SSD woes
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Cp-Coder wrote:
One of the first items I checked was the speed of the M.2 SSD. I was very disappointed. Dell had supplied the machine with a SSD that ran barely faster than clunky old SATA SSDs. In fact the sequential read speed was slightly slower than her old SATA SSD.
Somebody's spoiled. I'm happy with *any* SSD. I still have machines that boot off of spinning drives.
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Nobody (certainly not Dell) builds PCs without charging you for it.
True, but OEMs buy components in very large volume direct from the manufacturers. You buy small quantities at retail prices.
I won't disagree with that, but in my experience, I've yet to encounter a case where an OEM system turned out to be cheaper than buying all the parts separately. But then again, it's rather rare an OEM - especially a brand name like Dell - has a PC to sell that only contains parts you can purchase elsewhere. They all tend to have *some* proprietary hardware with no equivalent that will skew the prices. OTOH, if you're buying in large enough quantities, yeah, it'll be cheaper in the long run if you get something pre-built than if you have to take the time to put a bunch of PCs together yourself. The other thing...personally I despise not being to open a case just because I'm assumed to be so incompetent replacing a hard drive will void the warranty.
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Seems like very soon after you get it built it it becomes obsolete. Especially video cards and they ain't cheap.
Did a little mechanic work today. Put a rear end in a recliner! JaxCoder.com
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Somebody's spoiled
True, I blush to disclose. But the first time you work with a quality NVMe SSD, you may quickly join the folds of us "spoilt" folks! :)
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When a system already takes more time performing its POST routine from a cold boot (with no way around it) than getting to the login screen, I've already stopped caring. :-)
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OK, but drive speed is not just about boot time. It matters whenever you are dealing with reading / writing large files.
Purely for argument's sake :-) (because I know exactly what you're saying and I'm in your camp already): I read large files all the time: My largest files are typically movies, and even my oldest spinner is complete overkill and has no problem keeping up with playback. OTOH: If you need to move terabytes around (which I've done), then we're talking minutes rather than hours, so yeah - great. But how often do you do that? The greatest argument in favor of SSDs (and faster), IMO, is in bootup time, and application startup time. Typical users otherwise don't shuffle huge files around so frequently it matters much to them. If SSDs matched the price/capacity of spinners, that's all I'd be running (on the last Black Friday, I bought 10TB spinners for CAD$225 each). Awesome for my NAS and its offline/offsite backups. When are we going to see comparable SSDs in that price range/capacity? I'm patiently waiting.
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I won't disagree with that, but in my experience, I've yet to encounter a case where an OEM system turned out to be cheaper than buying all the parts separately. But then again, it's rather rare an OEM - especially a brand name like Dell - has a PC to sell that only contains parts you can purchase elsewhere. They all tend to have *some* proprietary hardware with no equivalent that will skew the prices. OTOH, if you're buying in large enough quantities, yeah, it'll be cheaper in the long run if you get something pre-built than if you have to take the time to put a bunch of PCs together yourself. The other thing...personally I despise not being to open a case just because I'm assumed to be so incompetent replacing a hard drive will void the warranty.
dandy72 wrote:
I've yet to encounter a case where an OEM system turned out to be cheaper than buying all the parts separately.
Every single PC I bought was cheaper than if I assembled it by myself, by at least a factor 2. Otherwise, I would have assembled it by myself : I enjoy doing it !
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So her computer started having all kinds of issues, including BIOS misbehaving. The computer was getting quite old and I did not fancy regular maintenance work to keep it going. Her birthday is early in the new year and so I bought her a new Dell as combined Christmas and birthday gift. I paid a little extra to get her a machine with a NVMe M.2 SSD. One of the first items I checked was the speed of the M.2 SSD. I was very disappointed. Dell had supplied the machine with a SSD that ran barely faster than clunky old SATA SSDs. In fact the sequential read speed was slightly slower than her old SATA SSD. I ordered a new Samsung 970 Pro M.2 SSD and used it to replace the item supplied by Dell. What a difference! Sequential read speed was about 5 times that of traditional Samsung SATA SSDs. Random read speeds were also much faster, but not quite 5 times. Now I sit with a M.2 SSD that Dell supplied, that is of no further use to me! I am a little disappointed in Dell.
You can USB 3.0-to-NVMe boxes, and turn the M.2 drive into an external drive. I've seen them advertised for ~USD 20 on Amazon; no idea about the quality.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.
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Not as expensive as buying the wrong system and then buying the right one.
In Germany, we say "billig ist manchmal teuer".
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I once had to replace the disk drive in a laptop that was designed in such a way that you had the take the entire system apart to get to the drive, including removing the main board. What a nightmare! Took me many hours and afterwards the WiFi never worked again. :mad:
Just like whne you try to replace the LCD on a smartphone :laugh:
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dandy72 wrote:
I've yet to encounter a case where an OEM system turned out to be cheaper than buying all the parts separately.
