SilverStone HDDBoost Review

Performance in an "Upgraded" System

HDDBoost = WD 320GD HDD + Kingston SSDNow 40GB

While our usual boot up test is run on a fairly heavy duty system with a moderately fragmented OS we thought we would really put this hybrid system to the test and see exactly what it is made of. To this end we used an older system which consists of a dual core socket 939 AMD X2 4400+ with 2GB of Ram. This system has been running for over 3 years now and has not been defragmented in well over a year and a half. To be honest we would be surprised if there are two files which are not fragmented on it. To keep things as fair as possible we did not switch out the WD 320GB for the 640GB Black we are using in this particular system. Rather, we just cloned the information to the smaller drive and then attached the 320GB back to the HDDBoost. We did this because the lower-end HDD is more representative of the type of drive this type of system would use.

XP Start Up

Any way you slice it that is one nice boost in performance! The more we use this hybrid setup the more we like it, but we can see that it may not be for everyone in every situation.

Adobe CS3 Load Time (Older System)

To us this seals the deal, as it gives this older system a nice performance boost. Basically, it gives you high-end performance without having to spend a fortune on an upgrade.