I was under the impression it's a bit tricksy getting a bootable install of Win 8.1 sorted with the product key gubbins? As you can tell, I don't really know, but it definitely seemed to be non-routine.

240GB was what I was looking at, can't really be spending £340 at the moment. 

It was a bit tricky for me, in that the product key for the clean install didn't work, but then installing it over itself made windows think it was an upgrade. I've got a 120GB disk, and for the most part it's fine. The only problem is with the likes of Max Payne and others wanting 30GB installs, I have to uninstall ones I'm not using regularly.

I think for games like that I'll use Steam Mover and shift 'em onto the regular disk rather than SSD.

You don't need Steam Mover any more. Steam let's you choose the folder to install games to and has for a while.

As for the original question. Clean install to a blank SSD (delete existing partitions in installer) to let Windows align the partitions to the SSD 's blocksize correctly and create the boot partition (useful should you ever want to encrypt the Windows partition) and upgrade to 8.1 through the store.

Steam always fails on me when I want to install to another location so far. Regardless - steam mover can move em back again too, so you could have the current faves on SSD but shift them away when you're about done with them, don't think Steam does that.


So: install Win 8.0 then update?

Not had any problems here, I am in the Family Sharing Beta (not that I have any "family" to share with), so maybe they've fixed it in that?

Yes, install Windows 8.0 and update through the store.