Baloo said:
Do let me know what you find out. I'm considering building a fanless SSD based PC to act as a HTPC.
Can't advise specifically on a HTPC, but I'm not ready to take the SSD plunge just yet...
Advantages of SSD's
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- blinding speeds cited by manufacturers
- noiseless
- lower power consumption
- fewer data errors
- Windows 7 optimised for use with
With benefits like these, moving up to SSD's should be a no-brainer for any self-respecting PC enthusiast, cost permitting. Well that's what you'd think...
I'm at the conservative end of the 'enthusiast' category of users - will pay good money for proven, stable components, but am not into risking system meltdown through overclocking or being the guines pig for bleeding edge technology. Although they've been around for almost two years, my research indicates that SSD's still have a few rough edges.
I'm not saying don't buy one - plenty of people are running fast systems successfully off SSD's - it's just that the technology isn't as 'rock solid' as what I'd like.
The cons
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- expensive
- small capacity
- slow write speeds
- real-world performance may not match advertised levels
- performance deteriorates over time
Price - As warned by others, SSD's cost plenty. The cheapest models, at around $150 for a 64GB drive, perform worse than good hard drives; a mid-range 64GB drive costs double that. At around 35-40 times the cost per GB of a quality hard drive, SSD's are impractical for general storage, however one SSD (or perhaps two in a RAID 0 configuration) as an operating system drive might be feasible.
Capacity - Gradually increasing and now available in 1TB models at a cost of $3500. I'll pass.
Write speed - Fact is, SSD's read much faster than they write, and real-world Write performance is often on par with, or even below, that of a good hard drive. Again, SSD's appear suited as OS drives, enabling fast boot times and application startups, but not for moving large files around.
Performance - Some users have reported speeds far below manufacturer specifications, and have been left waiting for firmware updates in order to achieve acceptable performance. SSD compatibility seems to be an ongoing problem. Defragging can provide temporary relief but results in drive wear. Also prone to read/write 'locks'. This is a red flag for me - after paying good money for technology, I expect it to work; I don't want to have to tinker.
Degradation - SSD cells are good for a finite number of writes. Firmware utilises 'wear levelling', which distributes the writes evenly on the drive and avoids using the same cells repetitively and thus creating dead spots. The 2-3 year guarantee handed out with SSD's, as opposed to the five years given for top end hard drives, is a concern.
All in all, I suspect SSD's are at least a couple of generations away from ironing out the issues and becoming affordable as mainstream options. The fact that market leaders in Western Digital and Seagate haven't released SSD's yet indicates they are banking on conventional drives to be competitive for a little while yet. At this stage, am leaning toward 2 x 74GB WD Velociraptors in a RAID 0 configuration as my OS drive.
It's a season of change for PC users with the release of Windows 7, new generation chipsets and CPUs, and the latest motherboards sporting USB3 and SATA3. With the right choice of upgrades, you can hopefully be future-proofed for a few years.
