Building a new Computer and opinions needed

A friend just built a PC with a SSD as the main OS drive and a secondary drive for other stuff like games and media.

It takes roughly 14 seconds from the time the power button is pushed to the time the Windows desktop appears. Definitely pretty fast. Working within Windows is of course fast and the slight reduction in noise is welcome. I love the idea of a hard drive with no mechanical parts to fail.

My biggest complaint, and the reason I have not gone the SSD route myself, is because hard drives in general are so damn expensive right now. Come summer time when production/supply is back up (hopefully!) I will be going that route for sure!

 

I built every system for my company (20 employees) and every server. For anyone that matters, the system has two drives; SSD for OS/Program Files - 1-3TB HDD for Data

It makes a huge difference system to system if you do tasks that require the drives.

For example, we regularly use files that are 30+ GB in size (TXT files) and we have to split, re-arrange, and combine these. On an SSD drive this process takes minutes - on a mechanical drive it takes 20-30 minutes. The time saving for each task justifies spending the extra money. The only issue is that we have a folder called 'swap' that we place data we are working with at the time on C otherwise if it stays on D you get none of the speed increases.

The price of SSD's have come down so low now it's hard to say no.

Erik

 

I'd say with those specs you would be handicapping your system to NOT get an SSD.

 

Prices on ssd dropped already alot and the performance difference is HUGE. Reliablity of cheper ones can be a problem though. Get intel/crucial/plextor/etc, something good. If mobo supports sata3, make sure hdd is...

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167049

The 320 Series are very reliable and at $140 for 80GB, they're finally below that magical $2/GB mark. I've used a couple of these over the last year and they've all worked perfect. Just make sure you have TRIM enabled. The only downside is they're still on the SATA II interface, so if you're looking for max performance from one drive then the new 520 series might be a better (albeit more expensive) option. You could always RAID 0 2 of the 320s also, I believe Intel is working on a software update to allow TRIM in RAID.

 

I built a PC 2months ago and opted for a 120Gb SSD as boot drive, 120 Gb SSD for dedicated games and 2TB hard drive for apps and the rest. Totally worth it.

 

Has anyone used one of the hybrid drives? It seems to get really high performance with large disk space and a bit easier on the wallet. I realize it won't give real SSD performance though.

 

I threw one of those in my new build, no issues at all and it's pretty fast. Im thinking about putting an ssd in my Mac Mini but I'd hate to split up the os and programs from my media, seems like more hassle than its worth.

 

I just built a i5 rig/16gb ram and started with a 320 gb HD and sent it back for an ssd after it had some problems.

With normal hd's being as expensive as they are presently the SSD seemed the better option.

SSD's are well under $2 gb at this point and closer to $1 gb if you go OCZ on a rebate deal.

I went with a Crucial M4 for their much more solid reviews than the OCZ's. The OCZ's seem to have price and performance in hand but what the reviews say they don't have is reliability so I went with the Crucial for $165 for a 120gb.

I'd not go less than 120gb for a main drive because after you load an OS and a few programs of any note you are 60-70% full.

I have externals that my photo libraries and work are on so I can live with that until HD prices come down to pre-disaster pricing. I just couldn't stump up the $130+ for a 1tb drive right now knowing the price will go back once things with production are in order.

 

I tossed an Intel 120GB SSD on my desktop with a 1TB, i7.... should of gone with a 240GB SSD. Once I loaded Outlook on there and my kids did a couple games I'm toast.

would not bother buying/building a PC or laptop without SSD