InterviewSolution
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InterviewSolution
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Solve : Are you running a HDD, an SSD, or both?? |
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Answer» Just curious as to how SSD adoption is going amongst members here, would be interested to see the results of the poll. The other great thing about SSDs if you can mount them anywhere you like, with a bit of Velcro if you want to - no need to consider cooling (beyond the very basics), vibrations, mounting it on its side, or anything like that. Funny you mention this, because on my 2 gaming systems they are minitowers and I have all the bays populated and my SSD in the 2 computers is plugged in and leaning at a 45 degree angle hanging off the SATA power connector and opposite end of the 2.5" SSD drive resting on the bottom of the case. And since it weighs next to nothing and the computers are stationary no risk of it coming unplugged or the metal outer case crossing components etc. In my wifes tower which is a full height tower though I ended up mounting it with just 1 screw in a 5.25" bay without need for a tray to mount the 2.5" SSD into a 5.25" bay. The screw is tight and the SSD isnt going anywhere, its locked in good with 1 screw. * I never thought of going with velcro, but thats a good idea for the minitowers if I wanted to make it look more pretty inside vs a loose SSD hanging and leaning against the bottom of the case. But even if the drive was velcro'd in place they are pretty ugly inside anyways with extra 80 and 120mm fans added for extra airflow since the cases were never designed to remove the heat output beyond that of a Athlon XP processor with integrated graphics or a AGP video card and the power supply is 650watts and the hardware inside, all newer guts, produce heat when gaming and extra airflow was needed so that I wouldnt have to run the system with the side panel off. The one 80mm fan vents the air out the rear of the minitower and the 120mm fans I picked up on clearance from Radio Shack and have them upright CIRCULATING the air inside the tower, but more importantly blowing cooler air across the PCI and PCIe slots to assist in keeping video cards cooler as well as to help the heatsink on the bridge from getting so hot that you can burn your finger as well. The motherboards should have been designed not to have just a passive heatsink on the bridge controller, so the airflow blowing across the face of the motherboard keeps the temps in the safe operation zone without cooking components. So the airflow of the minitower is cool air enters the front and side panel holes at the bottom of the side panel, and warm air exits at both the power supply fan and the added 80mm fans that are just below the power supply, but near the CPU's to draw the warm air away from the voltage regulators and power caps in that area to avoid a hot spot air pocket of circulating air within the case. Prior to adding this 80mm fan, it was getting toasty around the CPU heatsink and when reaching in with my hand to feel the air temp throughout the case with the side panel off of it. Now it has so much airflow that dust only collects in the lower airflow areas etc, ( corners of the case etc ) so it actually keeps it cleaner longer inside too.. Quote Doubt you'll see RAM prices drop any time soon, due to the fire at the Hynix factory and subsequent price increases Wasn't aware of this fire... but this article is interesting about it: http://qz.com/124239/how-a-little-noticed-factory-fire-disrupted-the-global-electronics-supply/#Thought about getting an SSD for my HP ProBook core I3 laptop. Because it came with a WD Scorpio Black 320GB, 7200rpm, 16MB cache, I can't justify spending $150 on an SSD that's 1/3 the capacity. The Scorpio is very fast & totally silent for 1/3 the price. That makes an SSD about 5-6 times as expensive as a traditional hard drive of the same capacity. Battery life would probably be the biggest benefit, but I'm getting around 3hrs as it is. Extra battery was $30. Do the Math. I am not an EARLY adopter of new technology, maybe because I was an inventor of new technology or more likely just frugal. Quote I am not an early adopter of new technology, maybe because I was an inventor of new technology or more likely just frugal. Not bad that the battery is only $30 for a charged spare to have on hand. My laptop 9-cell battery is like $75 for a spare for t he netbook and the larger laptop last I checked was $99 for a spare so I wont be buying any spare batteries. Had they been just $30 though I'd definately buy a spare to have 2x the processing time on hand if need be. As far as not being an early adopter of new technology... I have never bought computers or anything right as it came out, mostly because I couldnt afford it and learned to wait it out for the price to drop. But also I like to buy into the technology