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What Size SSD Should I Get?
I'm building a new gaming PC and I'm not sure what size SSD I should get. It's basically a choice between 240GB or 480GB. I'll be using the SSD for the OS, games & installed programs. My music, movies etc. will go on a secondary 1TB SATA HDD.
I keep my PC as clean as possible and rarely have space used up pointlessly. I have a maximum of 3 games installed at a time, so let's say the games were around 50GB each, that'd be 150GB used up already. I'm guessing the OS (Win 10) is probably gonna be around 50GB so that's 200GB used. That means if I got a 240GB I'd have 40GB free space left. I keep hearing the more space you take up on a SSD, the slower it gets though
Which is why I was considering the 480GB. I know, it looks like I've answered the question myself, but really I'm looking for any excuse to get the 240GB as it's gonna be more within my budget. What do you guys recommend, can I get away with using the 240GB SSD or will I notice my PC slowing down seeing as I'm only gonna have approximately 40GB space free on it?
I keep my PC as clean as possible and rarely have space used up pointlessly. I have a maximum of 3 games installed at a time, so let's say the games were around 50GB each, that'd be 150GB used up already. I'm guessing the OS (Win 10) is probably gonna be around 50GB so that's 200GB used. That means if I got a 240GB I'd have 40GB free space left. I keep hearing the more space you take up on a SSD, the slower it gets though
Which is why I was considering the 480GB. I know, it looks like I've answered the question myself, but really I'm looking for any excuse to get the 240GB as it's gonna be more within my budget. What do you guys recommend, can I get away with using the 240GB SSD or will I notice my PC slowing down seeing as I'm only gonna have approximately 40GB space free on it?
Comments
The alternative would be if you buy 4 smaller regular drives instead of 1 big and raid them. It still wont be as fast as the SSD but 3 times faster then a regular drive (assuming you use raid 5 with both gives you performance and speed) and the advantage is that your data is rather safe against crashes as well.
With that you could still do fine with 240 gig, the games with most loading on the SSD and the rest on the raid unit. You would need to check that the motherboard support raiding but most do, and you would loose 25% of the harddrive space to get the parity drive (if one drive crashes you just rebuild it on a new). Still, if you get a good price on 4 smaller drives it is a very good option.
In any case, you really should have no reason for more than 480 gig, SSDs tend to beccome expensive once you go over 500 and you can always in worse case move the heavy data files from the SSD temporary and paste them back when you need them.
Ningen wa ningen da.
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I expect in years time we'll see similarly for the larger drives. I wouldn't go any smaller than 120 as a bare minimum for an SSD (assuming you have a larger capacity drive to pair it with), and the more the better past that - it's just a function of what capacity you can afford.
You want ALL the games you play on your SSD along with your OS. Trust me.
So, between an SSD and a GPU, as most of the rest of the system will be pretty stock in terms of price (the only other real question is "which CPU", and even that question is pretty closed ended) -- where do you find the right balance?
Pretty much any SATA3 (or later) SSD is in the "freaky fast" category.
a) If either drive dies, you lose everything. You effectively half your reliability.
b) You will pay almost the same price for 2x 240 as you will 1x500.
c) If you want to transfer the drive(s) later on, you have to copy it off, then copy it back on, unless you have the exact same RAID controller and hook up the drives in the exact same configuration. With a single drive, its plug and play.
I just don't think you'd really save any money, and I don't think the speed benefit you'd get from RAID 0 would make up for the additional risk in reliability - at least for most people. I'm sure you can find a few applications where you can use all the SSD speed you can get, but for most people, an SSD is already so fast that "faster" doesn't really matter that much.
I mean, if all you have left in a budget is $60 - I would argue that a 240G SSD is better than no SSD and any HDD (unless you absolutely need to store 241GB).
But yeah, that's kind of a contrived corner case: if you can afford the bigger one, get the bigger one. But that's the same rule that has applied to any and all storage for.. pretty much forever.
If I had a spare ssd, I would recommend using it for temp.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
My first SSDs were 4 raided Intel X-80 drives, worked great on my intel computer but for some reason did I have issues when I changed to an AMD. It kicked out a drive every 2 weeks and AMDs raidexpert is total crap (you have to access it through a browser while my Intel system just told me it was rebuilding the one time a SATA cable died and I had to do it on my Intel). Not sure that it was AMDs fault that they dropped out or MSIs who made the motherboard but that doesn't change the fact that Raidexpert sucks big time.
Anyways, you can raid SSDs and it did give me an extra boost with the ancient X-80. Not sure if modern raided SSDs get bottlenecked or not though or after how many drives if so.
I wouldn't put my os on a SSD (even though i do have one copy on a ssd just in case) because of all the trimm bs and the fact that and this is kinda bullshit...
Windows 10 sometimes tried to defrag your SSD on schedule. No biggie for those of us who turn it off.... But it will write your ssd to 0 lol.
Aside from that i'd never ever game on a standard hdd ever again. The difference is amazing for loadtimes.
There were issues in the early days of ssds with writing. Modern stuff would take something like 12 years of continuous writing at maximum throughput to see it. It is more likely to suffer a good old failure than the write issue of the past.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
Ive also copied games on and off, just being picky what games ( mostly MMO, some doesnt profit much from being on SSD)
Power on hours: 21 256 = 885 days.