SSD & RAM

A desktop PC has RAM to hold active data on temporary basis . {Higher the RAM, more active data can be held. When the RAM runs out of its space, it swaps with the secondary space with a software technique paging. Data on RAM goes to the hard drive, therefore freeing the space for another data to go into the RAM. When the OS needs the paged data again, it simply swaps the paged data to the RAM, which the same paging technique. This process is slow because the hard drive is considerably slower than the RAM. } There are now two types of hard drive - a platter base hard drive and Flash base hard drive aka solid state hard drive, SSD. If you want to increase your computer performance, a single best thing you can do is now to get a SSD, after you have 4GB RAM, and Intel Core 2 duo processor with NVidia 9600 or greater graphic card.

A SSD hard drive I have can access the data at 250mb/s to 200mb/s (read/write). which is about x4 for sequential read on big files to x1043 on smaller 4K segment files faster than the platter based hard drive depending on the block size you are reading.

On Server/Database level, I would definitely go for the SSD for sure since I value I/O performance higher than the CPU power.

TomsHardware has done the bench mark where 10 SATA 3 GB/s hard drive couldn't match the 1 SSD hard drive performance. (source: I can't find the article but I know I read from the TomsHardware many times)

The question is, if the SSD is fast enough, where is a diminishing margin of return on RAM. Currently, 4GB DDR3 SO-DIMM cost about $250 to $300 each. So, equipping a laptop with a 8GB is a $500 endeavor. 200 mb/s + 120GB SSD harddrive can be had for $350.