DailyTech - Jansen's Holiday Gift Guide Part 1: SSDs, Storage, RAM

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Gadgets Jansen's Holiday Gift Guide Part 1: SSDs, Storage, RAM
Jansen Ng (Blog) - December 13, 2009 1:31 PM

26 comment(s) - last by aqaq55.. on Dec 15 at 7:48 AM

Here are a few shopping ideas for the enthusiast...

I write about what I find interesting, so it should be no surprise that the following tech gifts that deserve some consideration this holiday shopping season sound familiar.

Solid State Drives:

SSDs have been a very big story this year. Unfortunately NAND flash prices have doubled in the last six months, so these speedy devils are out of reach for many of us. However, there is still massive demand this Christmas season, and Newegg is one of many e-tailers running low on stock.

OCZ Vertex Series 30GB SATA II 2.5" SSD - OCZSSD2-1VTX30G

OCZ's Vertex series of SSDs is a favorite amongst enthusiasts, thanks to the use of Indilinx's Barefoot controller. A 30GB Vertex is perfect as a boot drive, and can be had for less than $100 with a mail-in rebate at Newegg.

Intel X25-M 80GB SATA II 2.5" SSD - SSDSA2MH080G2C1

Intel has been very aggressive on pricing with its second generation of SSDs using 34nm NAND, although the street price of the 80GB X25-M is hanging around the $300 mark.

Flash-based Storage:

Super Talent 64GB SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Drive - STU64GSSK

The first SuperSpeed USB 3.0 flash drive shipped this week to the channel, and will be available soon at retail. There will only be a few thousand available this month, as many of them have been pre-sold to early adopters and other enthusiasts who aren't afraid of the $399 price tag. This is the one to get for the guy who has it all.

SanDisk Extreme III SDHC Card 30MB/s 32GB - SDSDX3-032G-A31

Secure Digital High Capacity (SDHC) flash memory cards will continue to live on for years, thanks to backwards compatibility with the new SDXC format that will see traction in 2010.

If you're picking up a new digital camera this year, don't forget the storage! The Sandisk Extreme III SDHC flash memory card reads and writes data at a speedy 30MB/s, whereas many budget cards are around 6MB/s. Many e-tailers are selling the 32GB model around $200 and the 16GB model around $100, but 8GB and 4GB versions are also available.

Random Access Memory:

You need at least 4GB of RAM for an optimal experience, and preferably 8GB to allow for growth. Most OEMs charge a hefty premium for additional RAM, so many consumers upgrade their RAM themselves through sites like Crucial Technology, which is owned by Micron through Lexar Media. Crucial recently won the Bizrate Circle of Excellence Award for outstanding customer service for the eighth year in a row.

I specifically recommend RAM with ECC (Error Correcting Code) if your motherboard supports it. ECC corrects single-bit memory errors which could cause undetected data corruption or a computer crash. Electrical or magnetic interference (particularly from cosmic rays can cause a single bit of DRAM to spontaneously flip to the opposite state. RAM has come a long way over the last twenty years in reliability, but the higher capacities and greater densities involved mean that there is a greater risk of errors.

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Inaccurate statement

By pavel486 on 12/13/2009 3:10:53 PM , Rating: 1

This statement is inaccurate:
"You need at least 4GB of RAM for an optimal experience, and preferably 8GB to allow for growth."
Windows XP supports 4GB and can actually use 3 to 3.5 GB max. Don't waste your money.
Also ECC memory not supported by majority of home-office PCs.

RE: Inaccurate statement

By Storkme on 12/13/2009 3:14:33 PM , Rating: 3

x2, wtf?

Unless an 'optional experience' is running like 6 virtual machines side by side I dunno what on earth you'd need 4GB of RAM for.

Do games even use that much?

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RE: Inaccurate statement

By blowfish on 12/13/2009 3:30:13 PM , Rating: 2

Whilst the wording could have been better, "allow for growth" was a key phrase.

64bit versions of windows can use more than 4GB of course, and maybe future software will take advantage of that.

Otherwise, running a nice lean and mean 32bit XP system, you can easily make do with 2GB, as I do.

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RE: Inaccurate statement

By jimhsu on 12/14/2009 12:08:46 AM , Rating: 2

If what you do on a PC can be classified under "content creation", yes 4 or even 8 GB of ram is useful. Video is the notorious one (After Effects uses 100MB/SECOND for high quality (i.e. 1080p) RAM previews, and renders 2GB/core, requiring more like 16GB for an optimal experience), but even other types of development matter. I commonly mod for a variety of games, and it helps to have the game, editor, photoshop, 3ds max or equivalent, browser, and any other tools (on occasion SQL or Visual C++). That alone eats up 4GB, and windows needs some too. This, I find 8 GB useful. Still, it depends a lot on what you actually DO with a computer.

