Put an SSD in my Windows machine

I know I am a true Apple fan boy, but I also have a Windows machine I use for radio stuff like my RadarBox, Pro96Com and others.

What I have is an HP Pavilion Elite e9180f I bought almost 6 years ago. At the time it was very impressive for a consumer grade machine, with a 1TB HDD, 9 GB of RAM and 64-bit Windows Vista powered by a 2.67 GHz i7 processor and with a full 1GB of v-Ram. While today, 6 years later, it seems pretty pedestrian at the time it was pretty much a top-end machine unless you were a gamer (which I am not). At the time it was the computer with the best specs I could find for under $1000.

It had some pretty rocky reviews that came out after I bought it but I have not had any problems with it other than the power supply going kaput a year or so ago. I added a USB3.0 card to use with my backup drive and I removed the wifi card to accommodate it, otherwise the hardware is as it came.

Within months I upgraded to Windows 7 Pro and that has worked just fine with everything I threw at it. For almost 6 years the machine has worked great, for most of that it was on 24/7 running an ATCS feed and the ADSB receiver. Most of the issues I had over the years were getting devices (programming cables etc) to work with the 64-bit OS. Now that 64-bit Windows is pretty much standard that isn't an issue much anymore.

Recently however I noticed the computer seemed slow. It may have been a relative thing since I replaced my Mac recently and that runs like a roadrunner being chased by the coyote. The RadarBox program took several minutes to load and other programs just seemed sluggish.

I considered getting a new computer, building one myself or seeing about upgrading the existing one. I decided that an SSD should speed things up and on the advice of the kid (who owns a computer consulting company) I bought a Samsung 850 Pro 1 TB SSD (Fry's $449). I figured if it didn't help much I could use it on a new-build.

After getting home I ran the included cloning program, which took a few hours to copy the contents of my old hard drive to the SSD. After that was done I opened the computer, and swapped out the drives. After I restarted the machine worked fine.

So far so good. It boots in seconds and is ready to go in less than 20 seconds. The RadarBox program, which would normally take 3 to 3.5 minutes to start did so in about 10-15 seconds.

I figure this computer will now last me another few years and when I replace it I will remove and retain the SSD. It was totally worth the upgrade! It ain't quite Mac-like but it works.

Nice! I've considered the SD option/route for some time now. Seeing this report pushes me closer to doing it!

Thanks.

That was a smart move.

People have to realize, the GHz war is over. A good machine from days gone by is a good machine today. Of course for special things like games and benchmarks, new is better. But even an old machine (desktop) with a decent graphics card can game and with some tinkering can even hang with newer machines benchmarks.

I have been using SSDs for a few years now and they can make any semi-recent machine fast. It is better to do these little things rather then fill a landfill with these machines that still have much useful life left in them.

The next big computer jump will be Quantum computing if it ever comes. Until then it will be power consumption and some jumps in performance that really mean nothing to the normal Joe and only beneficial to those whom like more numbers in benchmarks.

The only downside to that new one is the size of the ssd I've heard the bigger they are as far as storage the the faster they fail

^ ^ only partially true


its the type of flash storage its using. MLC Memory, the builders have worked out the kinks and twists in MLC Designed drives.


the TLC Drives are now the spotty ones.


These two images are my two SSD's. Number 1 is a OCZ Vertex 4 128GB. the two MOST important SMART attributes you want to pay attention to:

Health Remaining and Lifetime Writes from Host

Well Number 1 is my Battlefield Franchise Drive. all my Battlefield Games are on this drive.

Notice the health on SMART E9: 98% this drive is nearly 4 years old. its a MLC Drive.


Now look at Number two. another OCZ, but a different line: OCZ Agility 3 a 64GB SSD. this is my windows drive. this drive has some conflicting information, because its refurbished, some of those data sets were reset or marked as "OLD"

but again key features: Drive Life and Lifetime Writes E7 and F1 the Life is misreporting its actual value, due to the refurb status. but look at the "Current" section. 97% and the writes attribute is definitely FUBAR. no way its only 10,000 writes for a 3 year old drive that has been through 4 windows re-installs on 7 and 2 for win 8. the SMART data is unreliable for a refurbished drive, it never is.


the end point is. you want MLC SSD Drives. not SLC or TLC. SLC and TLC have significantly shorter life spans.

reconrider8 said:

The only downside to that new one is the size of the ssd I've heard the bigger they are as far as storage the the faster they fail

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That may be true to a point. Since there are more memory chips (I presume...) in a larger drive then there are more parts to fail, simple mathematics.

