An SSD Eliminates System Delays
We have to admit that this is a blatant and perhaps provocative call to enthusiasts who haven't yet touched solid-state storage: don't deny yourself the advantages of an SSD the next time you upgrade your PC. Although the benefits are hard to quantify in some of the benchmarks we run (the System Builder Marathon is a perfect example, and if you haven't yet entered to win this quarter's trio of systems, make sure you do), an SSD offers so many obvious advantages, even to average users, that this call to action seems justifed.
We conducted this comparison with one of the largest, fastest and most expensive hard disks, Seagate's Barracuda XT 3 TB, and a similarly priced SSD drive from Samsung, the 470. By no means is that the fastest SSD you can buy, but our emphasis here is getting solid-state technology into your machine, period. Enthusiasts will probably go with something different. But at the end of the day, the message is the same.
At the same time, we have no interest in seeing hard drives disappear. To the contrary, when it comes to storing lots of data, be it in the form of movies, music, images, or documents, mechanical storage is still the only way to fly. With very few exceptions, an ideal PC nowadays consists of a SSD as the system drive and a hard disk for storing user information that isn't needed all of the time. A system without an SSD should really be relegated to the low end of the spectrum, while a machine with only solid-state storage is either going to run out of room quickly or cost an arm and a leg.