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RE: Inaccurate statement

By jimhsu on 12/14/2009 12:14:04 AM , Rating: 2

Oh, PS I use at most 1 VM at a time (the things I care about either don't need virtualization, or don't virtualize well). So VMs is not a usage case for me.

Of course, one thing that is notorious is scientific applications. At my lab, we're talking about upgrading a 48GB octo-core machine because "it runs out of ram". When you put hundred million row SQL tables (genomic data) in memory and expect to do something useful, yes you do find yourself running out of memory.

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RE: Inaccurate statement

By MrPoletski on 12/14/2009 6:49:40 AM , Rating: 2

quote:
Do games even use that much?

Short answer: Yes.

Longer answer: Read this http://www.corsair.com/_appnotes/an804_gaming_perf...

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RE: Inaccurate statement

By CrazyBernie on 12/13/2009 3:25:52 PM , Rating: 2

Uh... unless you've decided to step into the modern world with a 64-bit OS... there's nothing inaccurate about that statement.

Windows XP, Vista, and now 7 all have 64-bit versions that can handle beyond 4GB.

I agree with the ECC not being recommended though.

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RE: Inaccurate statement

By danrien on 12/13/2009 6:43:43 PM , Rating: 2

I agree - 4GB of RAM is generally useless for basic computing - I run up to 4 VMs sometimes, so 8GB is useful for me, but for my parents, they do great with 768MB and Windows XP.

ECC is also generally useless for a user, especially if you have 4GB of RAM... with all those electrons flying around at high speed, the chances of one of them being knocked out by a cosmic ray are pretty close to 0, and certainly isn't dangerous to your normal home PC environment (in a server environment, it is definitely useful).

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RE: Inaccurate statement

By Qapa on 12/13/09, Rating: 0

By Qapa on 12/13/2009 9:02:26 PM , Rating: 0

quote:
Windows XP supports 4GB and can actually use 3 to 3.5 GB max.

That is wrong, but most people don't know it anyway.

Win XP 32bits supports 4GB of memory. This means: RAM + page file.

So, put those 4GB to use by turning off the page file.

Advantages of doing this are:
1 - the system becomes faster since the OS won't be writing to the disk to page memory anymore (btw, XP pages memory even when it is not stressed for available memory, so this is one of the best performance improvements to do to a computer);
2 - less writing to the disk, means longer disk longevity (something to consider specially for small SSDs);
3 - if you though 30GB was small for the SSD (which is not, for any OS) you just won 1GB or so by not having a page file;

Another tip is that with an SSD as a boot drive, you can boot really fast so you can probably turn off hibernation, and that saves you several GBs (depending on how much RAM you have).

So, 30GB is really enough for boot drive: OS and maybe a couple of apps/games. Just don't waste it on useless stuff.

The only problem is to find a decent priced laptop that supports 2 disks (1 SSD and 1 HDD).

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RE: Inaccurate statement

By Pryde on 12/14/2009 1:47:07 AM , Rating: 2

Actually you are wrong.

Windows 32bit supports 4 GB physical address space. Most of that address space is filled with RAM, but not all of it. Memory-mapped devices (such as your video card) will use some of that physical address space, as will the BIOS ROMs, Cache on Hard Drives/DVD Drives, Sound Cards etc. After all the non-memory devices have had their say, there will be less than 4GB of address space available for RAM below the 4GB physical address boundary.

The page file has no effect on the amount of memory your PC can access and turning off the page file can cause some problems for programs that use the page file and in windows 7 offer no performance benefit being off.

quote:
2 - less writing to the disk, means longer disk longevity (something to consider specially for small SSDs);

Well that is true for SSD, the major factor in hard disk drive failures by far is temperature, there is such a thing as to cold for a HDD.

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RE: Inaccurate statement

By aqaq55 on 12/15/2009 7:48:12 AM , Rating: 1

http://ta.gg/3yu

fr ee sh i pp ing

(jordan shoes) $32

(air max) $34

+++

wow

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SSDs

By yacoub on 12/13/2009 3:39:04 PM , Rating: 1

SSDs are not yet ready for gift recommendations as they are still way too high priced. Also, 30GB is barely useful for anything.
They really have no business being on a gift recommendation list this year. Maybe next year.

RE: SSDs

By Gary Oak on 12/13/2009 4:01:39 PM , Rating: 1

Have you used an SSD before? At ~100 for 30GB, it's more then worth it.

Also he's not saying to use the SSD for everything. 30 GB is more then enough space for the OS and a few key programs you use often.

