Final Build Part 3

Comments

• VooDoo_Papa Member UncommonPosts: 897

  April 2011

  I just wanted to respond to the topic of SSD's and theyre usefullness for gaming etc.

  I was completely on the fence on using a SSD for my new build I just did about a month ago and looking back im completely satisfied that I purchased one.  Now, I dont put my games on this drive, its completely for my operating system and a few applications.  The reason being is, games are fairly large and to be honest, you wont really benefit from the speed of the drive unless you're playing a game that constantly loads directly from the drive.  In that case, you will see faster loads but beyond that the drive adds very little that a good SATA III drive cant offer.

  I purchased a mushkin 120 gig drive and with my windows 7 install its down to 76 gig free.  Ive installed everything I could on my secondary drive and targeted my secondary drive as my downloads folder for firefox.  Trying to get manage your SSD space can get tricky, but the 120gig drive makes this much more hassle free.  Ive checked my drive space every few days since I installed it and it hasnt moved since I finsihed installing all of my apps. 

  You're still going to have to deal with windows update files, temp files during installs etc.  Ive even noticed that some programs almost insist that they go on the C: and dont give you the opportunity to install on any other drive.  There are registry hacks etc. where you can force windows into choosing a secondary drive over the C:, but I think this is more of an issue for folks who use a SSD under 80 gig.

   

  Now, what I will say is the system as a whole is a lot more snappier.  You're SSD is still being used for virtual memory during gaming (save the discussion of your main drive used as a pagefile, theres really nothing other than theory to prove using a secondary drive is better) and overall the computer just reacts better.  I would strongly suggest purchasing one if you can afford a secondary drive as well.

  
• Quizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,348

  April 2011

  If you're going to use CrossFire or SLI, then the MSI motherboard supports it and the Asus motherboard does not.  Otherwise, I'd probably go with the Asus motherboard.

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  With video card prices as they are, I'd say don't get the 6870.  Either pay more for the 6950, or else save some money and get this:

  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102932

  The 6870 is priced closer to the 6950, while it performs closer to the 5850, making it not a good value for the money.  Well, you could argue that that's a pretty good price on the 6870, but the prices on the 5850 and 6950 are just that much better.

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  The memory is rated at 1.65 V, so if you try to run it at the DDR3 stock voltage of 1.5 V, it might not be able to hit 1600 MHz.  Maybe it can, and if you regard the rebate as "free", it's cheap memory that will certainly offer 1333 MHz at 1.5 V, and maybe 1600 MHz at 1.5 V.  If you're not going to do the rebate, then get different memory.  Note that the promo code on the memory ends tomorrow, so if you want that memory, then don't wait until Monday.

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  It would cost you all of $1 more to get either the newer version of the 500 GB WD Caviar Black, which has a decent chance of performing better, as it probably switched to a single platter:

  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136795

  Or else to get a 640 GB version of the WD Caviar Black, which gives you more capacity, and double the cache:

  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136544

  If it were an extra $10, I'd say get the one you picked.  But for $1?  I'd pay the extra dollar.

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  The Cooler Master Storm Sniper is a huge case, and massively overkill for your needs.  If that's what you want, then go ahead, but you'll need to re-use it in future builds to get much value out of it at that price.  Which you could do, of course.  The HAF 922 is a nice case, too.  If you'd like a cheaper case that is still more than what you need, you could try this:

  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129079

  Don't let me stop you from getting one of the bigger cases if that's what you're set on, though.

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  For $5 more, you can get a Windows 7 DVD that includes Service Pack 1:

  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116986

  That might save you a couple hours of downloading and installing updates, including the service pack.  But it also costs an extra $5.  Whether that's worth it is a personal preference.

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  Pretty good value on the power supply, now that Corsair is likely trying to get rid of it, as the TX V2 series is out.  If you'd like something cheaper that is still plenty good enough (and might conceivably be better), here's one option if you do rebates:

  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817207007

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  So, let's talk about solid state drives.  The performance of an SSD depends mainly on the controller.  SSDs perform well by writing to many NAND flash chips in parallel.  NAND flash chips come in capacities that are a power of 2, such as 4 GB or 8 GB.  Most SSD controllers have a number of memory channels that is also a power of 2, most commonly 8.  So in order to populate all channels equally, the capacity should be 8 times a power of 2, which is itself a power of 2.  Thus, you want a storage capacity of a power of 2, such as 64 GB or 128 GB.

  Solid state drives also have to keep some reserve area.  Some controllers need more reserve area than others.  Thus, if a controller has 128 GB of physical NAND flash, it likely gives you 119 GB of usable capacity in Windows.  The SandForce controllers need more spare capacity, and may give you 112 GB or even as little as 107 GB of usable capacity.  Different companies market the capacity different, and a SandForce drive that gives you 107 GB may be marketed as 115 GB (Corsair or G.Skill), 120 GB (OCZ), or even 128 GB.  One that gives you 112 GB of usable capacity may be marketed as 120 GB (several companies) or 128 GB (A-data).  So what you want is not so much for the claimed capacity to be a power of 2, as to be either a power of 2 or something a little less than a power of 2.

