SSD Drive Question....

Kevin O'Brian

Kevin O'Brian

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Hello Guys

Contemplating buying a new PC, Having been online is it worthwhile having a SSD drive as Primary HD as that is where windows will be installed etc and the SSD drive as I'am led to believe will give overall better performance ? mainly used for processing photos, not being used for games and Video/films

Any advice will be much appreciated and I have copied the build below.


Case STYLISH PIANO BLACK ENIGMA MICRO-ATX CASE + 2 FRONT USB
Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™i5 Quad Core Processor i5-3570K (3.4GHz) 6MB Cache
Motherboard ASUS® P8Z77-M: MICRO-ATX, USB 3.0, SATA 6GBs, ATI®CrossFireX
Memory (RAM) 8GB KINGSTON HYPERX GENESIS DUAL-DDR3 1866MHz X.M.P(2 x 4GB KIT)
Graphics Card INTEGRATED GRAPHICS ACCELERATOR (GPU)
Memory - 1st Hard Disk 120GB KINGSTON HYPERX 3K SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s (upto 555MB/sR | 510MB/sW)
2nd Hard Disk 1TB 3.5" SATA-III 6GB/s HDD 7200RPM 32MB CACHE

1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive 24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Memory Card Reader INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (XD, MS, CF, SD, etc) + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT
Power Supply 350W Dual Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan
Processor Cooling INTEL SOCKET LGA1155 STANDARD CPU COOLER
Sound Card ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Facilities 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT - AS STANDARD ON ALL PCs
USB Options 2 PORT USB 3.0 INTERNAL PCI-EX CARD + STANDARD USB PORTS
Modem NONE, I WILL BE USING BROADBAND
Operating System Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit w/SP1 - inc DVD & Licence

Monitor AOC i2352Vh 23" WIDESCREEN IPS TFT - 1920 x 1080, 5MS, DVI-D (£139)
DVI-D & HDMI Monitor Cables 1 x 2 METRE DVI-D CABLE (£5)
Keyboard & Mouse LOGITECH® K200 USB MEDIA KEYBOARD (£10)
Warranty 3 Year Standard Warranty (1 Month Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time Standard Build - Approximately 10 to 12 working days
Pricing Information

Price (excluding VAT) £706.67
Price £848.

Regards

Kevin :)
 
SSD speeds up the PC by so much, you'd be amazed how your office PC is still without one! everything loads within a split second, without a whisper of sound.

if you are spending £800 on a PC, there has to be a SSD in it! it's like buying a D4 then putting in a slow class 4 SD card.
 
I'm using a Crucial M4 128GB SSD in a couple of machines and its so smooth and fast.

I've seen them for as little as 79.99
 
Similar here

Sandink 120gb SSD for my main drive, Sandisk 240gb for scratch drive.

So much faster but I have found they occasionaly dont like coming out of hibernate.
 
Thanks guys much appreciated Question answered :thumbs: now asking myself is £800 to much to be spending on a pc mainly used for Photography and internet browsing ? There is a monitor also included in the price to

Regards

Kevin :)
 
Depends how seriously you take it. £800 is not really a lot for photography alone (a decent monitor fopr pro use costs that alone) - but if just playing around with photography then yes you could spend less.

I've a couple of 128Gb Crucial M4s and they are superb! Fast and quiet and store windows and the programs I need access to. Did I say they are quick?!

The rest of the data I don't need so much is installed on regular drives.

A big SSD (128Gb+) together with a 1Tb or 2Tb drive would be a good start.
 
Definitely a yes to getting an SSD. I've just built a similar PC for photo editing and it's sooooo much faster than my old vista laptop at lightroom. Worth the money's debatable depending on if you have the spare cash, but it's saving me a lot of time!
 
PC, same as photography, is a hobby and a money black hole. whether it is worth the money depends entirely up to you.

i built my machine in 2006, and has kept it up to date with many upgrades, current machine has no component from 2006. overall it must have costed me over £3000 on this, including £800 on a semi-professional monitor. was it worth it? yes, i did a lot of gaming on it and the £400 graphics card was well worth it. my dad sees this as a complete waste of money, i'm sure many people on here will also view it this way. but to me, i enjoyed building it, i enjoyed tinkering it and i enjoyed using it, that's all that matters.

you got to ask yourself do you enjoy post processing photos? how much time are you going to be spending on it?



also, that CPU is overclocking, if you are not going to overclock, you can save around £15 by going for the non-K version.
 
Thank you Wuyan and Neil, I do enjoy processing images and plan to upgrade to full frame soon, and as the files sizes are just getting bigger and bigger my lap top now would just explode :nuts::lol:
 
j07cmt said:
Will fail, with epic consequences. Look at aria.co.uk to see if there are any better PC's for you, you will get quality components then.
Click to expand...

