I'm looking into buying a 250GB SSD for my gaming PC (I'm not a 1% billionaire that can afford anything bigger). Will this improve overall performance, or just loading times? Your testimonials would be appreciated.
If your budget is super tight, it might not be worth it for gaming alone because it will really just improve loading times. However, for general usability of a PC, I would absolutely recommend it. I will never buy another computer without an SSD again.
If your budget is super tight, it might not be worth it for gaming alone because it will really just improve loading times. However, for general usability of a PC, I would absolutely recommend it. I will never buy another computer without an SSD again.
If your budget is super tight, it might not be worth it for gaming alone because it will really just improve loading times. However, for general usability of a PC, I would absolutely recommend it. I will never buy another computer without an SSD again.
I'd had a 250GB for a few years now that I have just my programs and games on and I haven't had any issues. I used a traditional HDD for media storage. Depending on what games you play, the 250 might require some file management (like newer games that are 50+ gigs you won't be able to leave installed).
An SSD is a quality-of-life improvement. It won't make games run better, but it will make using your computer a much more pleasant experience. It will boot faster and it will load all apps and games (installed on it) faster. As in, around 90% faster. An SSD is the biggest, cheapest improvement you can make to your everyday computer experience, but it won't change the way you play games. That being said, I would never recommend building a computer without one at this point, no matter what.
If you are planning to install your games ONLY on this drive, and not on any other HDDs you might have, then you should get a bigger one, though. Otherwise, do what I do: install the big ones/ones you play the most often on the SSD, and everything else on an HDD.
It's like getting a better monitor. It's not really worth it. If you have nothing to directly compare it to, you don't really know what you're missing out on. Once you get it, you'll notice that it's a nice improvement and think it's awesome, but it quickly becomes the norm for you. After that, you can never go back.
An SSD isn't essential, but it's a damn nice thing to have. I boot the OS and any games that I'm currently playing on it. Basically anything that you want to load fast. Just use your mechanical drive for bulk storage of small files or stuff you don't access a lot.
Just use the SSD as you boot drive, i.e. it has the OS and you most used programs on it. All you storage of pictures, videos, temp files, documents and other stuff is on you storage drive.
There are videos that show you how to make your smaller SSD be the boot drive and how to set up you computer so that downloads and other files are saved to the other drive as a default. Its not hard at all (even I did it), but the advice of a video that shows you all the step helps.
It will slightly improve loads in games and majorly improve OS booting etc. Deus ex is a recent game with extremely long load times, moved it to my ssd shaved about about 10-15 secs (still about 30sec-min sometimes). If it's in the budget it doesn't hurt, but honestly for games it's not that necessary however it makes booting up the OS super rapid.
I've put 250GB SSDs (the cheaper ones - the modern stuff which is far from premium are still much faster than small platter drives for large reads/writes and orders of magnitude faster for fragmented loads that have to jump around files on the physical storage medium) into $400 laptops before. Absolutely no qualms with it - an SSD is the most important single investment in improved user experience you can make with a modern PC (running modern Windows, which you likely want to for gaming). Yes, adding $70-80 to your costs can be a lot but every moment you're waiting for the desktop to load or the app you're wanting to use to finish is time that you're paying to get rid of; every OS stall that leaves the system unresponsive as the platter drive is overwhelmed is something you don't need to experience with a good budget SSD installed for the OS, main apps, and current games you're playing.
Yes, you're mainly just eating into idle time with this investment but that means every load screen is significantly reduced. In older games they are simply removed - sometimes you need to apply some mods to ensure this happens, for example Mass Effect 2 has 10 to 20 second load videos that play once through before looping (even if the load finished first); by editing them you can move to near-instant loads in the game using an SSD as they now take tenths of a second. This is one of the things that annoys me about these current consoles: they often have such long load times and an SSD would completely fix the issue - they only have 8GB of RAM so an SSD can fill that all in seconds, there's no excuse to ever wait 2 minutes for the load to happen.
I have my OS, most programs and a few thousand pictures on my SSD. Interestingly, it took two minutes to search for all 22,000 JPEGs on my 7200 RPM HDD, but only one minute on the SSD.
