Hello

Just a few points:

Large windows installs are due to unnecessary MS garbage (talk about windows games and other aplications, use the "activate deactivate windows apps" in  he programs control panel), hibernation files, service packs backups, and most important the windows  system recovery feature (use a proper backup program, there are many freeware utilities that do the job, and eliminate everything related to windows recovery). My typical W7 install requires no more than 13GB.

The page file, and aaaaaaall temporary files (that includes windows temp and web browser temps) should be stored in your mechanical drives.............. 'cause I hope you got the idea that the SSD is for your sysop and your best apps, the rest, including large data files (pictures, movies, p000rn, etc...) should be stored in that Terabyte HDD you've got next to your SSD (Ya know, the E:\ drive XDDDD).

Intel is fine, performs like a consumptive hundred years old turtle, costs its weight in gold, but.......... ok they are the most reliable.

Browse through OCZ or Corsair forums on how to improve SSD performance (some Hardware web guides are also extremely usefull).

Enjoy

I am not an uber-geek but I do build my own gaming computers.  I am getting ready to upgrade my 2 core system to a 4 core system and am not even considering a SSD.  I have been used the same SATA drives in my last 2 system builds and am satisfied.  From what I can determine from my personal research, a SSD will not really significantly  improve gaming performance.  A SSD is pretty much at the bottom of my list of upgrade wishes.  If you absolutely must have the best of the best performance then go with a SSD as it will improve loading times.

The only thing I can recommend is that which I am gonna do myself - go from 2 to 4 cores, not more than 4 cores.  If you got a 2 core system, you will get a very very significant boost in gaming performance if you go to 4 cores.  I came across an article on Tom's Hardware that convinced me to go ahead and upgrade to 4 cores.  My opinion.

Don't disable the swap file.  I could understand decreasing the default size of it, while leaving Windows the option to increase it if needed.  But if you disable the swap file and need very slightly more memory than you have in physical memory for a very brief period of time, then your computer crashes.  The point of a swap file is to prevent that.

If you're worried about wasting space on an SSD, then you should be a lot more worried about wasting space in system memory.  SSD capacity is only about $1/GB, while SDRAM is closer to $5/GB.

The writes to the swap file aren't a problem, either, unless you've got an unreasonably small amount of system memory.  Windows works very hard to pick out the stuff that gets the fewest writes as what it will put in the swap file.  If a program claims it needs a bunch of memory but isn't actually using it, Windows can stick it in the swap file without actually doing any writes, and then move it to physical system memory if the program actually uses it.  If you disable the swap file, then you have to buy more physical memory to handle all of the capacity that programs might claim for stupid things, and that can get expensive.

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A good SSD will make a huge difference in how responsive your computer feels.  It's not just boot times or program loading times, either.  Sites measure those because they're easy to measure, and taking a fraction of a second off of the response time every time you ask your computer to do something simple is a lot harder to measure.  Think of an SSD as roughly the offline equivalent of taking 100 ms off of your ping time, in addition to cutting load times and boot times by 1/2 or 2/3 or whatever.

Another advantage to SSDs is that if some program decides to do something stupid in the background (e.g., an anti-virus program decides it's time for a full system scan), an SSD means this basically doesn't matter.  With a hard drive, your system might slow to a crawl until you tab out and forcibly close the offending background program.

Another advantage to SSDs is that if a program crashes, you can get back in a lot faster than before.  Ever play a game and have the game crash or need to reboot the computer, and then frantically try to get back as quickly as you can?  An SSD means it only takes maybe 1/2 or 1/3 as long to get back into the game and continue.

I will not buy an SSD no matter how you try to tell me it's good or i need to read instructions first, i never bought one. I just read lots of bad things about them, people buying 5 of them best brand only to have them break every 3 months, lot's of bad reviews and problems with them. I know they are really fast and i thought about buying one but for the price and problems it's not worth the money, for me.

Originally posted by Shari

I'm in the process of upgrading my pc at the moment with some parts I have picked up for cheap second hand (I am on a very tight budget atm) and I was wondering if SSD hardrives are worth it. I have a 1tb seagate atm and I would use that for most my storage and put a couple of mmorpgs and win7 itself on the SSD.

I am currently looking at this one:                      

http://www.amazon.co.uk/SanDisk-120GB-Extreme-Solid-State/dp/B006EKJCWM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1341257464&sr=8-1

Is it worth it do you think, do they last as long as normal hardrives?