Thanks again will have a look there to tonight with a nice cup of tea when I finally get to sit down after work.

Kevin :thumbs:
 
ive gone through THREE 256gb samsung ssd's. All of them failed, a bit of a power fluctuation in the office and bang (not literally), lost a shed load of work.

My faith in them needs to be recovered. I did use them back in 2010-2011 (early 2011).

I dont know if they are now reliable - it wasnt the storage method that failed, was the controllers that come fitted to the SSD, just not meant to handle fluctuations of any sort (the PC didnt even power down, lights flickered in office and lost my work).

Has anyone else had this issue?
 
Carlh said:
ive gone through THREE 256gb samsung ssd's. All of them failed, a bit of a power fluctuation in the office and bang (not literally), lost a shed load of work.

My faith in them needs to be recovered. I did use them back in 2010-2011 (early 2011).

I dont know if they are now reliable - it wasnt the storage method that failed, was the controllers that come fitted to the SSD, just not meant to handle fluctuations of any sort (the PC didnt even power down, lights flickered in office and lost my work).

Has anyone else had this issue?
Click to expand...

thing is unlike a mechanical drive you often dont get a warning before failure (click of death, odd pauses etc) so its always best to have a copy of important data and system image for easy rebuild.

or run a UPS.
 
Carlh said:
ive gone through THREE 256gb samsung ssd's. All of them failed, a bit of a power fluctuation in the office and bang (not literally), lost a shed load of work.

My faith in them needs to be recovered. I did use them back in 2010-2011 (early 2011).

I dont know if they are now reliable - it wasnt the storage method that failed, was the controllers that come fitted to the SSD, just not meant to handle fluctuations of any sort (the PC didnt even power down, lights flickered in office and lost my work).

Has anyone else had this issue?
Click to expand...

Would say this is a result of using cheap PSU's - as a regular user of computer forums, I have heard stories of failed drives but never three in a row. Samsung have got an excellent reputation for SSD's.
 
arad85 said:
Nice. I'd not seen that before - thanks.

Given SSD improvements in the last few years (3 years is an AGE in SSD technology) I'd expect even better performance now.
Click to expand...

Gosh, I'd not realised I'd had it that long, but it's performed well in that period, never let me down, just keeps going and going.

Apart from a performance boost with more current drives, the price has reduced dramatically, I think I paid around £300 for a 128mb drive.
 
Les McLean said:
Gosh, I'd not realised I'd had it that long, but it's performed well in that period, never let me down, just keeps going and going.

Apart from a performance boost with more current drives, the price has reduced dramatically, I think I paid around £300 for a 128mb drive.
Click to expand...
Time flies doesn't it...

Yup. 128G are ~£70-£80 and will be 2-3x as performant (if not more) than your drive....
 
Carlh said:
ive gone through THREE 256gb samsung ssd's. All of them failed, a bit of a power fluctuation in the office and bang (not literally), lost a shed load of work.

My faith in them needs to be recovered. I did use them back in 2010-2011 (early 2011).

I dont know if they are now reliable - it wasnt the storage method that failed, was the controllers that come fitted to the SSD, just not meant to handle fluctuations of any sort (the PC didnt even power down, lights flickered in office and lost my work).

Has anyone else had this issue?
Click to expand...

j07cmt said:
Would say this is a result of using cheap PSU's - as a regular user of computer forums, I have heard stories of failed drives but never three in a row. Samsung have got an excellent reputation for SSD's.
Click to expand...

+1

i've had times when not only lights flicker, clocks reset to 0:00, and TV gone off. yet my PC continued to run with no data loss or any sign of this happening. all thanks to Seasonic built Corsair Ax850, £120 well spent IMO.

never go cheap on the heart of your PC.
 
j07cmt said:
Would say this is a result of using cheap PSU's - as a regular user of computer forums, I have heard stories of failed drives but never three in a row. Samsung have got an excellent reputation for SSD's.
Click to expand...

750w branded power unit. I run virtual machines on an external drive, I do, intensive work with 20gb databases so whether or not it just isnt up to it, or I had bad BAD luck.
 
Carlh said:
750w branded power unit. I run virtual machines on an external drive, I do, intensive work with 20gb databases so whether or not it just isnt up to it, or I had bad BAD luck.
Click to expand...

Don't waste your money on the lottery then!
 
arad85 said:
Time flies doesn't it...

Yup. 128G are ~£70-£80 and will be 2-3x as performant (if not more) than your drive....
Click to expand...


