52 replies to this topic

[eniparadoxgma]

Well...it's been awhile...

If you guys know me very well you know that I'm impetuous at best and just plain stupid at worst. I decided to put together a new build on Newegg just to get back into the swing of things because I haven't kept up with the tech for awhile...and I wanted to see how much it would cost if I was to do a complete upgrade (cpu/mobo/ram + 2 SSDs in RAID).

Here's what I put together:

CPU: Xeon X3440 2.55 quad core w/hyper threading

Mobo: eVGA P55 LE (socket 1156)

RAM: Corsair XMS 8gb (2 x 4gb) DDR3 2000

SSD: 2 x Samsung SAMSUNG 470 Series MZ-5PA064 64gb

CPU cooler: Scythe SCMG-2100


How does this look?

I currently have:

Intel C2D 6750 @ 2.66
eVGA 780i mobo
2 x 2gb Gskill
2 x 640gb RAID for OS/games

I haven't bothered worrying about my GPU although I game a looooot because my ATI 4870 w/1gb is still doing everything I need it to at 1920 x 1080.

Apparently I could do Crossfire with the above motherboard (I can get another 4870 for 140US or so) but the PCI Express lanes would be limited to 8x each. From what I can tell this wouldn't be much of a hindrance and 140 isn't that bad for a GPU upgrade (although I'm not worrying about it yet.)

I went with the Xeon in comparison to the i5 760 because the 760 is clocked a little higher but the Xeon has hyper-threading, and the hyper-threading I think is more important than the negligible clock increase especially if overclocking. I went with the Xeon in comparison to the i7 870 because I didn't think the .4 clock increase was worth the extra 60 or so dollars (US).

Here's where the story gets interesting...

I was just screwing around on Newegg and decided to try to check out with the "Bill me Later" option. I've tried to get credit through Newegg before and it has never worked...and I really didn't expect it to go through, but...it apparently did lol. So I've got this stuff on the way to my house now haha. I'm going to have to kick some butt to pay this off in 6 months, but what do you guys think of (apparently) my new build?

Compatibility issues off-hand? Anything could be better for the price point?

TIA, and yeah I know I'm crazy.

[scaramonga]

Good motherboard, not so sure about CPU choice

I'd also just go for the one SSD and save a little cash, perhaps getting another 4870 for Crossfire, but I've heard that this board don't do well in that respect, so I'd probably sell the 4870 you have and shove the money made, with money saved on SSD, on a good single GPU solution.

Rest OK

[eniparadoxgma]

scaramonga, on Nov 21 2010, 07:16 PM, said:

Good motherboard, not so sure about CPU choice

I'd also just go for the one SSD and save a little cash, perhaps getting another 4870 for Crossfire, but I've heard that this board don't do well in that respect, so I'd probably sell the 4870 you have and shove the money made, with money saved on SSD, on a good single GPU solution.

Rest OK

Thanks for the response, scara.

My research turned up Crossfire doing well on the motherboard. Can you point out what you've read for me? Since it would cost 130ish (US) for another 4870 I thought it would be the most cost efficient solution. I guess I could sell the 4870 and get a 5870 with the money + what I would have spent on another card...however I think it would end up costing at least an extra 75 dollar or so.

I knew running 2 SSDs in RAID +0 wouldn't net a huge increase in performance, but I thought it would have some. And, I play so many games/have so many programs that I think it's necessary to go with 128gb instead of 64gb. For example, my C drive partition at the moment is 381gb large and I don't really store anything on it.

[scaramonga]

1 single SSD will make your system fly, I only have a 60Gb job. When set up properly, Windows 7 will occupy about 18Gb of this, allow for some software that insists on installing on C:\, move pagefile to your other RAID drives, and set up a small partition on the RAID drives with which one links documents, saves, cache's for browsers etc to that partition (Junction Links) and at max you have a 25Gb usage of the C:\ drive, all other installs go to the RAID set up One small SSD for the system alone.

Junction Link Magic is what I use for this, as it can be a tedious process, but this makes it easy

The 5870 does sound the better option, but I would recommend the Nvidia 460/470 as a better choice overall, while keeping the cost down

[eniparadoxgma]

scaramonga, on Nov 21 2010, 09:09 PM, said:

1 single SSD will make your system fly, I only have a 60Gb job. When set up properly, Windows 7 will occupy about 18Gb of this, allow for some software that insists on installing on C:\, move pagefile to your other RAID drives, and set up a small partition on the RAID drives with which one links documents, saves, cache's for browsers etc to that partition (Junction Links) and at max you have a 25Gb usage of the C:\ drive, all other installs go to the RAID set up One small SSD for the system alone.

