Need advice for SSD / upgrade path

[trembl27]

Hi!

I need advice for a SSD to use as boot drive / programs drive.

I have windows 7 home premium 64 bits, core i5-750 with mild overclock, 4gb ripjaws, asus maximus III gene motherboard, ATI 5850 video cards, x-650 seasonic psu.

Programs i use the most are Office 2010, some steam indie games ( Magicka since a few days ) , etc. I mainly use my PS3 when a game is multi-platform.

I was looking at a way of improving my day to day experience with my computer and got around 200-250$ to spend.

I looked at my hard drive space, and right now I use 105 Gb, and 75 Gb of that are photos and videos that will be "hosted" on my current HDD. ( I'll setup Windows 7 document / libraries to D:\ drive )

64 Gb SSD look limitative to me as I plan on buying at least a game in these 3 : Star Wars : The old republic, diablo 3 and guild wars 2 when they are released.

I was therefore looking for 80 to 120 gb SSD. I'm also considering adding another 4Gb of ram while the same exact sticks are available.

I'm waiting for your advices on my upgrade path... going 80 Gb means I should be able to add 4 Gb of ram pretty soon. Going 120 means I'll probably never upgrade my ram.

I'm canadian so i'll probably buy from newegg.ca, ncix.com or another canadian e-tailer.

Thanks a lot !

Francois

 

[tecmo34]

I would go with the OCZ 2 Vertex 2 and hold off on adding additional 4GB of RAM. You'll get more benefit with your system overall by adding a SSD. The 120GB gives you the room to work more comfortably with your system. Depending on your usage, 4GB really won't add much of a benefit to the overall system.

 

[JohnnyLucky]

I was over at the Xbit Laboratories web site checking for new information about ssd's. I found a very interesting article published last November containing facts and forecasts about Flash and Solid State Drives. There is some good news and some bad news.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/s [...] ecast.html

You mentioned photos and videos. Do you use Adobe products such as Photoshop? If you do, then here is a link to an Adobe web page that contains their advice about solid state drives:

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/404/kb404439.html

Scroll down to the bottom of the list to get to the link to the ssd section.

 

[LordConrad]

I agree with Tecmo, go with the 120GB SSD. Unless you're doing a lot of photo or video editing, you won't see as big a performance boost from the extra RAM as you would from the SSD.

 

[trembl27]

Best answer selected by trembl27.