simulator on ssd: good or nonsense?

[Christoph_T]

Hi folks,

last week I have given my PC to a friend of mine. At the moment I am searching for good components for my next computer.
My question is: Should I buy an extra ssd for the simulator or would you say that's nonsense.
Any advice is appreciated.

With best regards,

Christoph

 

[Dumonceau]

Hi folks,

last week I have given my PC to a friend of mine. At the moment I am searching for good components for my next computer.
My question is: Should I buy an extra ssd for the simulator or would you say that's nonsense.
Any advice is appreciated.

With best regards,

Christoph

It makes very good sense!! I have one dedicated for my FSX and the difference is startling!

D.

 

[roger-wilco-66]

The only concern could be space requirements / cost. Large SSDs are very expensive.
So I use a hybrid SSHD drive because I need a lot of space on that volume. SSHDs also give a significant speed advantage.

Cheers,
Mark

 

[alehead]

It is always going to be a question of budget. If you have the money available, I would seriously recommend SSDs for FSX/P3D...

SSHDs are definitely a great option, but I believe SSDs still have the edge...

A


Andrew Entwistle

 

[expat]

When I rebuilt my high end system recently I added to 250gb SSD's. One (C:drive) has W7 and common pc apps, the other (D:drive) is FSX only. Also have two large mechanical HD's (one internal, one external) for storage. Works a treat. Most immediate difference is how fast FSX loads. You can manage the space limits by keeping only "active" aircraft in the FSX folder and the rest in a storage drive "hangar" folder, and just cut and paste back and forth to manage. You can also locate mesh and add on scenery as necessary in other drives.

 

[Bushpounder]

Just remember this, an SSD cannot be recovered when it fails. Whatever is on it will be gone. A regular drive has a pretty good chance for recovery. Remember that, if you have hundreds or thousands of dollars of software installed on it.

Don

 

[Firekitten]

SSD's also have a limited read /write lifecycle on them... fsx reads and writes a a bazillion times more compared with most games... chances of data corruption increasing = many.

What my system is setup as... (and it gets me full settings on fsx btw)

SSD for operating system (pc boots in seconds), disk drive for games. separate disk drive for fsx... ONLY fsx on that disk... fsx runs like silk lightning. Same effect, more longevity, cheaper, and works just as well

 

[Wizard]

And to give you a different setup - I have a SSD with Win 7 and FSX (only) on it. I linked my SimObjects to a hard drive - which makes it transparent to FSX. My SSD is only 120 GB. I do take some umbrage with the advice that SSDs lifetime is less than a magnetic hard drive... solid state devices (ie transistors) have been around for decades and I would say that life dependency is the other way around - magnetic pole shifting and mechanical drives are much more prone to physical failure, SSDs are cooler (temperature wise) and consume about 1/3 the power of a hard drive. I'd go all solid state if I could, but that would be cost prohibitive for me, so I compromised. Time will tell for sure about the durability of the SSD, but there is much less probability of an SSD failure than a HD. Just think of the trillions of cycles your CPU and cache memory will go through during it's life time... an SSD gets far less abuse than that - and both are composed of similar materials.

 

[roger-wilco-66]

And to give you a different setup - I have a SSD with Win 7 and FSX (only) on it. I linked my SimObjects to a hard drive - which makes it transparent to FSX. My SSD is only 120 GB. I do take some umbrage with the advice that SSDs lifetime is less than a magnetic hard drive... solid state devices (ie transistors) have been around for decades and I would say that life dependency is the other way around - magnetic pole shifting and mechanical drives are much more prone to physical failure, SSDs are cooler (temperature wise) and consume about 1/3 the power of a hard drive. I'd go all solid state if I could, but that would be cost prohibitive for me, so I compromised. Time will tell for sure about the durability of the SSD, but there is much less probability of an SSD failure than a HD. Just think of the trillions of cycles your CPU and cache memory will go through during it's life time... an SSD gets far less abuse than that - and both are composed of similar materials.

Sorry, but a NAND type SSD is not comparable to a traditional transistor or other semiconductor type. Also, it is true that a NAND gate cell can only go through a limited amount of write cycles and that this kind of SSD will degrade over time. Technically, this is the price you pay for the feature of not loosing stored data in the memory without power. They are also prone to fail on power outages. DRAM SSD types have no r/w limitations, but need to stay under a constant current or they'll loose the stored informations.

Having had two catastrophic SSD failures in notebooks in the past 2 years (which does not keep me from using SSDs) I have a special eye and a working backup concept for the systems I run with them.


Cheers,
Mark

 

[Jafo]

To all intents and purposes...ALL HDs are non-recoverable when they die.
And ALL HDs die.

Inescapable facts of [computing] life, so....
Get an SSD.

Currently I have just finished - today [you never finish] building a Haswell i7 5960 on an ASUS X99 Deluxe.... and FSX resides on an M.2 plugged directly into the MoBo [think PCIe]. It's 512gig - partitioned eventually for OS one half...and FSX on the other.

It's quick. A GTX980 draws the pictures while the rest of it thinks....

You have to dream tho....what FSX would be like if it even knew what 8 cores and 32gig ram was....

OK, so the build has cost me around $6800 AUD [including the LE Level 10 case] but I decided it was time I built something half-decent...

