Still quite heavily priced, SSDs are the future of computer storage, as you may know an SSD or Solid State Drive differs from a traditional hard disk drive in several ways.

A hard disk drive is a very traditional almost manual affair, where a wheel is “written” on by an arm almost like a reverse vinyl player. Imagine those little USB mini pens that you use for digital storage, now imagine them all taped together on a small circuit board, that is an SSD, its essentially digital storage that is written and retrieved much much faster than a traditionally hard drive. They also shouldn’t fail as easily as a traditionally hard drive, it has no moving parts.

SSDs like all new technology are still highly sought after and gradually over time the price will drop, however if you are looking for increased performance (you can massively increase the load time of your operating system up by using an SSD) then it may be the solution you are looking for. Your choices on the market are in abundance so we have chosen three different types of SSD for you

Crucial M4 – 128gb (£90) – Winner

Crucial’s award winning drives are lightweight, very fast read and write speeds and runs low power, on an overall score, the Crucial M4 wins our award for top benchmarking and great value for money.

OCZ Agility3 – 60gb (£60)

An overall great SSD in performance and price, the Agility3 is becoming a standard in many of our specs and a great all round addition to storage.

CORSAIR FORCE GT – 128gb (£120)

Incredibly fast quality SSD, a personal favourite of many of our staff, the GT is a superb quality SSD perfect for all round gaming, entertainment and performance.

Right now just to put into comparison with a hard disk drive, as of 2012 you are paying about 5pence per gigabyte, where with a solid state drive you are paying closer roughly to 90pence per gig, these margins will close but it will be another year or so before we see this taking effect.

Overall, SSDs are leading the way in the new age of PC gaming and performance computing, the question is more about WHEN you will switch and not IF, we are convinced that has the average capacity for SSDs increases and the price starts to drop, you will see solid state drives a standard feature in all computers and storage devices such as (TV satellite boxes and computer consoles)

I would love to hear any comments you have on SSDs below!

Author: Chris Turton from gaming PC company Palicomp.