I bought the 1TB version, as I didn't like the idea of keeping a small SSD drive and a big HDD for my setup as many other people have been doing. Because of this, I delayed my purchase of a primary SSD drive on my system until prices came down a lot, especially for the 1TB version.
System Specs:
I5 2500K
Gigabyte GA-Z68P-DS3 (BIOS F9)
Corsair 16GB Ram
EVGA GTX 970
I downloaded Samsung's Data Migration Software and easily cloned my Seagate 2TB SSHD Hybrid Drive; I had about 190GBs of data to clone. I switched the SATA cables around and the system booted up with no problems. The first boot up was fast, but not as fast as I was expecting. I installed Samsung SSD Magician and found my system was set to IDE mode. Went into my BIOS and indeed found it set to IDE. Just to give you a little backstory, I had just done a complete reinstall of Windows 10 about 2-3 weeks prior to this install due to issues with overclocking I had done which corrupted the Windows System files. Having set everything to default for the Windows 10 install, it apparently defaulted the system to IDE mode, and I hadn't noticed it at the time. I've read online that to get the best performance from this SSD, it's best to use AHCI mode. I went ahead and installed a fresh copy of Windows 10 again, since Microsoft makes it so easy to do so now, in regards to activation. After making the necessary changes in my BIOS, the Windows 10 install was quick and easy. I'd say it took half the time, if not less, when compared to the Seagate SSHD just 2-3 weeks ago.
Now with the fresh install of Windows 10, everything just feels snappier and Windows 10 boots in about 4 seconds starting from the Windows logo. I've set the OS optimization to Maximum Performance via Samsung SSD Magician, Rapid Mode disabled.
Samsung SSD Magician reported 546MB/s and 509MB/s, read and write. Also, random read IOPS at 94.2k and random write IOPS at 71.7k. It's not the fastest I've seen when compared to other people's stats, but it is still blazing fast from my experience. HWMonitor reports between 28-33 degrees Celsius.
With my system being six years old now, I once had Intel Smart Response SSD caching setup for the first few years of its life. I used a 30GB SSD which I still have and it still works flawlessly. Due to unforeseen issues, I stopped using Intel's SSD caching. I did notice a slight increase on load times when I stopped using the SSD caching, but I don't ever remember the SSD caching being as responsive and as quick to load applications when compared to using this SSD as my primary drive. It's really a world of difference.
When comparing SSD and SSHD speeds, there is no comparison. Don't let all that marketing mumbo jumbo from Seagate's SSHD advertisements fool you, the SSHD just can't keep up, speed wise. Those SSHD drives though, in my experience, are rock solid reliable. I have three Seagate SSHD drives right now and they all work perfectly fine.
I tested Skyrim Special Edition and found load times short, to where I spend less time looking at those 3D model load screens and just playing the game. Next, I loaded up Endless Legend, which is notorious for long load times, but didn't find much of a big difference of load times between the SSD and SSHD drives. Any difference would be about 10 seconds in length when loading a new game. I guess I can't expect everything to load in under 10 seconds or less. Currently, I'm playing Starcraft 2's campaign from the beginning since I just bought Legacy of the Void for cheap, and found the load times for this game very quick, about 5 seconds to load a campaign map (though I don't remember what it was like before, it's been years since I played these games). Didn't notice any increase in FPS on any of the games I tested and I wasn't expecting there to be.
After over a week of use, it's just made using the computer so much better, not having to wait around for things to load or install. I'm so impressed with the speed of SSD that I want to update the rest of my computers in the house with SSDs, only for the lack of money I haven't done so already. For the past several years, I have preferred to use my iPad for daily stuff like browsing the web, paying bills, etc., partly because apps just loaded so much faster on the iPad, than having to load anything on my computer. Especially since I don't keep my computer on 24/7, I turn it off when it's not in use. Now, I can boot the computer in a fraction of the time it used to take; I think I may begin using my computer just a little bit more than usual. For an almost seven year old computer, that's not bad at all.
| Standing screen display size | 10 Centimeters |
|---|---|
| RAM | 1 TB |
| Hard Drive | 1 TB Solid State Drive |
