[NiklasK]

I´ve previously used Revo R3600 in multiple rooms running XBMC Live and is now running a R3700 in my living room.

I was thinking if there were anything to gain (speed, fan-noise etc) by replacing the HDD with a SSD and upping it to 4 GB of RAM.

Any opinions?

/Niklas

[eskro]

well an SSD is faster then a normal drive,
so youll see an improvement there,,,

But for RAM, 2GB is enough and you wont notice a difference,,,

[NiklasK]

Forgive me if this is common knowledge but do I gain anything with an SSD when it comes to heat. Id love to get the R3700 cooler and quiter than it is at the moment...

[Driver 944]

A hard drive has moving parts - produces heat.
SSD has no moving parts - runs cool.

If you have a wireless card and you're not using it, take it out as it's a heat source.

I have 2 Revo 3610's. I swapped the hard drives for SSD's and removed the wireless cards. The only time I can hear the fan is when I turn it on (runs high RPM at boot). I would say they both run cooler because the fan noise has been reduced from the "stock" configuration.

If you want to try a experiment, remove the hard drive and run XBMC from a USB stick or Memory Card. It won't be as fast, but it will help you with the heat / fan noise. If there is a noticeable improvement, it will help you to justify the price of a SSD or live with a hard drive.

[NiklasK]

I´m running them all wired so it might be an idea to remove the wifi-card.

Any hints how to do this, just "unplug" the HDD and wifi-card? Any BIOS tinkering after this?

/NIklas

[Driver 944]

This will give you a idea of what is involved.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUo8RSue5...re=related

Remove the hard drive and the wifi card. Tape the leads from the wifi card down to keep them from touching anything.

Then install XBMC to a USB drive, you may have to change the boot order in the Bios after you remove the HD. There are plenty of instructions on the board to help you.

[claypigeon]

I´ve previously used Revo R3600 in multiple rooms running XBMC Live and is now running a R3700 in my living room.

I was thinking if there were anything to gain (speed, fan-noise etc) by replacing the HDD with a SSD and upping it to 4 GB of RAM.

Any opinions?

/Niklas

Nicklas,

Lets break your question apart

Heat and since heat needs to be removed from the system, potential fan noise:
From what I have read the SSDs use less watts so they will produce less heat, that is just physics (conservation of energy) so if your pc has heat sensors that detect this added heat and the heat in the box reaches limits that increase the fans rate of spin you might reduce fan noise by reducing that excess heat.

Performance is a whole different issue.
What is your performance issue? What is the cause of the performance issue? A faster hard drive will only make a difference if your performance is being hindered by that device. Ram is only going to help if you are so low that you are having issues with page faulting.

Let me give you an example, I run most of my systems using openelec which is just a pre packaged OE linux with XBMC software, where the live version you are using is a packaged general purpose version of linux. All my content is on network drives, and all my OS and software is on a 8GB USB flash drive and the slowest box is just an atom 330 with only 1GB of ram. it takes ~ 20 seconds for OE linux and then xbmc to start. That is the only time the performance of my system is bound to the performance of the local "disk" in my case a USB flash drive, after that it bound to CPU, RAM and network IO for SMB. If I were to use a SSD drive, the only performance I would expect to experience is a potently faster boot time, and that improvement would likely be minimal as the bulk of the boot time is not drive IO related, it is tied up in the system management issues of getting the kernel up, loading device drivers, and loading daemonds, So before you go dropping in a SSD for "performance" understand where your may be having performance issues. if you want to see how a the small atom I outlined runs I did create a video to show the doubting Thomas. In the video I did go to the system screen so you could see exactly how the box was configured. The only thing it wont tell you is it is running off a 8G USB flash drive.

[Kirky99]

I just got my Atom/ION system running on openELEC and I concur it's amazing. I've got 4G in there still, but it is pretty speedy compared to the same PC running on a SSD. I'm running the content completely off the network (movies, shows, canary, cache...) I'll say having the cache on the network is slower than having it on the SSD, but it's still manageable. Freed up a SSD for another system I'm building. The USB stick I'm using is a small 1G stick I got in a training class.

If you're just running a XBMC client on your HTPC, giving openELEC a shot is worth a looksee.

[tboooe]

Personally, I do not think the SSD is worth the price. I put an SSD into both a Revo 3700 and a Zotac ND22. Yes its a bit snappier if I browse rapidly through my video library. However, for the price/performance I would not do it again. Also, for me the memory upgrade to 4gb made a bigger difference. Perhaps it was swapping out the crappy memory that came with the unit with higher quality components that made the difference.

[eskro]

well the Kingston 30GB SSD is $56 after rebate,,,

so for $56, i'd rather have an SSD rather then a $45 mechanical hard drive....

but thats me,,,

[tboooe]

well the Kingston 30GB SSD is $56 after rebate,,,

so for $56, i'd rather have an SSD rather then a $45 mechanical hard drive....

but thats me,,,

Agreed but the OP was talking about replacing the HHD that already comes with the 3700. So in reality the decision is whether to spend $0 or $56.