Why you should buy an SSD

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Jamie McKane

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Why you should buy an SSD

It's 2020, and if your PC is running its operating system, applications, and games on a hard drive, it's time to take a long, hard look in the mirror.

With read and write speeds that are much slower than solid-state drives, you are literally wasting time - and your life - by using a hard drive to run your PC's operating system.
 
It would be nice to expand on QLC and TLC. Not all SSDs are equal! I almost bought a high capacity QLC but after some research I went with a Samsung TLC.

Also Primocache for the win if you can't put all your stuff on SSD.
 
Prices are still not yet reasonably comparable to platter drives. So a direct size exchange is not yet possible.
But you can run the OS off a smaller C drive, and then use a larger platter drive as the D drive and the program installation directory for larger and less used programs.
 
I have an M.2 drive in my desktop and cannot believe the difference from a 7200 Seagate.
Also put a small SSD in my notebook to replace the 2.5 and it seems at least 20 times faster..
Just saying
 
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Silicon Power 1TB NVMe M.2 PCIe Gen3x4 2280 TLC R/W up to 3,400/3,000MB/s SSD


130 USD on Amazon.
 
" it's time to take a long, hard look in the mirror."

I do this every day, and feel a bit sexy afterwards.

Note: random 4k speeds are more important than sequential read or write speeds at any depth.
 
The article does not cover real-world performance. A graph with artificial benchmarks might look impressive but a person using their pc for typical office or gaming use will not notice the 1-2 second difference in loading a game between a sata & nvme ssd. Rather go for size over absolute speed.

If you're working with huge video files or i/o intensive databases etc sure look at that superfast nvme drive.
 
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ponder said:
The article does not cover real-world performance. A graph with artificial benchmarks might look impressive but a person using their pc for typical office or gaming use will not notice the 1-2 second difference in loading a game between a sata & nvme ssd. Rather go for size over absolute speed.

If you're working with huge video files or i/o intensive databases etc sure look at that superfast nvme drive.
Click to expand...
Nvme has the advantages of no cables :p
 
ponder said:
The article does not cover real-world performance. A graph with artificial benchmarks might look impressive but a person using their pc for typical office or gaming use will not notice the 1-2 second difference in loading a game between a sata & nvme ssd. Rather go for size over absolute speed.

If you're working with huge video files or i/o intensive databases etc sure look at that superfast nvme drive.
Click to expand...
You can still notice it, just not as drastically, mostly because Nvme allows for read/write at the same time, if you have the slot, it's worth the small difference in cost (usually within R50 - SATA Nvme)
 
ponder said:
The article does not cover real-world performance. A graph with artificial benchmarks might look impressive but a person using their pc for typical office or gaming use will not notice the 1-2 second difference in loading a game between a sata & nvme ssd. Rather go for size over absolute speed.

If you're working with huge video files or i/o intensive databases etc sure look at that superfast nvme drive.
Click to expand...

Half-way agree with you. In the hierarchy of upgrades going from mechanical to any SSD is the first step as latency is the biggest improvement not speed. Then Memory. Then CPU. (Ignoring GPU for now, because priority there depends on not only if you game, but how and what you game). Getting a faster SSD is after those. The crucial swing to the Samsung for me was not performance, but endurance as my first non-Samsung SSD died an early death. The performance was secondary but nice.

In terms of NVMe and SATA - there wasn't a major price difference when I shopped around. NVMe definitely leads to cleaner build, with less cables. And it is the newer technology. Again the performance is almost secondary but nice.

I built a 3900X with plenty of RAM so the overall cost of the drive was negligible in my overall budget. If you are going to spend more than R15k on a system might as well get a good, fast NVMe. If you have an older system with mechanical harddrive a small SATA SSD for OS and programs is a very good upgrade. Wouldn't go for large SATA though it is a waste of money any way you cut it - most big volume stuff like movies or rarely played steam games etc works plenty fine on mechanical and you can always use PrimoCache to make up for it.
 
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