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Is an SSD with getting for PS3?

My 0G fat PS3 died over a year ago but now I'm thinking I'd like to buy a new one as I want to repay a lot of the games I still own.

I'm most likely going to buy a 12GB super slim and put in the 120GB hard drive from my old dead PS3. But I guess this could be a good opportunity to add in an SSD instead.

Is it worth adding one in?

What is the best recommended brand.

Any (UK) links would be great

Thanks
 

NeOak

Member
No.

The PS3's SATA bus is capped by the hardware encryption.

Even a 7200rpm drive offers a light speed up.
 

maus

Member
No. You should get a SSHD. They are less expensive and have more storage. Get one with 8GB of cache.

I highly doubt a PS3 is capable of utilizing SSD caching. Also hard drive cache is much different than the SSD storage on an SSHD.
 

kraspkibble

Permabanned.
no you should only buy an SSD if you're using it in a PC. consoles even the PS4/XB1 can't fully utilise SSD speeds so you'll be wasting a lot of money. get a 5400/7200RPM HDD.
 

ClearData

Member
I have a Seagate 1 TB SSHD that works well in mine. I wouldn't bother with SSDs in consoles. The difference is not so dramatic as it is on PC.
 

kurahador

Member
Nope. The difference is marginal at best. Even 7200rpm isn't worth it IMO due to the heat it produce.
Stick with 5400 rpm.
 

televator

Member
What about heat? Don't SSDs produce less heat than an HDD?

Also improved load times are always a good thing no matter how you slice it. I hate loading screens.
 
What about heat? Don't SSDs produce less heat than an HDD?

Also improved load times are always a good thing no matter how you slice it. I hate loading screens.

Nah, just get a 500GB or 1TB, 5400RPM regular drive, maximum value for money. The system doesn't really gain speed from an SSD to justify the much higher pricetag.

Thanks for the replies, whats the best hard drive to get for the PS3 then?

aiming for 250GB

There is no "best" really, just get any Samsung, Seagate or WD you can get, big brand ones are quite trustworthy. But really do go for 500GB as it will last you longer. Costs like 40$.
 
Maaaaybe if you have one lying around, but I'd still personally go for a high capacity drive over an SSD considering most installed games expect a spinning hard drive and were built around the data access times 99% of PS3s will have.

This might be worth a read.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-can-ssd-upgrades-boost-ps3-performance

From the article:
"Flash memory is now cheap enough to be included as standard in next-gen consoles and could be extremely useful for caching data from the Blu-ray optical drives."

Hehe, so how is everyone enjoying their PS4 & Xbox with a SSD which is apparently included as standard along with a SATA III connection?

j/k It's a good read, but the final conclusion is sadly still true regarding SSD price. (Article is from 2012) Since 1TB SSD is still expensive, let alone 2TB SSD.
 

decaf

Member
Worth noting 2TB drives and up won't work. I've read 1.5TB drives can work, but never actually seen proof of this.
 

SURGEdude

Member
Like others said it's simply not worth it. The only reason I opted for it was I had an old drive laying around and I still have a early fat with only a burned out BR laser. Not having a spinning drive is just one (extremely) minor effort to keep that baby cool enough not to YLOD.

Outside of theoretically seek times an SSD or hybrid is a waste. Only seen any improvement at all on some home brew cache fetching.
 

Dunkley

Member
I had an SSD laying around and tossed it in my PS3 and feel very satisfied with the result. The load time difference, especially on large games like GTAV is quite noticable and the OS generally feels a lot more responsive.

However if it's worth investing in a huge SSD is another question, the improvements are certainly nice but while they are noticable, I'd say they aren't big enough either to feel like anything more but an optional premium you don't need to invest in.

If it comes down to that vs. just buying a regular HDD with more space, I'd definitely say go for the latter.
 

Bluenoser

Member
When I upgraded my PS4 HDD, I used the 500GB one in my PS3, and although it has tons of space for storage, I find load times and general response pretty sluggish. I had an SD in there before (120GB) and it was better, but got filled up way too fast. So it comes down to how much stuff you plan to store on it.
 
When I upgraded my PS4 HDD, I used the 500GB one in my PS3, and although it has tons of space for storage, I find load times and general response pretty sluggish. I had an SD in there before (120GB) and it was better, but got filled up way too fast. So it comes down to how much stuff you plan to store on it.