Junction Link Magic is what I use for this, as it can be a tedious process, but this makes it easy

The 5870 does sound the better option, but I would recommend the Nvidia 460/470 as a better choice overall, while keeping the cost down

Well, the order has already been placed so I guess I'm stuck with the two 64gb's. I thought that putting programs and games on a striped SSD RAID array would garner serious performances raises.

Actually, now that I've done a bit more research it looks like it would make more sense to go to a 6870 if I was to upgrade...unless I just go ahead and CF with another 4870 for the time being muahaha. I'm not exactly an ATI fanboy, but the only time I ever bought and used a Nvidia GPU there was a noticeable difference for the worse. Whether or not this "noticeable difference" was an objective thing or the placebo effect is up to debate. Regardless, I'm staying with ATI.

And thanks for the link to that program. It looks ultra-spiffy.

Edited by eniparadoxgma, 22 November 2010 - 02:25 AM.

[scaramonga]

eniparadoxgma, on Nov 22 2010, 02:23 AM, said:

I thought that putting programs and games on a striped SSD RAID array would garner serious performances raises.

Your right. But unfortunately your gonna wear them out, and depending on the 'cleaning' method, they will degrade in performance lol. SSD's are really not meant to be written a lot to.

So basically, you can have your lollipop, but never lick it much

[eniparadoxgma]

scaramonga, on Nov 21 2010, 09:36 PM, said:

Your right. But unfortunately your gonna wear them out, and depending on the 'cleaning' method, they will degrade in performance lol. SSD's are really not meant to be written a lot to.

So basically, you can have your lollipop, but never lick it much

Well that sucks doodie balls. How quickly do they degrade on average? I was reading something that said SSDs wouldn't degrade down to nonworking for 100 years or something but that doesn't say much about the average decline per month or year or anything in terms of performance.

This doesn't seem too bad:

Quote

"An empty [SSD] drive will perform better than one written to. We all know that," said Alvin Cox, co-chairman of the Joint Electronic Device Engineering Council's (JEDEC) JC-64.8 subcommittee for SSDs, which expects to publish standards this year for measuring drive endurance. Cox, a senior staff engineer at Seagate, said a quality SSD should last between five and 10 years.

The good news is that after an initial dip in performance, SSDs tend to level off, according to Eden Kim, chairman of the Solid State Storage Initative's Consumer SSD Market Development Task Force. Even if they do drop in performance over time -- undercutting a manufacturer's claims -- consumer flash drives are still vastly faster than traditional hard drives, because they can perform two to five times the input/ouput operations (I/Os) per second of a hard drive, he said.

(http://www.computerw...own_inevitable_)

Where's MO with his SSD knowledge when ya need 'em? Heck I'm going to have to do some research just to set them up initially.

[eniparadoxgma]

Here's an article about those SSDs if anyone's interested.

[eniparadoxgma]

aaaaaaaand another one for those interested.

Looks like I did a pretty good job choosing the SSD(s) even though it was on a whim.

[m.oreilly]

i would not go with the sammies.

[eniparadoxgma]

m.oreilly, on Nov 22 2010, 10:23 PM, said:

i would not go with the sammies.

Dang it man! They're already on their way.

What's the issue, Mosephus?

[m.oreilly]

samsung is the issue re any FW updates/info you would want. atm, you would most likely get better coverage from sandforce/newest marvell controlled drives (even existing intel). samsung does a talk to the hand when things don't work right/stuff happens...while i like my sammy plasma, i would not buy a sammy drive atm...

[m.oreilly]

heck enip, i'm sure they will get you going and be fast and make your ssd storage experience a good one off the line. for trim and such, i'd almost recommend a single/single kinda implementation, as i'm not up on the garbage collection algorithms these models pull, but raid will fo sho be fast as heck

[eniparadoxgma]

m.oreilly, on Nov 23 2010, 02:07 AM, said:

samsung is the issue re any FW updates/info you would want. atm, you would most likely get better coverage from sandforce/newest marvell controlled drives (even existing intel). samsung does a talk to the hand when things don't work right/stuff happens...while i like my sammy plasma, i would not buy a sammy drive atm...

Well, I'll go ahead and prepare for war if something is to happen then.

m.oreilly, on Nov 23 2010, 02:27 AM, said:

heck enip, i'm sure they will get you going and be fast and make your ssd storage experience a good one off the line. for trim and such, i'd almost recommend a single/single kinda implementation, as i'm not up on the garbage collection algorithms these models pull, but raid will fo sho be fast as heck

I was wondering about that. If I RAID I won't be able to use TRIM, right? So, maybe I just back up the drive somewhere else and then wipe it and reinstall every month until they have TRIM support for RAID arrays?

[eniparadoxgma]

Looks like this might help the situation.

I could be wrong though.