Great read and very informative considering I'm in the process of building a few workstations (and a server) myself. Definitely look forward to reading your 'server recommendations'!
Just wanted to point out that with a large amount of RAM (I would say greater than 8GB), you can consider removing/shrinking the pagefile and disable hibernation to free up space on a SSD. Or alternatively, if there is an additional (non-SSD) storage drive being used, the pagefile could be moved to that drive.
Here are some guides that helped me:
***Explains how to do it***
http://techgage.com/article/disabling_windows_pagefile_hibernation_to_reclaim_ssd_space/***LONG read, scroll down 2/3 down to see the results and how they can apply to a given situation***
http://www.tweakhound.com/2011/10/10/the-windows-7-pagefile-and-running-without-one/It just seems a bit much to say that you must commit so much drive space, when there are diminishing returns (for the pagefile) when you have more RAM than you actually need. Also, if you have a SSD, boot-ups/shutdowns are a few seconds which kind of eliminiate the need for hibernation. Of course, everyone and their computer is different so there is some risk of blue-screening or running out of memory, but if its a client computer with no important data I feel its at least something worth considering.
Sorry for the long comment. I have a 120GB Intel X-25M and its been fun tweaking the heck out of it. Its been almost 2 years now and still runs great. And FWIW, I'm going to say that Intel makes some of the best SSD drives in terms of reliability. I recently purchased 2 more Intel 310 SSDs and noticed that those drives carry a 5 year warranty! Nice to have a company stand by their product like that.
