Tatts4Life Posted February 3, 2016 Author Share Posted February 3, 2016 So I'm building a system that all its gonna be used for is watching movies with Kodi, use to be called xbmc, and playing games with launchbox and Steam. My movies will be stored on a separate server so that I can have Plex running. But I plan on having my games stored on my htpc. I have roughly 260gb of rom and I so games loaded for now. And with Steam I have a bunch of games and some have a bunch of mods. I think Oblivion was pushing 100+ mods last I played. My issue is do I go with an ssd or hdd. I was thinking of getting an ssd because it has no moving parts and is quiet, but the max size I can afford is 1tb. With an hhd it's less expensive and I can go for a larger size. BUT they add more noise to the system. What would be best to go with? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted February 3, 2016 Share Posted February 3, 2016 Noise isn't the factor here usually, it's speed. SSD's are blazing fast compared to HDD's. I always tell someone to get SDD's for their OS drive and an HDD for their games. After playing Fallout 4 with 130 mods I want a 250GB SSD for the games I play the most. Rom's aren't going to see a performance increase honestly if you get an SSD except for maybe PS2, Gamecube and Wii games, And even then, I honestly doubt you'll see one. Lucky you if you can afford a 1TB SSD, thats insane. The alternative is an SHHD, a Sold State Hybrid Drive. It's a mix of SSD and HHD, though it takes a bit of time to learn what you love running the most. So after a few uses something you use the most, like F4 in my case, would start loading faster and general speeds should be increased a bit but not like an SSD. So it's really all what you need it for. If you only play a handful of PC games that came out within the last 6-8 years, or in Oblivions case are modded heavily, then go for a 250GB and transfer some steam games to it and save the money. In due time 1TB's will be affordable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DOS76 Posted February 3, 2016 Share Posted February 3, 2016 I always use them in tandem except in a laptop without an optical bay that can't be replaced with a drive caddy. Then you get SSD speed for your system plus HDD storage for your files. Also if a 1TB SSD is in your budget you should be able to afford a 250 GB SSD and a 5TB HDD probably for around the same price. Its a best of both worlds scenario. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
polygonslayer Posted February 3, 2016 Share Posted February 3, 2016 Highly recommend getting and SSD for you main OS drive. Windows boots up so fast I most times don't have time to reach for the remote and turn on the TV before it's ready to go :) I got a 500gb SSD where I also store some PC games I want faster loading in, Launchbox itself and any other programs (as long as they don't take up too much space), I find this to be plenty of space to be honest, but I suppose it depends on your needs and budget. Also as long as you got your disc based systems unzipped I can't imagine they being much faster on an SSD, it's already just a couple of seconds to mount an image and the emulator boots it so toss them all on your big drive/s. I find it hard to go back to my laptop whenever I need to turn it on, takes foreeeeever to boot into windows. :P Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted February 3, 2016 Share Posted February 3, 2016 Don't put games on your OS drive, even an SSD. Always keep them separate for best performance. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
polygonslayer Posted February 3, 2016 Share Posted February 3, 2016 I've not noticed any performance hit having put about 5 of the games I want to run faster on my SSD. I'm sure there is technically a difference, but not noticeable on the game I got there or for my eyes :) I'd personally have virtually zero loading in Dark Souls 2 for example and maybe a tiny performance hit (somewhere) than having to wait through loading screens in that game. Personal preference I suppose :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tatts4Life Posted February 3, 2016 Author Share Posted February 3, 2016 I found a 1tb SSD for around $325 which didn't seem too bad to me. SentaiBrad said Don't put games on your OS drive, even an SSD. Always keep them separate for best performance. So if I want my games like Oblivion, Skyrim, and the fallout games which have lots of mods to load fast would I put them on a separate ssd other then the system drive or load them on my hdd and have steam loaded on my ssd? When it comes to having a dedicated OS drive and a media drive I've never done that before. Reason I'm interested in an ssd is for the faster load times. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DOS76 Posted February 3, 2016 Share Posted February 3, 2016 System is on the SSD files are on the HDD. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DOS76 Posted February 3, 2016 Share Posted February 3, 2016 Here is an SSD I would get. I've been getting these HDD's lately at Best Buy for the same price haven't had any of them long term yet but they have all been working great. That is at just over $200 so you can either save money, buy some better/bigger RAM or buy a 500GB SSD and it would still be in your $325 price range Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted February 3, 2016 Share Posted February 3, 2016 I am speccing out a new PC to build and I am looking at two SSD's myself. One for my OS and one for my most played games or load intensive games like Fallout 4. Your OS takes a lot of read and write cycles from your Hard Drive, so when you do anything intensive on your OS Drive (Usually C:\) the task you're doing (Playing a game, writing video, etc) clashes with your OS just being on. For most programs that's not a problem, I have tons of programs installed. When it comes to writing video I have a separate Internal HDD for that (My YouTube channel and LaunchBox's channel), my 3rd Internal Drive has mostly video on it but also has Load Intensive games on it (F4 and The Witcher 3), and my other drives have my games on them. Not all games or tasks are intensive so for the most part having them installed on your C:\ drive is fine (Like Kodi, or Firefox, or Anti Virus Software etc), but when we're talking about trying to lower Load Times as low as possible a completely separate SSD will provide the best possible solution. In Windows 8 and 10 you can actually see your Hard Drive load. Ctrl + Shift + Esc. Click More Details if your Task Manager isn't already expanded and go to the Performance tab at the top. You'll get an idea of what I mean. Idle your C:\ drive still bounces around a lot. