7200RPM vs SolidState

[twlawrence]

I am building a computer to be used almost strictly for SolidWorks 2011. Is the hard drive I choose going to make a big difference as far as performance goes? Is it worth the extra money to get a solid state drive, or is a regulard hard drive just fine? Thanks

 

[JackNaylorPE]

CAD programs like to use the swap file, whether Windows needs them to or not. While an SSD will serve you well for these reads / writes, many worry about wearing out their SSD's as they have a limited number of writes.....others feel, they won't or at least their PC's won't live long enough for this to matter. Most CAD boxes I build have a 120 GB SSD for the OS, major programs and swap file and use a 1 GB 7200 rpm HD for file storage.

 

[twlawrence]

Thank you for the information. This computer will be used at the office where it is connected to our server. Most of the data is actually stored on the server. Very few files are actually kept on the computer. Should i just go with the SSD?

 

[eloric]

Kind of hard to tell tw, considering that SolidWorks is not your everyday software that everyone has installed. Looks like a really cool design program that could make some kick a$$ machinery. Without knowing how big the designs are, how often they are updated on the hard drive, the size of the program itself, and other I/O requirements, it is only a guess to say that it will make a noticible difference.

The system specs don't give much of a clue. 6 GB of RAM is recommended, but no mention of hard drive space required. I suspect that the application is CPU intensive, so you may want to consider a beefy quad core with a 1366 socket. That might be a better place to put your cash, but you should confirm.

You can call a salesman and see if he can find a Software engineer that might know. Have you tried the user community? SolidWorks Blogs

 

[NetworkStorageTips]

Once you load the file, if you have plenty of RAM, then SSD will not make a huge difference.

But in normal Windows operations, and with file retrieving and saving, SSD's are fantastic.

I am switching everything I can afford to, to SSD's.

here is a YouTube video showing how to upgrade a desktop PC to an SSD:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbWzkd9E9uU

 

[twlawrence]

Best answer selected by twlawrence.