Worth getting an SSD for my rig?

[sanzen07]

I'm not really in the market to build a new PC but I am interested in potentially getting an SSD for the one I already have. I've heard this is one of the best upgrades that can be done. I'm a little hesitant because my rig is almost 5 years old now so I was wondering if it's even worth it...

 

[nubki11a]

Not sure, it is supposed to help a lot. It would be worth it getting a small one and using it for SRT, but you need a Z68 Motherboard for that..

 

[Coup27]

Yes. It is worth getting an SSD for any rig. The difference over a HDD for general OS use is massive.

 

[groberts101]

I can't imagine life without them now. Well.. I can.. but I prefer not to work off an HDD based system. lol

I have an SSD running from a cheap IDE to SATA adapter on my kids Pentium 4 machine which hits a "massive" 26MB/s max speed. The difference in response with any thing they do on their play rig is amazing compared to the original 80GB drive.

Totally woke that old system up and worth every penny, IMO. The same effect applies to just about any machine with the slowest/most bottlenecked systems(such as laptops) receiving the largest percievable benefit from them.

Plus.. you can always carry them forward to any other machine you decide to upgrade to later on.

 

[Puppies04]

I certainly won't be going back to HDDs for my OS and favorite games, Pick up a 120gb drive install windows and your most played games on it and you will never look back. Plus as already pointed out you can always carry the SSD forwards when you do decide to upgrade your rig.

 

[RavenSEAL]

Not worth it if you don't have a SATAIII motherboard IMO.

 

[jhansman]

My upgrade ended up being pretty much built around having an SATA 3 SSD for a boot drive. Can't imagine ever going back to booting from a spinner. I could have put one in my X4 SATA 2 system, but I figured it was time to move up.

 

[know of fence]

Yes. It is worth getting an SSD for any rig. The difference over a HDD for general OS use is massive.

... when it comes to general responsiveness, faster loading times, faster boot times, I doubt it will do much for frame rates.

SATA revision 2.0 (SATA 3 Gbit/s) is sufficient even if you max out the bandwidth on rare occasion. It's all about the random reads anyway (100x faster than HDD) and when it comes to sequential reads~250 MiB /s is still plenty.

Intel SSD 320 doesn't even reach the ~250 MiB/s (3 Gbit/s) threshold, though the expensive drives certainly do.

 

[greenhawk]

Plus.. you can always carry them forward to any other machine you decide to upgrade to later on.

+1

it is not like bying a new radio for the car or mag wheels, it is a re-usable part.

OP, depends on what you do with the computer, the SSD will help with day to day making the system feel a lot snappier. You only need a 60-12GB drive as the existing raptor will do fine as a programs / games drive (for the ones you do not install on the SSD).

upgrading the ram to 8GB is possible, but limited benifit unless needing more ram (otherwise windows is generally good at caching files in excess RAM). The GPU could do with a upgrade if you are a gamer, but the 23" monitor proberly is not showing signs of needed a super fast GPU.

Getting a good after market cooler and doing a little overclocking can help in some things as well ,but then most games released recently are generally console ported, so even 5 year old hardware still runs them acceptably.

All told though, that would be a bit over $500ish for most of the above changes. Of course, best to improve in areas you are likly to get the best benift from.

 

[LokutusofBorg]

yes. It is worth getting an ssd for any rig. The difference over a hdd for general os use is massive.

+1

not worth it if you don't have a sataiii motherboard imo.

-100

 

[pitz]

In random I/O, which is most of what is done on a Windows machine, typically when the drive is only transfering 1-2mb/sec. If you get a SSD, these operations are sped up sometimes by a factor up to 100X. It really makes that much of a difference.

And best of all, as the others have described, its not a part that you throw out. Unless you're into super-high-performance, its likely that a SSD you buy today will still be very adequate performance-wise 5-10 years from now.

 

[Coup27]

Not worth it if you don't have a SATAIII motherboard IMO.

No offense, but if thats what you think, then you have missed the entire point of SSD's.

 

[zuffy]

Not worth it if you don't have a SATAIII motherboard IMO.

This is so wrong.

 

[Hulk]

Not worth it if you don't have a SATAIII motherboard IMO.

I'm curious as to what you base that opinion?
SATAII will do 250MB/sec. Besides sequential read/write no other benches approach that metric. SATAII systems show HUGE real world performance gains when moving from HDD to SSD. It has for me anyway!