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DOS76 Posted February 3, 2016 Share Posted February 3, 2016 If your PC is good enough how much could that really matter(rhetorical question)? I'd go SSD for the system but you still can't beat the value of a 5TB HDD for storage over adding a second SSD for storage. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted February 3, 2016 Share Posted February 3, 2016 It mean's a lot. Your PC can do and load a lot but the time it takes to load and do those actions is still hindered by how fast your Hard Drive can spin, or in this case how fast your SSD can read its self. RAM and GPU's can make your system technically run smoother but the SSD will change how fast it can do those things. Programs will also boot faster as they the instructions can technically go faster with a faster read speed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tatts4Life Posted February 3, 2016 Author Share Posted February 3, 2016 I forgot that you mentioned a sshd so I think what I might do is a ssd for my os and the sshd for all my games and launchbox since I have so many games. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted February 3, 2016 Share Posted February 3, 2016 Yea, SSHD's are a good in-between, but they're still not the full speed of an SSD, and the speeds they do reach it will take time for the drive to learn, so do keep that in mind. If load times are still really bad for the more intensive games then getting a 3rd drive, a 2nd SSD, could still be a good idea down the line and loading only the intensive games on that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DOS76 Posted February 3, 2016 Share Posted February 3, 2016 Guess we will just have to disagree on this one because while you are talking saving milliseconds I'm talking about saving money and gaining greater storage capacity at the same time. To me that is a no brainer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted February 3, 2016 Share Posted February 3, 2016 No, I am all for saving money, I also didn't know we were disagreeing on anything. Load times in Fallout 4, especially with mods is literally 30 seconds to a min, if not longer. On an SSD they are under 10-20 seconds. Over the course of an hour or two with dozens of load points we're talking a lot of time. The SSD on an OS drive can save a lot of time not just in loading the OS for the first time but all of the programs loaded on that and the OS runs more efficient. For games that aren't modded to hell and back or aren't loading in 2k and 4k textures a ton a regular Hard Drive is totally doable. After playing games with hideous load times though a 250GB SSD at roughly $100 is a really good investment. SSHD on the other hand provides slight speed increases with the added benefit of storage. However they're slightly more expensive than HDD's, not nearly as expensive as SSD's per GB but don't provide the speed an SSD can. Sometimes though the price difference from a 3TB HDD and a 3TB SSHD may not be all that much, especially on a sale. We're totally in agreeance here Derek, but I know exactly what Tatts4life is talking about, some of these games can get really bad on loading and when there are a lot of loading spots it saves serious time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted February 3, 2016 Share Posted February 3, 2016 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj_MLZDe6MM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DOS76 Posted February 3, 2016 Share Posted February 3, 2016 That video doesn't at all specify if it is SSD OS with storage on a HDD or if it is SSD OS and SSD storage or even if it isn't just an SSD running the OS with the game installed on the same drive so really it only shows that having an SSD makes your system faster which is undisputable. I would always recommend that you run your system off of a an SSD 100% of the time I just question the value of using two of them in the same system unless you are booting two OS's each from their own SSD. I tried to find some documentation talking about using two SSD's vs an SSD and a HDD but I couldn't find any results for anything that covered that specific topic. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DOS76 Posted February 3, 2016 Share Posted February 3, 2016 I just loaded Arkham Knight in a 13 count from its folder with an SSD and a HDD which I find to be acceptable the things is though it took a 72 count to load from LaunchBox which is kind of a long time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted February 3, 2016 Share Posted February 3, 2016 Ah, I see what you mean now. Yea, an SSD as the OS then a game installed on the same Drive with an OS may not make much of a difference. On a regular HDD, this can make a world of difference. So maybe keeping the OS isolated on it's own drive is just a carry over and it probably means nothing on an SSD. I would still personally say keep your OS separate regardless of Hard Drive type, but if you want to save some money then yea it might not make much of a difference if any. Or you could go full hog and get a PCIe SSD drive. ;) Now those are expensive, but holy crap are they fast. Put Fallout 4 on that thing. Load times? What load times. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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