Need advice for my very first build!

[Tjj226_Angel]

Alright. I feel as if I got a really good build down. I'll post the new build here rather than making an edit on the original since this'll be ended soon.

 

CPU: Core i5-2500K Quad-Core 3.0GHz - $225

Mobo: Asus P8Z68-V PRO - $207

GPU : Radeon HD 6950 Twin Frozr II - $245

RAM: Vengeance 8GB (2x4 GB) 1600MHz - $40

PSU: Hale90-750-M 750W - $140

Cooler: Hydro Series H80 - $85

Case: NZXT Phantom - $125

Solid State Drive: OCZ Vertex 3 - $190

Optical Drive: Asus DRW-24B3ST Dual-Layer - $20

Monitor: Asus VH238H Black 23" Full HD - $174

Total: $1,451

 

I'm almost done! Only a few questions and tweaks to be made so I can order all the parts!

 

1) 750W or 850W enough?

2) Corsair H80 or Noctua NH-D14?

3) If I get the Noctua, would it fit in my case?

4) Vertex 3 or Vertex Max IOPS?

5) Is my monitor good? Or is there something better for same price or cheaper?

6) Say I play BF3 on medium graphics and I want 60 FPS. Should I downgrade a part just because I may not need the extra power.

 

For this response, I will only be giving other options and not recommendations. You have a great PC here, so don't feel like you NEED to change anything.

 

Motherboard

 

With the price offered, you could get a second 60GB SSD for the hard drive caching with SRT technology, or you could upgrade to a i7 processor. You won't be dropping any features of the motherboard (from what I can tell), but you will loose the Asus customer support . I would personally go with the mobo and a caching SSD before I buy a single mobo. You would just see more performance out of your pc that way. However, this is totally up to you, and there really is no right and wrong answer. The other thing is you might want to shoot for the twin frozer 3 when they go on sale, or go with two gtx 460s in sli. Again, just something to think of.

[Black Mage]

For this response, I will only be giving other options and not recommendations. You have a great PC here, so don't feel like you NEED to change anything.

 

Motherboard

 

With the price offered, you could get a second 60GB SSD for the hard drive caching with SRT technology, or you could upgrade to a i7 processor. You won't be dropping any features of the motherboard (from what I can tell), but you will loose the Asus customer support . I would personally go with the mobo and a caching SSD before I buy a single mobo. You would just see more performance out of your pc that way. However, this is totally up to you, and there really is no right and wrong answer. The other thing is you might want to shoot for the twin frozer 3 when they go on sale, or go with two gtx 460s in sli. Again, just something to think of.

 

Finally someone says something about ASRock. Was trying to refrain from mentioning them to see if anyone would at the very least make an option for it. I think I might switch my current mobo, but I think I'll do some research first before doing so.

 

Also, for a caching SSD, would this do?

[Tjj226_Angel]

Finally someone says something about ASRock. Was trying to refrain from mentioning them to see if anyone would at the very least make an option for it. I think I might switch my current mobo, but I think I'll do some research first before doing so.

 

Also, for a caching SSD, would this do?

 

No, you don't need that SSD. That particular SSD is designed for people who want to cache their HDD with an SSD but they DON'T have the Z68 chipset on their board. To keep it simple, that drive costs a premium for a feature that you already have. You only need a Sata III or 6gbps 60gb SSD. ANY SINGLE SSD with those specs will work for the SRT technology. Underneath is a link to a video on how to set up a cache array with SRT. Don't worry, it is super simple.

 

 

Something you should know, the results aren't really relevant for todays tech. You still et up your SRT array the same way, but your performance will be about 3 times what he had. Seriously, who does that test with a 5400 RPM drive and 20gb of SSD cache? You will have a 7200 rmp drive and 60-64gb of cache sooooooooooo I think you will beat his dinky little setup right there.

[Black Mage]

No, you don't need that SSD. That particular SSD is designed for people who want to cache their HDD with an SSD but they DON'T have the Z68 chipset on their board. To keep it simple, that drive costs a premium for a feature that you already have. You only need a Sata III or 6gbps 60gb SSD. ANY SINGLE SSD with those specs will work for the SRT technology. Underneath is a link to a video on how to set up a cache array with SRT. Don't worry, it is super simple.

