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I Just bought my first SSD! Do I put it in my Desktop or Laptop?

M

maniac5999

Senior member
So, almost 2 years ago I told myself that I wouldn't buy a SSD until I could get one for less than $1/gb, and earlier this week, Newegg had the Kingston V Series SNV425-S2 (128gb) for $120 after MIR, so I bit.

Now I need to decide which computer to put it in. I split my time about equally between my desktop and netbook. The desktop has a 2 year old Samsung F1 1tb drive in it, which was one of the fastest 7200rpm drives available when I bought it. The Netbook has a generic OEM Seagate 320gb, 5400rpm drive. Because of this, and the fact that the SSD is actually big enough to serve as my only drive in the netbook, I'm debating which computer to put it in. My concern with the netbook is that the drive will hurt battery life, but my battery life stinks anyway (4 hours websurfing) and I'm wondering if the loss will be significant. The other thing is if having a SSD in the netbook will be overkill, given that it only has a K8 X2 @ 2ghz and already has 4gb of RAM.

What do people think, do I put the SSD in my netbook or in my desktop?
 
Well i would suspect the netbook would show the most noticable change. I dont like laptop/netbooks so im biased. My SSD in my desktop is one of the best purchases I have made for my PC and love it.

there is a Downside: you will never want to go back to a HD again 🙁
 
Wouldn't it help the battery life in your netbook, rather than hurt it?

Honestly, it depends which computer you use more. The SSD might compensate for the shortcoming of your netbook more, making it much, much more usable. Also, the upgrade in the netbook is more straightforward - a simple reinstall, rather than a reinstall of OS on SSD, reinstall of programs on hard drive. I don't recommend cloning, however, even thought that would be simplest.
 
Termie said:
Wouldn't it help the battery life in your netbook, rather than hurt it?

Honestly, it depends which computer you use more. The SSD might compensate for the shortcoming of your netbook more, making it much, much more usable.
Click to expand...

This exactly.
 
maniac5999 said:
So, almost 2 years ago I told myself that I wouldn't buy a SSD until I could get one for less than $1/gb, and earlier this week, Newegg had the Kingston V Series SNV425-S2 (128gb) for $120 after MIR, so I bit.
Click to expand...

You're a man of your word. :thumbsup:

I went through the same thing a couple years ago, but I think my limit was $2/GB. :$

Termie said:
Wouldn't it help the battery life in your netbook, rather than hurt it?
Click to expand...

I think the Kingston drives use more power.

Termie said:
Honestly, it depends which computer you use more.
Click to expand...

This.

My other thought is that if you use the netbook as a "net" device and stream everything over WiFi, then you can probably get away with a small SSD. I think there's been deals for 60GB SSDs close to $1/GB.
 
Zap said:
You're a man of your word. :thumbsup:
I think the Kingston drives use more power.
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure it will. I can't find the review that measured idle power, but I think it was somewhere around 1.7w

Zap said:
My other thought is that if you use the netbook as a "net" device and stream everything over WiFi, then you can probably get away with a small SSD. I think there's been deals for 60GB SSDs close to $1/GB.
Click to expand...
Unfortunately, my 'Netbook' is my mobile platform, I'd need at minuimum Win7 (20gb) WoW (25gb) Civ5 (8gb) and my documents/music (5+gb) on it which really prohibits a 60gb SSD. In the desktop I could get away with a 60gb or smaller, since I can keep a lot of that stuff on the HDD.

I think that I'm going to put it in my netbook. due to it's size (and the fact that I can give my old 320gig to my roommate to put in his 5 year old Macbook Pro) Unfortunately, I don't have any windows installation media for it, and I assume that my Win7 home CD (I think it's 64 bit only) wouldn't work with my OEM (32bit) Product key. Is there any easy way to get/make installation media besides calling MSi and paying $20 for them to mail me a CD?
 
maniac5999 said:
I'm pretty sure it will. I can't find the review that measured idle power, but I think it was somewhere around 1.7w
Click to expand...

Indeed, you are quite right: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/6gb-s-ssd-hdd,2603-9.html. That is a higher idle than a 5400rpm notebook drive for sure.

But for the reasons you've mentioned, it makes more sense in your netbook. Also, it's not the highest performing drive out there. Save up for a faster drive for your desktop, where the speed will make a difference (and capacity isn't as critical).
 
Termie said:
Indeed, you are quite right: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/6gb-s-ssd-hdd,2603-9.html. That is a higher idle than a 5400rpm notebook drive for sure.

But for the reasons you've mentioned, it makes more sense in your netbook. Also, it's not the highest performing drive out there. Save up for a faster drive for your desktop, where the speed will make a difference (and capacity isn't as critical).
Click to expand...

Thanks for the link, that's exactly what I was looking for. Now for the big question, how does that stack up to a laptop HDD? Is 1.4w idle, 2.4w max, 1.3w(?) video playback and 1.8w for workstation I/O going to net me about the same power use as my HDD, better or worse?
 
maniac5999 said:
Thanks for the link, that's exactly what I was looking for. Now for the big question, how does that stack up to a laptop HDD? Is 1.4w idle, 2.4w max, 1.3w(?) video playback and 1.8w for workstation I/O going to net me about the same power use as my HDD, better or worse?
Click to expand...

Looks like your burning about 50% more power at idle, and your on the high side of the 5400rpm drives for video playback: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/laptop-notebook-hard-drive,2548-8.html. But you'd be on the low-side of 5400rpm drives for max power. So it depends what you do with the netbook. Mostly idle and waiting to be used...battery life goes down. Mostly playing movies, battery life the same. Mostly reading/writing lots of info, battery life goes up.

For typical internet surfing...probably a bit worse on the battery than your old drive.
 
dpodblood said:
This exactly.
Click to expand...

ditto on the battery life of the netbook being helped by the SSD. Nevertheless, I'd put the SSD in the your desktop. I recently upgraded my daughter's computer to an X58 along with a Kingston V+ 64gb SSD as her boot drive and this thing screams. I have an ASUS netbook that I plan to install a 64gb SSD on. I figure I won't be storing loads of stuff on it anyway. Can't see how people can possibly sit there writing papers or long documents on these netbooks anyway!
 
laptop you will love it so much because of all the savings (energy/time/on/off/hibernate) you will then buy another for your desktop.
 
lol I have this drive in my laptop and it has WORSE power consumption than the stock 320G 5400 rpm WD scorpio

if nothing else, it also runs hotter
 
Do you put it to sleep at 1 minute? it has no spin up time. daily antivirus scan time should be 15 minutes. daily backup should be significantly less time. this saves power too
 
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