Are SSD's worth it?

I recently had my 128GB SSD die on me so I just bought a copy of windows 8.1 and installed it on my 1GB HDD. I know windows 8 boots faster than 7, but I've also found little difference between the times it takes to open programs. Gamewise, Dark Souls II still loads between areas in a couple seconds.

So for all the trouble of having to micromanage such a small capacity drive are SSD's in anyway worth it and if so under what circumstance?

Personally I don't think the technology is there yet for the price. Let the crazy rich people buy them for a few more years then maybe there will be TB sized SSD's at reasonable prices for us schlubs.

Try a hybrid and see how that works. What I worry about with SSD's is how they handle corrupt files and bad sectors, and how often stuff like that happens with SSDs. For a regular disk drive, no big deal, they're cheap enough to replace, but SSD's are still pricey.

I think its totally worth having a small one to load windows on with enough space for that one big game that loads slow, that is about it. Windows runs liquid smooth but on a nice enough PC it isn't a huge difference but for what I paid for this 120gb? Yea worth it.

I've been using one for over a year now, and I'd say they're not really necessary. Nice, sure, but the actual impact varies wildly. If you can afford one, then go ahead, but if you can't, or would rather put your money toward a more vital component, then I'd say absolutely skip the SSD. Just make sure you have a nice and quick HDD, of course.

They are totally worth it. Super fast, quiet, somewhat affordable. They have reached the .75 cent per GB threshold and slightly under. There is no reason not to get one for a boot drive and a game drive.

This is what I have in my system and it is fantastic. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233208

Windows boots and I'm up on Chrome or playing a game in about 45 seconds (I timed it) - write and read speeds are as advertised and kick the shit out of my 1TB black drive that I use for storage.

I use Link Shell Extension to put all of my non-essential files (pictures, music, movies, old games) on my storage drive and link that with my SSD so they show up in the same directory even though they are on different drives so that helps a lot with HDD management. I use the space on my SSD for Windows, current games, and any program I want to load quickly, Right now I still have about 20GB of space left on the SSD with everything on it including all of my video and audio production stuff.

Don't buy one at full price. That's for sure. I actually installed one I got yesterday and going from my HDD to the SSD, I've noticed a pretty ridiculous bump in responsive-ness. I'm also the kind of person who has a couple of things boot up on start-up. I find having the big HDD as a sort of storage device for anything other than essential things (like games and the OS) makes it a lot easier to manage. Are they worth it? Well, like @jjweatherman says the practicality is relatively limited and its benefits vary from person to person... so... Buy one? Or don't, that's cool too.

I'm guessing you can afford it and so yes. Totally worth it. As it's been mentioned, even if it's just for your OS and a small handful of games, it's super noticeable. Just use something like SteamTool to alternate the games you're currently playing onto the drive if you have limited space.

@benspyda: No

get a Solid State Hybrid Drive instead. I got one last fall and it is fantastic.

about the price of a HDD, nearly the speed of a SSD.

Seagate makes some good ones.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178381

I'll suffer through the handful of extra second's worth of load times to save money, or put that extra money towards something far more useful.

Don't get me wrong, if I were dropping $1500 on a computer or more, I'd definitely have a sizable SSD in there, but my current computer runs almost everything on high-ultra settings, no issue, and it totals up to $800. That alone was a hefty price tag*, and I really didn't think that the minor load time advantage of an SSD was worth it when I was hitting the upper limit of my budget. Some people claim they couldn't live without one, but I'm just happy to have a respectable gaming computer.

*worth mentioning, it was originally $700, but I replaced the graphics card with a better one about six months later.

EDIT: Also, I'm the kind of person who alternates between playing a lot of games, so having to transfer Steam games to and from an SSD would offset that load-time advantage, so... yeah. I don't consider them worth it at the moment. Not until the price of an SSD rivals that of an HDD.

I got a $70 120 GB SSD last year. Now that game install sizes are increasing I almost want a larger one, but honestly, the big benefit is primarily getting the OS on there. Gains from having games can vary greatly. I'll probably try to make this drive last as long as I can until the price/GB drops significantly.

Picking up a tiny one just for the OS is completely worth it, but the price for a larger one is just not worth the gains.

