[Cret]

I'm getting really really tempted to buy one of these (now that they're only expensive and not stupidly expensive), but was wondering if anyone else on here uses one.

I want to make a small form factor PC (possibly with a 'lite' OS on it) which will boot quickly and be fairly quick to use.
It's not going to be running any hefty applications, just mainly serving music, running some vehicle diagnostic software, and maybe some satnav once in a while.
Already got a mini-itx motherboard with an Atom 1.6ghz 330 dual core cpu and this seems to be fairly spritely, butthe more I read about SSDs the more I want one.

I've been told that OCZ vertex ones are excellent, and can get a 30gb 2.5" one for around £100, but wanted to see what other people are using, if anyone is bothering with these things yet.
Can get same size ones on ebay for about £65 and while the specs are a bit less good, I'm wondering whether they're reliable and if they'd still give a nice performance boost etc?

I know they come in some netbooks already, but from what I've seen I doubt most of those drives would be suitable to use.

[tribz]

I've got an entry level 128GB Kingston as my boot / apps drive on my Win 7 box and whilst its not as good as some of the other SSD's out there, it beats most traditional HD's easily.

Biggest difference you'll notice is the responsiveness of the OS, everything seems to open quicker. You can actually start running apps straight away as Window logs in whereas normally you'd have to wait for Windows to finish loading start up items.

If your running it in a vehicle, you'll not have to worry about it taking a knock or bump either.

[fastie]

I'm using INTEL MAINSTREAM X-25 80 gig, it's one of the fastest ssd drives on the market and I will never go back to standard HDD

[Cret]

I'm guessing both those ones are a fair bit dearer than I want to spend really. I was planning on using a small one for the OS and programs, then a 2.5" sata HDD for storing music on.

I've been told the Vertex ones are one of the best but not sure how others compare in general. What sort of money are the ones you guys have?

Tribz - do you know the model number of yours?

[tribz]

Cret, on Jan 26 2010, 07:55 PM, said:

Tribz - do you know the model number of yours?

Mine was this one which was £147 + VAT when it was available. Ebuyer have a 64GB one here but its a bit pricey now at £113 + VAT, it was only £91 + VAT at the beginning of December.

I might be wrong but if its an Atom CPU, would I be right in thinking that this is going to be a the bottleneck for reading and processing data anyway so a faster SSD might not be any better?

[fastie]

mine was over 300pounds few months back, not cheap at all

[Cret]

Thanks for the details chaps.

Don't know if I'm totally honest Tribz, what spec would I need to be comparing?
This is the board I have:
http://www.asrock.co...sp?Model=A330GC

Like I say, I don't intend to be running serious stuff on this, but factors of importance are a quick boot time and just generally being fairly responsive and a fairly lightly laden machine.

Even if the mobo/cpu is a potential bottleneck that might prevent the ssd reaching full potential, I'd assume that an ssd would still give a big boost compared with an HDD anyway?
And if that is the case then I guess I'd be best of buying a cheaper, slightly slower ssd rather than a cutting edge one since I'll get more for my money and possibly no benefit from the extra speed of a posh one?

Sorry if any of this sounds like stupid questions!

As a separate question - where's the setting that varies the time available to choose the bootup OS? My current hdd shows 3 xp installs somehow and it waits for 25 seconds for you to choose. I thought it was in the bios but I can't see a setting in there for it. I know it'll be somewhere obvious.

This post has been edited by Cret: 26 January 2010 - 10:26 PM

[bazcabs]

Cret, on Jan 26 2010, 10:24 PM, said:

As a separate question - where's the setting that varies the time available to choose the bootup OS? My current hdd shows 3 xp installs somehow and it waits for 25 seconds for you to choose. I thought it was in the bios but I can't see a setting in there for it. I know it'll be somewhere obvious.

Properties of My Computer > Advanced Tab > Start up and Recover, Settings Button.

[pongo]

Cret, on Jan 26 2010, 10:24 PM, said:

As a separate question - where's the setting that varies the time available to choose the bootup OS? My current hdd shows 3 xp installs somehow and it waits for 25 seconds for you to choose. I thought it was in the bios but I can't see a setting in there for it. I know it'll be somewhere obvious.

I think you need to edit your boot.ini options via msconfig under Windows XP - both for the time and for editing the boot options displayed at start up.

You can do that by hand or via msconfig from an Administrator account from a command line terminal in Windows XP.

I think it's different under later versions of Windows.

[Cret]

bazcabs, on Jan 26 2010, 10:59 PM, said:

Cret, on Jan 26 2010, 10:24 PM, said:

As a separate question - where's the setting that varies the time available to choose the bootup OS? My current hdd shows 3 xp installs somehow and it waits for 25 seconds for you to choose. I thought it was in the bios but I can't see a setting in there for it. I know it'll be somewhere obvious.

