17 replies to this topic

[Wingers]

Good evening DTE.

I am looking to make a few new purchases for my Compoota. Nothing spectacular, but I am looking to come out of the otherside with an Intel I5.

anyways, for the time being im going to start with an SSD, as this is something that i can actually afford - maybe.

so i came across this: http://www.overclock...2104&subcat=910


Corsair Force Series 3. 60GB (6GB/s) SSD:
for the low low price of: £76.99 inc VAT

the read and write speeds look pretty nice but was wondering if anyone knew of any better deals floating around at the moment?

[mosi]

I got a 60GB SSD and found it wasn't anywhere near big enough. I'd suggest a 120GB for your OS and main stuffs. My 120GB is a corsair force series 3 and works awesome. The only thing I install on my main drive is Windows and apps like visual studio, adobe stuff and other programs. Right now my 120 has 17GB free and it has no games on it.

[SpuD]

I get on pretty well with my Crucial M4 128GB - with SSDs you actually lose nearly half of the write performance going for the 64GB instead of the 128. If you can stretch to a 128 it's definately worth it. Not to mentio you'll fill a 60GB in seconds, especially with windows 7 and stuff. I have between 10 and 20GB free on mine most of the time, it's got windows, a few games and some documents and shizz on.

[Rymdkejsaren]

I am moving this to general since clan discussion is reserved for stuff about you know, the clan.

[Armgas]

I bought an OCZ Agility 3 60GB 4 months ago. And I am quite pleased with the performance (I use it in a laptop though)
OCZ bought a chip manufacturer about 2 years ago. And their 3rd generation disks use these new chips.
According to benchmarks when I looked about 4 months ago the OCZ Vertex 3 series are amongst the absolutely fastest disks out there. And the Agility 3 is identical in every way except they might use cheaper sram chips IF they run out of their normal supply of chips. This ofcourse has never happened since then, and even if they did, the controller would remain the same and therefore still be one of the fastest.

But to be honest I don't think you are going to notice any problems with any of the manufacturers so long as you buy 3rd generation. And speedwise the difference between them isnt big when you compare to conventional disks. So buy what you can find at a reasonable price. (Thats likely to be Corsair or OCZ afaik)

Like the others I'd suggest 120gb if you intend to use it for both windows and certain game installs. 60 is not enough for both.

[Wingers]

cheers guys. will probably go for a 120GB if the price is right.

[Shinobi]

we have stayed away from SSD as its just to expensive still, yea its fast as fook but space vs cost. Id rather get a nice big SATA

[SpuD]

In a gaming rig or high performance workstation they're great, on an average desktop they're pointless as the bottleneck is the user I wouldn't waste the money on replacing all your drives with SSDs yet as a business, total wasted time per day would be about 5 minutes a head. Most users would be happy with a cheap 320GB sata let the wingers have his SSD, they are pretty immense on a decent home rig

[Wingers]

im just thinking about it for my "home theatre" PC, its got 2 x 1TB of SATA storage in there but just figured it would be nice to watch windows boot up in app. 5 seconds as apposed to nearly a minute.

plus the motherboard is on its way out and doesnt support Win7 so im figuring, new mobo, new cpu, new ram, new SSD and then i have nice home theatre rig to watch my HD films on my 42" TV

[SpuD]

In that case, get a Raspberry Pi and a storage NAS. It'll be a month or so until you can actuallly get your hands on one, but they're about £30 and support 1080p decoding and will (probably) run XBMC just fine It's my eventual plan when I get a tv. I'd only go for the fully fledged PC if you need something the Raspberry Pi doesn't do. It's low power too (as in, mobile phone style ), so you could either leave it on 24/7 or put it to sleep - will be faster than booting Win7 from cold no matter what spec you run. 100meg ethernet will be fine for streaming 1080p to it. RS and Farnell are building them as fast as they can, apparently, so if you can wait for one it's definately worth it.

http://www.raspberrypi.org/
http://www.farnell.com/raspberrypi/
http://xbmc.org/about/

[mosi]

SSD in a media PC? What a waste. Get a RaspberryPi or a Acer Revo R3700 + Storage NAS.

http://www.raspbmc.com/ - Raspyberry Pi xbmc distro.

[SpuD]

[Wingers]

for the £200 id be spending on the ACER Revo, id rather spend app. £250 on new mobo, cpu, ram + SSD which then together with my 1GB ATI XFX 5750 would be able to run some better games then I can currently run, still serves as a "home theatre" PC if i just want to watch a film.

but would still be able to used for gaming and work (i log in remotely from home a couple of times a month) and ive only spent £50 than a Revo, although i may hold off for a while and take a look at the Raspberry Pi and see what that has to offer.

although to be fair, i dont want to let me XFX 5750 go to waste.

[SpuD]

Raspberry Pi for work and htpc usage would be fine, and do your damn gaming at a desk like the rest of us

TV is not for (proper) PC gaming

[Wingers]

well due to the fact i live in a 12foot x 12 foot "studio" flat, or "living space" i dont really have the room for a desk like the rest of you, my option is on the TV or no dice im afraid :-(

[SpuD]

[Wingers]

Thanks Spud.

[SpuD]