Would it be better to get 2 hard drives 1TB each, and run them in RAID, or would it be better to get a single 240gb SSD for around the same cost?
How much would the RAID cut down on load times compared to the SSD? You lose some storage space sure, but the end result is still more storage than an SSD.
You can run a software RAID with any old motherboard right?
I would probably go with the SSD honestly. Then save up a bit for a 1 or 2TB drive. If you are going to RAID you would likely need to buy a proper RAID card unless you want your RAID array corrupting once and a while forcing you to re-install.
Or do the opposite. Buy a 1TB for now and then when the time comes, install to SSD. Transfering all my games was pretty easy with Steam mover (Steam and Origin games)
RAID sounds neat but it fails to address the real advantage of an SSD in daily use and that is seek time. No spindle HD, even in RAID can match the seek time of an SSD and thus fails to deliver the same experience changing experience an SSD gives in most uses.
I went all SSD a couple of years ago and will never go back to spindle myself.
SSD all the way. If you have an intel system you can use SRT to make a small SSD drive act as a huge cache drive for your HDD. It works pretty good actually, but still is a halfway solution really.
What doesn't really help is SSD in raid 0. The benefit's are really small as SSD's are internal raid0 devices to begin with.
That you can do it doesn't mean it's smart to do it.
SSD in Raid0 is such limited improvement you're better off running 2 as JBOD with one for windows and one for games for instance or spending the cash on a better GPU ;)