Atomic_Sheep Posted July 27, 2010 Share Posted July 27, 2010 Hi guys, I purchased my new computer case but it doesn't have support for smaller sized HDD's i.e. SSD. I was prepared to purchase conversion kits to make sure that in the future when I did end up getting SSD that I was going to be able to put them in, the only thing is, after looking up wikipedia, it appears that SSD come in 3 diffent sizes, namely 1.8, 2.5 and 3.5" sizes. My question is, rather than spending 100 bux on a conversion kit to make sure that I'll be able to future proof my case for 2.5" SSD's, I just wanted to see your guys opinion on whether I should be worried about getting 2.5" conversions or whether future SSD's will just end up being 3.5" mainstream anyway? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tennyson Posted July 27, 2010 Share Posted July 27, 2010 I bought one when I purchased my Intel 160Gb SSD earlier on. It didn't fit in my Xaser case as I use removable caddies, so I just modified a caddy by drilling a few extra holes and mounting it firmly. I guess, as a bunch of RAM chips with a controller bolted to it, consideration should be given for a small amount of heat dissipation. Mine's been running like a charm ever since, Frank Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest J van E Posted July 27, 2010 Share Posted July 27, 2010 My 2.5" 80 SSD is simply leaning against the back of my PC (standing on the bottom, a bit beside the regular hard disks). No moving parts etc. so no need to really secure it. And certainly no need to spend money on brackets or whatever. If you often move your PC this might not be the best solution, obviously, but my computers stands where it stands all the time, so... no problems here! And even when I have to move it there won't be a problem as long as I think of the SSD hanging in there... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrMaestro Posted July 27, 2010 Share Posted July 27, 2010 Just get a 2.5" bracket like these ones. You don't need anything fancy, the connections are the same. The brackets simply allow you to mount the drive in a 3.5" bay. I bought a $5 one when I bought my Falcon. Mike Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Dow Posted July 28, 2010 Share Posted July 28, 2010 SSDs are a bit like SD cards and USB sticks, basically robust, though not necessarily suitable for carrying in your pocket! You don't need a bracket, just park it somewhere in the case. If you really want to secure it you can screw it against any one of the bays with a screw or two, the SSDs are so light that securing just one side is fine. I had mine pushed into a spare bay and not secured, it worked perfectly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterhayes Posted July 28, 2010 Share Posted July 28, 2010 I got around this by buying a 2.5/3.5 eSATA docking station this takes any SSD/SATA HDD of both popular sizes and are hot swappable. PeterH Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maurice_King Posted July 28, 2010 Share Posted July 28, 2010 Might be hot swappable Pete but esata will still be slow when compared to running directly of a standard SATA port. ( Not by much though) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterhayes Posted July 28, 2010 Share Posted July 28, 2010 Hi Maurice I agree!! Very slightly slower [seek times] (usualy insignificant in real use) but with an eSATA SSD it would still blitz an Internal SATA HDD. Theoretically the loss in read/write etc is negligible and I have swapped the eSATA to an inside SATA II and FSX loads in about the same time approx 20 seconds. No stutters on turns with either eSATA or SATA with a SSD. Regards Peter Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atomic_Sheep Posted July 28, 2010 Author Share Posted July 28, 2010 Hi guys, thanks for the replies... the only concern I have with placing my HDD's somewhere in the case without securing them is the fact that over time I'm going to have more than 1, I'll eventually I'm sure will have at least 4. I've currently got my external HDD sitting inside my case on a "shelf" but even that is a bit annoying because when I move the case (very rarely), I forget about it and it flops about which is not cool and I'm thinking about just taking it out from inside the case and placing it on top where it's visible. But the thing is... if I have 4 of them, then this complicates the issue somewhat and renders the solution of just leaving them lying about quite inappropriate in my opinion. Granted the time when I'll have 4 SSD's is some time off but how long these brackets will be on sale for, I don't know and I don't want to find myself in a situation whereby the brackets that are a must for my case suddenly stop being sold some time down the track so I just wanted to know whether there is a trend of increasing sizes of SSD HDD rendering acquiring a rather expensive investment of SSD brackets at this time quite useless in the way of future proofing my computer case. I just wanted to see whether there is any trend in the way of SSD's increasing over time and increasingly becoming the size of current non SSD HDD's. I can't help but feel that over time SSD's will simply become 3.5" for PC's as the standard size and 2.5" for the laptop market i.e. the exact same situation that we have right now but I just wanted to see whether this was actually happening or whether I was just insane. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrMaestro Posted July 28, 2010 Share Posted July 28, 2010 I can't help but feel that over time SSD's will simply become 3.5" for PC's as the standard size and 2.5" for the laptop market I'm pretty sure that won't happen, SSDs will become cheaper and cheaper until they cost less than conventional HDDs. After all, they're just a bunch of memory chips and a controller chip soldered onto a PCB. Thanks to smaller and smaller fab processes, more companies getting in on the game and SSDs slowly becoming mainstream prices will fall faster and faster. There would be little point to making 3.5" models, the manufactures don't need the space and would only be doing it for the sake of making them bigger. I really don't see it being too many years before cases no longer have 3.5" bays. Anyway, did you have a look at the link I posted earlier? Conversion brackets *aren't* expensive, you can get them for less than $10 and they usually support two drives. Mike Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atomic_Sheep Posted July 28, 2010 Author Share Posted July 28, 2010 Hi, yep, I had a look, I'll be getting the lian li ones if I decide that getting them is mandatory. PCcasegear I'm aware of... got some of my stuff from them... I do know what you're talking in the way of just getting the cheapest ones possible, I realise they'll most likely be fine/fit. As for the decision to go with the thingies or not... still a bit inconclusive about it in my mind. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterhayes Posted July 28, 2010 Share Posted July 28, 2010 NuclearRam You dou have another alternative for FSX and that is a SATA III VRAP WD Velociraptor (6GB/s) which come in (I think) in 300GB and 600GB flavours and will give astonishing performance. One caveat they can only be <60% full to maintain full performance. Most mobo's these days come with SATA III and USB 3.0 (and I'm told that for the latter, in theory, you would be able to run FSX ie on an external drive). But then, how will the SSD SATAIII drives perform? Ain't technology grand. Regards PeterH Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rohan Posted July 29, 2010 Share Posted July 29, 2010 The WD SATA III Velociraptors come in either 450 Gb or 600 Gb sizes - the 300 Gb are still only SATA II, as far as I'm aware. I'm hoping to buy all the parts for my new system this week and that includes three 450 Gb Velociraptors. What's worrying me a little is that I've seen a few "reviews" of SATA III hard drives which say that there's no real benefit to using that technology on a SATA III connection ... any thoughts on that ? Ro Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterhayes Posted July 29, 2010 Share Posted July 29, 2010 Ro It's early days to give any real significant opinion on SATAIII. In theory SATAIII should be twice as fast as SATAII (which was twice as fast as SATAI - but was it?) and we may need to see firmware tweaked after users have posted their opinions. All I know that SSDs are blisteringly fast in loading FSX, so that's where I'm stuck at present. Regards PeterH Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rohan Posted July 29, 2010 Share Posted July 29, 2010 PeterH, I am wondering about the validity of those reviews, since I know that not all SATA III motherboards are created equal - it seems that not all designers are including sufficient bandwidth to properly support SATA III, and I wonder whether those "reviewers" are aware of that. I also saw a review (linked from a post here) in which a SATA III raptor showed a reasonable (to me) improvement in performance over a SATA II raptor. For now, I'm just not prepared to spend the sort of money that SSDs need, Ro Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest J van E Posted July 29, 2010 Share Posted July 29, 2010 In theory SATAIII should be twice as fast as SATAII (which was twice as fast as SATAI - but was it?) About computer hardware being 'twice as fast': this usually only is true when doing the math... You have specifications and numbers and when doing the math the new hardware should be twice as fast. But usually the actual performance isn't 'twice as fast'... I guess this is due to the fact that whatever hardware you put into your computer, it has to work along with the other hardware! So even if your hard disk really and actually would be twice as fast, then the data that has been acquired twice as fast will have to be 'used' by the ram and the cpu and what not... I have never seen hardware that was 'twice as fast' that doubled my fps. So always keep that in the back of your mind when you read some new hardware is twice as fast! BTW I also use an SSD for Windows 7 and FSX and I love it. It IS fast (when starting up Windows 7 and loading FSX always loads at the same nice speed) but still, it's a matter of seconds gained and FSX itself performs the same as before when flying. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tim_A Posted July 29, 2010 Share Posted July 29, 2010 esata will still be slow when compared to running directly of a standard SATA port. ( Not by much though) How so? I have an eSATA port on my PC, and it is (literally) a cable running from one of the internal SATA headers to a slightly different socket on the backplate. My eSATA box does the same in reverse. There is no difference in the electronics. The limited testing that I've done (copying a DVD's worth of files between two partitions on a single drive) showed no time difference whether the drive was plugged internally or externally... Now, admittedly this wasn't on an SSD, but I don't see how that should make a difference (the same drive was used in both tests) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterhayes Posted July 29, 2010 Share Posted July 29, 2010 Ro I am sceptical too about those tests and I believe that the SATA III raptors are a fair compromise (as opposed to SATA II) if you do not want to go down the SSD path. On the 480GB VRAP (cheaper than the SSD) you have approx 300GB of usable space (60%) before you see a drop off in performance whereas on a 120 GBB SSD you only have approx 100GB usable space (90%). I agree with J Van E SSD's load FSX blisteringly fast, and on my rig they stop the stuttering in turns, but they do not affect overall FSX performance. J Van E in my "twice as fast" comment, I was referring to theoretical HDD performance in terms of data transfer, read, writes etc, I didn't mean to imply that a faster HDD would make the PC run faster, but there is no doubt that a fast HDD does have an impact on the speed at which textures are loaded in FSX. Put FSX on an old 5200rpm SATAI drive and then on a SATA II 10,000 rpm VRAP and I think that you will see the difference that I am referring to. Ro, keep us up to date on what you choose, I'm looking at a SATAIII Vrap for my slower FSX review machine. Regards PeterH Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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