Mistake buying three 32GB SSDs?

[VirtualLarry]

One of my recent endeavors has been to build three mini-ITX rigs, with AM1 boards and CPUs. (Ok, and one micro-ATX AM1, but we won't talk about the odd man out.)

It all started with some cheap Sempron 3850 CPUs ($20), and soon spilled over to some $36.99 decent-looking mini-ITX Winsis cases from Directron.com , and then of course, RAM and SSDs.

Initially, I had purchased two Apotop (huh? yeah.) 120/128GB SSDs from Newegg for $50. (Cheapest 120GB-class SSDs at the time.)

Then, Newegg had a special on Sandisk SSD PLUS 120GB SSDs, for $40 ea.

Then, later on, after I had built two of the ITX rigs, and was buying the remaining parts for the third, I decided to spring for some 32GB SSDs at TigerDirect. Transcend '370 models, for $27.49 ea + ship, came out to around $30 ea.

My thinking was that I was going to be putting Linux Mint on these, and that a 120GB SSD would be overkill for a Linux install.

Part of my goal was to get the overall cost of the PC below or at $200, which swapping out the $50 SSD for a $30 SSD would get me.

I haven't opened the 32GB SSDs, and now I'm lamenting that I may have made a mistake in value by purchasing them. At least I didn't get them at Newegg, because they want $50 for them. Yep, $50 for a 120GB, or $50 for a 32GB, guess size doesn't matter to Newegg.

I don't think Linux Mint 17.2 takes up more than 16GB, including 4GB for swap (4GB RAM in PC). So that should leave a decent amount for document storage and downloads.

 

[Flapdrol1337]

Does linux mint do other shenanigans like a hibernate file?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Does linux mint do other shenanigans like a hibernate file?

TBH, I don't know. I *think* Linux uses the swap partition to hibernate, but I'm not sure.

I've never tried it in Mint, but my Ubuntu 12.04 LTS laptop (OEM-installed Linux), magically got a new "hibernate" option in the system menu after one of the updates (kernel update?), but that option has never worked for me. It seems to write out the hibernate data when shutting down, but then, on bootup, it always goes to a fresh new boot. I have no idea why it doesn't work. Then again, lots of things don't work in Linux. (I tried partitioning and formatting a 5TB drive to GPT and NTFS in Mint 17.1, nope, cannot do, "sgdisk" command missing from OS, called by "Disks" utility tool.)

 

[Essence_of_War]

I'm not sure I understand the question.

If your top goal was to do the builds under $200, then who cares about what we think about the value of your SSD picks? Build and enjoy. Slap yourself on the back for hitting your budget goal!

Do you really need us to tell you that paying ~1 USD/GB is highly dubious value for an SSD, and that the value boat on small capacity SSDs has sailed?

Newegg probably isn't asking for $50 for that 32GB SSD just for funsies. Even if you have like no NAND, you still have to buy 1 controller per drive, and that drive still needs one unit of packaging, etc. You shouldn't expect the price/GB that you see on 256/512 GB drives to scale down to small capacities.

 

[Yuriman]

I'm sure you can get by with 32GB in Mint, but if you're giving/selling these machines to other people, you're doing them a disservice. Most people, from my experience, have no idea what to do when their hard drive gets full and you're in for a tech support nightmare.

 

[fuzzymath10]

Most people, from my experience, have no idea what to do when their hard drive gets full and you're in for a tech support nightmare.

Exactly - my parents ran out of space on their 80GB boot SSD this year because they had downloaded a ton of photos from their cameras. Moving their personal folders is annoying. Fortunately, I was in town and had a spare 160GB SSD so they're back to half full, plus 2x80GB of spare SSD storage, plus a 500GB spinner.

There's what you think you can get by with, what you probably need, and what you want.

32GB boot drives belong on phones and tablets. You should provision for temp files, swap, hibernation, internet cache, etc all chewing up space and assume most users won't reconfigure or run cleanup routines.

 

[KingFatty]

Perhaps a USB drive, or SSD/microSD plus reader, would be more versatile of choice, assuming your mobos support booting off USB. If you need to dump the computers, you can continue to use the storage on other computers/smart phones/cameras.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I'm sure you can get by with 32GB in Mint, but if you're giving/selling these machines to other people, you're doing them a disservice. Most people, from my experience, have no idea what to do when their hard drive gets full and you're in for a tech support nightmare.