I'm sure you are right, but I'm still getting 7.3 on my win7 experience index, which isn't bad for a 3 year old machine and SSD, so I think I'll stick with it for a while .

yyyy.JPG
 
WEI is like going to a car showroom and looking at performance specs and they say "fast, faster, very fast". it doesnt really mean much in terms of performance where the boys at MS have deemed a permormance criteria of unknown bias to be a certtain rating.
 
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neil_g said:
WEI is like going to a car showroom and looking at performance specs and they say "fast, faster, very fast". it doesnt really mean much in terms of performance where the boys at MS have deemed a permormance criteria of unknown bias to be a certtain rating.
Click to expand...

Everyone to their own, but I find it's a good comparative measure, so if I change something in the system , graphics card for instance, I can re-run the assessment to see if it has any impact, it's of no importance to me what the performance criteria is, as long as it works for me, which it does. But I appreciate it's not for everyone.
 
SSD is a good plan - make sure your most used files (OS, swap, temp) are on it. I'd probably get 256 gb as it is still sensible money.

7200rpm is great for storage - cheap and big.
 
daugirdas said:
SSD is a good plan - make sure your most used files (OS, swap, temp) are on it.
Click to expand...
If you are using swap space, you should get more RAM. It will be '000s of times quicker to access...
 
I've just ordered a custom built from Chillblast, but only having a 60gb SSD as most of the cost is going into having 16gb RAM.
Just wondered can you choose SSD or HDD drive to install on ? i.e OS and LR4, PSE10.
 
Graham00 said:
I've just ordered a custom built from Chillblast, but only having a 60gb SSD as most of the cost is going into having 16gb RAM.
Just wondered can you choose SSD or HDD drive to install on ? i.e OS and LR4, PSE10.
Click to expand...

60gb is just too small. windows uses lots of reads when starting as do your programs. This is where you see the benefit of a very fast hard drive. 60gb is barely big enough for windows and a few programs. you can get a 120gb drive for 50 quid now.....
 
I was in formed by pc specialist the windows will always be installed in the 1st primary drive on the list that you have chosen did not have the option to choose the location to have it installed.

I also read that windows only users about 15-20gb space on 64bit
 
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kevin obrian said:
I was in formed by pc specialist the windows will always be installed in the 1st primary drive on the list that you have chosen did not have the option to choose the location to have it installed.

..........
Click to expand...

You can choose on which drive to install windows, just follow the prompts.

Spacewise you are about right but SSDs are cheap enough now not to restrict yourself to 60 odd gig.
 
EOS_JD said:
60gb is just too small. windows uses lots of reads when starting as do your programs. This is where you see the benefit of a very fast hard drive. 60gb is barely big enough for windows and a few programs. you can get a 120gb drive for 50 quid now.....
Click to expand...

I dunno, my old 60gb vertex wasn't exactly slow (still faster than a mechanical) and moving to a new Samsung didn't make a huge difference performance wise. Can easily fit windows, Lightroom, cs4 suite, couple of games and loads of other tools on it.
 
i jumped on SSD train with very first generation Samsung, although it was same read/write speed of a mechanical drive, it made Windows felt a LOT faster. it's all about the 0ms seek time.

upgrading to C300 and then M4 made minimal difference in speed. too many people get hang up on spec sheet of SSDs. ANY SSD will perform miles better than a mechanical drive.


but having said that, i won't buy a £50 128GB SSD, they don't sound very reliable. Crucial, Intel and Samsung are the best brands.
 
Going from a mechanical drive to SSD is like car to motorbike in terms of speed difference. Going from older SSD to new SSD is like going from last years model bike to current year model - you would hardly notice.
 
I built up my pc earlier this year. I was initially going to put a 60GB SSD drive in but went for the 128GB instead. My SSD sits with 53GB used. My advice would be to put as big an SSD in as you can afford.
 
Graham00 said:
I've just ordered a custom built from Chillblast, but only having a 60gb SSD as most of the cost is going into having 16gb RAM.
Just wondered can you choose SSD or HDD drive to install on ? i.e OS and LR4, PSE10.
Click to expand...

Yeah you can choose what you install it on.

It basically appears like a second drive in my computer, but I would use the SSD for OS and most programs and use my hard drive for storing data such as photos, music, videos, etc. Stuff where the added speed boost of a SSD won't make a difference.

--->Didn't see the second page! >.<

Keith W said:
Talking of SSD's, this popped up today in my email: Kingston 256GB V200 SSD - £99
Click to expand...

Its a good buy, I'm tempted. But its a very slow drive in terms of SSDs. Not that it'll be that noticable as the main benefit is access times.
 
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