SSD drives in education

[zag]

Deluded is a tad strong, dual core vs single core still matters a lot and so does memory bandwidth for certain things, and CPU instructions, and cache. Yes a SSD makes a big difference but that is not a reason to use a crappy old power wasting CPU if you don't have to. CPU speed is not a major concern but instruction set is. A 1.6 GHz Atom will run Windows 7 much better than a 2.4GHz Pentium. DDR2 is way, way faster at things than DDR and those differences become huge when your using stuff that chews a little more CPU power than word processing. Video editing, CAD, etc. sure not everyone does that but some do.

 

Yeh we don't do any of that video editing or CAD stuff here. I'm talking about office, email, Sims type applications on our standard desktop workstations.

 

It just makes me laugh when you see people recommending "at least an intel core i3" or "more than 2gb ram".

 

The day we started using SSDs was the day people stopped complaining about the speed of their machines. Storage has been the bottleneck for many years, not cpu or memory despite what the Intel Marketing says.

Edited May 9, 2012 by zag

[glennda]

Buy your own SSDs, swap them out and keep a few hard drives lying around if you need to do a warranty replace

 

Or buy from the likes of Novatech/Stone who will custom make the machines with SSD's at a cheaper cost then buying a machine and SSD seperatly. If one fails its them who comes in a sorts it for 5 years...

[jamesfed]

It just makes me laugh when you see people recommending "at least an intel core i3" or "more than 2gb ram".

 

Hear you loud and clear there - at 1.6ghz dual core my PC should be the slowest one in the school but you know what - the Vertex 3 inside it changes a whole lot of things (8GB of RAM only for running VMs)

 

Problem is the same is happening in the mobile phone market at the moment with people saying look at my shiney quad core android phone it runs as smooth as butter then all the review sites knocking Windows Phone because its only single core (but still runs as smooth as butter)....in that case its the OS fault just as with full PCs its the storage fault for things being slow.

[SYNACK]

Yeh we don't do any of that video editing or CAD stuff here. I'm talking about office, email, Sims type applications on our standard desktop workstations.

 

It just makes me laugh when you see people recommending "at least an intel core i3" or "more than 2gb ram".

 

The day we started using SSDs was the day people stopped complaining about the speed of their machines. Storage has been the bottleneck for many years, not cpu or memory despite what the Intel Marketing says.

 

When it's an extra $20 for another 2GB why not have it in there and only need to hit the SSD half the time. We get i5 for vPro and power efficiency as well as having the potential to still be decent in a few years time. But this is a divergent argument from the OPs topic.

[synaesthesia]

Building all our machines this year ourselves, with 120GB SSD drives. Really, really looking forward to it, the boost it's given our heavily used office stations has made a *massive* difference and it seems the next logical step to keep performance related problems to a minimum.

 

Maybe we might start to see the network actually being used!

[CyberNerd]

Has anyone here made the jump to SSDs in class / staff rooms?

 

This year I have put a proposal forward that for one classroom which currently has Pentium D machines in (About 4/5 years old) rather than replace all the systems at a cost of around £300 each (15 PCs so £4500) we buy 64GB Crucial M4 SSD drives at a cost of approx £60 each (£900).

 

Theoretically this should extend the life of the base hardware by at least 2 years, just trying to see if anyone else has gone down a similar route!

 

I'm in a similar situation. The machines will never adequately run windows7. We are proposing ripping out the drives altogether and diskless booting them into a VDI environment.

[Greenbeast]

i'm intrigued by all this hype over ssds

[localzuk]

i'm intrigued by all this hype over ssds

 

It isn't hype... Hype is unfounded, SSD speed is definitely real...

[SYNACK]

It isn't hype... Hype is unfounded, SSD speed is definitely real...

 

Yeap, I have dealt with a couple and they are stupidly quick but if you have real performance bottlenecks in other areas already you will never realise this fully. This is why we go for new gear as it will reap the most benifit and will keep running for longer meaning that they are unlikely to end up in the situation where Cybernerd is above of not being able to run the modern software in the short to medium term.

[CyberNerd]

in the situation where Cybernerd is above of not being able to run the modern software in the short to medium term.