Hmm, that's a good point, that I guess I hadn't fully considered.

I was basically thinking of these machines as basic internet-access boxes, without any significant downloading. I mean, if they're a "digital hoarder", then they need to provide their own storage for that. (External Portable USB3.0 HDD, for example.)

 

[VirtualLarry]

I'm not sure I understand the question.

Well, basically, should I open and finish the build with the 32GB SSDs, or should I return them (potentially incurring a restocking fee + shipping back), and use some 120GB SSDs.

Edit: The AM1 ITX board I used is an ASRock, with 4 SATA6G ports, and the SSD mounting bracket I'm using in the 3.5" drive bay has room for two 2.5" drives. So I could buy a 1TB 2.5" drive and stick it in there as a data drive. It's questionable whether the end-user recipient of these machines would have the know-how to deal with a secondary drive though.

 

[cbn]

Well, basically, should I open and finish the build with the 32GB SSDs, or should I return them (potentially incurring a restocking fee + shipping back), and use some 120GB SSDs.

I think 32GB would be plenty for a Mint 17.2 internet browsing box.

Although I don't recommend it, at one time I ran Mint 17.1 off a 8GB USB 2.0 flash drive, limiting downloads to updates, nvidia driver, and the Steam Client....which I used for streaming only. As I recall it did use up almost all the space though. But 32GB is 4X more than 8GB, so your boxes obviously will have a lot more wiggle room for extras.

Another option would be to use the 32GB drives as cache drives for your Z97 builds.

P.S. Those transcend 370 drives got a really good review from SSD reveiw:

http://www.thessdreview.com/our-reviews/transcend-ssd370-ssd-review-256gb/

Nice find!

 

[dave_the_nerd]

My housemate has a 6 year old laptop that has never seen >50% CPU use, but damned if she doesn't have 90GB of photos on the thing.

Just saying.

 

[VirtualLarry]

My housemate has a 6 year old laptop that has never seen >50% CPU use, but damned if she doesn't have 90GB of photos on the thing.

Just saying.

Thanks.

PS. Buy her a 1TB external USB drive, and teach her to backup. A 6 year old laptop HDD probably doesn't have much time left.

 

[tweakboy]

You can install OS ,,,,,,, and thats about it.

 

[cfenton]

You can absolutely run Mint on a 32GB drive. As someone mentioned, you can run Mint from a slow USB drive if you really want to. For an internet box that uses webmail and nothing else, that's probably fine. If the people you intend to use these things ever want to put photos, videos, or anything other than documents on them, then the 120GB drives will be much better for the small price difference. I know I'd rather have the wiggle room for a few bucks than have a constantly full drive.

 

[Zor Prime]

Exactly - my parents ran out of space on their 80GB boot SSD this year because they had downloaded a ton of photos from their cameras.

That's funny. My wife did the exact same thing.

I gave her 1TB of space elsewhere for her pictures and she obviously knows well enough about it but one time she totally forgot to dump them there and she's like "PC ran out of space???" lol

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Thanks.

PS. Buy her a 1TB external USB drive, and teach her to backup. A 6 year old laptop HDD probably doesn't have much time left.

Way ahead of you, man. Replaced the original HDD with a 250GB SSD a while back (Crucial M550) and backups are automated (OS X Time Machine) to my server.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Well, the saga's not quite over. I found some apparent NOS HDDs, 160GB SATA2, for $15 at Newegg, free ship. (See my Hot Deals sub-forum thread.)

So I ordered "a few".

Swapping out the $30 32GB SSD for a $15 160GB HDD saves me another $15 per machine, and with 160GB, the end-user(s) shouldn't be running out of space.

 

[XavierMace]

Now they'll just be running out of time. LOL.

 

[cbn]

Swapping out the $30 32GB SSD for a $15 160GB HDD saves me another $15 per machine, and with 160GB, the end-user(s) shouldn't be running out of space.

Virtual Larry, how much RAM are you using?

4GB?

