SSD Upgrade Yes or No

Hey Guys,

whats your opinion to a SSD upgrade from an normal SATA HDD.

Does it improve much in games? i heard about many ppl complaining about
the SSD isn´t that much faster for the amount of money it costs.

And the next question is which brand you would take? i heard intel is very good in stability, OCZ´s are faster but cause a lot of problems.

Whats your suggestions to all this?

 

Once you have a SSD in your system you're spoiled... you'll never want to go back to HDD. The overall system performs faster, reacts very quickly, it's great! You won't see an increase in FPS in games, but the load times will be drastically shorter. And it will be faster loading textures in-game, but that's hard to notice.
The main difference can be seen in the general performance of the OS.

Intel is definitely a great choice (320 Series), but other drives perform very well too, e.g. the C300 or the M4 (Crucial/Micron)

 

An SSD is probably the single best upgrade you can make. As svl7 said, once you've had one, you'll never go back to a HDD for your main/OS drive.

 

I was thinking of buying an SSD and using it externally.... It appears I should buy one and use it as my main drive and get an external conventional HDD.

The great ticking noise is ever louder now. I hate forced upgrades. They are never as fun

 

Ok so what do you recommend? Been thinking about this upgrade myself... but can't seem to make my mind up about the brand ...

 

My boss bought himself an OSZ Vertex 3(SATA 3 interface, but backwards compatible no worries). It's not too expensive - £215 i think for 120GB and futureproof. He's had it for a month or so and keeps raving about it - no negative feedback at all. I'm still saving up...

 

yeah the problem for me is im still on warranty, don´t know if i should wait till its exposed,

also the SSD drives should be less expensive 2012

 

You're allowed to exchange the RAM and HDD without having to worry about the warranty.

 

ok that is great to know, then the SSD will be my next investment

 

I still can't choose whether to spend the money on the CPU upgrade(got to be 920xm) or that OCZ SSD. Money is pretty much the same - around £200 (+/- £20).
But, tbh, my CPU despite being sat at pretty much the bottom of prev gen i7 series hasn't held me back much. Whereas the HDD...
I guess I'll be happy to grab the SSD first and then start saving again, while watching the 920xm go steadily down in price lol

 

ssd is definitely worth it, it doesn't really help with gaming other then load times, but for everything else its a great improvement.

i really like the intel drives, the 320 series is pretty affordable. not the fastest but very reliable and comes with 5 yr warranty, gotta love that.

now every time i use a computer without an ssd it feels so slow, hahah

 

SSD is the best upgrade you can make in your laptop. Your in honey once you put that baby in.

 

I have a ssd in my desktop as a boot drive and everything else is on hdd. when i open up an app its instant. once i was showing one of my friends i opened every ms office app in about 6 seconds and his eyes almost popped out of his head lolololol

 

yup
I basically swapped out the cdrom for a ssd.
best investment ever.

insane boot speeds and my commonly used apps load instantly.
920xm was also a major upgrade for me, but i went from the 720qm which has way slower clocks than the 920xm (or even 620m)

 

Personally i recommend crucial c300
the 4k performance is the best and currently no other Ssd can outrun it
One little advice, better dun buy the new 25nm products, the 4k performance is sux,and the main factor that dominate that ssd is fast or not, its all depend on 4k read performance

 

I'm going to replacing my optical drive for an SSD soon, which do you all think would be the smarter move?
Putting the SSD where the optical drive was, or relocate the current HDD there?

 

I don't think it matters someone correct me if I'm wrong but aren't they both sata3

 

lets just say if u wanna make it a ssd system disk,and hdd for data saving,put it in the optical bay,if you just feel its fine,just replace your hdd,btw,its quite complicated to put it on the optical bay since to do that u will almost rip you whole laptop off

 

I don't think any of them is SATA 3, logan801, not in an M15x anyway, which is a shame ofc. M15x only support SATA 2 interface, but buying a SATA 3 SSD kinda makes sure that this will be one of the things you won't have to upgrade when you buy a new machine
I'd replace the main drive with an SSd and put the big HDD into the optical drive bay, but only because the main drive feels more securely locked in it's bay - performance wise it won't make any difference.
Hers' the link to how it's done http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m15x/481238-guide-m15x-optical-drive-hdd-caddy-installation-56k-warning.html

 

Going SSD is like switching to HD or Blu-Ray. Its torture going back to a regular HDD. I would check for deals and upgrade.

Check out the hard drive section here for suggestions.

 

Sadly these SSD's are still just not enough space for me... and way too cost prohibitive. *sigh*... maybe someday, I'm just waiting for the tech to mature a bit more I guess. My next comp will have one, just not this one. Over the next year I'm definitely upgrading my CPU, GPU, and my RAM, and I'll probably be throwing in a KILLER 1103 for good measure That should get me at least another 2-3 years with this baby before I get too jealous over other hardware and spring for a new system.

 

Some benchmarks here that involve OCZ and Intel SSD's:
Test Setup And Benchmarks : OCZ?s RevoDrive X2: When A Fast PCIe SSD Isn?t Fast Enough

 

In a M15x I would rather go with a SSD hybrid (like the Momentus XT) as M15x only has one HDD slot.

On my M17x I have a 500GB Momentus XT (Hybrid) paired with a 500GB regular HDD. I use the Momentus XT as a boot drive, and the 500GB as a backup drive for my photos. Works great so far.

 

speed of an ssd and the space of an hdd?...i want one...is the momentus xt easy to install?

 

yes
it's just a matter of swapping it out.

knowledge of re-installing windows and drivers is required since installing a new drive means starting from scratch. you will need your windows cd and the internet to download drivers (do not use the resource cd since it can kill your alienfx)

all of the info is on this forum however.

 

If it were true, then everyone would buy hybrid drives instead of SSD's. They don't. Hybrids offer faster performance in some situations, mostly startup, if use patterns are consistent and repetitive. Otherwise, they're no faster than a conventional HDD. I bought one for my daughter's Inspiron. It's a step above a standard HDD, but does not remotely compare to an SSD.

 

Is the momentous xt 500gb worth getting though? I usually just put my laptop to sleep mode instead of turning it off so I guess the boot up time wouldn't be the main reason I would be getting the drive. I know that there wont be an impact on gaming performance besides load times, but I do browse and play music and movies (casual stuff).

 

The Momentus XT is not nearly as fast as a SSD. It cuts down my boot time from 40-50secs to about 30 secs. Its faster than a regular HDD, so for a M15x I think it is worth it as a M15x only has one HDD slot.

 

it definitely is a step up from a regular laptop hdd.
quite noticeable boot time reduction as people have already stated.

but don't compare it to a full blown ssd, it's just not in the same league.