You might not have to junk your motherboard,
CPU and RAM just get. An SSD upgrade may be all you need.
I was originally going to talk about Ivy
Bridge this month, and explain why it’s still the CPU architecture of choice,
despite doubling as an oven filament when it’s overclocked. However, while I
was double-checking the prices on our Elite list, I noticed that the price of
SSDs has tumbled like a Jenga set balanced on a dog’s back. Just in case you
haven’t spotted it yet, you can now buy a Crucial. M4 128GB for just $135 inc
VAT from www.ebuyer.com, and a 256GB
version of the same drive for $262.5 inc VAT.
An SSD upgrade may be all you need.
It isn’t only Crucial that’s dropped its
prices either. The price of other manufacturers SSDs, including those of
Samsung, have also plummeted. In short, there’s simply no excuse for not
installing an SSD in your next PC build now. Not only are Crucial’s 128GB and
256GB M4 SSDs supremely fast, but they also offer more than enough storage
space for Windows, plenty of software and a good few games too.
I mention this because I meet so many
people who happily perform massive PC upgrades every now and then, swapping out
the motherboard, RAM and CPU, but keeping the same 1TB hard drive they’ve had
for years, and still using it as a system drive. I know we’ve said this
repeatedly, and we’re probably starting to sound like a broken record (an
incredibly tedious record with a conservation about storage devices on it), but
the upgrade that will make the biggest difference to your PC is changing from a
hard disk to an SSD.
The biggest difference you’ll notice is the
Windows startup time, which is sadly almost impossible to benchmark
consistently, as catching algorithms make it slightly different each time.
However, it’s astoundingly quicker than using a hard drive, and I’m not just
talking about the time it takes for the Windows desktop to appear. When you
boot up Windows 7 or Vista on a standard PC on a hard drive, you also have to
sit around and wait while the hard drive stops falling around before you can
actually do anything.
An upgrade to an SSD will make a much
more noticeable difference in terms of general use.
Click an icon on the Quick Launch bar
straight after boot-up and you’ll have to wait for your hard drive to stop
mucking about before you see the result of your action. It’s even worse if you
click on several apps one after each other in an attempt to get them all
running at one.
The benefits of SSDs continue well after
boot-up though. Game levels load much quicker, which makes a massive difference
in data-heavy games such as The Witcher 2, and iTunes doesn’t shamble along
like a fat tortoise stuck between two bricks either.
If you’re still using a Core 2 Quad or
first-gen Core i7 system, then you may be tempted to gut your system and
install a load of new Ivy Bridge kit now (even if it does get hot), but if your
PC still uses a hard drive as a boot drive then I’d instead advise spending
just $135 on a small upgrade that will make a world of difference. There’s
still a need for faster CPUs, of course, but an upgrade to an SSD will make a
much more noticeable difference in terms of general use.
For this reason, and as a result of
feedback from our readers (see issues 105, p 123), we’ve decided to kit out all
the PCs in our Elite section (except the budget PC) with a solid-state system drive,
as well as a hard drive for data. When a 128GB costs just $135, you’d be a fool
not to make the jump. I’m now going to remove my preacher’s hat. Buy an SSD.
Seriously.