The reason I am asking is because I am wondering how 4GB RAM + 7200 rpm 160GB HDD would compare to 2GB RAM + 10000 rpm 160GB Raptor for overall usage in a extreme budget build?

Both options (4GB RAM + 160GB HDD vs. 2GB RAM + 160GB Raptor) come out to the same price when using current NOS drive pricing--> http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2433743 )

P.S. I have never used a Raptor before, so I don't know what to expect. Yeah, they are going to be slower than a SSD, but the pricing is still a bit lower than those 32GB Transcend 370 SSDs.

 

[StinkyPinky]

Yeah some people just don't get it when it comes to space. My wife is pretty good with computers but storage space is just a number to her. She has no idea what size stuff is, so she'll plug in her 64gb iphone and let it obliterate all storage capacity on her 120gb ssd. Itunes is terrible with space management.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Virtual Larry, how much RAM are you using?

4GB?

The reason I am asking is because I am wondering how 4GB RAM + 7200 rpm 160GB HDD would compare to 2GB RAM + 10000 rpm 160GB Raptor for overall usage in a extreme budget build?

Both options (4GB RAM + 160GB HDD vs. 2GB RAM + 160GB Raptor) come out to the same price when using current NOS drive pricing--> http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2433743 )

P.S. I have never used a Raptor before, so I don't know what to expect. Yeah, they are going to be slower than a SSD, but the pricing is still a bit lower than those 32GB Transcend 370 SSDs.

Raptors aren't faster enough to matter unless you're bottlenecked by random I/O - in which case you should be using an SSD anyway. The higher platter density of modern 7200 rpm drives like the WD Blue gives them sequential performance that matches or exceeds the old, tiny Raptors.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Itunes is terrible with space management.

QFT

 

[cbn]

Raptors aren't faster enough to matter unless you're bottlenecked by random I/O - in which case you should be using an SSD anyway.

For the same price ($26 shipped) as that NOS 160GB Raptor, the only SSD that could be purchased would be something like a 32GB (assuming you can find one on sale).

And for a old machine or extreme low budget build (especially one sees light usage and/or mostly sleeps during the day) I would rather spend less money than what a 128GB SSD or 1TB HDD usually costs (about $50, lower when on sale).

P.S. My experience with Linux Mint 17.1 was that it could be slow with 2GB RAM and 80GB HDD (slower than Windows when using the same 2GB RAM and 80GB HDD). I could fix this slowness by using either a 64GB SSD or a 500GB HDD.

 

[Essence_of_War]

And for a old machine or extreme low budget build (especially one sees light usage and/or mostly sleeps during the day) I would rather spend less money than what a 128GB SSD or 1TB HDD usually costs (about $50, lower when on sale).

I find this to be sort of penny-wise pound-foolish. If the $20-25 difference between a several-year-old raptor or 32GB SSD and a 1TB Hitachi Ultrastar or 120GB Patriot Blaze makes or breaks your build budget, the correct decision is to save another $20-25 and get the storage configuration that isn't hamstrung.

 

[cbn]

I find this to be sort of penny-wise pound-foolish. If the $20-25 difference between a several-year-old raptor or 32GB SSD and a 1TB Hitachi Ultrastar or 120GB Patriot Blaze makes or breaks your build budget, the correct decision is to save another $20-25 and get the storage configuration that isn't hamstrung.

For my primary work machine, I would totally agree with you.

But for something that is only going to see light duty I'll bet something slower and cheaper like eMMC 5.0 would be fine.

Since eMMC is not available for older machines (Core2, etc) and not used on current low budget DIY boards (socket AM1, etc), I'm hoping for lower cost SSDs using DRAM-less controllers and TLC V-NAND sometime in the future. This should be awesome for any machine with 2GB RAM. But for the time being this option doesn't exist, so are left with fewer budget options like the 160GB NOS Raptor I mentioned.

Speaking of eMMC, I noticed eMMC 5.0 is a new feature on Skylake (previously eMMC in the form of eMMC 4.51 was limited to atom). So we may see this on some DIY BGA boards with Celeron 3955U, etc

P.S. That seven year old 160GB Raptor for $26 shipped is actually a new, never been used before HDD. So while it is old tech, its not a worn out drive.