Hm this forum might be a bit difficult to get a “everyday user” response from. Personally I get them for longevity vs hdds
As for what I do with them that makes me appreciate speed?
Scratch space when I’m video editing
Game load time obviously
Pc load times and system responsiveness in general
Virtual machines I don’t offload to my server
Large data transfers when I’m doing content creation, specifically modifying .WIM files to prepare for deployment.
What "everyday users" like Joe Everyman are doing was not "placed on the table". I am specifically asking what activities ***TPU Forum Users*** are **frequently** undertaking , that is on on a routine basis.
The genesis of this question was when one of the users who came to us was referring to a build he wanted 'for college' using "graduation money" which only allowed for on board GFX ... the GFX card was planned to be a XMas gift to himself allowing him to check out the cards that were to come out in September. He has about $400 to spend and I recommended he just add the GFX card as everything else had been well chosen (Z370, 8600k, SSHD, good cooler, 2 TB SSHD, 620 watt M12 PSU) . He asked what my thoughts were on dropping from a 1070 ($420) I recommended to a 1060 ($295) so he could add a 512 GB 960 EVO ($120) to his gaming build. He had read on a forum that I won't mention ... it was THG ..
... that an SSD was critical for gaming.
I answered that giving up a 50% faster GFX card for 0.9 seconds of boot time or 7 seconds of game load time didn't seem worthwhile especially since will likely never notice. He doesn't do programming, video editing, animation, rendering, etc (taking accounting) where I could see an advantage so I started wondering what might make it worthwhile that is outside my realm of experience.
As an example., can we justify the investment in a SSD because ....
Scenario A - When we build a new box , it will take xx minutes to transfer data from old box to new box. That is not a **frequently** undertaken activity and therefore is of no relevance to the question.
Scenario B - A friend just brought you a 500 GB Samsung T5 Portable SSD containing all episodes of all the Star Trek Series or the full videos of your son's football games from pewee thru college. Now if you are going to sit and stare at the progress bar, then you certainly will be displeased w/o the fastest storage option. But I'm gonna hook that up, start the transfer and go watch a football game with my buddy and then give him back the drive when he goes home 3 hours later... so again speed isn't doing anything for us.
Scenario C - I just started my video editing side business and I've got two workstations that I bounce back and forth between, editing one file on one PC while doing format conversions on the other. You need things done for folks to pick up at end of day. So yes, there's an obvious advantage ... definitely a get the biggest, baddest and most ya can afford situation.
So while most anything you can do on a PC will be faster on an SSD, the question relates to any actual increase in productivity. But the typical tests used to show how great a SSD is or to differentiate between them don't typically involve things that we do on a frequent basis:
-Time it takes WinRAR to uncompress the Linux 4.12 Kernel tar.xz archive to the tested drive.
How many times do folks here do that on any one particular box ?
-The 4.0 GB ISO image of Windows 10 64-bit was copied to a different folder on the same drive.
As above ?
-Installed Microsoft Office 2016 Professional
As above ?
-Installed Adobe Reader, Google Chrome and iTunes.
As above ?
-In this test, we measured the time it took Photoshop CS6 to open ten 50 megapixel images at the same time and, once done, process each image, one by one. The operations performed on each image were crop, move, auto levels, resize to 1024x768, and save for the web.
As above ?
As for the reliability, we have not installed a HD in 8 years, most boxes have at least 1 SSD and 1 SSHD ... in that time:
... have had 3 SSDs fail, one of those a warranty replacement for one that previously failed.
... have had 0 SSHDs fail, after 5 years of usage, we try and re-purpose for off site storage tho many are still in place.
Of those 3 failures, IIRC, one was in 2015 and the warranty replacement was in 2016... the replacement lasted 19 months. The last was also in 2017, 1 month after warranty expired
My laptop SSHD is 6 years old. My personal PC has twin SSDs and twin SSHDs and will be 5 years old tomorrow. No SSD failures in the last 5 years so while i couldn't say this a few years ago ... in the last 5 years, I have seen little to say reliability is significantly better one way or the other. Last I looked, Samsung was averaging about 0.24% failures, Corsair about 1.84%. HDs were averaging about 0.70% from Seagate, 1.03% from WD. While ya can say that the best SSDs are 3 x better than the best HDs, its also safe to say reliability of the best SSDs is 99.76% to 99.30 % for the best HDs. Unfortunately no data available for when they 4.5 years old, those numbers are for units 6 - 12 months old.
