SSD for operating system?

[Stadius]

I am working on a new build and have a question about drives.

My initial concept was to get a 30 or 60G SSD and only put the operating system there. And get two or four 1T drives for storage. (and 1T external for music and movies)

Is this plan to put the operating system alone on an SSD sound? Or is there no advantage for doing so?

Thanks

 

[sminlal]

It's a very sound plan. I'd go with the 60GB drive and try to put your home folder there as well, since browsers place all of their temporary and cache files in the home folder tree. Having them on the SSD will speed up your web browsing as well. You can put your data files on the hard drives for bulk storage.

Here's a video I posted that shows a side-by-side comparison of booting Windows 7 and starting Firefox using an SSD vs. a WD Green drive: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTHX0MqVMss

 

[Stadius]

Excellent sminlal. exactly what i needed to know.

I am a gamer and 3D artist/modeller. What will be the repercussions of having games and software installed on the HDD? I assume it will just load a little slower.

I would like to have a snappy OS and browser and I can wait a little for a game, MAX, MAYA or CATIA to load.

 

[sminlal]

If you have enough RAM so that the game can be loaded entirely into memory then the only real effect of putting your games on the HDD instead of the SSD will be slower loads, and perhaps slower scene changes if the game has to wait to load new scene data.

If you don't have enough RAM then you might be better off spending your money on RAM first and an SSD second.

 

[Stadius]

My budget is around 3K CAD. I will have at least 6 of ram.

 

[sminlal]

6GB of RAM is probably plenty. Try to configure your system so that you have empty DIMM slots on your motherboard. For example, if you have a motherboard with 6 DIMM slots, buy three 2GB DIMM modules, not six 1GB modules. That way it will be easy to upgrade later if you want to.

And of course you'll need to use a 64-bit OS to take advantage of all that RAM.

 

[Stadius]

Best answer selected by stadius.