@yabbering_yeti: I would be putting my OS and main programs on it along with games. The HDD will be for storage at that point. I'll just hafta manage my games like a console (uninstall the ones I'm not currently playing)..
Yeah, put your OS on it. It is worth the cash just to hit the power button, type your password, and be ready to go before you swallow a sip of your drink. I want to get a large SSD for game storage, but like yourself, can't justify performance vs. cost.
If you had the budget and you put your OS on it (along with your programs), then yes, most definitely.
The biggest benefit of an SSD is having your computer boot and shut off faster by installing your OS on it and then having your HDD store your bigger media files or games.
It's gotten cheaper now, so it's totally worth it. Even relatively high-end 250GB SSD's like the X400 goes for under $80 these days. It always depends on your needs and budget, but it will eliminate that bottleneck.
It will only improve loading times. The storage device in your compute has no impact on gaming performance, so you won't see improved frame rates choosing an SSD over an HDD. That said, packing an SSD in your computer is the single best improvement you can make. Everything loads so much faster and just makes things feel so much smoother.
You won't have to sell a leg to buy one either. I purchased my 1TB SSD for just $300.
You want a 512GB minimum SSD these days, unless you are happy to keep on installing and uninstalling games.
It depends on what you play too, some games like GTA V, Witcher 3 and DOOM are 50GB+ but a lot of others are of course nowhere near that big.
I am surprised to see many people talk about SSDs for OS loading...I very, very rarely boot my PC from a turned off state. Sleep mode is more power efficient than turning your PC off entirely and better for your components.
Your PC will use more power having to go through booting than it would just sitting in standby for a few hours and by turning off your PC, you are removng the electrical charge which puts your components through more strain when turned back on than they would feel if left in standby/sleep.
The best thing about SSDs is that every little thing your computer does will be done much quicker. It can't render game graphics, per say, but it can retrieve the assets for the graphics faster. An SSD is a must for just about the whole computer.
It only gives you benefit, however, if the OS is installed on it. That's pretty much a requirement, or else the benefits of an SSD aren't really worth it. Anything at or above 256GB should be fine for OS stuff and a few games you'd like to prioritize, and we're at a point now where it's not too expensive to do it.
If you use the computer daily, Moving your operating system and frequently used programs to an SSD, is one of the biggest lifestyle improvements you can make! relative to the cost.
Ideally you want to be able to have you operating system, as well as some games and programs that you use often on it. I was struggling on my 120 GB SSD, which was fine when i bought it, but last year, with games getting huge, all i could fit on it was basically windows and battlefield 4. I bought a 500 GB SSD to replace it, and after installing everything i wanted on it, i leveled out at about 100 GB free.
A samsung 850 evo 250 goes for about $80-100, if you think you can manage on 250 , go for it, otherwise, the 500 GB model is usually around $160-180 as an example.
Once you experience the first boot of your PC with SSD, you will think back to all years prior and consider yourself to have been a primitive beast-man, no different to our Neanderthal ancestors.
It only gives you benefit, however, if the OS is installed on it. That's pretty much a requirement, or else the benefits of an SSD aren't really worth it. Anything at or above 256GB should be fine for OS stuff and a few games you'd like to prioritize, and we're at a point now where it's not too expensive to do it.
This is not true. You can get the benefits of the SSD without having OS on it. For example: games from non-OS SSD will still load faster than they would from regular HDD and things video editing is much faster if your cache/input files are on the SSD even if the program (+OS) is on a regular HDD.
SSD's are the greatest invention since sliced bread. They are also getting affordable. At this point I would advice on going for a 500GB model though. Yes it's more expensive but I guarantee you that once you have a 250GB installed you'll be wanting a bigger one. Put your OS on there and Steam and it will fill up in no time. It's just about the best upgrade you can do to revitalize an older system.
