Joined: Jan 23, 2009
Posts: 1789
Location: Central Illinois
Working on a new system and with the cost of SSD's ever dropping I'm thinking about putting a 128gb one in for OS and swapfile.
SSD owners......what has been your experience? Worth it? I"ve put in 16gig DDR3 ram at the start, would money be better spent on an additional 16gb ram and another Sata III HDD?
Mainly concerned with graphics and video production not gaming.
Other pertinent specs: ASUS z77 LK board, 3rd gen i7, GTX 560
Joined: Mar 08, 2010
Posts: 1934
Location: Northampton, UK
IMHO more RAM and extra HD would be effective for video/graphic production. You only need the speed of the SSD to load the application quickly. With more RAM everything is in memory rather than being swapped out. You'll need W7 Pro or Ultimate as the 64-bit Home Premium can only use 16Gb max.
Joined: Apr 03, 2010
Posts: 2971
Location: Loveland, Colorado
I have been using SSDs for only a year now and I will say this.
If you do alot of file saving, music editing, pictures editing, movie editing, you cant beat the performance of an SSD. My average start time with a mechanical drive was 1-2 minutes. My average start time with my SSD is 15-30 seconds. Games start quicker but thats all the performance enhancement you will get there, it doesnt make any games play better. But like I said, if you do alot of file saving, you cant go wrong.
On the other side of that coin, depending on what you do with your system. If you do alot of 3D rendering, or Video editing blah blah blah. (Sorry I sound like a broken record) I wouldnt worry about having 32GB of memory. I mean I typically use my desktop for gaming and checking my email and I have 8GB of memory. While gaming, I have the game, TS, iTume a two browsers and I barely use 4GB of my 8.
So thats just my 2 cents, take as you will
Joined: Jul 11, 2011
Posts: 387
Location: Port Richey, FL
If your doing any ammount of rendering, or alot of read/write to your storage areas, SSD is a must, you will absolutely love it, no question about it, I wish I made about 3k more a year just to afford huge ammounts of ssd purchases for my office...
100% satisfaction garunteed.
Right now I have two OCZ Vector3 60gigs in raid0, and my start time for w7 ult is around 10 seconds...literally.... 10 seconds. 1080p video rendering that used to take me 4-5 hours, now takes 45 minutes to an hour.
Do it.
Do it now.
Hurry!
Joined: Jan 03, 2012
Posts: 110
Location: Plainview, TX
Stay with the 16 gig RAM and go with SSD Well worth it.
quieter, quicker, more reliable.
boot times are sooooo fast.
sometimes i reboot just to show off to my friends.
mine is only 60 gigs , though, about a year old. so i do have to watch the space on it.
120 gigs will be no issue, just keep music and large files on other hard drive.
Joined: Apr 03, 2010
Posts: 2971
Location: Loveland, Colorado
So I dont worry about the room too much.
OS driver: 300GB intel SSD
Staorage Drive (Inbox) WD 1.5TB
Server storage: 7TB = 3x 2TB Hitachi + 1x 1TB Hitachi
I have all my games and such on my Storage drive, all my music, photos and movies on my server and my heavy program like MS, CS5 etc on my OS drive.
Its kind of a pain at first remember where everything is stored, but you get used to it.
Joined: Jan 23, 2009
Posts: 1789
Location: Central Illinois
Good thoughts, all. Thanks for your feedback guys, I'm still weighing it. I think I might install one just for the OS and swap file, and PS scratch disk. I suppose if I'm working on a really a really large file I can move it over to the SSD while editing and then move it out when done, just to benefit from the read/write performance.
The only thing I don't like is giving up one of my Sata III ports for only 128gb of storage. Mobo has 6 so once I throw out one for CD I've only got 4 left, and I like to have an eSata port tied to one also.
I'm at about 4tb of storage on board now so it's definitely just going to be an OS type situation for me. I don't think I'll even install applications on it as I don't see alot of benefit other than load times and that's not a big issue for me.
Joined: Jun 24, 2010
Posts: 117
Life just isn't the same since making my first SSD purchase a couple years ago.
When I visit my parents and use there computer without a SSD I can definitely notice a huge difference and that computer isn't to far off from mine based on other specs.
Prices have plummeted recently so there really hasn't been a better time to dive into SSDs.
You have an Intel setup and with my experience with both AMD and Intel you are better off in case you ever want to put a couple SSD in raid.
"Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle." -Abraham Lincoln
