SSD's and how do they work?

[Claaken]

I am looking for a SSD for my gaming pc. I have heard people talk about raids and stuff and I have no idea how any of it works. What SSD would you suggest I buy and how do they work?

 

[mcorish]

SSDs will not generally help for gaming, but will certainly help with computer startup times and the off time game loading. SSDs are flashed memory based as opposed to a HDD which is mechanical, and relatively slow compared to an SSD.

You can take a look at a better description of an SSD here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive

 

[Leadbelly78]

I am looking for a SSD for my gaming pc. I have heard people talk about raids and stuff and I have no idea how any of it works. What SSD would you suggest I buy and how do they work?

If you're looking to buy a SSD drive, go with http://pcpartpicker.com/part/samsung-internal-hard-drive-mz7pd128bw

 

[Stevemeister]

As noted it won't make a huge difference with in-game experience but it dramatically speeds up computer start-up and load times so much so that once you've had an SSD you won't ever want to go back. Depending on how avid a gamer you are you would need at a least a 480-500 GB drive. I run a 480 GB Sandisk Extreme II as my primary boot SSD which is very fast and I have a secondary 960 GB Crucial SSD for storing my games. You don't need to worry about RAID arrays - that is for folks who need to move huge amounts of data quickly for example in video rendering/processing applications. An SSD installed normally will be more than fast enough. Keep your HDD's for storage of non-speed-critical stuff.

 

[Stevemeister]

fyi http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-recommendation-benchmark,3269.html