Any point to an SSHD if not being used as a boot drive?

Tropez

Hey guys,

Can't sleep so decided I'd spec up a new gaming PC I've been planning.

It will have an SSD for a boot drive. I've got a mate who reckons I should go for an SSHD as the main storage drive but I've been looking into it and I'm not sure there's a point? Seems it might reduce loading times by a few seconds once it "learns" the game but other than that benchmarks suggest they're on a par with mechanical drives and given that for the cost of a 2TB SSHD I can get a 3TB standard HDD I'm thinking I shouldn't bother.

But as I have no experience with SSHD's I thought I'd ask you knowledgeable lot whether I'm right on this one?

Just in case it's not too clear (as I say, can't sleep so don't know how much sense I'm making) SSD for boot drive and a handful of things that launch on startup (Avast for instance), larger drive for Steam/Origin library and other documents.

Cheers!

Geep

I haven't used an SSHD, but it looks as if there might be benefits for gaming. When I changed to an SSD recently I looked at options and decided not to bother, retaining the HDD for storage and lesser used stuff, but then I'm not a gamer. Seagate have a comparison (http://www.seagate.com/gb/en/do-more/how-to-choose-between-hdd-storage-for-your-laptop-master-dm/) which you might find useful.

fenlander_uk

Could be useful as a scratch disk for photo/video editing.

Tropez

Geep wrote: »

I haven't used an SSHD, but it looks as if there might be benefits for gaming. When I changed to an SSD recently I looked at options and decided not to bother, retaining the HDD for storage and lesser used stuff, but then I'm not a gamer. Seagate have a comparison (http://www.seagate.com/gb/en/do-more/how-to-choose-between-hdd-storage-for-your-laptop-master-dm/) which you might find useful.

Thanks for the link. If it were for a laptop, I might be inclined to go for an SSHD just because it would improve boot times. In fact, I am half tempted to go and do that on my old Lenovo.

From what I can tell as far as gaming goes, once the drive has "learned" the game it works out what it can move to the cache for faster recovery and you may get a slight increase in level loading time but I can't find anything beyond that where it appears superior if it isn't also been used to host the OS.

fenlander_uk wrote: »

Could be useful as a scratch disk for photo/video editing.

I wouldn't be using it for that. My old PC is getting stripped down and converted to an office/work PC so the light amount of video editing I'll do I'll be doing on that.

maas

I have my PC set up with the boot drive (C) as SSD and the storage drive a big 4tb HDD.

OS, games, day to day browsing and office apps all run off the C drive and just use the D drive for large data storage/movies/music.

There's a definite speed increase for games. The start-up and in-game level loading is just way faster.

Unless storage was an issue on the boot drive, I would just have the games "installed" on the boot drive. Todays SSD's are big enough/cheap enough now to use as OS/game drive.

Cycrow

The main improvement you will see is the load times in games, how noticeable this will be will depend on what games you actually play.

i have 3 drives in m pc, a smallish SSD for the boot drive/applications, a larger SSHD for games, and a large HDD for storage

With a SSHD, it depends if you run the same games all the time, or if you change alot. As it caches the most used files into the faster part of the drive, it is only the loading time that it'll improve, so the ingame performance wont increases

Tropez

maas wrote: »

I have my PC set up with the boot drive (C) as SSD and the storage drive a big 4tb HDD.

OS, games, day to day browsing and office apps all run off the C drive and just use the D drive for large data storage/movies/music.

There's a definite speed increase for games. The start-up and in-game level loading is just way faster.

Unless storage was an issue on the boot drive, I would just have the games "installed" on the boot drive. Todays SSD's are big enough/cheap enough now to use as OS/game drive.

It wouldn't be feasible to install all the games on to an SSD. My Steam and Origin libraries alone account for around 1.5Tb of my currently used storage, and that's considering that about a third of my Steam library isn't currently installed on this system. A 1Tb SSD is around £275. I could buy 2x 4Tb HDD drives for that! I'll be getting a 512Gb SSD.

Cycrow wrote: »

The main improvement you will see is the load times in games, how noticeable this will be will depend on what games you actually play.

i have 3 drives in m pc, a smallish SSD for the boot drive/applications, a larger SSHD for games, and a large HDD for storage

With a SSHD, it depends if you run the same games all the time, or if you change alot. As it caches the most used files into the faster part of the drive, it is only the loading time that it'll improve, so the ingame performance wont increases

Thank you. Yes, this was what evidence online led me to believe although there was little that referenced the setup I will have.

On that basis, I'd be inclined to just get a 3Tb drive because I play a lot of RPG and RTS/TBS and switch between them. Thanks.

JasX

Personally I have the following setup:

SSD
->Boot drive

1.5TB conventional drive
-> 200 GB outer partition used for games
->1.3 TB 'other' partition used for video media and basically any 'BIG' stuff I'm not going to be using whilst actually gaming (ie not where I'd write video captures I'm making whilst gaming to)

1TB conventional drive
->Everything else.

Basically I go with the old trick of taking a big drive and making a small partition on the outer edge/fastest part of the drive and use that for gaming, it's a good halfway house and actually the 'read' access speeds compare favouribly with cheap / low end / old SSDs anyway... provided you're not doing anything on the other partition at the same time.

EDIT: wow 1.5TB of *installed* steam games. I'd make a point of starting 'mostly' afresh and ditching any you're not playing regularly back to not being installed

Tropez

JasX wrote: »

EDIT: wow 1.5TB of *installed* steam games. I'd make a point of starting 'mostly' afresh and ditching any you're not playing regularly back to not being installed

I play mostly RPGs and RTS/TBS games. As a result, these games are high on disk space but are suitable for dropping in and out gaming. Uninstalling them would just leave me in a position where when I wanted to play, say, Empire again, I'd have to download 17Gb of data all over again. I'd rather have them on the drive so they're available as and when I want them.

tekkendp

SSHD generally do improve performance - on repeat tasks. However, you need to consider:-

1) If you are only playing one game at a time, then the software management for the SSHD will learn this, and the most reused data is then stored on the ssd segment (generally 8GB max storage) to improve access times.

2) Most drives only have an 8GB segment of SSD (the rest is standard HDD), so if you are playing big RPG's for example, then you could end up loosing out. As not all of your most reused data is going to be stored on the 8GB, and will then be stored on the standard slow disk.

3) The standard disc in most SSHD's are only 5200rpm, rather than the normal standard of 7200 rpm for 3.5" desktop HDD's.

So, under some situations, you will see a boost. But if you like juggling your games, then not so much. The good news is that SSD's are finally starting to drop in price. I have moved over to SSD, and will never look back.

And don't worry about the limited writes issue. It's not that likely that you will hit that limit for all sectors available on the disc. Plus, some of the more top quality SSD manufactures, add a little extra storage (that you cannot directly access) to help improve the lifespan of the disc. It's a bit of a cheat, but there you go.

Another option is this. Get two drives, for example a 1tb 7200 rpm HDD and a 120GB SSD. For games that are not that affected by loading times, put them on the HDD (along with data, music movies etc..), for your OS and games/apps that are affected by loading times, put them on the SSD. That's a pretty good combo that gives the best of both worlds.

Hope the above helps.

Tropez

Thanks, Tekkendp. I think I'll go with my current plan of the 512Gb SSD and a 3Tb HDD. I've read that you can allocate some of the SSD space as cache for the HDD to improve some load times so I may look into that, or possibly buy a smaller SSD at some point for that purpose (Smart Response Technology I believe it's called).

Anything that would significantly benefit from faster loading times I'll be able to install to the SSD.