My gf has an older Dell laptop that came with windows 7. She wanted to buy a new MacBook because she prefers the Mac now. Although I prefer Apple computers I thought it was a waste of money for the amount we use computers at home. I put an ssd drive in her Dell and she was blown away. It used to take minutes for it get to windows loading screen and even longer for windows to load and be useable. Now you are in windows and cruising the web in 30 seconds. After that I discovered her Dell motherboard could take processor upgrades. This laptop seems as fast as a newer model. Buy the SSD.
It only gives you benefit, however, if the OS is installed on it. That's pretty much a requirement, or else the benefits of an SSD aren't really worth it. Anything at or above 256GB should be fine for OS stuff and a few games you'd like to prioritize, and we're at a point now where it's not too expensive to do it.
This is not true. You can get the benefits of the SSD without having OS on it. For example: games from non-OS SSD will still load faster than they would from regular HDD and things video editing is much faster if your cache/input files are on the SSD even if the program (+OS) is on a regular HDD.
What I mean to say is that most of the benefits of an SSD come from having the OS installed on it. Sorry if it wasn't clear. Point is: if your OS is installed on an HDD, but you have an SSD installed for other things, then there's a lot of missed opportunity, in my opinion.
I am surprised to see many people talk about SSDs for OS loading...I very, very rarely boot my PC from a turned off state. Sleep mode is more power efficient than turning your PC off entirely and better for your components.
Your PC will use more power having to go through booting than it would just sitting in standby for a few hours and by turning off your PC, you are removng the electrical charge which puts your components through more strain when turned back on than they would feel if left in standby/sleep.
Sleep mode is not better for your components and turning electical charge on/off does not cause any significant wear&tear, that's literally how computers work.
It's nice, but it's the last thing I'd spend money on upgrade wise.
If you can spend $50-100 to get a better GPU or CPU do that over getting a SSD, If you have already stepped those up to the point that $100 isn't going to take you to the next level then SSD is the next thing to look at.
I am surprised to see many people talk about SSDs for OS loading...I very, very rarely boot my PC from a turned off state. Sleep mode is more power efficient than turning your PC off entirely and better for your components.
Your PC will use more power having to go through booting than it would just sitting in standby for a few hours and by turning off your PC, you are removng the electrical charge which puts your components through more strain when turned back on than they would feel if left in standby/sleep.
Sleep mode is not better for your components and turning electical charge on/off does not cause any significant wear&tear, that's literally how computers work.
Electrical charges can shorten lifespans when you turn devices on and off due to power fluctuations.
I never said it causes significant wear and tear if you turn a PC on and off a lot. I'm saying it being better for components, having very low power draw and being more convenient than shutting down makes a strong argument for never turning a PC off & just using sleep modes.
You are free to disagree. That's literally how forums work.
@deepcovergecko: I'm not exactly sure what kind of harmful electrical charges and power fluctuations you are worried about that can avoided by using sleep-mode. PC is not like a an electric motor that causes a current spike on startup.
I found it doesn't make as big of a difference as some claim (especially when it comes to real world experience) but it is definitely an improvement. If I were to build a PC today I would only use mechanical hard drives for mass storage of media. Everything else would be SSD.
I've installed Planetside 2 on my SSD (I still have the usual hard drive for everything else) and despite my otherwise aging hardware the loading times are SUPER fast. I don't know if it has a noticeable impact on performance, though.
I would get one, i would never consider a mechanical drive again as my OS drive. Just a warning though, if you do get one and use it as your boot drive. Going back to a 7200 RPM mechanical drive will make you feel like you stepped 10 years back in time. It's scar how fast you get accustomed to the speed.
Currently i have 3 SSD's and 2 HDD's in my machine. The two HDD's are just drives i offload to (Chrome download folder, iTunes library, pictures etc). My daily driver which in this case is KDE Manjaro has its own SSD, my Windows 10 gaming drive has its own SSD, and the third one houses all my games from Steam, GOG etc.
Yes! I use my sdd for windows and a few games that I'm trying to beat right away (Witcher 3, metal gear solid V). Everything else is installed on my other drives.
Regardless of any increase in loading speed, what I love about SSDs is that they further reduce the amount of moving parts in my PC. SSDs rarely fail and if they do they don't fail in the way traditional HDDs do. That bit alone already makes it worth it, to me.
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