry, a intel 320. I was being cheap when I specced these out compared to my other machines.

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#884412 26-Aug-2013 05:09

At $110 G.SKILL Phoenix III FM-25S3-120GBP3 is a good choice.

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#884422 26-Aug-2013 07:54

DravidDavid: After reading this thread, I changed my BIOS to AHCI. Windows installed all drivers and it works. Maximum write speed sunk to the bottom of the sea and is slower to boot.

I opened the PC, changed the controller and got better than normal speeds. Changed back to IDE and saw a 100MB/s read increase just by reverting back over prevous IDE speeds.

Windows went from benching thr SSD at 7.2 to 7.8...Not thatt it means much. I tested trimm was enabled long ago with a simple prompt command. That was in IDE mode.

You have two main AHCI providers: Microsoft and Intel. Intel drivers come from the Intel RST software. If your PC has an Intel controller then you should install Intel RST. This is regardless of drive manufacter.

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#884428 26-Aug-2013 08:21

Don't forget to look at getting more RAM because 4GB is not that much if you do lots of multitasking. RAM is faster than swapping out to an SSD and more RAM reduces the need to write to disk for virtual memory.

Your motherboard has four slots and I presume that you're only using two. So for under $100 you can at least double your RAM.

letmekiwi

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#890109 5-Sep-2013 09:36

Hi guys,

I'll borrow this topic, if that's ok, to ask a similar question like OP.

I have a 4 year old PC, with following components:

AMD x4 630 2.8g quad core
4g ddr3 1333 ram 2gX2 dual channel
Asus m4a77td pro mother board
1tb hard drive 7200rpm sata2
460 GTX 768mb Video card

I'm considering a cheap, but meaningful upgrade (SSD + GPU), to extend the life of my PC, which is still holding it's own with current games.

However, looking here http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/M4A77TD_PRO , I found my motherboard has only SATA2, so I'm wondering would SSD still be an improvement, if it can't go to it's full speed potential?

I'm also wondering if PCI 2.0 will be detriment to new video cards?

Any suggestions?

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