next »

[Please Support Us!]

Please Support Us!

Please help keep (=WDG=) alive

• Server rules
• Forum rules
• Join us
  
• Clan members
• About the clan
• Server stats
• WDG YouTube Channel
• WDG Downloads
• IRC Webchat

Steam groups:

• WDG community
• WDG clan group
• WDG Battlelog Platoon

Our allies:

• [NuB] TF2 clan
• Velocity Gamers Hub
• Destination Gamer

GoG Links:

• Wix Discord
• Wix IRC channel

TF2 Links:

• Official TF2 Blog
• TF2 Steam Forum
• The Fort 2

October 2025

Mo	Tu	We	Th	Fr	Sa	Su
		1	2	3	4	5
6	7	8	9	10	11	12
13	14	15	16	17	18	19
20	21	22	23	24	25	26
27	28	29	30	31
	Birthdays
Chaos (40)
	Upcoming Events
Upcoming Birthdays: Chaos (40)

[Zarf]

I'd class a small SSD for the OS as essential nowadays for any midrange or better build. I reckon it should be on at least equal budget priority with CPU / GPU / RAM.  

Anyway Cheezer, have a look at what people are flogging on the multiplay forums second hand at i43, bound to be people upgrading on site and shifting the old rigs.

BTW - Crucial direct are selling refurb SSD's for just 72p/GB inc VAT, crazy good prices. The C300 is a good performer too.
http://www.crucial.com/uk/promo/index.aspx?prog=CRUCIALUKREFURBPROMO&AID=10401721&PID=1546795&SID=247624465

Downside is just 30 day warranty, but the prices are too good to pass up on. I've half a mind to pick up a couple as cache drives in my file server, but I don't get my first paycheck until after i43 and my Credit card is already smoking from costs associated with moving into a new place.

[Chaos]

A good ssd doesn't mean you can or can't play some games. it just means parts are faster so it's not essential and shouldn't really be budgeted as though it is. They are awsome, but I wouldn't take one at the cost of my cpu/gpu/psu

[Cheez]

Thanks zarf, I'm not going i43 though. But that 64gb SSD looks very very tempting

[Zarf]

A good ssd doesn't mean you can or can't play some games. it just means parts are faster so it's not essential and shouldn't really be budgeted as though it is. They are awsome, but I wouldn't take one at the cost of my cpu/gpu/psu

Games aren't the be all and end all of a PC for many people though, The aim is for a balanced PC that handles everything pretty well and storage subsystem is part of that.
For instance I'd be happy to save on the CPU and go for a Phenom2 rather than i5 if it let me add a 60GB SSD. Same deal with SLI/Crossfire or 16GB ram if I didn't have a specific application in mind.

[discordance]

A good ssd doesn't mean you can or can't play some games. it just means parts are faster so it's not essential and shouldn't really be budgeted as though it is. They are awsome, but I wouldn't take one at the cost of my cpu/gpu/psu

SSDs are still too expensive per mb for me. If you are someone who uses a lot of space (i am) then its really not worth getting an SSD just yet. I do use a lot of space though and have 350 games on steam or something so if you are a normal person they might be alright. But agree with chaos they aren't essential. I have a pair of velociraptors as my main drives and I still load faster than most people. I probably spent as much on them as I would have done SSDs but I can install everything I own on steam onto the one I use for steam, SSD at the same price i'd still be deleting stuff all the time.

[Junta]

A good ssd doesn't mean you can or can't play some games. it just means parts are faster so it's not essential and shouldn't really be budgeted as though it is. They are awsome, but I wouldn't take one at the cost of my cpu/gpu/psu

Very much agree... SSD is great but not essential. A fast hard drive is no match for SSD, but it isn't exactly snail pace either.

[Brahms]

The main problem with SSD's at the moment IMO is that the price is going to drop so much soon. I already have to deal with the fact that my Graphics and CPU will be worthless in 6 months, why add storage to the list of disposable parts.
A 1TB drive is going to be useful until it expires, A 60GB SSD is going to look like a waste of time in a few years when you can only store 4 games on it.

[DeadlyAvenger]

The main problem with SSD's at the moment IMO is that the price is going to drop so much soon. I already have to deal with the fact that my Graphics and CPU will be worthless in 6 months, why add storage to the list of disposable parts.
A 1TB drive is going to be useful until it expires, A 60GB SSD is going to look like a waste of time in a few years when you can only store 4 games on it.

I bought my 5850 in January 2010 and it's still going strong, plays everything I've thrown at it so far - 20 months.

[Brahms]

Worthless was an overstatement, what I should have said was "Substantially depreciated"

[Cheez]

Mobos to go with rcts suggestions anyone?

[DeadlyAvenger]

Something like this?
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-278-GI&tool=3
Anything that's a similar chipset / price would be fine I'd imagine?

Comparison of chipsets here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_AMD_chipsets

[Chaos]

That mobo looks ok to me I guess, No mosfet cooling and those sata connectors look like they're inconvenient but other than that, it'll be fine

[Zarf]

The main problem with SSD's at the moment IMO is that the price is going to drop so much soon. I already have to deal with the fact that my Graphics and CPU will be worthless in 6 months, why add storage to the list of disposable parts.
A 1TB drive is going to be useful until it expires, A 60GB SSD is going to look like a waste of time in a few years when you can only store 4 games on it.

Debatable really, unlike RAM and CPU transistors, NAND technology is near the end of it's physical ability to shrink. The cells have to hold a charge and we are already at the point where there are only a handful of atoms in each cell to hold electrons and the walls are so thin that they start leaking charge quite quickly (thus your SSD can't survive as many rewrite cycles and more random errors crop up requiring more NAND to be used as parity in a RAID esq protection)

NAND has maybe one more process shrink left in it, and we'll only see 10-20% savings over the current gen from that.

Fortunately there are some really interesting techs in development, main contender is phase change memory (heat a crystaline material with different temperatures and it'll form shapes with different resistances) and another based on manipulating the magnetic "spin" of electrons. Either of these would be salable to smaller processes (thus cheap), have many times greater lifespan than NAND, and would be fast enough to replace the RAM in your PC.


I'm finding 160GB to be plenty for my usage patterns, haven't actually had to free up any room for months and when I do I've got 7TB of space on my File Server connected via a 2Gb/s teamed network so I just cut and paste rather than uninstall. At around 230MB/s nothing takes very long.

[discordance]

your setup is a pretty heavy though zarf and the price on a single ssd kinda pales in comparison to overall time/cost investment.

[Brahms]

Yeah, you've got to admit you're sort of an edge case here zarf.

I consider my self an edge case because my storage requirements are so low (320Gig, two OS, including media) but even I think that the price/cap is just too crazy. If it's going to stagnate in one process then in my mind that's just even more reason to wait it out. Then you can buy SSDs and not worry about obsolescence.