Building a new Mac Pro tower. SSD really worth it?

By mrt2
in Apple (macOS)

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mrt2

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Ok I'm about to build a freaking speed demon of a machine and I'm wondering is dropping the money for SSD really worth it? They are so small and for a solid state drive that is 500GB it'll be at least $1400 :(

I couldn't have anything lower than 500GB for my boot drive/home folder drive since all my apps will be installed there. I could move my home folder/applications folder to another drive but that would defeat the purpose of having a SSD which is that your Apps launch and run faster... thoughts?

Experienced

mrt2

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Yep.

You could get an after market Intel 80gb or 128gb SSD for the OS and programs and also put in a 1 Tb secondary drive for storage.

Well I'll have plenty of storage... my other 3 internal drives are going to be 2TB each. :) But 128GB isn't enough for applications IMO....

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svnO.o

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How many apps do you really have? I have more apps than most people (entire Adobe Suite, Visual Studio suite, Office 2010 suite, 3 browsers, ftp, steam, IM client, torrent client, 7zip, winrar, zune player, imgburn, microsoft security essentials, n all sorts of others, probably ~100 apps) and don't even use the full 80GB of my SSD (got 30GB left running Windows 7). I just keep games separate and my OS/main apps load super fast. Keep temporary files/downloads/docs/pictures/mp3s on another hard drive and you shouldn't need much more unless you have hundreds of apps installed. Maybe Mac OSX works differently than Windows though.

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5Horizons

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I use a 60GB SSD (~$200) for my Mac Pro's boot drive + Applications. Home folder is on a WD640AAKS. Granted, my workflow doesn't include a ton of huge apps, but I use Aperture, Photoshop, and Illustrator along with a bunch of smaller apps. Right now I have 45 GB free on the SSD.

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mrt2

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How many apps do you really have? I have more apps than most people (entire Adobe Suite, Visual Studio suite, Office 2010 suite, 3 browsers, ftp, steam, IM client, torrent client, 7zip, winrar, zune player, imgburn, microsoft security essentials, n all sorts of others, probably ~100 apps) and don't even use the full 80GB of my SSD (got 30GB left running Windows 7). I just keep games separate and my OS/main apps load super fast. Keep temporary files/downloads/docs/pictures/mp3s on another hard drive and you shouldn't need much more unless you have hundreds of apps installed. Maybe Mac OSX works differently than Windows though.

I do HD movie and music editing.... Final Cut is a 50GB Install and logic is a 30GB install.... :(

Experienced

mrt2

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Actually I don't use ALL the tools that final cut came with so I could cut the install down considerably... and I just saw some other areas on my boot drive I could skim down... I could get away with a 256 SSD... what's the cheapest yet fastest 256 or 250 I could get?

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Timan Veteran

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I'm thinking of buying one for my mac pro? whats the fastest / cheapest (storage space is not a problem, it'll be for the OS and Apps only) 30gb is fine.

Also what would you need to get them to fit in the mac pro bays (3.5")?

Experienced

lt8480

Posted
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Yes it is, I just upgraded my MacBook Pro to a SSD drive, and the speed improvement is amazing. Photoshop launches in seconds, it truly is amazing.

As opposed to what? Minutes?? :s

A ?400 PC I sometimes use with a SATA 7200rpm drive will open Photoshop in sub 3 seconds

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