  The exception is Intel's SSD controller, which has 10 channels.  Thus, you want it to be 10 times a power of 2, as in 80 GB or 160 GB.

  The controller in the SSD matters tremendously.  The best SSDs on the market are based on a Marvell or SandForce controller.  The next tier down is based on an Intel or Samsung controller, and those are still pretty good, to the degree that I'd go ahead and buy one if it were $10 cheaper than a Marvell or SandForce controller for the same capacity.  Samsung's first generation controller wasn't very good, but it seems to be off the market, and the Samsung 470 is the newer controller.

  The next tier is Toshiba and Indilinx controllers.  They perform like a good SSD, rather than having severe problems like the bottom tier, but they really aren't as fast as the better controllers.  The Indilinx Barefoot controller was pretty good in its day, and forced SSD prices way down, as it meant Intel no longer had a monopoly on good SSDs.  But that was two years ago, and it's pretty dated by now.  The Toshiba controller launched much more recently, and only makes sense if you get a big discount on it.

  The bottom tier is JMicron, plus some obscure controllers that basically get ignored.  A lot of those manage to perform much worse than a hard drive in random writes, to the degree that I'd sooner take a hard drive.  And I don't like hard drives.  That there are garbage products on the market doesn't mean you have to buy them, but it does mean you have to be careful of what you're getting.  Incidentally, if an SSD advertises that it uses DDR2 memory, that's a dead giveaway that it's a JMicron controller and should not be bought.

  So what of the SSDs you're looking at?  The OCZ Agility 2 and Vertex 2 are both a SandForce controller, which is good.  The 90 GB Agility 2 is really the wrong capacity for it, though.  I think that the Kingston SSDNow V+100 is the Toshiba controller.  Kingston's naming system is an incomprehensible mess, though, as they've used SSDNow V-something or other as the marketing name for JMicron and first generation Samsung controllers in the past, and you want to avoid those.  So while the SSDNow V+100 is probably a decent SSD, it might not be.  It's cheap for a reason, and personally, I wouldn't buy an SSD from Kingston at all.

  So what would I buy?  Depending on budget and how you feel about rebates:

  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227550

  50 GB usable capacity, SandForce controller

  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167049

  75 GB usable capacity, Intel controller

  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227590

  Either 107 or 112 GB of usable capacity (I'm not sure which), SandForce controller

  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148348

  119 GB of usable capacity, Marvell controller

  Actually, what I'd personally do is to get that last one, and then no hard drive at all.  But some people need more storage capacity than I do.
• Quizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,348

  April 2011

  
  Originally posted by VooDoo_Papa

  I purchased a mushkin 120 gig drive and with my windows 7 install its down to 76 gig free.  Ive installed everything I could on my secondary drive and targeted my secondary drive as my downloads folder for firefox.  Trying to get manage your SSD space can get tricky, but the 120gig drive makes this much more hassle free.  Ive checked my drive space every few days since I installed it and it hasnt moved since I finsihed installing all of my apps. 

  I'd put games on the SSD, too.  Maybe not all of your games, but if you tend to play one game at a time, like I do, then put that one game on the SSD and leave it there for however many months you play it.  You can copy the files off later if you want to make room for another game.  Games tend to be pretty read-heavy and not write that much, so they don't put much wear and tear on the SSD.

  While an SSD does lose some performance as it gets close to full, you can easily put 100 GB on it before that becomes an issue at all.  With a SandForce drive (I'm guessing you got a Mushkin Callisto Deluxe), you can go all the way up to the cap that Windows will let you use and usually not lose any performance at all until Windows refuses to write because the drive is full.
• Catamount Member Posts: 773

  April 2011

  I have that variant of the Vertex 2; it's 107GB useable space.
• Quizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,348

  April 2011

  Do you mean the 2.5" one in the original post, or the 3.5" one I linked?  The one in the original post has VTX2E in the code name, and that's certainly 107 GB usable.  The 3.5" one I linked doesn't have the E, so that may or may not be one of the 25 nm, 107 GB drives.
• Phelcher Member CommonPosts: 1,053

  April 2011

  Isn't that socket already EOL next year..?

   

  "No they are not charity. That is where the whales come in. (I play for free. Whales pays.) Devs get a business. That is how it works."

  
  -Nariusseldon
• Shinami Member UncommonPosts: 825

  April 2011

  You don't want a new build with a previous generation card as it means its one of the first things to go obsolete in such new build. I was going to buy a 2500K a while back and settled on the 2600K because it really is that much better in the long run. These two aren't processors one just buys hoping as a consolation to a new technology being released later.

   

  As long as you believe you can reach 60 FPS in a game through researching your build, that is what should count and don't let anyone con you into believing that playing with under 60 FPS in a multiplayer game is "agreeable" or "acceptable" by any means. 
• Ridelynn Member EpicPosts: 7,383

  April 2011

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  Originally posted by Phelcher
  Isn't that socket already EOL next year..?
   