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RE: SSDs

By n0nsense on 12/13/2009 5:41:40 PM , Rating: 2

I own 30GB SSD for almost two years. And it's not enough for Windows 7.
XP ... you probably don't need SSD.
I use it for Gentoo. But all /var and /tmp gone to other drives.
It is nice for compilation and other staff. Actually it would be better to own 16GB of RAM.
if you make a RAM disk , that's fast. really fast. You only touch app launcher and it's already open :) SSD is definitely better than HDD, but until you can buy it for ~1USD/GB i can't see them useful for masses.

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RE: SSDs

By AnnihilatorX on 12/13/2009 6:02:54 PM , Rating: 2

quote:
And it's not enough for Windows 7

It is enough for Windows 7, just don't install non-critical big applications on it.

It's likely that you need to move My Documents folder to a storage drive, which you can easily do with Move folder option in properties of My Document, My Music, etc.

You can even remap temporary folder using NTSC junctions. But that's hard to do if you are not into Otherwise just regularly clean the temp folder within %appdata%.

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RE: SSDs

By AnnihilatorX on 12/13/2009 6:03:55 PM , Rating: 2

On a side note, I even managed to run 64bit Vista with 16GB SSD for a year. Don't ask me how.

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RE: SSDs

By StevoLincolnite on 12/13/2009 7:52:53 PM , Rating: 2

I ran Windows 98 back in the day on a 500mb HDD, had a whopping 200mb left over.

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RE: SSDs

By rs1 on 12/13/2009 7:01:18 PM , Rating: 2

I think SSD's are great (I have the 80 GB Intel drive in my laptop), but 30 GB is absolutely too small. Keep in mind that with any SSD, you want to keep your free space around 20-25% so that the load-leveling algorithm has something to work with. So that 30 GB drive is more like a 24 GB drive if you don't want it to start wearing out prematurely. That's enough for Windows 7 and a game. One game.

Hell, even 80 GB is borderline acceptable at best. The only reason it's sufficient for my needs is that I also have a secondary 320 GB HDD in my laptop for storing downloads, multimedia, and other things that don't need the speedy access that the SSD provides. A lot of laptops don't support a second internal HDD as mine does, however.

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RE: SSDs

By tlbj6142 on 12/14/2009 10:39:10 AM , Rating: 2

Don't install apps on the SSD!

When I did my fresh install Windows 7, I was able to fit, Windows 7 Home (x64), Office 7 (Pro sans Outlook), Firefox and Chrome in 16GB? Maybe it was 18GB. And 4-6GB of that was my pagefile which you don't need when you have SSD.

That's what I'd do if I were to purchase a smaller SSD. OS, Office, Firefox, Chrome on the SDD (and any other smaller frequently used apps). Move user profiles to Magnetic drive (don't forget the 'Public' profile). Install all other other apps on the magnetic drive. Whatever it would take to keep the SSD less than 50% full (for future OS patches, service packs, etc.).

That said, the speed improvement of switching to Windows 7-64, using a newer hard drive (WD 1TB Caviar Black) and a 8GB readyboost drive made a huge performance boost on 2yo machine I use to run XP. So much so I'm waiting until the next gen SSDs (SATA3??) come out later this year before I make the switch.

But, if Santa were to give me a 30-40GB SSD, I wouldn't return it.

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RE: SSDs

By Reclaimer77 on 12/14/2009 11:59:12 AM , Rating: 2

quote:
30 GB is more then enough space for the OS and a few key programs you use often.

No, it's really not.

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RAM

By Headfoot on 12/13/2009 3:22:52 PM , Rating: 2

You should probably mention the OS imposed limits on memory and also the effect of still being 32bit vs 64bit, just in case some less technically versed readers are on the site looking for gifts for their enthusiast relatives.

RE: RAM

By AssBall on 12/13/2009 3:43:02 PM , Rating: 2

It won't kill them to put 8 gigs in their Windows XP-32 system. And its good for sales... o_0. Like having a quad core processor when all you do is surf the 'net and play solitaire.

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RE: RAM

By MrPoletski on 12/14/2009 6:56:04 AM , Rating: 2

I'll have you know Vistas 3D spider solitaire is a beast of a game!

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Newegg stock

By Gungel on 12/14/2009 10:41:34 AM , Rating: 2

Newegg does have the OCZ Vertex 30GB in stock for $99 after mail in rebate. I just placed my order.

RE: Newegg stock

By ViroMan on 12/14/2009 9:50:27 PM , Rating: 2

Realy?

Im looking at it now and it says $129.99 thats AFTER a $20 rebate.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...

Is there another one thats not being shown to me?

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