Yes. Though don't expect it to affect your games much.

the impression I'm getting from other users of SSD is "Once you tried it you can't go back." Yeah, I'm reconsidering getting one, now I'm rebuilding my PC.

When I built my PC in September I got one as a boot drive and also for games I'm currently playing. If I had to do it again I'd probably spend a little more for a bigger one. Once you use it for an extended period of time you really don't wan to got back to using a conventional HDD, at least as a boot and for games.

Yes but not as a main storage drive. A 250GB is pretty cheap and can hold your OS, apps and games that need a long time to load (like CIV5 or Total War). In the end though the only difference is speed, so it isn't necessary as such. I got an SSD about 3 years ago and I am sticking with it also when I will upgrade.

It is worth it but you need to use a "traditional" hard drive because SSD space is premium. This requires a little bit system design since Windows doesn't necessarily handle building an integrated file system spanning multiple drives very elegantly.

Yup.

I've had mine since just before Battlefield 3 came out (over two and a half years ago). I'll never go back to spinning disk for my boot drive.

This has been my experience. My HDD was making noises making me think that it's on the way out so I got a fairly expensive and fast Samsung SSD. My Windows boot has shortened and there isn't that awkward waiting period after you've been dumped to desktop but the computer is still loading stuff up in the background.

Do I notice huge differences? Not really? I on my PC yah sure but for gaming ehh. Depends on the game. Trials Fusion takes considerably longer to load up than it has any right to, SSD or not. AC Black Flag loaded faster.

So for the amount of money I paid for it? I wouldn't say it was super worth it. A fast regular drive would probably work just as well, be 5 times as big and cost half as much.

@slag: I can attest to this. I've a hybrid drive. It caches things like the OS and the most used programs in the SSD part. My computer boots up so must faster and launches my regularly used programs in an instant now. If the hybrid drive ever dies, I lose no data.

Depends on what sort of data you're storing. Mostly applications/games? Great! However, except for absurdly high bitrates, you wont notice the difference in read speed for video/music unless you're doing your own encodes/renders. The ideal situation, as others have mentioned, is to have an ssd large enough for all of your immutable data and applications and a traditional hdd to store multimedia/documents/etc that don't benefit from the speed increase or change too often (Hybrid drives also work if you don't want to have to think about this).

The prices are getting there, I recently bought a 480GB ssd for $250 canadian and have seen 120GB ssds on sale for as low as $60. For someone like me who wouldn't ever be playing more than 10 games at any one time this is great.

I think SSDs are worth it. There are three Samsung SSDs working in my PC right now, because the upgrade from HDD to SSD is (at the moment) the only upgrade that is really noticable. You get more out of those dollars spend then, lets say, investing the money into a better CPU, GPU or whatnot. Just look at those benchmarks: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1121?vs=966 for example. A SSD lets your system boot faster, lets apps be snappier and of course also shortens loadtimes for games.

One thing tho: SSDs get slower when they are nearly full. Any modern SSD with 128 GByte will get slower if you go over 100 GByte of Data as a rule of thumb.

They have less space than those old HDDs but do you really need 1 TByte? I've got a NAS for all images, videos and music. Steam has my games only one click away. Then again I'm on 100 MBit fiber and they are downloaded to my PC in only a few minutes, so your mileage may vary.

It's sort of one of those things that once you have it you find it very hard to go back. SSDs are the shit. Some people say they have issues with longevity, so back up early and often.

The prices on ssd's have definitely been on a downward trend. You can easily get a good 250gb ssd to use as an OS drive as well as several of your favorite games that you may currently be playing.

I have my favorite games loaded on the ssd, and other games that I play every once in a while on one of my other drives.

I think the performance increase in boot time alone is so worth having an ssd. Having worked in IT for close to 20 years now all I can say is that I really appreciate how fast my pc boots up with the ssd installed. You will see some performance gain as well in other applications and a little in some games, but definitely not all games maybe besides a little faster load time. I use my pc for more than just gaming and can definitely justify the price for an ssd in my system.

I've been perfectly happy micromanaging certain content on a smaller ssd and having the rest on a hard drive. I think it's worth it, but It's all relative to the person.

