One of the best areas to spend a little more to get a lot more is with a solid state hard drive for your desktop or laptop. Traditional platter based hard drives have been the de facto standard for all computers for a very long time. The main reasons being large size and low cost. Below we will outline the pros and cons of choosing SSD (solid state drive) over a traditional hard drive and why it is the one component that you will really notice a difference. Let’s be frank, can the normal user notice a few more megahertz in the CPU or a few hundred more megabytes of RAM, probably not. But we guarantee everyone can notice the difference when using an SSD.

Access Time – SSD 0.1 milliseconds vs. HDD 10-12 milliseconds – Winner SSD is over 100 times faster

Reliability/Durability – SSD has NO MOVING PARTS whereas an HDD has magnetic platter that spin and moving read write heads – Winner SSD

Power – With no moving parts SSD uses less power than HDD – Winner SSD

Capacity vs Price – Although SSD’s come in sizes larger then 512Gb the price becomes very costly when compared to traditional HDD and in the sizes smaller then 512Gb the difference is less noticeable – Winner HDD

So we started off this blog stating where you could get the best bang for your buck when choosing where to spend a little more on your desktop or laptop. As you can see SSD is going to cost a little more, but the benefits outweigh the costs. Instead of getting that extra RAM or faster CPU, consider instead spending a few extra dollars on a solid state drive.