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  Intel has been obsoleting sockets with pretty much every major generation lately. That's been one of the prices of going with Intel. But, I also have to admit, by the time it comes around to upgrade Intel CPUs (I usually upgrade about every other generation, or about 3 years for a motherboard/CPU), there have been enough other advances to make a new motherboard a worthwhile investment anyway.

  As far as 6870 vs 6950 - 6950 is the faster card, and has a different GPU architecture with better performance, and more importantly, PowerTune technology which allows for easier to manage performance. Both will run most every current game at single screen resolutions (1080p) just fine, but you'll have a bit more longevity out of a 6950.
• Shinami Member UncommonPosts: 825

  April 2011

  
  Originally posted by Ridelynn

   

  
  

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  Originally posted by Phelcher
  
  Isn't that socket already EOL next year..?
  
   
  

  ---

  
  

   

  Intel has been obsoleting sockets with pretty much every major generation lately. That's been one of the prices of going with Intel. But, I also have to admit, by the time it comes around to upgrade Intel CPUs (I usually upgrade about every other generation, or about 3 years for a motherboard/CPU), there have been enough other advances to make a new motherboard a worthwhile investment anyway.

  As far as 6870 vs 6950 - 6950 is the faster card, and has a different GPU architecture with better performance, and more importantly, PowerTune technology which allows for easier to manage performance. Both will run most every current game at single screen resolutions (1080p) just fine, but you'll have a bit more longevity out of a 6950.

  6950s can be flashed to become 6970s....which is how I ended up with my Crossfire configuration. Most models are compatible. It gives you the potential to doing a little work and having a "top" card spending around $200 - $250. 

   
• Catamount Member Posts: 773

  April 2011

  
  Originally posted by Quizzical

  Do you mean the 2.5" one in the original post, or the 3.5" one I linked?  The one in the original post has VTX2E in the code name, and that's certainly 107 GB usable.  The 3.5" one I linked doesn't have the E, so that may or may not be one of the 25 nm, 107 GB drives.

  I have the 3.5" drive; it looks like those are 25nm as well (not a huge surprise).
• DanielJack11 Member Posts: 17

  April 2011

  Thanks once again guys! I'll make the necessary adjustments I am kind of glad I came back to double check again.
• DanielJack11 Member Posts: 17

  April 2011

  Actually I have a question, is Hitachi Deskstar as good as the Western Digitial Caviar Black? It's a bit cheaper but it shuld be of the same quality right?
• Quizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,348

  April 2011

  No, a HItachi DeskStar is not just as good as a Western Digital Caviar Black.  A Western Digital hard drive is likely to be more reliable than a Hitachi one.  The DeskStar line at one point was so failure-prone that it was dubbed the "DeathStar", though those days are over.

  A WD Caviar Black will also be substantially faster.  Western Digital actually makes two lines of 7200 RPM, 3.5" desktop hard drives:  Caviar Black and Caviar Blue.  Caviar Black is substantially faster than Caviar Blue, and Western Digital will tell you so themselves.  Independent benchmarks confirm this, and the Caviar Black line tends to be significantly faster than other 7200 RPM desktop hard drives.

  The basic problem with hard drives is that any time you want to read or write something, you have to wait for everything to physically move to the right spot.  Sometimes this can take 10 or 15 ms.  You might think, but 10 or 15 ms is so short of a period of time that I won't notice.  And if you only want to read one file, and it is completely defragmented, then that might be correct.  But if you need to load hundreds of files at once, as you commonly do, then waiting 10 or 15 ms each means you have to sit there and wait for an annoyingly long time.

  A WD Caviar Black is optimized to get the drive head to the right spot to start reading or writing as quickly as possible.  Other hard drive manufacturers try to do that, too, but the Caviar Black is simply better at it.  When you have to load hundreds of small files at once, that can be the difference between having to sit there and wait 4 seconds versus 5 seconds.  Of course, on an SSD, you might have to wait less than 1 second.

  Now, if you're getting an SSD, too, then the speed of the hard drive doesn't matter so much.  If you have both an SSD and a hard drive, then you put the programs that you want to be fast on the SSD, and the files where speed doesn't matter on the hard drive.

  If you want to save money by getting a cheaper hard drive, then go ahead.  If 500 GB is what you're after, then here's a Western Digital Caviar Blue for $40:

  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136769

  Incidentally, among 7200 RPM hard drives, the rough order of speed at a given capacity goes Western Digital Caviar Black > Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 > Samsung Spinpoint F3 > Hitachi DeskStar > Western Digital Caviar Blue.  Older drives, such as the Seagate Barracuda 7200.11, will tend to be slower than newer ones.  That's rough because it can vary by capacity, and by how old the drives are, especially for brand names that get re-used.  Spinpoint F3 and Barracuda 7200.12 specify a particular generation.  Western Digital doesn't have older Caviar Black drives on the market, like they do with Caviar Blue drives, and also doesn't have any Caviar Black under 500 GB, so I'd assume that they discontinue the older Caviar Black drives.