Best SSD desktop PC/workstation

[ImagoLuna]

Can someone expert in desktop PCs recommend me one that has an SSD? I only need the tower as I can use the old screen, mouse and keyboard. It's for office type work but I want better speed and my current PC was made in 2007 and is nearly dead!

I can't seem to find online a variety of possible PCs with SSD rather than HD and a teccie expert has recommended I get an SSD this time. Any advice please?

[ImagoLuna]

Also, is getting a PC with an SSD really so much better and so much quicker? Anyone know much about this kind of thing?

It seems I can easily pick up an HDD PC really quickly from local stores but if I want an SSD, I can get one custom made at a place like PC Specialist but it'd be about double the cost and I'm not expert enough with technical stuff to know what I really need.

So bumping this thread again in the hope someone can advise me please?

[ImagoLuna]

Bumping my thread one last time if someone can talk to me about SSDs versus HDDs for PCs?

[PhilODox]

Surely SSD is only faster for accessing hard drive, the speed of the machine is going to be down to things such as memory, motherboard/chipset, graphics card etc.

I'm not an expert, I'm afraid, but what are you using this machine for? Just home use? Business use? Gaming?

[SouthLondonDaddy]

Do you know the difference between random access and sequential access? Let’s ignore fragmentation for the sake of simplicity.
The former means accessing data which is scattered all over the hard drive; a typical example is what happens when you boot up your PC, or launch a particularly “heavy” piece of software: lots of different files need to be read, and they’re all over the place.
The latter means accessing bits of data which are one next to the other, e.g. copying a large file.

Think of a librarian who needs to get hold of certain books: random access is like getting one book from the kids’ section, one from the history section, one from fiction, etc. Sequential is like getting 3 books by the same author, all next to each other.

SSDs are faster in both tasks, but are way faster than ordinary drives when it comes to random access, which is why you’ll see the biggest speed improvement when booting up the PC or launching certain software like Photoshop. The difference in the bootup time for Windows 10 can easily be 15 seconds for SSD vs 45ish seconds for an ordinary drive. Some more info here: uk.pcmag.com/storage-devices-reviews/8061/feature/ssd-vs-hdd-whats-the-difference

To be clear, not every task requires reading data from a drive; e.g. calculations run entirely in memory are not affected in the slightest by the kind of drive you have.

A common piece of advice, which I agree with, is to get one SSD to install the operating system and the software you need, and another, cheaper and slower, hard drive for your data, music, videos, etc. Nowadays you can find a 128 GB SSD drive for ca. £45, and a £256GB for ca. £70-80. If you’re on a very tight budget you can of course save by avoiding an SSD drive, but in that case be sure not to overspend on other components, e.g. avoiding an SSD drive and then buying the latest, most powerful CPU would be nonsensical, unless you have very specific computing needs.

Online shops like PCSpecialist and CyberPowerPC can build PCs customising every single component to your choice. I have ordered from both in the past.