Properties of My Computer > Advanced Tab > Start up and Recover, Settings Button.

That's the sucker! Thanks

Cheers Pongo also, although this one seems to have done it.

Been looking at loads of these ruddy ssd drives tonight and I'm struggling to pick a suitable one.

I've found a few sites with reviews of a few but not yet found something that gives side by side comparisons across a whole heap of them.
I'm not looking to spend a lot more than £100 if I can avoid it. 64gb would be nice but to get something half decent I'm expecting to get a 32gb drive for this sort of money. Any recommendations in this sort of realm?

Here's the ones I currently like the look of although I've not yet done enough homework on them:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/LeopardHunt-ASAX-32G...=item414c1aaa48

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/OCZ-Agility-30GB-Sol...=item4ced0fd84c

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/OCZ-Vertex-30GB-Soli...=item45f0ad45b2

http://www.aria.co.uk/SuperSpecials/Other+...productId=39253

This post has been edited by Cret: 27 January 2010 - 12:24 AM

[tribz]

tribz, on Jan 26 2010, 08:59 PM, said:

I might be wrong but if its an Atom CPU, would I be right in thinking that this is going to be a the bottleneck for reading and processing data anyway so a faster SSD might not be any better?

Sorry, I wasn't very clear with that. SSD will definitely be a lot lot quicker than a normal HD but I wouldn't expect to see much difference between the low end and the high SSD end due to the CPU so I'd stick with the lower end for that spec. If you can find the 64GB Kingston V- one, I put 12 in recently as upgrades to a bunch of office PC's and the difference was very noticeable.

This post has been edited by tribz: 27 January 2010 - 12:29 AM

[tribz]

Cret, on Jan 26 2010, 11:56 PM, said:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/LeopardHunt-ASAX-32G...=item414c1aaa48

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/OCZ-Agility-30GB-Sol...=item4ced0fd84c

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/OCZ-Vertex-30GB-Soli...=item45f0ad45b2

http://www.aria.co.uk/SuperSpecials/Other+...productId=39253

They all look OK other than that Intel one which has a rubbish write speed. The LeopardHunt seems to have the best specs but I've never heard of them before.

[Cret]

Thanks tribz

When you say "due to the cpu" - what is the particular spec or detail that you're basing this on? You know more than me so I'm not doubting you, but what I mean is that I want to get something as quick as I can afford, but obviously don't want to be paying for speed I can't utilise.

What numbers between the drive and the cpu dictate what is OTT & therefore a waste, and what would be the maximum speed the cpu could support etc? If I know that then hopefully I can figure out the best option in terms of price/size/speed.

I had looked at the kingston V series ones but they didn't have brilliant reviews (not least of all because of the controllers they use being known to commonly cause issues). But they're tempting as I can get double the storage for similar money as the alternatives.

I'm erring towards a vertex 30gb one (or Leopard) at the moment but don't want to waste money if that's more fancy than the cpu can support properly for whatever reason.


Cheers
Jim

[arronc]

I use a Samsung MCCOE64GEMPP 64 GB SSD in my MacBook Air : the results are great for somethings, others not so good.

1) Things appear to be very snappy because of a combination of much faster seek times on read operations, and the fact that Im running OS X with no virus protection, so most read operations are not going though the processor.

2) Boot time is faster, but its constrained by the speed of the ATA bus on this machine.

3) I run lots of different operating systems in VM's on this machine. The VM boot times are really good, but the antivirus on the windows OS seems to negate the snappiness you feel as now the disk performance get latched to the CPU performance, (1.8 intel core 2 duo).

So I would say that even in this configuration, which is a bit more beefy than an atom, I am usually constrained by the ATA bus, the Processor, and disk latching processes like antivirus.

My conclusion is that the two benefits IM really getting with a SSD in a low spec machine are low read seek time, and additional ruggedness for travel.

I dont believe that upgrading this SSD in this machine would give me any improvement, even though being quite an old SSD, even the cheapest you would look at now would exceed the specs of this one.

Edit : Oh : battery life is much better with it being lower powered than a regular drive. Forgot that one : LOL. Probably the most important to me personally !

This post has been edited by arronc: 27 January 2010 - 01:48 PM

[tribz]

Cret, on Jan 27 2010, 12:32 PM, said:

Good questions Cret. I have to admit its only a gut feeling based on my system building experience. The Atom is a great CPU but its geared towards energy efficiency rather than performance. Thats why I questioned whether it would be the bottle neck for a faster type SSD. My own rigs have taught me that upgrading one component often then highlights another component to be under performing and you end up moving a bottle neck around the system until you get to how you'd like it to perform.

I cant seem to find any benchmark tests for an atom / ssd configuration