 

[d4a2n0k]

I slapped an SSD into a 6 year old laptop with SATA I and its a huge difference. You do not need SATA III to see the benefits.

 

[sanzen07]

Cool - thanks for all the input guys. I'll be picking up an Intel 120GB SSD!

 

[DesiPower]

I bough a 32 GB SSD for a Pentium D 945 computer that's hooked up with my big screen TV. It was definitely the best upgrade I ever did. That comp was dead slow, would take ages to boot and open the browser, not its much much faster, I was about to build a new rig but now I feel I dont need to for another year or two!!

 

[sm625]

I'm not really in the market to build a new PC but I am interested in potentially getting an SSD for the one I already have. I've heard this is one of the best upgrades that can be done. I'm a little hesitant because my rig is almost 5 years old now so I was wondering if it's even worth it...

If its 5 years old then what you doin with win 7? nm I dont think I want to know.

If you act in the next 3 days you can newegg a 32GB Torx2 SSD for $45 (wtf!) I think I'm gonna buy one myself. At the very least get one of those and put your OS and your favorite game or program on it.

 

[pitz]

If its 5 years old then what you doin with win 7? nm I dont think I want to know.

5-year-old machines run Win7 just fine...

If you act in the next 3 days you can newegg a 32GB Torx2 SSD for $45 (wtf!) I think I'm gonna buy one myself. At the very least get one of those and put your OS and your favorite game or program on it.

What use is a 32gb SSD for Win7? You'd barely get the OS and maybe Office installed, but not much else. 128gb is a good starting size these days, basically Win7 + Office + 2 or 3 games.

 

[DesiPower]

*Snip*

What use is a 32gb SSD for Win7? You'd barely get the OS and maybe Office installed, but not much else. 128gb is a good starting size these days, basically Win7 + Office + 2 or 3 games.

wrong, I have win 7 ultimate, office and tons of other programs (no games) and the size (before hibernate and pagefile) is just 18 GB.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yes. It is worth getting an SSD for any rig. The difference over a HDD for general OS use is massive.

Aside from a few particular things, like virus scans, the overall effect of an SSD is actually quite minimal.

I have two 30GB OCZ Agility SSDs in RAID-0 on this box. And Firefox still takes a second to open.

 

[Coup27]

Aside from a few particular things, like virus scans, the overall effect of an SSD is actually quite minimal.

I have two 30GB OCZ Agility SSDs in RAID-0 on this box. And Firefox still takes a second to open.

I would say that is more down to your choice of SSD than anything else. The original Agility was hardly fast to begin with crippled with the fact it is only 30GB.

Also, RAID0'ing SSD's will have virtually no increase on 4k read speeds.

 

[groberts101]

for some that may be true, Larry.. but you obviously do not have usage level that would really see the greatest gains from an SSD if it took you this long to even bite that bullet and get one. Not to try and single you out or pick on you here as obviously everyone has a valid opinion to share.. but many here have seen you post of your unecessary need for increased speed and the requirement for a certian GB/$$$ threshold to be reached. Just makes me think that you are overbiased against them for whatever reason, is all. Dunno, maybe you raised that bar too high from an expected increase in percieved user experience?

The other point to consider is that you can do all that stuff mentioned above(and so much more) at any one time/simultaniously.. which an HDD would surely penalize you for. Then there's the likely probability that you have not booted back to an HDD based OS since you got those SSD's running on your rig. You get spoiled more than you know since Windows built in caching algorithms won't save you all the time and SSD just works all the time.

It's also very peculiar how one's perspective is such that we don't see as huge a gain(in light usage at least) when we move TO an SSD.. but when we move AWAY from it and revert back to HDD?.. we realize just how good they actually are for the overall experience.

Then there's the fact that even my kids(9 and 11) can see the obvious benefits even on their hand-me-down Pentium 4 system. Not to mention all my other nieces and nephew's using them in their parents systems I've built. That inexperienced and unbiased perspective alone always gets me wondering how people just don't see the near instant response that they have to offer. Seems clear as day even when just navigating the OS/apps GUI without even tasking the system with job requirements.

Anywho.. the OP is well on his way to a great experience and will surely dread booting to HDD based systems once he get's familiar with these things. Once that bar gets raised for the weakest link in a PC?.. there's no going back.