 

[Bjoern]

SSD's also have a limited read /write lifecycle on them... fsx reads and writes a a bazillion times more compared with most games... chances of data corruption increasing = many.

I've seen a statistic somewhere that you only need to worry about SSD lifetime if you run a server with extremely high usage. The Average Joe/Jane will never even get close to this, so a a SSD should last just as long as a regular HDD, if not longer.

 

[Christoph_T]

Thanks for your feedback. I think I'll go for a hybrid-systen. Facts so far:
- 8 GB Ram
- one hard drive with 2 TB
- ssd with 250 GB (plus an old 250 GB ssd)
- MSI GTX 970
- Intel 4790K cpu
- a power pack with 530 W

I don't have chosen a mainboard and a cpu cooler yet.

 

[modelr]

Thanks for your feedback. I think I'll go for a hybrid-systen. Facts so far:
- 8 GB Ram
- one hard drive with 2 TB
- ssd with 250 GB (plus an old 250 GB ssd)
- MSI GTX 970
- Intel 4790K cpu
- a power pack with 530 W

I don't have chosen a mainboard and a cpu cooler yet.

I would highly suggest 8 GB more RAM. WIN 7 or above can use it. Fewer read/writes to virtual memory.

Also suggest a watercooling system. Makes a huge difference when using flightsim.

 

[mikewmac]

I've been running a dedicated flightsim system I built a couple of years ago with 2 SSD's, 1 for my Win7 Pro OS and 1 for all my flightsims along with 2X 1 Tb HD's with 1 for all my data and any support programs that don't need the speed of the SSD's and one for backing up all the other drives. This has worked great and very reliably so far. The only issue is that the the 2 SSD's are only 128 Gb due to the high cost of SSD's at the time and the flightsim one is getting full. I have a replacement 512 Gb SSD, cheaper than the 128 Gb one was a couple of years ago, arriving today to clone this original flightsim SSD onto and space should never be a problem again.

 

[Daube]

Go for a "SSD only" computer.
HD are a thing from the past. You can keep an external one if you need space to store unused files/archives/movies etc...
SSHD are a bad idea to me. They are like hybrid cars when you're dreaming about a pure electric car. Sure they have more range (capacity) than the electric cars, but you still get to worry abou that thermic engine, the noise, the smell, the maintenance etc....
Yes, SSD are expensive, but the prices keep dropping every year.

 

[Roadburner440]

The SSD is AMAZING if you have a SATA 3 computer. I originally bought one of the red Corsair GT's for use in my desktop with FSX, and it mainly just got rid of the texture popping. That desktop is SATA 2 though. However with my laptop I have a Samsung 840 250GB (can get it on newegg for $130ish), and with SATA 3 it makes a world of difference. I would never use anything else for FSX or P3D again.

 

[mikewmac]

The SSD is AMAZING if you have a SATA 3 computer. I originally bought one of the red Corsair GT's for use in my desktop with FSX, and it mainly just got rid of the texture popping. That desktop is SATA 2 though. However with my laptop I have a Samsung 840 250GB (can get it on newegg for $130ish), and with SATA 3 it makes a world of difference. I would never use anything else for FSX or P3D again.

Good point. Both of my SSD's are connected through SATA 3 connections to the mobo.

 

[Bjoern]

I would highly suggest 8 GB more RAM. WIN 7 or above can use it. Fewer read/writes to virtual memory.

8 GB are adequate for just about everything as any 32bit application can't allocate more than 2.3GB virtual memory anyway.
It's a different ball game for 64bit apps but let's face it...no one uses those to their full extent anyway.

Faster RAM should be preferable.

- ssd with 250 GB (plus an old 250 GB ssd)

Be careful with old SSDs with Sandforce 1200 controllers (e.g. OCZ Vertex 2). The Intel 8 series chipsets have quite a few problems with those.


As for coolers, I've got a Coolermaster Evo that kept my i4670 so cool that this summer was actually really boring in terms of "Will my CPU melt today?".

 

[Christoph_T]

Thanks again for your suggestions.

With "old" I mean a Samsung ssd 840pro.
I will use one ssd for windows and one for the sim. I need the HD for games and other data.

Concerning the RAM: I will start with 8 GB and the tests will show if there is a need for more.

With best regards,

Christoph

 

[Bushpounder]

To all intents and purposes...ALL HDs are non-recoverable when they die.
And ALL HDs die.

Inescapable facts of [computing] life, so....
Get an SSD.

Currently I have just finished - today [you never finish] building a Haswell i7 5960 on an ASUS X99 Deluxe.... and FSX resides on an M.2 plugged directly into the MoBo [think PCIe]. It's 512gig - partitioned eventually for OS one half...and FSX on the other.

It's quick. A GTX980 draws the pictures while the rest of it thinks....

You have to dream tho....what FSX would be like if it even knew what 8 cores and 32gig ram was....

OK, so the build has cost me around $6800 AUD [including the LE Level 10 case] but I decided it was time I built something half-decent...

That is not a true statement. Not ALL HD's die. I am using a HD that is over 10 years old. Most regular HD's WILL give a warning prior to them failing, which gives one time to copy them. An SSD fails like a light bulb. Now it's working, now it isn't.

Don