 

I can run modern software, just not windows :/

[sonofsanta]

I think, with Windows 7, Core 2 Duo and 2GB RAM is a realistic baseline for reasonable performance for most tasks, such as Office, browsing, etc. Such computers would see the full benefit of an SSD and it is absolutely worth doing. An SSD really does improve performance in every metric - not only 10 second boot times with instantly usable desktops, but even my Firefox performance is much snappier with the weight of tabs I tend to have open.

 

If you're getting custom built from Novatech/Stone, with hard drive prices as high as they are still, there is no way you can't justify the extra £10/£20 to bump up to a 64gb SSD over an entry 320Gb hard drive - drop the processor down to afford it if you must, because it will make much more of an impact than a couple of meg of L3 cache and hyper-threading.

[googlemad]

Thanks for the comments!

 

I think I'll alter my proposal to mention if we can save a few quid on not replacing the entire hardware in certain rooms then we can put the savings into speccing SSD drives for the rooms which do get new hardware!

[3s-gtech]

Very interesting topic and debate.

 

My plans, now we have replaced 90%+ of the student PCs around the school, is to get more life out of them with SSDs. So next year where one of our IT suites is due replacement on our 3 year cycle, I'll put Crucial M4s in instead (Core 2 Duo PCs with 3GB RAM). I'll work my way around the school doing that, damn sight cheaper than replacing the PCs and the boost will be more significant for our budget. I'll draw the line at our Prescott P4/PentiumD machines though - not sure it's worth bothering.

[Arthur]

I'm intrigued by all this hype over SSDs

There aren't many computer components that can give you a > 6,000-30,000% increase in performance for not a lot of money. Once you use a computer with an SSD, you can never go back to HDDs (at least not for your OS drive).

 

HDD (2.5" 5,400rpm)

 

http://i.imgur.com/g8jkB.png

 

SSD

 

http://i.imgur.com/XKJtp.png

Edited May 9, 2012 by Arthur

[sidewinder]

Well this thread has certainly convinced me to go for SSD's when buying replacement PC's this year.

I'm hoping to be amazed, because I've NEVER used one. I've got very close to buying them for home computers but capacity has always won out in the end

[glennda]

I did a comparision loading Adobe PhotoShop Cs3 on windows 7 one on a HDD one of an SSD - the ssd have fully loaded Photoshop before the HDD had even shown the photoshop splash screen.

[3s-gtech]

Also, in real usage terms, I have not found any usage difference between a 64GB Crucial M4 on SATA 2 versus one on SATA 3. Similar host machines, no noticeable gain in normal usage.

[Tallwood_6]

Just ordered some new HP's with factory fitted SSD's and was amazed at how reasonable the pricing came out. Planning to refurb a large batch of machines with SSD's over the summer you can get 64gig Cruicial or 90gb kingston SDD's quite cheaply now and the warrenties and reliability looks to be pretty solid now.

[glennda]

What do you class as reasonable for the HP Desktops? Also what proc and ram you get out of interest as I need to recommend some to clients next week (saves me a job )

[Tallwood_6]

HP elite 8200 core i5 4gb ram 120gb SSD 3 year warrenty well under £450 excl vat for just the base unit keyboard and mouse.

[glennda]

HP elite 8200 core i5 4gb ram 120gb SSD 3 year warrenty well under £450 excl vat for just the base unit keyboard and mouse.

 

Not a bad price to be honest was expecting 500+! Are you able to give me an HP P/N? All I can see for the 8200 range is HD?

 

 

EDIT: Ignore me!

Edited May 9, 2012 by glennda

[Danp]

After using my Mac Air for a week I was convinced about SSDs and will be fitting one as my main drive in my desktop in the summer

[jamesfed]

Would it be of any benefit to anyone if I were to mash together a comparative video (HDD vs SSD) - I know there are plenty out there on YouTube ect already but I'm thinking something more education based/something that you would like to know but that isn't on any other videos.

[synaesthesia]

Imagine what the Air would be like if it used an SSD properly There's been talks of some hacks around to do so but as I'm not a user, I've no idea if that's come to fruition.

[dave.81]

Well i've just ordered a 64GB Crucial m4 to install into one of our main IT suites and will compare speeds with identical pc sat next to it. Only way to tell if the extra cost can be justified.