Quote -  And let's not forget the motherboard, in this discussion.

Win 7 often reports that the drives are the slowest component of a system, when in fact, it is the northbridge or southbridge chips that are relatively slow. (The northbridge chip typically controls the RAM and the graphics card, AND the southbridge chip. The southbridge chip, among other things, controls the disk drives.)  Sometimes, a motherboard uses relatively cheap condensors, also impairing the speed.

No sense in putting SSD's on a mediocre motherboard.

"True Dat" I had a Tyan with poor (relativly) Southbride performance, and the southbridge overheated alot until I put it in a Coolermaster case with a zillion fans. It moved onto the render farm and the current content creator is an ASUS MB