 

 

Something you should know, the results aren't really relevant for todays tech. You still et up your SRT array the same way, but your performance will be about 3 times what he had. Seriously, who does that test with a 5400 RPM drive and 20gb of SSD cache? You will have a 7200 rmp drive and 60-64gb of cache sooooooooooo I think you will beat his dinky little setup right there.

 

I actually can get a free Seagate HDD 250GB. And I'm already getting a OCZ Vertex 3 120GB SSD. So I should go for a OCZ Vertex 3 64GB SSD? Right?

[Tjj226_Angel]

I actually can get a free Seagate HDD 250GB. And I'm already getting a OCZ Vertex 3 120GB SSD. So I should go for a OCZ Vertex 3 64GB SSD? Right?

 

Yeup! What you would do is use your 120 gb SSD as a boot drive with game data and what not. Basically use it as your primary drive. Then with the extra 64gb SSD, you cache your mechanical hard drive. So what you should have is 120 gb of a SSD, and then 250gb of a hybrid drive for a total of 370gb of storage. Does that make sense? I know it is a little confusing so please tell me if I need to explain more in depth.

 

On another note, are you going to be getting a 1tb when the prices drop? If not, you should really think about upping your storage when all the prices become sane again.

[Black Mage]

Yeup! What you would do is use your 120 gb SSD as a boot drive with game data and what not. Basically use it as your primary drive. Then with the extra 64gb SSD, you cache your mechanical hard drive. So what you should have is 120 gb of a SSD, and then 250gb of a hybrid drive for a total of 370gb of storage. Does that make sense? I know it is a little confusing so please tell me if I need to explain more in depth.

 

On another note, are you going to be getting a 1tb when the prices drop? If not, you should really think about upping your storage when all the prices become sane again.

 

1TB? Maybe, but the prices might not go down in a few months. Getting a free 250gb is better than an triple overpriced 1tb.

 

Anyway, could you elaborate? My dad is more than confused when it comes down to this. He's worked with computers and built one before, but I don't think he's up to date with some things. And what 64gb SSD should I get if I were to go for what you suggest? I can't seem to find the OCZ Vertex 3 64gb anywhere. It's as if it disappeared.

Edited November 19, 2011 by Black Mage

[Tjj226_Angel]

1TB? Maybe, but the prices might not go down in a few months. Getting a free 250gb is better than an triple overpriced 1tb.

 

Anyway, could you elaborate? My dad is more than confused when it comes down to this. He's worked with computers and built one before, but I don't think he's up to date with some things. And what 64gb SSD should I get if I were to go for what you suggest? I can't seem to find the OCZ Vertex 3 64gb anywhere. It's as if it disappeared.

 

List your questions individually so that way I can answer all of them in one quick and easy post. The reason you can't find a 64gb vertex 3 is because there is only a 60gb SSD. Still the Agility 3 is what I say you should get because the positive aspects of the vertex don't really show through on the SRT tech. So the premium is sort of pointless.

 

So if you can get your dad and you to sit down and ask a list of question, I, and I am sure every one else, will try to answer your questions. It will be the most efficient way to solve your confusion.

[Tjj226_Angel]

List your questions individually so that way I can answer all of them in one quick and easy post. The reason you can't find a 64gb vertex 3 is because there is only a 60gb version of the SSD. Still the Agility 3 is what I say you should get because the positive aspects of the vertex don't really show through on the SRT tech. So the premium is sort of pointless.

 

So if you can get your dad and you to sit down and ask a list of question, I, and I am sure every one else, will try to answer your questions. It will be the most efficient way to solve your confusion.

[Black Mage]

We already did that as soon as I posted. But anyway, here are the questions asked by my dad.

 

1. What is the use of caching a SSD?

 

2. If a 120gb SSD makes everything faster, why make use of a second caching SSD?

 

3. How does it work?

 

4. What is your opinion on price-to-quality? Is it worth getting?

 

5. Is there a catch to it? Say, risk of BSODs? How high?

 

Any other questions may be asked later. Hopefully he'll get the idea once you type in down.

[Stonerboy779]

1 - It increases your normal HDD cache of 64mb to 60-64gb depending what SSD you get. So for fast access time of your most regular HDD data it is a massive help.

