[Hardware Question] SSD just for the OS?

[Madfish]

Originally Posted by T.}{.O.R.

What's the situation with SSD's, RAID and TRIM - I've read somewhere that whne put in RAID TRIM doesn't work. Or is this just for every other OS than Win7?

As far as I know there are some Intel controllers that pass Trim to Raid drives, however that is not an established method whatsoever yet so there is no guarantee. Let me make this a bit more clear. It is possible to use Trim for one SSD in a set of raid drives (e.g. 1 SSD + 1 MD). The operating system doesn't matter and it's not just Windows 7 affected. In fact that's probably part of the problem as a good raid should work on a purely hardware basis anyways.
However, TRIM in raid is already being worked on - at least Intel, Adaptec and Acrea are working on it and I assume others are too. But for now you should avoid the issue.
Also I doubt you'll need an SSD raid. Like I mentioned, even SSD's are already questionable and an added bonus. Yes, they do give performance but there are better options to increase perfomance unless you run I/O apps like databases and such.

I agree with your choice on the vendor and also to reduce the size of RAM for the gaming machine. 6gb is perfectly reasonable right now and you can always stack up with another 3 modules.

Picking a local vendor is always a good choice when you're putting a decent amount of money on the table. Sometimes there are components that are not broken but still not working perfectly either. For example coil whistle, slight vibrations etc. Depending on the vendor it can really cause some problems trying to get hardware with slight symptoms exchanged.

[csThor]

Thx for the opinions overall guys. I may decrease RAM to 6GB but the rest of the components is fixed now because I am limiting myself to a certain vendor who has a retail shop nearby. I have had a not so pleasant experience with online ordering a few years back so I am not going to cherry-pick components from this or that vendor just to save a few €uros. I'm sticking to one where I can actually go and kick up a stink if necessary.

[BadAim]

Originally Posted by csThor

I have had a not so pleasant experience with online ordering a few years back so I am not going to cherry-pick components from this or that vendor just to save a few €uros. I'm sticking to one where I can actually go and kick up a stink if necessary.

LOL! I hear you. I just bought a new monitor and it had a bunch of dead pixels, it would have been a horror show to send back to an online vendor, especially since the neck for the base wouldn't come back out of the monitor; It wouldn't go back in the box!

I just walked into the store, plopped the (unclosable) box on the counter and the lady said "do you want to exchange or get a refund?" before I had a chance to even explain why I'm taking it back.

Worth a few extra bucks IMHO.