Every single PC I bought was cheaper than if I assembled it by myself, by at least a factor 2. Otherwise, I would have assembled it by myself : I enjoy doing it !
Same parts, from the same manufacturers? Where do you live, where consumers are gouged so badly? The only (non-laptop) system I've ever bought pre-built was a cheap Acer Aspire something or other. But cheap is the key word here. For one, it came with a Seagate drive, which I would never buy on its own, despite Seagate typically being consistently somewhat cheaper than other brands.
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Same parts, from the same manufacturers? Where do you live, where consumers are gouged so badly? The only (non-laptop) system I've ever bought pre-built was a cheap Acer Aspire something or other. But cheap is the key word here. For one, it came with a Seagate drive, which I would never buy on its own, despite Seagate typically being consistently somewhat cheaper than other brands.
dandy72 wrote:
ame parts, from the same manufacturers? Where do you live, where consumers are gouged so badly?
Of course. France. Pre-built systems also have ... Software. A real official windows+MSoffice licence ain't that cheap. And you get a lot of crapware for free too :-)
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There is an old saying : every computer you can buy is either experimental or obsolete.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
One of advantages of building your own is the ability to upgrade. I just upgraded mine to 32G memory 1T SSD in preparation to go from Win7 to Win10. Plus you don't have to clean all the crapware from it.
Did a little mechanic work today. Put a rear end in a recliner! JaxCoder.com
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dandy72 wrote:
ame parts, from the same manufacturers? Where do you live, where consumers are gouged so badly?
Of course. France. Pre-built systems also have ... Software. A real official windows+MSoffice licence ain't that cheap. And you get a lot of crapware for free too :-)
Rage wrote:
Of course. France.
Gotcha. I've heard the horror stories.
Rage wrote:
And you get a lot of crapware for free too
I had intentionally not brought up the whole discussion on crapware that's bundled with OEMs. IMO, not having to deal with *any* of that is worth the price of admission. Go ahead and buy a PC from Dell without a hard drive (spinning or SSD). With no drive, they can't preload said crapware. Or legally charge you for a Windows license that you may or may not even need.
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Rage wrote:
Of course. France.
Gotcha. I've heard the horror stories.
Rage wrote:
And you get a lot of crapware for free too
I had intentionally not brought up the whole discussion on crapware that's bundled with OEMs. IMO, not having to deal with *any* of that is worth the price of admission. Go ahead and buy a PC from Dell without a hard drive (spinning or SSD). With no drive, they can't preload said crapware. Or legally charge you for a Windows license that you may or may not even need.
Taking a new Dell with Windows 10, cleaning the drive and doing a clean Windows 10 install, takes much less than an hour. 15 Minutes if you install a quality NVMe SSD. All crapware gone. Windows 10 immediately activated. What is the big deal getting rid of crapware? Ok: I assume you have a Diskpart script to clean and repartition the drive before you install Windows, but that is something you only need to prepare once. I have been using the same script for more than 8 years.
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Taking a new Dell with Windows 10, cleaning the drive and doing a clean Windows 10 install, takes much less than an hour. 15 Minutes if you install a quality NVMe SSD. All crapware gone. Windows 10 immediately activated. What is the big deal getting rid of crapware? Ok: I assume you have a Diskpart script to clean and repartition the drive before you install Windows, but that is something you only need to prepare once. I have been using the same script for more than 8 years.
Cp-Coder wrote:
Taking a new Dell with Windows 10, cleaning the drive and doing a clean Windows 10 install,
So, you've paid for the licensed version of Windows 10 that you're blowing away, and--if you have a clean Windows 10 install disc--that means you're installing from a retail or MSDN or similar disc...?
Cp-Coder wrote:
What is the big deal getting rid of crapware?
Ask that to the average user. You know, the type who still has the default wallpaper.
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Cp-Coder wrote:
Taking a new Dell with Windows 10, cleaning the drive and doing a clean Windows 10 install,
So, you've paid for the licensed version of Windows 10 that you're blowing away, and--if you have a clean Windows 10 install disc--that means you're installing from a retail or MSDN or similar disc...?
Cp-Coder wrote:
What is the big deal getting rid of crapware?
Ask that to the average user. You know, the type who still has the default wallpaper.
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So, you've paid for the licensed version of Windows 10 that you're blowing away
You have never done this - have you? :) No. You do not blow away the license you paid for. My precise procedure for a new machine is: 1. Unpack the machine and hook up monitors, keyboards, etc. 2. Connect network cable so the OEM Windows 10 gets registered with Microsoft as soon as I turn on power and register with Microsoft using my MS account. (A MS account is nice but NOT essential.) 3. Turn machine off. That's it. Windows 10 is now registered for that machine with MS for ever. 4. Replace the system drive (if you wish). It has no effect on the machine's MS license. 5. Using Diskpart clean and repartition the system drive. 6. Using a Windows 10 installation tool that is a free download from MS, do a clean install on the newly partitioned system drive. This step takes 15 or so minutes if your system drive is a good NVMe SSD. Once again you may or may not opt to use your MS account and password. 7. When the first clean version of Windows is up and running, check Windows activation in Control Panel >> System. You will see that Windows 10 is activated! 8. Then I usually do the Windows updates that can take a while. Try it if you ever buy an OEM in the future. It works! Yes, you need to be computer savvy to mess with disk partitions, etc. For this reason I get called in whenever a family member scores a new machine. I enjoy helping. By the way: Diskpart is a dangerous tool in the hands of the inexperienced. Research it well before using it, to avoid disasters!