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/05/the-hot-crazy-solid-state-drive-scale.html

A good read on stating SSDs fail a lot and why people continue to buy them with high failure rates

Originally posted by ictown

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/05/the-hot-crazy-solid-state-drive-scale.html

A good read on stating SSDs fail a lot and why people continue to buy them with high failure rates

If the writer's friend bought 8 SSDs and had them all fail, the common factor is the person using them or perhaps something wrong with his system.  A lot of the time that a user thinks his SSD has failed, the problem is actually elsewhere.

I suppose that I have a small sample size myself.  But I bought one SSD 33 months ago, and another 16 months ago, and both still work.

Yes, SSDs do fail sometimes.  But you know what else fails sometimes?  Pretty much everything.  Including hard drives.

Let's do a quick, unscientific sample, based on New Egg ratings.  Let's compare 500 GB hard drives to 128 GB SSDs, as those are common capacities for people who need some capacity but not a huge amount.  And let's pick the items with the most reviews, and compare the reviews.  After all, people who have a drive fail are motivated to come back and write a scathing review.  Meanwhile, drives that have a lot of reviews have been out for a while to have time to accumulate those reviews.  I list the percentages of 5/4/3/2/1 egg reviews.

On the hard drive side, the ones with the most reviews are:

Samsung Spinpoint F3:  78/8/3/4/7

Western Digital Caviar Blue:  63/15/6/4/12

Western Digital Caviar Black:  70/13/4/6/7

Seagate Barracuda:  49/14/7/4/26

Western Digital RE4:  84/4/4/1/7

Western Digital AV-GP:  78/5/5/3/10

Hitachi DeskStar:  34/14/2/11/39

On the solid state drive side, the ones with the most reviews are:

Crucial M4:  84/5/3/1/6

Crucial M4 with transfer kit:  85/6/4/2/3

Plextor M3:  90/3/3/1/3

Samsung 830 desktop kit:  76/9/4/4/6

OCZ Petrol:  18/5/6/14/58

OCZ Vertex 4:  61/17/4/4/13

Samsung 830 retail packaging:  80/8/4/1/6

Samsung 830 laptop kit:  87/7/1/0/4

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As I see it, the four drives with the most favorable ratings out of those 15 are all SSDs.  The OCZ Petrol does have bad reviews, but that was predictable enough that I've never recommended it to anyone.

Do SSDs fail?  Sometimes yes.  Do they fail more often than hard drives?  If you stay away from shady controllers, probably not.

Here's another take on it if you want:

I've got a laptop and a desktop that run SSD. Yes, its definitely worth it, but I don't necessarily agree that a graphics card is a better upgrade option, that depends on the computer and what it can handle (power supply, existing components, etc). A SSD can be quite a cost-effective way to "wake-up" an older computer.

However, another option to consider, if looking for max storage, is a RAID configuration. My main gaming desktop uses this configuration. The speed is more than reasonable, and for the price of an SSD, I've around 4 TB of space. So, it also doubles as primary storage for my home network.

Good luck in your build!

edit: also, the laptop has been running the stock SSD for three years, never a problem, and has seen pretty heavy use (3-4 people in the house use it, games, homework, etc). Not even an indication it is slowing down.

Originally posted by Quizzical

Originally posted by ictown

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/05/the-hot-crazy-solid-state-drive-scale.html

A good read on stating SSDs fail a lot and why people continue to buy them with high failure rates

If the writer's friend bought 8 SSDs and had them all fail, the common factor is the person using them or perhaps something wrong with his system.  A lot of the time that a user thinks his SSD has failed, the problem is actually elsewhere.

I suppose that I have a small sample size myself.  But I bought one SSD 33 months ago, and another 16 months ago, and both still work.

Yes, SSDs do fail sometimes.  But you know what else fails sometimes?  Pretty much everything.  Including hard drives.

Let's do a quick, unscientific sample, based on New Egg ratings.  Let's compare 500 GB hard drives to 128 GB SSDs, as those are common capacities for people who need some capacity but not a huge amount.  And let's pick the items with the most reviews, and compare the reviews.  After all, people who have a drive fail are motivated to come back and write a scathing review.  Meanwhile, drives that have a lot of reviews have been out for a while to have time to accumulate those reviews.  I list the percentages of 5/4/3/2/1 egg reviews.