SSD all the way

Definitely worth it, have a 120gb for windows, a 180 for the steam games I play most often & a 2tb hd for everything else. I just picked up another 120 for around $60 on sale to put towards a new media pc, wouldn't consider not having one for the OS anymore.

I think so.

It's the absolute last upgrade I'd make on any system I build, I'd much rather put that money into a better gpu/cpu/ram/monitor. I have one in my current system and I'm seeing no real benefit while the annoyances of always having a nearly full c: drive are ever-present.

Yes. They're like rocket fuel for your OS

I got a Samsung 840 Pro SSD as well and installed Windows 8 on it and I don't even install games on that drive, I installed the WD Caviar Black 1 TB HDD. I really like how fast it boots and shuts down and I also use the Magician software that came with it to optimize the drive. Since my time spent now is mostly doing browsing, reviewing (which is where the bulk of my time is spent), and pretty much just productivity tasks and I just play games when I've got time, I'm glad I invested in an SSD. It's really up to you on what you are going to use it for. It contains the OS and all the applications while all the media stuff and mostly games, all go to the HDD. That is pretty much my best set up since like others have said, having a fast HDD is good enough for your games, but if you want to have fast boot times, then having the OS and applications on the SSD is great, too.

A hybrid drive is a good compromise but I've read that there are some drive models particularly the ones Seagate makes that are not as reliable or rather have higher failure rates compared to other brands like WD but it's not prevalent enough (can't remember the exact percentage) that it should deter you from buying one if you are considering it but its just something to keep in mind with HDDs. Another consideration is to know if the manufacturer has good customer service.

SSD's are worth it, but that's really dependent on what you're looking to get out of it. Last thing, get one from manufacturers that have good reviews and really reliable, like the one's Samsung makes recently (e.g. 840 Pro, EVO) as well as Intel though Intel's are reeeeallyyy expensive but are very reliable (low failure rate).

I recently got a 250GB SSD when I upgraded my PC, and I don't regret it one bit. I still have my original 1TB HDD so all the Giant Bomb videos, my music, Office files, porn, all that junk lives on there while the OS, my web browser, my most important apps, and most of my games run off the SSD. I can see how it would become a huge hassle having to micro-manage lots of games that you have installed all at once, especially since games can now be up to 30-40GB in size, and if you don't have a fast internet connection then it can be even more of a hassle. But don't forget that just because you have an SSD doesn't mean all your games have to run off of it. Some games make perfect sense to run off of SSDs - games like Diablo III, BioShock Infinite, Tomb Raider, basically anything with load times - but there are plenty of games that are more CPU intensive than they are HDD intensive - turns in Civ 5 don't take ages because they're loading assets off the hard drive, it's because the CPU is crunching all the numbers - and so you'll only notice a minor difference. So yeah, you kind of have to tailor things to your needs and requirements, and it's not going to be super relevant for everybody, but you might end up waiting a long time for SSD memory to fall significantly in price when you could just get one now. If you use your PC for any sort of work - video editing, Photoshop, audio engineer etc. - an SSD is basically mandatory, but for gaming PCs it's a case by case basis.

Also, don't underestimate the advantage of a drive that runs silently. I have my PC in my bedroom and often fall asleep with my PC on running some Giant Bomb stream or a YouTube playlist or something, and it's nice not having the drive clunking around all night.

The biggest difference I've noticed between an SSD and regular HD is the boot time for me. Before it may take 30 seconds for my computer to boot to windows, but switching to a SSD cut it down to 10. Also, starting programs installed on the SSD made a difference in start time too. I've noticed mixed performance on SSD regarding games, Skyrim and Mass Effect 3 definitely load faster while Mass Effect 2 still took an inordinate amount of time to load. Also, I recently installed an SSD on my shitty laptop and noticed some minor performance boost, meh, guess the drive wasn't the bottle neck. I don't know, if you are happy with what you have now just wait for the SSDs drop down to a much more reasonable price, no point in getting a SSD if you can't really justify it.

Not for me, but I simply don't want to deal with multiple drives. Hybrids might be worth it.

I like my SSD. I've got a 256GB Samsung drive from a couple years ago and think it's totally worth it. I store all my downloads on a separate 1TB drive and have them both backing up to another 2TB drive.

