[Hardware Question] SSD just for the OS?

[csThor]

I'm not yet decided on the cooler, so far I have a "safety" in my list which means a dedicated Intel cooler. I'm still hammering that out.

Oh and Thor - this is a socket 1366 CPU. I had toyed with the idea of getting myself that bad-@ss i7 980extreme but then I decided to lower my expectations a bit and shuffle a few €€ over to peripherals (the SSD and the RAM). As for the MoBo I've got to say I looked through the feature lists of the MoBos available at my dealer and I greatly prefer that one for being a bit more "future proof" (meaning for the next 1 - 2 years). I can always slap a better socket 1366 CPU in plus more RAM and I'll be fine. I wanted SATA-600 and USB 3, anyway.

[Blackdog_kt]

SSD questions aside, am i the only one who thinks that anything more than 4-6GB of RAM is way too much overkill for a gaming PC?

I can't think of anything that would use up that much RAM, unless i'm running SoW in window mode with a bunch of stuff in the background, including photoshop to edit my screenshots on the fly

[dduff442]

Originally Posted by Blackdog_kt

SSD questions aside, am i the only one who thinks that anything more than 4-6GB of RAM is way too much overkill for a gaming PC?

I can't think of anything that would use up that much RAM, unless i'm running SoW in window mode with a bunch of stuff in the background, including photoshop to edit my screenshots on the fly

You're right -- nothing uses that much RAM at the moment.

OTOH, it's Alt-Tab heaven and RAM is cheap.

dduff

[swiss]

You probably could save ~$50 if you go for some OE/bulk parts instead of retail.

Retail is the same product in nicer box, plus you get some cables for free(well, they aren't exactly free...)

[T}{OR]

Originally Posted by csThor

I'm not yet decided on the cooler, so far I have a "safety" in my list which means a dedicated Intel cooler. I'm still hammering that out.

Oh and Thor - this is a socket 1366 CPU. I had toyed with the idea of getting myself that bad-@ss i7 980extreme but then I decided to lower my expectations a bit and shuffle a few €€ over to peripherals (the SSD and the RAM). As for the MoBo I've got to say I looked through the feature lists of the MoBos available at my dealer and I greatly prefer that one for being a bit more "future proof" (meaning for the next 1 - 2 years). I can always slap a better socket 1366 CPU in plus more RAM and I'll be fine. I wanted SATA-600 and USB 3, anyway.

High end i7 CPU's are way overpriced for the minor difference in performance they offer. Yes, I know it is a 1366, and older socket than 1156 that I recommended.

There is no way you will ever convince me that Rampage III is worth the price. It is almost twice € than many of the boards that will do the job nicely. Personally I would use the difference to buy that Xonar Essence STX, but then again, I am an sort of an audiophile.

Also, weather you will use all of that 12 GB's of RAM is doubtful, or in near future. 6 GB is a perfect choice, unless you are into video editing, where I would go with an AMD X6 and 8 GB in dual channel where according software packages can actually use the extra RAM and cores.

Originally Posted by Blackdog_kt

SSD questions aside, am i the only one who thinks that anything more than 4-6GB of RAM is way too much overkill for a gaming PC?

I can't think of anything that would use up that much RAM, unless i'm running SoW in window mode with a bunch of stuff in the background, including photoshop to edit my screenshots on the fly

No, you're not the only one.

[SG1_Gunkan]

Originally Posted by csThor

INTEL Core i7 960 4x3.2 GHz BOX
Asus (Retail) Rampage III Gene Republic of Gamers iX58
12GB Corsair Dominator PC2-12800 CL8 KIT
2.5" Crucial RealSSD C300 64GB
3.5" WD 1000GB WD1002FAEX 7200U/min 64MB SATA 3.0
ZOTAC (Retail) GTX480 1536MB mini-HDMI/DVI
Creative (Retail) X-Fi Titanium PCIe
Asus (Retail) BR-04B2T BD-Rom
Windows 7 Professional 64bit OEM

- Consider GIGABYTE GA-X58A-UD3R. It's cheaper, and an amazin motherboard.
- Mushkin Redline Pc3-12800 Ddr3 1600 6gb 3x2gb Cl6, it's cheaper and Lower latency: CL6.
- Mushkin Callisto Deluxe 120gb Ssd is cheap and GREAT performance. 2 x 60gb Callisto drives are 266€ but on RAID the performance is 33% more than one single 120gb.
- Consider Samsung Spinpoint F3 1tb Sata2. Amazing performance and very cheap.
- 460 it's a better option than 480. 480it's too much ineffective in terms of power consumtion and temperature. If you want 3D power, use 2 x 460 on SLI better than one single 480.
- Creative X-Fi can give you a lot of headache with drivers and computer freezes. But it's simply GREAT.

I have SSD's on work for servers. The performance is just AMAZING. Go SSD's everyday, but you need TRIM support and Windows7 to avoid the degradation problems of old SSD's.

[T}{OR]

Originally Posted by SG1_Gunkan

I have SSD's on work for servers. The performance is just AMAZING. Go SSD's everyday, but you need TRIM support and Windows7 to avoid the degradation problems of old SSD's.

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?

[janpitor]

I have one 32G SSD for win and another 64G for simulators together with a normal 500G disc. Win loads fast, so do the simulators. As far as I know, 12G RAM would tend to higher the timings thus decreasing the overal performance of RAM...6 is far enough. As for cooler...noctua nh D-14, and I think for the price i7 920/930 + overclock is the best option. I opted for i5 750 just for the lower money needed

[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.