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I am building a new desktop computer and would like the performance and energy benefits of a solid state hard drive of 128GB-256GB.
Looking around the internet I can’t seem to find anything suitable. Are these disks still not worth buying?
The prices seem to vary greatly and all I find are 2.5″ and 1.8″ form factors which will probably not fit in a desktop cabinet.
The SanDisk? G3 SSD Family looks interesting but these are only the laptop sizes.http://www.sandisk.com/ssd
edit:The system I am planning to build is a completely passive desktop PC (no moving parts).So my questions are. Do they not come in desktop sizes? Can they be purchased at a resonable price now? Are they worth it?
Answer: Do they not come in desktop sizes?
The only ones I’ve seen are 2.5″. ?You can use mounting brackets that allow them to be mounted in 3.5″ bays.
Can they be purchased at a resonable price now?
The Intel X25-M Mainstream SSDSA2MH160G2C1 2.5″ 160GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid state disk (SSD) – OEM is USD 579 @ newegg (ATOW). ?If $579 for a 160GB SSD is reasonable for you, then go for it.
Are they worth it?
The Intel X25-M is $3.6 per GB. ?The VelociRaptor from the graph below is $0.76 per GB. ?You’re paying 4.7 times more per GB for this SSD, and the speed improvement is 2.4 times faster. ?The hard drive is a known bottleneck for most systems so 2.4 translates to a huge performance increase across the board.
Pros
- Extremely fast (transfers and random access)
- quiet (no seek noise, no idle noise, no vibrational noise)
- slightly less power usage
- less heat
Cons
- very expensive cost / GB
- drives are relatively small and may require an extra drive for large storage
- The wear-leveling issue. ?Over time the drive will slow down b/c of the algorithm that tries to prolong drive life by distributing writes evenly across all bits. ?Anand still feels that the speed loss is not enough to deter him from recommending SSD’s though.
- 3 year warranty vs 5 year for many rotational disks
notes:
- Tests by anantech, The SSD Anthology: Understanding SSDs and New Drives from OCZ