On the hard drive side, the ones with the most reviews are:

Samsung Spinpoint F3:  78/8/3/4/7

Western Digital Caviar Blue:  63/15/6/4/12

Western Digital Caviar Black:  70/13/4/6/7

Seagate Barracuda:  49/14/7/4/26

Western Digital RE4:  84/4/4/1/7

Western Digital AV-GP:  78/5/5/3/10

Hitachi DeskStar:  34/14/2/11/39

On the solid state drive side, the ones with the most reviews are:

Crucial M4:  84/5/3/1/6

Crucial M4 with transfer kit:  85/6/4/2/3

Plextor M3:  90/3/3/1/3

Samsung 830 desktop kit:  76/9/4/4/6

OCZ Petrol:  18/5/6/14/58

OCZ Vertex 4:  61/17/4/4/13

Samsung 830 retail packaging:  80/8/4/1/6

Samsung 830 laptop kit:  87/7/1/0/4

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As I see it, the four drives with the most favorable ratings out of those 15 are all SSDs.  The OCZ Petrol does have bad reviews, but that was predictable enough that I've never recommended it to anyone.

Do SSDs fail?  Sometimes yes.  Do they fail more often than hard drives?  If you stay away from shady controllers, probably not.

I bought 3 and all three failed. Your point is...I have shady controllers..well gee thanks. On the other hand, I've still got 2 maxtor hard internal and external hard drives still functioning and they're ide. Along with 5 other sata hard drives still going strong. your sample from newegg doesn't correlate much to what the blog posted about, but whatever.

Hey, yep, what everyone else said:

MMO load screens are quicker

Windows loads quicker

Programs load quicker

Things running simultaneously (video, programs, games) aren't fighting over accessing the hard drive

System can rely less on the page file

And one more thing. When you experience lag or stuttering in a game or MMO you can be certain that it isn't a problem with your hard drive. lol

SSD is the way to go if you can afford it, everything and I mean everything loads faster from the OS, movies, games and programs. A game installed on the SSD will fly in terms of loading and you should have zero client side lag as long as your system can keep up with it.

As for those complaining about their SSDs failing...stop buying cheap crap. I have had 2 on different systems and they have yet to fail, near 2 years running now.

Originally posted by ictown

I bought 3 and all three failed. Your point is...I have shady controllers..well gee thanks. On the other hand, I've still got 2 maxtor hard internal and external hard drives still functioning and they're ide. Along with 5 other sata hard drives still going strong. your sample from newegg doesn't correlate much to what the blog posted about, but whatever.

Which SSDs did you get, how do you know they failed, and what happened when you sent them in for warranty service?

SSDs do tend to have substantial warranties.  I just checked 120-128 GB products on New Egg from Corsair, Plextor, Samsung, OCZ, Mushkin, Corsair, SanDisk, G.Skill, and Intel.  That includes all of the major SSD vendors.  All of them came with at least a 3 year warranty, and some had a warranty as long as 5 years.

If most SSDs are going to fail within 3 years, then how do you think these companies make money?  For the Mushkin and Corsair SSDs, New Egg didn't say the warranty length, so I had to go to their web page.  Both give 3 year warranties on their SSDs, but sell other products that they're not willing to give that long of a warranty on.

I bought the OCZ Vertex 4 256gb SSD a few weeks ago and I love it.  Most applications open almost instantly.

Windows 7 didn't like it at first.  The MBR wouldn't install correctly.  I had to redo it three times before it took.

Getting a SSD is both a good and bad thing. 

Good :

Your computer will feel a lot more responsive

Bad :

You will totally notice the lack of a SSD if you use a pc that doesnt. And let me tell you right now, its not a very good place to be in when you are used to having a SSD.  Just recently I used my grandmas laptop and I was like "zomg how can people live with using pcs without a SSD! Its like loading webpages off a 56k!"

This is the part where you play that sound when you connect using the phone line.

Here is another good one if you are looking to buy. I wish the sizes would be higher but you can raid 0 them.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=20-239-045&SortField=0&SummaryType=0&Pagesize=10&PurchaseMark=&SelectedRating=4&VideoOnlyMark=False&VendorMark=&IsFeedbackTab=true&Keywords=%28keywords%29&Page=1#scrollFullInfo