SSD for steam

DeSelby83

apologies if this has already been asked but im thinking of getting a ssd for my steam gaming. just wondering where or what brands are the most reliable. im not looking for anything too big, presume around the 100 gb mark would be enough. what are peoples experiences with like?
thanks

Laviski

I wouldnt buy ssd for steam unless u get the 500g upwards. Simple reason games are usually 20gigs and sometimes much much higher.
I would recommend get 2 drives and turn them into a raid and have a 120g ssd for your os.

DeSelby83

whats a raid?

Laviski

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID
Raid 0 is what ur looking for.

ShadowHearth

OP, I got myself 256gb ssd only for steam ( I got 60gb one for OS ). You don't need 512gb ssd for steam, because no way you will be playing so many games at the same time, and you don't need to have all your steam library installed.

Best ssd's in the market are: crucial m4, Samsung 830, intel. These ssd's have the biggest reliability figures and most stable speed figures. These are the ones we recommend when building Pcs

uncle_sam_ie

What I do is, the few games I play are on my SSD. The rest are on a 2T drive. I use steam mover to to move the steam games on and off the SSD. It's very easy to manage. A 128GB SSD like the ones ShadowHearth recommend is all you'll need.
http://www.traynier.com/software/steammover

DeSelby83

are they hard to install? im not that up to date on them so im just trying to figure out if i can do it and if its worth it. does it add an extra drive, D drive for example in my computer or is it integrated somehow with the C drive

Laviski

Well u got lots of options there. One thing is imo for certain everyone should have ssd for their os. What ever your budget decides after that so be it at least u know of different methods ppl do.

Just to remember for pc gaming my piority would be gpu/ram/hard disk then cpu. Obviosly u need check ur mb. Yes ssd brings better load tims but decent graphics card and rams makes everything sexy. Max settings Worth the wait.

Laviski

Instaling hd is simple and each new hd will be assigned a letter. Being familiar with bios helps in creatin a raid.

Antar Bolaeisk

Laviski wrote: »

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID
Raid 0 is what ur looking for.

There's a fair chance if he's asking what a RAID array is that he has an off the shelf computer incapable of creating one.

@OP:

What computer do you have at the moment and are you planning an upgrade any time soon?

The reason I ask is that we could spec you the latest and greatest but if you've got older SATAII ports then there's not really much point and you may as well go with a lower cost model. Also, make sure you have enough power connectors and available ports for whatever set up you go for.

Also, if you must have all your steam games installed at once then Steam Mover is your friend as mentioned above. Get a 1TB (or greater) mechanical drive, install Steam on the SSD and then move the games off to the 1TB. I know people recommend doing it the other way around but I found this way slightly better as you're not constantly reading Steam from the mechanical drive. Finally, I'd also install the OS onto the SSD as the speed improvement is more than worth it.

Laviski wrote: »

Instaling hd is simple and each new hd will be assigned a letter. Being familiar with bios helps in creatin a raid.

Not quite, in the case of the installation of an SSD it's recommended to have the controller set to AHCI mode for increased performance. If you're running Windows XP (which you really shouldn't at this stage) changing from IDE to AHCI requires a registry tweak and driver installation prior to swapping the controller settings.

It also most likely won't be initialised to begin with so see here for how to prepare a first use drive: http://www.ehow.com/how_4918155_initialize-new-hard-drive.html

DeSelby83

i have a sony vaio laptop, i7, 8gb RAM and nvidia 330m (not great) running windows 7. i have an eSATA port so not sure what difference it makes. by mechanical drive do you mean an external HD?
thanks for everyones help too

Antar Bolaeisk

Edit: DP

Antar Bolaeisk

DeSelby83 wrote: »

i have a sony vaio laptop, i7, 8gb RAM and nvidia 330m (not great) running windows 7. i have an eSATA port so not sure what difference it makes. by mechanical drive do you mean an external HD?
thanks for everyones help too

Well that changes things a bit. Mechanical drives are the old HDD drives with the spinning platters and the roving heads.

You can use the eSATA port for the SSD but you'll either need to get a power supply for it or buy an enclosure which comes with a power supply or USB power adapter.

Your laptop should already be using AHCI so that won't be an issue.

What model is the laptop, sometimes the larger ones come with a spare bay for an extra drive?

If it were me I'd probably go with the convenience of installing a 256GB SSD into the laptop rather than having to cart around extra peripherals. This won't be a concern though if you only use it at your desk.

DeSelby83

its this laptop here with 8 RAM instead of 4. it is mainly a desk laptop but i think i would rather install it rather than drag around more peripherals. im just not sure how to install it or if there are any issues with installing it. is it a case of clicking it in and let the bios run and install it like when i replaced the RAM or is it more complicated. sorry for all the questions

Antar Bolaeisk

Looks good, seems to have 3GB/s speeds on the SATA ports so definitely go for one of the recommended drives such as the M4. I'm a little out of touch with the current top performers though I believe Intel have something juicy coming out.

Replacing the HDD is easy enough, there's generally a plate on the back which can be removed to facilitate access to the drive. There's usually a small caddy around the drive which must be removed from the current drive and fitted to the new one. After that it's plug and play. One thing to watch out for, I would advise you to re-install Windows since you're moving to an SSD but you'll need your re-installation media which you most likely won't have due to horrible manufacturers no longer including it.

I can't find your model of laptop but here's a video of a HDD replacement on a Sony which should be close enough for you to work from (despite him having two drives in his):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CFrDub28ms

Here's a link to a Win 7 x64 Home Premium iso (don't worry, it's an official version provided by digital river for it's customers but accessible to all) which you can either burn to a DVD or copy to a bootable USB drive (use this tool to put it on to a usb).

This of course assumes you're using Home Premium. Check your windows sticker on the back to confirm.