Need Some HDD vs SSD Advice

C

CustomModAddict

Limp Gawd
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Sep 2, 2010
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Im not a HDD or SSD expert by far. But thinking about putting in a SSD in a build I am doing for my sons gaming rig. And with all these changes in technology I am curious.

The mobo I am installing will be SATA 6.0 Gb/s and since the SDD are still a little pricey for a 14 year old boys gaming computer. I am beginning to wonder if I really need it. Is the additional speed of SSD really gonna make that much of a difference for the cost?

Options:

1TB 7200RPM Sata 6 GB/s with 64 MB Cache

OCZ Agility 90 GB Sata II SSD

Or any other recommendations.

I want to know if spending the $200.00 something odd bucks for the SSD is really going to make a difference in his gaming experience. I know the OS will go on the SSD and I am sure he should be able to fit a few of his favorite games. And he can use the HDD for data and other applications.

OR would I be better off doing a raid system of some type.

Please point me in the right direction.

Thanks
 
Personally, I prefer setting up mirrored drives for people that aren't going to be building and maintain it themselves. That way when a drive craps out it won't require a complete rebuild of the whole setup (and all of my time to do it).

Yes, an SSD is going to be faster. Some folks will argue faster is always better, but I'd rather have redundancy instead.
 
An SSD will definitely give you an overall better performance experience. A mechanical HDD on a 6GB/s controller will not give you the same experience as am SSD on a 3GB/s interface. The SSD will blow it away.

If it is gaming you speak of, the HDD will only come into play when loading levels and loading the game itself. With an SSD, both of those will be faster than a regular HDD, but when you are actually in the game, the bottlenecks are mostly GPU bound (with CPU and memory also playing a role).

$200 will not get you much in terms of capacity if you buy an SSD and since some of the games out there can install 10GB or more of data on your HDD, that would fill up a small SSD very quickly.

RAID is not really something you want to introduce especially into a 14 y/o's system. I would stick with a 2 drive setup though. A small fast HDD for the OS and a larger 7200rpm drive for Apps/games.

If you want to make sure things are backed up, use an external HDD or USB drive. RAID 1 is not a substitute for backup.
 
Depends on which games he plays. If he's an MMO addict, a SSD will make a big difference. For an FPS, though, it will mostly be a decrease in load times with a small positive effect on fps

One 90GB drive will not be sufficient for most children - he'll likely be downloading tons of educational music & videos. Plus at least 10 GB for each game.

I agree 100% with the guy who suggested two drives in raid 1 (mirrored). The time saved/crisis situation averted when a drive dies (ALWAYS the night before a major paper is due) is priceless.
 
I'd stick with a regular hard drive for now. You can always upgrade to an SSD later on.

SSD's are ridiculously expensive right now and they're just going to get faster/bigger/cheaper as time goes by.
 
+1 to everyone. Thanks a lot, the $200.00 I would be spending can be used a lot better on the other parts of the systems. And as mentioned, I can always add an SSD later when the prices and capacity are better.

Thanks!
 
Burner27 said:
RAID is not really something you want to introduce especially into a 14 y/o's system.
Click to expand...

Why not? Set the drives up in a motherboard RAID1 mirror and leave it be. There''s nothing about the operation of it that'd be any different to the kid than a single drive setup. Going with a 2 separate (OS & data) drive setup just means it'll be that much more hassle to reinstall it when the drives die. The upside is it'll be easier for Dad to rebuild it. Use a pair of quicker drives and there won't be much of a speed hit.

As for adding an SSD later, errr, no. It's not that simple. You're basically talking about totally reinstalling the OS and all the programs. Just be aware the switch would end up taking more work than build the machine that way from the start.
 
Stick with the normal hard drive for now - the performance increase going to SSD won't be worth the space cost and dollar cost for his likely usage patterns.
 
wkearney99 said:
Why not? Set the drives up in a motherboard RAID1 mirror and leave it be. There''s nothing about the operation of it that'd be any different to the kid than a single drive setup. Going with a 2 separate (OS & data) drive setup just means it'll be that much more hassle to reinstall it when the drives die. The upside is it'll be easier for Dad to rebuild it. Use a pair of quicker drives and there won't be much of a speed hit.

