Storage prices — time to grab an SSD?

Quick one for the people who have put more hours into this than me. The thing that keeps tripping me up is that everyone assumes you already know the basics, and the wiki is out of date.

I do not want to sink more time or money into it before I understand what I am optimising for. Thanks in advance to anyone who chips in.

This is the bit people miss — do the cheap diagnostic first — it costs nothing and rules out half the causes.

Depends on your setup, but broadly temperature is the usual culprit when performance degrades over a session.

From experience, the safe move is the reversible one — you can always undo it if it makes things worse.

Report back once you have tried it.

Counterpoint: the defaults are conservative on purpose, so there is usually headroom to gain.

This is the bit people miss — temperature is the usual culprit when performance degrades over a session.

Same boat here. the averages hide the problem; look at the one percent lows instead.