ASUS U30Jc Revisited: Adding an SSD

SSDs Are Definitely Faster; Are They Worth the Cost?

Everyone has an opinion on where the most value comes in a system upgrade. Looking strictly at the mobile market: For some, gaming performance is the ultimate goal, and unless you're already shelling out for something like an HD 5870 or GTX 480M you're wasting money on other upgrades. Similarly, if you're doing CPU intensive tasks like complex data analysis, video editing, or 3D rendering you'll want a fast quad-core CPU before you start to worry about other upgrades. Anand is fond of saying that SSDs are one of the most noticeable upgrades you can make to a system; it's true, but we probably need to add the qualification that it depends on what you're doing.

Obviously, hard drives are slow and they're using old technology. In fact, outside of the fans cooling down your hardware, hard drives remain the only mechanical device inside modern computers. With data rates that are several orders of magnitude slower than RAM (which is in turn a couple orders of magnitude slower than CPUs), if you run into situations where your bottleneck is the hard drive, it tends to be a very noticeable bottleneck. If you doubt this, try putting an older 80GB 7200RPM drive (circa 2004) into a modern Core i5 system and witness how painful it becomes to boot Windows and launch applications. (Notice also how freakin' loud those early 7200RPM drives are!)

There are things you can do to make a hard drive less painful. Don't install a lot of startup applications for example. Don't run real-time anti-virus protection, Internet security, or even real-time anti-malware protection tools—and hopefully you know how to avoid doing anything that might get you infected. Delete all of your temp files and defrag your hard drive regularly. Make sure you have at least 4GB RAM. You can even try running RAID 0 with 10K RPM drives (i.e. WD Raptor). All of these things help, but none of them will make the sluggishness of a hard drive disappear completely. My personal desktop system that I've been running for three years now (without a reinstall of Windows Vista) has exactly this sort of setup, and overall I'm fine with the performance. However, there are plenty of occasions where I really notice the presence of hard drives/lack of an SSD.

One of the things SSDs really help with is making even slower systems feel more responsive. Outside of Atom netbooks (and even those will benefit, though spending $200+ on an SSD with a $300 netbook is a dubious use of funds), any laptop is going to feel quite a bit faster at launching applications, copying files, installing/patching applications, etc. You can still get by without an SSD—many people do—but once you've used a system/laptop with a fast SSD it can be very painful going back to a conventional hard drive. SSDs also help to mitigate the decline in performance that Windows tends to experience over the years, though this goes back to the above list of having too many startup applications and clutter, and not defragging. If you want a system where you don't have to worry about regular maintenance, a laptop with an SSD today will generally feel just as fast in a year or two (provided you don't run into situations where the SSD performance drops substantially, though thankfully TRIM enabled drives should take care of that).

Ultimately, for laptops it really comes down to the $100 (or $300+) question: how much do you value general responsiveness, and how much do you value capacity? Also, do you have a "fast enough" CPU and GPU for what you want to do? Remember that unlike desktops, upgrading the CPU can be tricky and upgrading GPUs is generally not supported (though you can always give it a shot). On desktops, you have a lot more options and you can upgrade any component you want. You can also get something of the best of both worlds by using a smaller SSD for you OS and primary applications with a large HDD for your data, games, etc. Most laptops don't have the luxury of supporting two hard drives, particularly 14" and smaller laptops like the U30Jc, so you have to decide how to balance SSD capacity against cost. I know I'd be hard pressed to get by with anything less than 120GB on my primary laptop, and 250GB is preferred. For me, SSDs are an expensive luxury, but the general increase in responsiveness is very enticing.

One area where we think there's a lot of growth potential is in the business/enterprise market. We've asked a few OEMs about SSD uptake with laptops, and so far it sounds like many businesses are holding off and sticking with conventional hard drives. The reason businesses could really benefit is that they're frequently locked down tight with security and monitoring features, and it's in that sort of setup that SSDs really start to shine. With real-time anti-virus, TPM, and full disk encryption running (and other tasks as well), a good SSD can make even speedy corporate laptops perform common tasks twice as fast.

Looking at the U30Jc, the SSD upgrade is definitely nice. I would personally hold off and look for a faster GPU first—something with an Optimus GT335M and a better LCD would be perfect, if I could keep all the other aspects of the U30Jc. However, plenty of laptop users couldn't care less about gaming, in which case an SSD is the next logical upgrade. The CPU is plenty fast and the graphics subsystem will handle anything short of complex gaming without any trouble. Slap an SSD into the unit and it suddenly boots and launches applications faster than high-end desktops with RAID 0 Raptors. If you have a desktop or external HDD, you can even get by with an 80GB SSD quite easily—leave all your family photos, movies, etc. on the desktop and only put the data you're currently using on the laptop.

The great thing about SSDs is that you can make the switch whenever you want. Just clone your hard drive over to the SSD (using a separate desktop most likely) and you're ready to roll. My advice with laptops is to make sure you have all the other features you want first—there's typically no upgrading the LCD panel or GPU, so you'll be stuck with whatever a laptop comes with. When in doubt, go with a standard laptop configuration and a conventional HDD. Afterwards, you can upgrade as you see fit. You'll usually get better prices than what most OEMs charge for an SSD upgrade anyway, and with SSD technology advancing rapidly there's no harm in taking your time. Once the prices and capacities reach the point where you're ready to make the switch, SSDs will be waiting.