As for adding an SSD later, errr, no. It's not that simple. You're basically talking about totally reinstalling the OS and all the programs. Just be aware the switch would end up taking more work than build the machine that way from the start.
Click to expand...

Overhead and performance. RAID 1 is not a substitute for backup.
 
your son is 14, he doesn't need an SSD. spend the money on a better graphics card. that will be a much more noticeable performance increase.

put the ssd in your computer.
 
Burner27 said:
Overhead and performance. RAID 1 is not a substitute for backup.
Click to expand...

Never claimed it was. The performance hit for it on a modern machine with fast drives really isn't going to be all that much of a problem. The upside to it is when one drive tanks you usually don't have to start over completely from scratch. This would save Dad from the time to set it all back up again. Just replace the drive and rebuild the mirror. It's often easy enough to talk someone else through doing it over the phone.

And, of course, having actual backups of important data is still necessary. That's so obvious it hardly bears mentioning.
 
Burner27 said:
RAID is not really something you want to introduce especially into a 14 y/o's system.
Click to expand...

Psshhh! When I was 14 I was having to learn about DMA's, IRQ's and Base Memory just so I could get my DOS games to work. At this age their brains are really starting to kick into high gear.

If the child is into computers, I say buy 2 $50 drives and RAID 0 them and let the kid go at it. If the array fails, he'll get to learn stuff.

Don't dumb it down just its a kid....give them oppurtunity to learn stuff. I spent lots of days after school and weekends trying to figure stuff out back then, since we didn't have stuff like Google and forums...just crap like Compuserve. Kids got nothing BUT time to learn this stuff.
 
af22 said:
your son is 14, he doesn't need an SSD. spend the money on a better graphics card. that will be a much more noticeable performance increase.

put the ssd in your computer.
Click to expand...

QFT- I put one in my machine at work and it has made a really big improvement in my day to day operations.
 
Burner27 said:
Overhead and performance. RAID 1 is not a substitute for backup.
Click to expand...
Raid 1 is great for reliability and uptime, which is exactly what you are looking for in a family computer. When the hard drive breaks at 4pm on the Sunday before the kid's final paper is due, the stress level for the whole family spikes and the pressure is on you.

God forbid the replacement hard drive should end up DOA, back ordered, or lost in transit - you'll be hearing about "the time it took you a month to fix the computer" for the rest of your life.
 
thefreeaccount said:
Raid 1 is great for reliability and uptime, which is exactly what you are looking for in a family computer. When the hard drive breaks at 4pm on the Sunday before the kid's final paper is due, the stress level for the whole family spikes and the pressure is on you.

God forbid the replacement hard drive should end up DOA, back ordered, or lost in transit - you'll be hearing about "the time it took you a month to fix the computer" for the rest of your life.
Click to expand...

Aside from constant dieing hard drive, don't you also have calls relating to spyware and viruses?
 
Thanks everyone, all great advice. I think I will do some type of raid setup. Since he lives a 1000 miles away. I want to do something that will give him speed and a back up, in the event he does have a failure. He can simply recover. I forget the raid number descriptions, I will google them. But I think 3 drives, 2 running like a raid 0 and then a 3rd drive for a mirror back up of the other two. Guess that would be raid 1?

Thank you everyone, I think the raid is probably better for the situation, as its not very easy for me to just run over and fix it. At least with a raid and a back up he can figure it out or I can walk him through it over the phone.

And FYI its gonna be a i7 930 and a GTX 470, I may upgrade the memory from 6 to 12 with the money saved.
 
CustomModAddict said:
Thanks everyone, all great advice. I think I will do some type of raid setup. Since he lives a 1000 miles away. I want to do something that will give him speed and a back up, in the event he does have a failure. He can simply recover. I forget the raid number descriptions, I will google them. But I think 3 drives, 2 running like a raid 0 and then a 3rd drive for a mirror back up of the other two. Guess that would be raid 1?
Click to expand...
That's RAID 5. That's not the best option to use in a Windows environment unless you're spending the extra cash for a true hardware RAID controller (typically $250 to $450 minimum)

For simplicity's sake, stick to RAID 1 plus a NAS, file server or external hard drive as a backup of that RAID 1,.
CustomModAddict said:
And FYI its gonna be a i7 930 and a GTX 470, I may upgrade the memory from 6 to 12 with the money saved.
Click to expand...