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Dell used to use quality components but like every other manufacturer has gone to saving every cent possible on all but their high highest-end models - all products. In fact just last week I was looking at laptops, (not just Dell). It's sad the mid-range models I was looking at from every manufacturer all have at least one, usually more, compromises in quality/performance. To get a truly uncompromised laptop really meant buying high to highest end. In the end I bought: dinner - after wasting a whole day on research decided to give up on buying a crap-top. Until recently I had an old i3 Dell, (gen 3 or 4 - "M," 2 cores without hyperthreading), that noticeably outperformed [a batch of] 8th gen i5 Dell Desktops one of my clients purchased year before last. CPU benchmarks were lower on the i3 but just running win 7 or 10 the laptop ran noticeably MUCH faster. desktop hard disks were supposedly faster but real life came out measurably slower (even without a stopwatch), boot/shutdown time: i3 by a lot, program startup: i3 ... I ran visual studio on the i3 laptop: always instant responsive (couple of seconds to start), very very useable. Tried vs on one of the i5 desktops - almost threw up (both me and seemed the desktop too). I have no idea why (yes: all 'tuned' the same etc). On paper that i3 was a dinosaur, the i5's "modern." Laptops really seem suck more and more every year.
after many otherwise intelligent sounding suggestions that achieved nothing the nice folks at Technet said the only solution was to low level format my hard disk then reinstall my signature. Sadly, this still didn't fix the issue!
This (and the original slow SSD) takes me back to when I was managing a small group of 50 computers. We were obliged by Corporate to switch to Dell and I started to see really weird performance differences between different, but similar, models - some being slower than the old PCs they had replaced. I called in Dell and the technician who came swapped out the motherboards in the 'slow' units - suddenly they ran normally. When I asked what the problem was the answer was rather shocking... "Often they discover that there is instability or lockups due to errors in m/b design and chipset implementation. To remedy this they often insert enforced wait cycles in the CPU or slow it (or the bus) down and fudge the bios to falsely report correct speeds. If the client doesn't complain they leave it be and if they do they get a corrected m/b" This smells as bad as the VW emissions scandal, but it was more than 10 years ago so I'm not in any way suggesting that things like this are still happening today. Incidentally we never saw that particular technician again.
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So her computer started having all kinds of issues, including BIOS misbehaving. The computer was getting quite old and I did not fancy regular maintenance work to keep it going. Her birthday is early in the new year and so I bought her a new Dell as combined Christmas and birthday gift. I paid a little extra to get her a machine with a NVMe M.2 SSD. One of the first items I checked was the speed of the M.2 SSD. I was very disappointed. Dell had supplied the machine with a SSD that ran barely faster than clunky old SATA SSDs. In fact the sequential read speed was slightly slower than her old SATA SSD. I ordered a new Samsung 970 Pro M.2 SSD and used it to replace the item supplied by Dell. What a difference! Sequential read speed was about 5 times that of traditional Samsung SATA SSDs. Random read speeds were also much faster, but not quite 5 times. Now I sit with a M.2 SSD that Dell supplied, that is of no further use to me! I am a little disappointed in Dell.
When I set up a home-built machine 2 years ago, it took me quite some time to get the Samsung (IIRC it was a 950 Pro) working correctly. The culprit was Windows which didn't have an appropriate driver, and therefore didn't set up it's modes correctly. Maybe your original Dell machine wasn't set up correctly either? Not sure about Dell, but here at the office we've spent a lot of time to get our HP machines working properly, because HP failed to set up the machines (with NVME drives) correctly, and our IT failed to fix it because they relied on (incorrect) info from HP.
GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto)
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When I set up a home-built machine 2 years ago, it took me quite some time to get the Samsung (IIRC it was a 950 Pro) working correctly. The culprit was Windows which didn't have an appropriate driver, and therefore didn't set up it's modes correctly. Maybe your original Dell machine wasn't set up correctly either? Not sure about Dell, but here at the office we've spent a lot of time to get our HP machines working properly, because HP failed to set up the machines (with NVME drives) correctly, and our IT failed to fix it because they relied on (incorrect) info from HP.
GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto)
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Maybe your original Dell machine wasn't set up correctly either?
That is entirely possible! But I tried to update the driver on the SSD and was told the driver is up to date. When I replaced the SSD with a Samsung 970 PRO, the problem was resolved immediately.
