[Hardware Question] SSD just for the OS?

[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.

[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.