For gaming, a Core i7 930 CPU isn't really needed as the Core i5 750/760 provides 99% of the performance advantage while being $100 cheaper just for the CPU alone. Then there's the costs of the motherboard. You can easily save $150 by switching to a Core i5 750/760 setup and still get 99% of the performance in games.

Alternatively, if you still want to stick to the i7 930 for some reason, I would recommend spending that $200 and ditch the GTX 470 and going for a GTX 460 1GB SLI setup. That'll definitely outperform the GTX 470 and will provide a more tangible difference in performance than an extra 6GB of RAM for a gaming PC.
 
Danny Bui said:
That's RAID 5. That's not the best option to use in a Windows environment unless you're spending the extra cash for a true hardware RAID controller (typically $250 to $450 minimum)

For simplicity's sake, stick to RAID 1 plus a NAS, file server or external hard drive as a backup of that RAID 1,.


For gaming, a Core i7 930 CPU isn't really needed as the Core i5 750/760 provides 99% of the performance advantage while being $100 cheaper just for the CPU alone. Then there's the costs of the motherboard. You can easily save $150 by switching to a Core i5 750/760 setup and still get 99% of the performance in games.

Alternatively, if you still want to stick to the i7 930 for some reason, I would recommend spending that $200 and ditch the GTX 470 and going for a GTX 460 1GB SLI setup. That'll definitely outperform the GTX 470 and will provide a more tangible difference in performance than an extra 6GB of RAM for a gaming PC.
Click to expand...

Danny thanks buddy. Thats the kind of advice I like to see. Anything that saves money is a good thing. I will post in the appropriate catagory and get the consensus on a set-up. But I see switching to the i5 core, and mobo saves $300.00 total, and I can get 2 gtx 460's dirt cheap. Do you think that i5 set-up with SLI 460's and say 12Gb ram will get him by a few years?
 
CustomModAddict said:
Danny thanks buddy. Thats the kind of advice I like to see. Anything that saves money is a good thing. I will post in the appropriate catagory and get the consensus on a set-up. But I see switching to the i5 core, and mobo saves $300.00 total, and I can get 2 gtx 460's dirt cheap. Do you think that i5 set-up with SLI 460's and say 12Gb ram will get him by a few years?
Click to expand...

Do note that short of using a 3 x 4GB RAM setup, 12GB of RAM is not possible with the Core i5 setup.

Anyway, a Core i5 750/760 + GTX 460 1GB SLI + 4GB of RAM should get by just about any gamer for a few years.

I recommend posting in the General Hardware subforum since we usually do give advice on how to save money on hardware.
 
Have you looked into the Hybrid drives?

I have read good articles about them and even picked up a 500GB Momentus XT from the egg for like $130 to use as my secondary drive w/ my F240 SSD.
 
In my entire life i've only had one hard drive die on me ever. And even in that one case it got to be incredibly loud before it gave out so I had ample warning. Now compared to the amount of cases where noobies install malware/spyware on accident and screw up their windows install - it's happened hundreds of times. Perhaps you should look into using high quality power supplys and low rpm hard drives to extend the life of your client's drives. (also avoid maxtor and quantum hard drives)
 
ZodaEX said:
also avoid maxtor and quantum hard drives
Click to expand...

They're both long gone. Quantum sold it's hard drive division to Maxtor in 2001. Maxtor was bought by Seagate in 2006.

IBM/Hitachi Deskstars (Deathstars) were the ones to watch out for back in the day. Nowadays I think all the major drive brands are reliable.
 
Un-Reliable is so freaking true. In two years I have lost three drives, 1 in my PC and 2 MAC drives. But the MAC drives were in my MAC book pro, lap top so that could have been from being mobile. It happens thats for sure. And after those three failures I have learned to back up the back up :)
 
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