For your overall usage, SSDs are easy to justify... even before prices started getting near reasonable ... looking at your uses
- Scratch space when I’m video editing - proverbial "no brainer" to have an SSD
- Game load time obviously - As Zappa said this is the "crux of the biscuit". Undoubtedly the SSD moves data faster, but does it matter ? Have same games on both SSD and SSHD ... For comparison purposes. In the MMO I play, it takes 44 seconds on both the SSD and SSHD from launch till I can move my character. This is because handshaking with the server (220Mbs connection) takes longer than anything else, same as it did when was 100 Mbs. Or, if I sit and stare at screen I can measure a load time difference in say Witcher 3 with the stopwatch on my phone. I don't remember the difference between SSD and SSHD loading times other than it was small. But lets say:
SSD loaded in 12 seconds
SSHD loaded in 17 seconds
In either case, I finished up my work for the day, launched the game and more often than not, did one or more of the following:
... took a bio
... made a sammie for dinner
... let out the dogs
.. sent kids some texts
In either case, game loaded b4 I get back
Or even say I had already done all of those, and launched game after returning. Then i will ...
... Close all workday apps ... 4 seconds
... Took headset off hanger, unplugged charging cable from headset, took domgle out of storage space on headset frame, plugged dongle into USB port, replaceds storage cover and put on head, swung mic down ... 15 seconds
... launched discord, selected channel ... 9 seconds
... launched the apps I use for the MMO I play .. 3 seconds or
... launched browser to standard 4 tabs for that game ... 4 seconds
So yes the SSD killed on load time, but tho Game was ready for me , I wasn't ready for it until twice that time had expired. It did the job faster but didn't get me playing any faster.
- Pc load times and system responsiveness in general -
If I boot off SSD, load time is 15.6 seconds (boot being button press to password entry screen)
If I boot off SSHD, load time is 16.5 seconds
No real impact and end result... I save 0.9 seconds once or twice a month. A system is only bottlenecked by it's weakest link ... and that's me. I can't hit the keyboard as fast as the system can put characters on screen. Even using our main app, AutoCAD, there's no operation that doesn't complete before I have entered the next command. Now if I was rendering, that's an application that's even more worthy of an SSD than video editing but less than 2% ACAD of users do any rendering
Virtual machines I don’t offload to my server - No experience here, but another instance where this would seem to have a significant advantage with SSD
Large data transfers when I’m doing content creation, specifically modifying .WIM files to prepare for deployment - Have no familiarity with that stuff but of course any routine large data transfers would benefit from the speed. For most folks even PC enthusiasts, large data transfers will be limited to:
... copying data from old storage device to new build. That's an operation I will start and then either go to sleep or do something else so how long it takes is immaterial.
... Backups ... again, I think most of us are sleeping when that happens.
... large file transfers over network or other activities which you start and then multi task ... likely even realizing when it completed.
There's an old saying ... "If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, did it make a sound ?" The two schools of thought are a) of course it did, and b) who cares ? If nobody heard it, it doesn't matter. So that's the point here.... if a SSD completes a task, and nobody is sitting waiting for it to complete, who cares ? The Photoshop test is a script of 60 individual operations .. 1) open file, 2) crop file, 3) move file, 4) auto levels 5) resize and 6) save to web .. rinse and repeat 9 more times. It completes the task in 49 seconds ... how long will it take to make the necessary KB entries / mouse clicks to accomplish that ? A cupla analogies....
... If an attorney employs a secretary and on average she has to work 60 minutes of overtime a day, if i change out her HD to an SSD, will I save on overtime costs ? I have done that test here launching large AutoCAD files off both SSD and SSHD (program is on SSD) ... they both take the exact same time... but even if it didn't, no one is going home earlier.
... If I drive the Porsche 930 to a job site instead of the SUV, will I get there any earlier ?... no of course not ... not in he real world of rush hour stop and go traffic. But yes, i still enjoyed driving the 930 even tho once I get there, the SUV is better suited for the muddy site. So yes, I love knowing that the SSD is faster, but to date, I am unable to give a practical reason for doing so. Since we can multi-task, even away from the PC, how long it takes a storage device to accomplish something more often than not, doesn't change anything.
Tho we have been building PCs for 25 years, I'm humble enough to recognize that my experience doesn't encompass all of PC-dom. I know that SSDs are an automatic for animation, video editing, rendering etc ... back in the day I would pay $1,000 for a 1 GB SCSI Hard drive because back then, with RAM limited, AutoCAD did a lot of writing to disk between each operation.... now this is stored in RAM and storage has become far less relevant ... when i click on "save" icon, it's done before I can move the mouse to next command. So to be in a better position to understand user needs, it would be useful to understand what other instances, the investment brings something "real" (in other words besides benchmarks) to the proverbial table.
Sorry for the wall of text but I was just sitting here waiting filling time and rambling waiting for wifie to get home with my car