Not much, I will mainly be returning to old games in my collection like Folklore, Demons, GT5 etc and buying some new games like GTA5 and GT6 as i never owned them

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00A1ZTZOG/

Came across that which i thought was cheap and looks good but i guess normal harddrive is the way forward
 

Meh3D

Member
I highly doubt a PS3 is capable of utilizing SSD caching. Also hard drive cache is much different than the SSD storage on an SSHD.

No, that's not how SSHD works. The drive itself handles all cache management including the 8GB SSD. Anandtech has a good write up in their Seagate SSHD review on how these work.



To the OP,

I highly recommended an SSHD. There are tangible benefits just keep in mind the drive has to cache data to do its work for games. There are videos of SSHD vs standard 2.5 5.2K rpm drives. SSDs are simply not worth it versus the cost for GB. Yes, SSDs are so much cheaper and no caching is needed but the price per GB is still high and the improvements over an SSHD/HD are not worth it to summarize the reviews.
 

univbee

Member
Worth noting 2TB drives and up won't work. I've read 1.5TB drives can work, but never actually seen proof of this.

According to someone whom I trust, a >1.5TB drive will work, but the PS3 will only format 1.5TB of it so it's effectively pointless. Also worth noting is that the PS3's backup system is effectively capped at 640 gigs of data, so going much past a 750 gig drive or so is largely wasted.
 
I have a SSD in my PS3.

Pros:
  • XMB loads up a little quicker. Icons on the XMB load a lot quicker.
  • Your PS3 will produce less noise and heat.
  • Load times in most games will only improve by a few seconds but menus, icons, textures, ect might load in a lot quicker depending on the game.
  • Web pages on the internet browser load a lot quicker. I used to use the web browser to browse GAF a lot before I got my PS4 and PC.

Cons:
  • It's more expensive than a regular HDD.
  • PS3 doesn't come close to taking full advantage of the speed SSD provides.
  • Games and updates still take forever to install even with SSD.
  • You probably won't even notice a difference in most games, but it's cool for the few where you actually do.

Honestly, I'd say it's probably not worth it unless you have a lot of cash to burn. You're not going to be getting an amazing boost in performance, it's very marginal most of time. I noticed the difference the most in Final Fantasy XIV and Gran Turismo, so I guess it might be worth it if you're really into either of those games. Otherwise, it's mostly just good for bragging rights and maybe for keeping your console temperature a little lower.
 

RedZaraki

Banned
I've heard the difference is minor. Sounds like there's other timers or bottlenecks built into things that will still slow you down.

Unless you're a speedrunner, hobbyist, or just have some spare cash and want to, I don't think it's a huge deal.
 
A lot of people get hung up on this dollar to megabyte ratio thing and fail to understand that sometimes a person wants maximum performance at whatever the price. You're not going to get that 100% of the time with HDD or SSHD.

I find SSHD to have limited benefit over a full SSD. Sure you can "train" an SSHD to be fast for a certain test but the drive will quickly remove stuff from cache as you load other games and such. And since a lot of games are larger than whatever cache you have the cache is almost always useless.

I ran this test with my Xbox One where I repeatedly rebooted my Xbox One with SSHD installed to compare the speeds. The more I rebooted it the quicker it got until a certain point. Video comparison is here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXOPG4g8_FU. SSHD is the top half.

If I simply had an SSD in the system the boot speed improvement would be apparent all of the time. As it is now, even though I install everything to external drives the cache on the SSHD is "wrong" and boot times are slow again. Loading up the the guide is still snappy though.

A lot of people will also say that the internal port will slow down an SSD. There is some merit to that but people forget that what makes an SSD so amazing is NOT the raw throughput, which is impressive, but how quickly it can deal with small files or fragmented larger files. The worst SSD on the market will out perform the best HDD on the market no matter the interface when loading small files.
 
EDIT: also TheAngryMonkey understands whats up^


yes but i had a spare SSD from my broken desktop, but a 7200RPM HD will do well too i had one myself for like 5-6 years on my fat ps3

my super slim is running with a 250GB samsung 840 and honestly it less of a pain in the ass when i use it (updates, loading times, opening apps and that includes the store do so without problems)
 
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