You’ve optimized your computer for maximum performance, with a speedy multicore processor, fast RAM, and a graphics card with more processing power than NORAD had during the Cold War. Now it’s time to add the pièce de résistance: a high-speed solid-state drive (SSD), so you can say goodbye to slow Windows boot-ups, lengthy application load times, and the retro feel of a motor-driven platter drive in a 21st-century computer.

But SSDs aren’t like old-fashioned spinning hard drives, where a quick look at rotational speed, interface type, and cache memory can give you a pretty good idea of performance. The SSD market is relatively new, and even experienced PC builders and upgraders might be taken aback by the choices and feature sets available.

Unless you’ve been running an investment banking scheme, you’re probably not going to be able to afford to replace that 1TB boot drive with an equivalently sized SSDor even four 256GB SSDs. So how big a drive do you need? Does your hard drive controller, which sat back and relaxed as data flowed in at well under 100,000 Kbps with your old spinning drive, have what it takes to keep up with an SSD that can spit out data almost five times faster? Does RAID Level 0 still offer a speed boost with these things? And since that roomy conventional spinning drive is going to have to stick around to hold your extensive collection of Nickelback concert videos, how big an SSD do you even need, anyway?

The good newswhich you probably already knowis that adding just about any SSD to a typical system will give you a noticeable speed-up over a conventional hard disk. A small boot drive that’s only large enough to hold your operating system and key applications won’t cost much, and will definitely make a difference. But what if you want the fastest possible performance? It’s worth investing in a new motherboard supporting 6-Gbps SATA, and even buying a second drive for a RAID array. Let’s take a look at what kind of speed-up you can expect from various SSD hardware setups, and the best way to set up your software to get the most from an SSD installation.