after many people before me paid the hefty premiums and were the test subjects to work out the issues so that by the time I am buying the product or similar product it has been out long enough to be less troublesome. But also new isnt ALWAYS better. You can buy into something that seems hot and then is not which is more common with video players etc, as well as run the risk of having nothing but problems with it because it was released too quickly without adequate testing to work out the flaws in which you can buy into a lemon or headache until the bugs are worked out. I have learned to get by with less processing power, stretch the life of a computer as much as realistically possible, and buying parts, systems, devices etc after they have started to bottom out in price to save lots of money and benefit slightly later than sooner. Up until around 2002 I never bought any new computers and any new parts were just bottomed out or clearance priced hardware for example to stretch the life of a Pentium 75Mhz Dell Full height beige tower etc that I bought for $20 at a Linux Show with gaping holes in the 5.25" bays where the knock outs were gone and only a single 4x CD-Rom as mounted. And it was the cheapest working computer they had at the booth. They really wanted people to buy these used computers and then bring them over to another booth to have a group of people install a Linux to them for free to promote Linux, but I decided to use it as a way to upgrade away from the slower 486 instead. In 2002 with college I was forced to spend money to get a system that can run Visual Studio Professional .Net 2002 edition in which I tried to go the route of a cheap Celeron 700Mhz build, but the installer complained that it needed to be a Pentium Class processor II, III, or 4 so I ended up having to buy a open box HP Pavilion Pentium 4 2Ghz with Windows XP Home for $719 normally priced $999 so that I could do my college work, but I quickly realized why the prior owner brought it back. It didnt have an AGP slot so it would never run good games, so I had to sell that for like $500 and then buy a Compaq Presario S6030NX with Athlon XP 2800+ CPU in late 2003 for $549 which had AGP slot as I took the side panel off in Radio Shack to make sure it actually had the port and wasnt Integrated AGP like the HP I had prior. Since then though I have been buying motherboards and guts from Tiger Direct and Newegg and performing upgrades and new builds at the fraction of the cost of buying new, and buying parts like SSDs when they are priced to move, but also have good reviews and are not cheap because they are problems as some SSDs that were priced to move had problems, but instead priced to move because 128GB and larger SSDs are hitting the market and they need to get rid of the older stock at discounts so I save money and avoid problems in holding back and buying later vs right away with no review base to help decided yes or no to the purchase as many people purchase blindly without reviews and take the risk of getting burned. I also buy used cars the same way as I buy the computer seconds and discounted to move parts. Let someone else buy it new and take a loss on its negative equity, and when they trade it later for another car, if it is a model that has really good ratings for being trouble free, I will then check it out and if its a good buy I will buy into it. I bought a 1998 Honda Civic this way in 2008 for $3000 with 100k miles on it. Put new timing belt into it and just oil changes every 3k and gasoline on the fuel sipping 1.6 liter VTEC and today at 155,000 miles its still going strong and this car will be turning 16 years old in January with me owning it for 6 years. I cant see spending the crazy amounts of money on new cars, especially when I can do most of the work myself on them to keep them running etc all the way down to engine rebuild if ever needed etc, although I'd give the transmission work to someone else... I hate working on automatic transmissions.. I resist planned obsolescence... But benefit from it in saving myself money Quote from: Computer_Commando on October 25, 2013, 05:34:21 PM I can't justify spending $150 on an SSD that's 1/3 the capacity. I personal dont see the point either. I put a SSD in laptop just for travel purposes. Unless there is true technological advantage, I complete agree with you.Are they really still that expensive over there? If we were still talking about SSDs as a new technology to the mainstream, maybe back in 2009, I'd probably agree, because back then you were talking a few hundred £ for a 64 or 80GB drive. Nowadays an older 60GB can be bought for £30, a newer 32GB can be bought for less than that, and a new 128GB drive is around £75. A 256GB drive is generally around £120-130. To me that's not a significant price difference from a HDD when a 500GB drive (which most people don't use more than 150GB or so at most) is around £40-50. I