discussion SSD for HTPC useage

[SiochainCDA]

Good evening ladies and gents,

So now that my desktop gaming PC is running well, and I have no pertinent upgrades for the near future, I'm looking at sinking all that pesky extra money I don't have into getting my HTPC into better shape. I currently have a pair of 2TB WD Greens for storage, and an old 320GB WD for the boot drive. I'm only using about 40'ish GB total on the boot drive (Win 7, XBMC, just the basics) - so I'm thinking a 64GB SSD would be a great bang for the buck solution to speed up boot time and general useability.

So to my question - what SSD should I be looking at? Should I care about huge speed, or just go with something cheap? I've been debating between a Corsair Force 3 60GB and a Kingston SSD-Now V200 64GB - are there better options, or would one of those be a solid performer?

Thanks in advance!

 

[AkG]

For that setup....an uber SSD would be overkill. Its only job would be to speed up boot up times and opening up what VLC or media player?

I'd either hold off and wait for the 3.5" Seagate Hybrid hdds with onboard NAND to arrive on the scene later this year (according to rumor and innuendo) as that will combo large hdd with fast nand.... or get a cheap but decent SSD now. See if you can pick up a gently used Crucial C300. If not...the prices are cheap on the M4s and thats always a good choice....OVERKILL but still a very good choice.

YMMV

 

[ipaine]

I ended up using my older Kingston V+ 128GB in my HTPC. Is it maybe overkill a little, well sort of as the machine would be fine with a standard drive but hey I had it just sitting around so it was good to put it to use. That said it only takes a few seconds for the system to wake up from sleep. And this is up into my mediaportal frontend that has to deal with a few thousand TV episodes and almost 600 movies in its database.

Of course if I was going to get one know I would go for maybe a small M4 or really almost any cheaper small SSD.

 

[Arinoth]

Personally I feel an SSD is overkill for an htpc, mainly for the fact it's something you'll be leaving on most the time (at least I do). So the very rare times I reboot it I wouldn't get/see the constant gain compared to booting up my desktop daily.

 

[zoob]

On the contrary, I would think an HTPC is the perfect situation for a SSD.

You push the power button, and all of your other AV gear turns on almost instantaneously (save for some TVs with stupid startup chimes and animations).
Push the power button and you expect your gear to be usable (or at least wake up from sleep very quickly).

A cheap refurb SSD would work perfectly here, and that's the reason I have a Corsair Force 120 refurb in my own HTPC. The investment is minimal compared to all of your AV gear, yet it provides for a better user experience.

 

[ipaine]

While I do agree with that, there is one big reason why I wanted to use a SSD, noise. They are silent and the quieter the HTPC is the better, at least in my small living room.

 

[Arinoth]

I've been using 2.5" HDDs in several different HTPCs and I can never hear them, perhaps because most people use 3.5", which tend to be louder.

Like I said, I keep mine on all the time, I allow the computer to put the drive to sleep after 10-15 mins of no use, same with the screen. Whenever I want to watch something, i click my htpc keyboard, everything wakes up instantly.