I've got my OS and some games installed on a 180gb drive and all of my other shit on a 2TB HDD. I'd say it's worth it. I suppose I haven't used a standard HD in awhile but my OS is so snappy I very rarely see a loading cursor and everything loads more or less instantly. Short loading times on games is a nice thing, too.

Absolutely. I only have a 120gb with Windows 7 and a few Adobe programs on it, but the speed increase is fantastic. The only game I have installed on it is TF2 which boots extremely fast and I get into games in seconds.

This notion that SSDs are only for the rich and those who want to splurge is outdated at this point. 256GB SSDs can be had for ~$100 if you wait for a sale, one of which happens just about every week. Get a SSD for OS and comonly-used programs, and a 1TB and you're a whole $200 down, which as you may remember was about the cost of one 1TB HDD not two years ago after the flooding in Thailand. Here, for instance, is an SSD I saw on sale earlier this week. Note that it's MSRP is only ~$40 more than its sale price, so even without the sale it's still quite cheap:

http://www.passwird.com/deals/535ea8e8a07097b174000477/sandisk-ultra-plus-256gb-25-sata-iii-solid-state-drive-ssd-10999-shipped-at-newegg

As to whether or not they're worth it: Completely. OS boots in under 10 seconds on my desktop PC, and under 8 on my MacBook Pro, and Adobe software loads magnitudes faster than it does from a spinning HDD. Definitely get one, everybody.

I view a small SSD for the OS to be mandatory these days. For games, an HDD is still plenty fast enough (load times are still typically a fraction of that of a console). I have an SSD in every computer I own. I just wait for them to go on sale for cheap when I need a new one.

Once you get used to how fast SSDs are, you can't go back to using HDDs for the OS. Everything feels slow. It isn't just OS boot time, but opening any application, browsing the file system, transferring files.

You just have to change how you use storage. The old method of just using one large HDD is becoming a thing of the past. On modern OSes, handling multiple drives is trivial. If you can use a USB flash drive, then you can use a multi-drive system.

I have 2 240 gig SSDs. It makes everything awesome. Windows boots in a flash and when it boots you can do things immediately. Also some games, like Skyrim, are way faster. Phenomenal. I mean, it's expensive too. I got mine during black friday.

They are really fantastic. I wish more people knew about them. It's only been about 6 months for mine but it really does feel like the best of both worlds

Jeff I think mentioned on the bombcast that he put one in his PS4.

The difference in bootspeed alone makes the like 55€ I spent worth it. Takes like 8 seconds. (who needs W8 anyway) I haven't played a lot of games yet on my new PC so I'm not so sure about load times. I guess I should try out Saints Row 3, the loads in that were weird where the sound of a cutscene started during a load.

The difference in the Windows updates after installing Windows was also great. All those restarts took time originally.

This.

I just picked up one of these and I can't recommend enough. I'd wait a year or two for the price of the SSD's to decrease. They are good but not worth the money IMO.

Aren't those two statementsmutually exclusive?

I think they're best used in laptops where it can help battery life and keep the hardware thin. The new Macbook with the SSD is great, everything feels whip-fast. Photoshop loads in a second or two.

The last statement was about the Solid State Drives. I was co-signing the SSHD's.

The SSD is great for every gamer.Buy one as soon as possible and you will not regret it.

Fuuuck yes they are

I was so happy to shirk off HDD's for an SSD. One of the best quality of life improvements to my personal computing I've ever had. It's fantastic and I recommend staying on the SSD train. If you personally don't care or find much of a difference, eh to each his own but I'm not putting up with those spinning discs ever again. Just the boot time savings alone are worth it for me, let alone the lack of noise and speed in other applications.

You can get a 1TB SSHD for slightly less than the price of a 250 GB SSD, and the difference in performance is minimal, especially if you are mostly using it for games.

I suppose life expectancy is lower on a SSHD due to its moving parts, but I doubt that is going to matter in most cases.

I think it depends on what you are going to use it for, a PS4 with its SATA2 interface will not be able to make full use of a SSD, and as such SSHD is pretty much objectively the best choice in that instance. Even SATA3 is still unable to make full use of a SSD (and the SSD part of a SSHD of course). Some games/software is greatly aided by a SSD, some are not at all. Maybe with the upcoming SATA Express we will finally see the great value of a SSD, who knows.