SSD or Velociraptor?

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RANGAdude

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Hey guys,

New here obviously. I have recently (about 2 months ago) built a new rig with, these components:
i5-750
HD5870
CoolerMaster GX750Watt power supply
Hitachi 1TB 7200rpm HDD
Asus Evo Motherboard (supporst SATA 6, USB 3.0)
4GB Kingston 1600Mhz RAM

So I haven't listed everything in my rig but for my question I'm quite sure this is enough information. I have been thinking of getting a new HDD for my OS, games and applications as the one i have isn't exactly blazingly fast. I've thought about SSD's but these are really quite expensive and don't hold that much. I have about 200GB's taken up with games, applications and my OS atm. I have found a great drive on an australian site (as i am aussie) but here is a link to your beloved newegg :p Newegg.com - Western Digital VelociRaptor WD6000HLHX 600GB 10000 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
This one stood out to me as it has the SATA 6/GBs connection and is a lot bigger than most other fast drives. Still a bit pricey but imo greater value than SSD.
What do you guys think? Don't have the money this instant to buy it but still would like your feedback.
Regards
 
In my personal opinion you should use 2 hard drives. You should use a small SSD for your OS, and a large fast Sata drive for your games and applications.
It's generally not a great idea to put everything on 1 drive. If the OS drive gets corrupted all your games are still there, and vice versa.

You'll get better benchmark performance from a SSD, which is to be expected. But ask yourself this. Is that 3 seconds extra you wait for a game to load, or a big file to transfer, worth the degradation and eventual failure of the SSD? That VelociRaptor is built on technology that is proven and it will most likely last a few years if you take care of it. That SSD won't last very long without strict maintenance.

EDIT: And by "won't last very long" I mean that SSDs are notorious for slowly degrading in performance. Every time you write to a SSD the performance drops a fraction of a percent, but that adds up over time. If you're running games and apps, installing things and deleting them, and just generally using it, a SSD is going to degrade fast. This is why I recommended using it as the OS drive.

Then again, maybe I'm way off base. And if I am I'm sure one of the TF junkies will show up eventually and share with you their knowledge. Until then take what I say as my opinion.
 
The Velociraptors don't worth the extra money in my opinion, you won't see a very noticeable gain by changing to a Velociraptor.
Regarding the SSD their technology have improved a lot and the degradation almost none, thanks to the TRIM technology. You should wait for someone with an SSD to comment.

I would buy the SSD if I had the need and the money.
 
If you have the money I'd go with dual SSD's if your primary objective is speed. One SSD isn't big enough for much anything these days and you will not benefit from just putting your OS on it if your main concern is games loading slow. With 2 (2x128GB for instance) in RAID you will have 256GB which is acceptable. However, this is probably going to cost around $300 USD and seems a bit ridiculous.

I have a SATA III (6gb/s) WD Caviar Black with 64MB cache and I don't mind the load times. Windows boots fast and games load reasonably quickly. It isn't lightning speed but it only cost $80 for 640GB, leaving room to buy a good CPU and GPU which are much more important when gaming.
 
Don't know how things are now but a few months ago TRIM didn't support RAID so I don't recommend it, I may be outdated though.

Personally I don't think is worth buying a SSD now, unless you usually work with very large files, like editing HD videos. One 128GB SSD is more than enough for the OS and three or four games, mainly the ones you're playing at the moment.
 
RichM499 said:
In my personal opinion you should use 2 hard drives. You should use a small SSD for your OS, and a large fast Sata drive for your games and applications.
It's generally not a great idea to put everything on 1 drive. If the OS drive gets corrupted all your games are still there, and vice versa.

You'll get better benchmark performance from a SSD, which is to be expected. But ask yourself this. Is that 3 seconds extra you wait for a game to load, or a big file to transfer, worth the degradation and eventual failure of the SSD? That VelociRaptor is built on technology that is proven and it will most likely last a few years if you take care of it. That SSD won't last very long without strict maintenance.

EDIT: And by "won't last very long" I mean that SSDs are notorious for slowly degrading in performance. Every time you write to a SSD the performance drops a fraction of a percent, but that adds up over time. If you're running games and apps, installing things and deleting them, and just generally using it, a SSD is going to degrade fast. This is why I recommended using it as the OS drive.

Then again, maybe I'm way off base. And if I am I'm sure one of the TF junkies will show up eventually and share with you their knowledge. Until then take what I say as my opinion.
Click to expand...

SSDs are about a lot more than loading times, it's more like would I rather have my system be sluggish but use older technology or would I rather have it be pleasant to use and on the cutting edge. SSD performance degradation isn't an issue like it used to be, now that Windows 7 is out and all decent drives support TRIM SSDs will continue to perform much like they did when they were new. I do agree with using two hard drives though.

Comparing a SSD to any conventional hard drive is like comparing a minivan to a Bugatti Veyron, sure the van holds more and is cheaper but if you want performance the Veyron is the obvious choice.

Also the SATA 6/GBs on the vleocirapor is irrelevant since it can't even saturate a SATA 1.5/GBs connection.
 
Go with the SSD. I'am using the Intel X25M 80GB SSD. You can download an SSD management tool which defragments and looks after your SSD, you just run it once a week and your SSD will not decrease in performance. It only works for the Intel X25 series of SSD's though. BTW iam Aussie to, I buy from PC Case Gear, great site, cheap prices.
 
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