buy mostly used parts so my 128GB SSDs have been around £50-55, making them even better value. It's definitely interesting to get different viewpoints on the subject, I just haven't seen SSDs as an early adopter technology or prohibitively expensive for about 2 years now. And as for a true advantage, I would've said the massive speed difference would be just that, but that's just my opinion I like that a 7 year old laptop can boot to Windows in 15 seconds or so and pretty much every program loads in a second or two, even after a year or so of use by someone who's, shall we say, not very technically minded, and has really given their OS a beating in terms of installing everything they can click on and doing no maintenance whatsoever. Their partner actually went and bought a new laptop, with an Ivy Bridge i3 CPU, and they both agreed the old C2D based laptop with an SSD, total cost around 1/4 of the new laptop, was much faster and better to use day to day.This one is on sale for $90US. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820239045&nm_mc=EMC-EXPRESS102613&cm_mmc=EMC-EXPRESS102613-_-EMC-102613-Index-_-SSD-_-20239045-L01A Active power consumption is not much less that traditional hard drive, 2.11W vs. 2.5-5.0W (typical) It seems like the best ones out there at this time are the Samsungs, EVO & Pro. Samsung warranty is 3 years. WD Scorpio warranty is 5 years. This indicates to me that the reliability of SSD is less than HDD. Decent review & price comparisons: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7173/samsung-ssd-840-evo-review-120gb-250gb-500gb-750gb-1tb-models-tested Quote Posted by: Calum Yes, bunt don't bet on it. Quote Are they really still that expensive over there? Prices aren't that bad for 128GB or less... here is the prices I paid for my SSD's, but I got the larger 60 and 90GB SSD's when the prices fell about 2 years ago before they rebounded due to demand. The 30 and 40 GB drives were purchased within the last year on close out prices. 30GB Corsair NOVA SATA II - $29.99 with free shipping 40GB OCZ Agility 2 SATA II - $34.99 with free shipping 60GB OCZ Agility 2 SATA II - $39.99 with free shipping and - $5.00 rebate ( Normally $44.99 without rebate with sale and was marked down from $64.99 for $20 off ) 90GB OCZ Vertex 3 SATA III - $54.99 with free shipping and - $10.00 rebate ( $64.99 if purchased without rebate and was normally priced $99.99 with instant $35 off with a blowout sale they had at www.newegg.com ) * At prices like these it was a bargain for a performance gain, but because I need storage capacity, I have to run mixed SSD paired with a HDD.I have Windows 7 on a 100 GB partition, so a 128 GB SSD would suit me just fine. However... Quote I like that a 7 year old laptop can boot to Windows in 15 seconds or so and pretty much every program loads in a second or two My 3 year old desktop can boot to Windows in 40 seconds, and pretty much every program loads in less than a second. Except Firefox, but then I tend to start it after boot and leave it running all day. However, the prices are getting so low now. Quote Calum stated .... Doubt you'll see RAM prices drop any time soon, due to the fire at the Hynix factory and subsequent price increases Decided to look up my 8GB RAM stick that came with that $72 bundle Biostar AM3+ Motherboard and the 8GB DDR3 1600 Crucial Ballistix Sport ... Price only increased by $5.00 for that same RAM stick. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148540 Attached is the deal I got... could not pass that up getting a $62.99 8GB DDR3 1600 stick of RAM for FREE with that AM3+ motherboard that would run my existing quadcore until the AMD FX-8350 8-core 4Ghz is purchased at some point. * After this purchase I realized I should have picked up 2 of these to upgrade my wife away from the Core 2 Duo E6600 setup or have 16GB RAM and a spare motherboard..LOL [recovering disk space, attachment deleted by admin] Quote from: Computer_Commando on October 26, 2013, 10:46:08 AM Active power consumption is not much less that traditional hard drive, 2.11W vs. 2.5-5.0W (typical)magnetic platter hard drives will either need to be kept spinning, or spun up when needed, which takes up a lot more power, though. Quote Samsung warranty is 3 years. WD Scorpio warranty is 5 years. Samsung's magnetic Platter drives have 3 year warranties, and WD's SSD drives have 5 year warranties. You could just as easily reverse that and say since Samsung's platter drives have 3 year warranties and WD's SSD drives have 5 year warranties, that SSDs are more reliable. Fact is of course that the warranty is designated by the company itself. If you want to compare two types of products for reliability I'm not sure that the warranty period would be a good indicator even if it was the same company, but it's pretty much useless when we're talking about two different companies. |
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