The stock heatsink that came with my i7 wasn't working very well for me. It was fine for normal operation but when I went to encode video (especially HD video) almost immedately after going to 100% on all cores the temps would shoot up to 80 degrees C almost instantly and start to creep towards 90. I wasn't overclocking at all. The MB came with software that could be used to run it in an underclocked setting for power management so I used that until I could get a heat sink. It made a huge difference.
I have an SSD and I think it works great. I did a lot of research on which specific model to choose, with some models there were issues with the controller causing stuttering that would freeze your system. The only device that wasn't affected by this back in Feb 2009 the Intel X25-M so I got that. There were some firmware issues with the drive still but Intel released new firmware that fixed those problems.
I'm very happy with mine. I use it as a system drive and all programs are on it. Everything loads very quickly. Then again, I have never used anything else on this system so it is really hard to judge how much of it is from the SSD vs the rest of the system.
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