My kid, who is a professional in the field, said to get the Samsung Pro, I assume it is because it has the best type of hardware etc. It is the same type he uses in his critical hardware so I guess it is good enough for me.

the first part N9J is not completely correct. its density per chip. and partially related to number of chips.

then factor in whether they are SLC, MLC or TLC based Memory chips. SLC's were the worst for performance and life, MLC at first was a hit or miss in life span, TLC is now the factor in low life. MLC is the best right now.

Samsung's are the best SSD's on the market. but stay away from the TLC versions.

I just built a computer with a Samsung 850 EVO Series 250GB SSD and a 1TB Western Digital Black Edition for storage. Asus Z97-A motherboard, Intel i5-4690k CPU 3.5GHz, EVGA G2 750 Watt PSU, Gigabyte GeForce GTX 750 Ti 2GB Windforce Graphics card, CoolerMaster Hyper 212 EVO CPU Cooler, G. Skill Ares 16GB Ram,
I installed Windows 7 Pro on the SSD and it runs quick and smooth.

I'm coming from a 10year old Dell with Windows XP Pro on it!!!

Talk about an upgrade!
Overclocking will be next......

OC no problem with that H212 EVO on it. make sure your airflow is good though. that is key for marginal to extreme OC rates.

Make sure you remember the golden rule of OC.

BABY STEPS!!

CapStar362 said:

OC no problem with that H212 EVO on it. make sure your airflow is good though. that is key for marginal to extreme OC rates.

Make sure you remember the golden rule of OC.

BABY STEPS!!

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I fully agree CapStar362....

I made the mistake of overclocking it using the AI Suite 3 software that came with it and according to CPUZ and Asus's overclocking software, it had my CPU at 4.6 MHz when it was done with the 5 way optimization!

I didn't want it overclocked that high anyway and there was no way to "turn it down" safely that I could find so I re-installed Windows 7 and I didn't install the AI Suite 3 Software.

When I get the chance, I'll do the overclocking myself through the BIOS.....one step at a time!

AI Suite is a pile of dog snot. do it by BIOS. i run my 3770k @ 4.5GHz on 100Mhz BClk so thats a 45 ratio multiplier. runs magnificent. i also disabled C State so the CPU runs 4.5 at all times, rather than dancing around with turbo mode and idle states. also with Win 7 you might want to unpark your cores.

use this to achieve that feature.

https://bitsum.com/parkcontrol/

Does overclocking really add anything to the experience or is it more of a contest to see how fast one can get their computer?

N9JIG said:

Does overclocking really add anything to the experience or is it more of a contest to see how fast one can get their computer?

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I'm not looking to "win" any contest. I just want to increase my CPU speed a bit and I have that ability now.
I'm also not going to overclock it to it's max.

Now I do believe there are some people who overclock just to see how fast they can push their processor speeds. Some people even go to the extremes of de-lidding their CPU!!
Crazy to go to those extremes if you ask me.

N9JIG said:

Does overclocking really add anything to the experience or is it more of a contest to see how fast one can get their computer?

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It depends on who you're talking to. :lol:

Seriously, some people do overclock for bragging rights on forums. Others overclock because they want the additional power for games or intensive CPU processing.

Using the BIOS, I overclocked my PC to see what I could get out of it. I have an 3.2 GHz AMD Phenom II X6 1090T. I was able to overclock it almost 20% on air cooling; anything faster than that made it run too hot. Not needing to max it out, and not wanting to spend the cash on water cooling, I left it at that ... it's very reliable, and it just loafs through even processing-intensive programs such as iRacing.

it can be both worlds for overclocking.


there are challenges to extreme OC CPU's and then there are causal OC people just to get a small boost in performance.


my CPU turbo's @ 3.9 so my 4.5 is not that much. i just disabled the idle states so that the the 3770k is always running @ 4.5GHz, instead of dynamically adjusting clock speeds which in some applications causes stutters and problems.