2 - Helps alleviate that really slow feeling when you go from accessing things on the SSD to using things on the HDD. The speed of the SSD cache helps bridge the gap between SSD and HDD speeds.

3 -

Intel limited the maximum cache size to 64GB as it saw little benefit in internal tests to making the cache larger than that. Admittedly after a certain size you're better off just keeping your frequently used applications on the SSD itself and manually storing everything else on a hard drive.

 

Intel allows two modes of write caching: enhanced and maximized. Enhanced mode makes the SSD cache behave as a write through cache, where every write must hit both the SSD cache and hard drive before moving on. Whereas in maximized mode the SSD cache behaves more like a write back cache, where writes hit the SSD and are eventually written back to the hard drive but not immediately.

 

Enhanced mode is the most secure, but it limits the overall performance improvement you'll see as write performance will still be bound by the performance of your hard drive (or array). In enhanced mode, if you disconnect your SSD cache or the SSD dies, your system will continue to function normally. Note that you may still see an improvement in write performance vs. a non-cached hard drive because the SSD offloading read requests can free up your hard drive to better fulfill write requests.

 

Maximized mode offers the greatest performance benefit, however it also comes at the greatest risk. There's obviously the chance that you lose power before the SSD cache is able to commit writes to your hard drive. The bigger issue is that if something happens to your SSD cache, there's a chance you could lose data. To make matters worse, if your SSD cache dies and it was caching a bootable volume, your system will no longer boot. I suspect this situation is a bit overly cautious on Intel's part, but that's the functionality of the current version of Intel's 10.5 drivers.

 

Moving a drive with a maximized SSD cache enabled requires that you either move the SSD cache with it, or disable the SSD cache first. Again, Intel seems to be more cautious than necessary here.

 

The upside is of course performance as I mentioned before. Cacheable writes just have to hit the SSD before being considered serviced. Intel then conservatively writes that data back to the hard drive later on.

best explination really..

4 - depends on how quick you really want overall performance. if you don't like waiting for anything and can't afford to only use SSDs then it is great and a 60gb SSD on sale make it imo worth it.

5 - not that i know of

[Tjj226_Angel]

We already did that as soon as I posted. But anyway, here are the questions asked by my dad.

 

1. What is the use of caching a SSD?

 

2. If a 120gb SSD makes everything faster, why make use of a second caching SSD?

 

3. How does it work?

 

4. What is your opinion on price-to-quality? Is it worth getting?

 

5. Is there a catch to it? Say, risk of BSODs? How high?

 

Any other questions may be asked later. Hopefully he'll get the idea once you type in down.

 

 

1: You don't cache an SSD, you use a SSD to cache a hard drive so from now on to avoid confusion I will refer to it as HDD caching. The use for HDD caching is much like Stoner said, it gives you that bridge of speed. An HDD is the biggest bottle neck of performance in computers these days. While a SSD alone is a great way to by pass that bottle neck, but there are still times that you need that surplus of storage in your HDD and you get slowed down. Using an SSD to cache your hard drive is the only way to fix that bottle neck. So, like stoner said it is a bridge, but I say it is a bridge +1.

 

2. The idea of using both is that the only draw back of caching the HDD is that it is marginally slower than a plain SSD, but the setup is up to ten times faster than an HDD with a much larger storage space. So instead of debating about which one to choose, you can have them both. That is the reason to get them both.

 

3. See stoners post

 

4. With the agility 3 or the patriot pyro 60gb it is worth it. My personal opinion is that if you can get the SSD after rebate for less than 90 dollars then it is definitely worth it.

 

5. I have heard of one or two BSODs, but that was because the drive went bad so it kind of doesn't matter because that is just statistics and not a representation of quality.

[Black Mage]

Alright. Thanks for the help. I think I may pass on the second SSD, as you can always add on to the computer on a later date correct? I've already got a fairly fast computer right now, so I think I can wait the extra minute or two without the second SSD. I'll be ordering the parts soon based from the latest specs I posted. The only change I might make is the Mobo, from Asus P8Z68 V-PRO to the ASRock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3, but that's not garanteed. I'm really excited to be finally ordering the parts that were long overdue for me. Really, thanks for all the suggestions, answers, and help provided. Now excuse me, I'm off to shopping.