Hardcoreware determine if it is worth installing an SSD as a cache rather than use it as a dedicated drive for Windows and applications and games

While CPUs have increased in speed, cores, and efficiency, and we can install huge amounts of ram in a system running upwards of eight channels, if the data you are loading is still coming off spinning platters read by a moving head, there is always going to be a delay in getting that data to you. While read latencies occur in the CPU cache and memory in nanoseconds, mechanical hard drives are in the 5-10 millisecond range. That is a lifetime in comparison. SSDs are in between – they are in the 30 microsecond range (or 0.03 milliseconds). This is what makes the performance boost so noticeable, and why a system with an SSD in it always feels more ‘snappy’. Additionally, the 4K I/O per second performance and data transfer speeds are dramatically higher than on a mechanical HDD. This leads to better load times in applications and games.

But there is still one major problem with SSDs today – price. If you look at your Windows and “Program Files” directories, you are probably using at least 300-500 GB of space, depending on how many applications and games you have installed (this is not taking into consideration storage of media like videos, photos, and music). At that level, you are looking at an expense of at least $400 for an SSD big enough to hold all that data. Alternatively, a middle range 512GB mechanical drive is around $60-70.

Some people get around this by installing a smaller SSD as a “Windows Drive” and using a mechanical drive to install their applications on. You can grab a 128GB version of any SSD for around $100, which brings down the cost considerably. The problem with this is, you only really benefit from half of what SSDs have to offer. Your system will definitely feel more ‘snappy’ overall, with boot times drastically reduced. And perhaps you can install a few of your most used programs on it before running into capacity issues. But if you are running most of your programs and games from a mechanical hard drive, you are really missing out on the data transfer performance SSDs have to offer.

  SSD Cache Performance - is it as good as a dedicated SSD?