Hello PC enthusiast community,
I've been lurking for a while and finally have a question of my own. Any help will be much appreciated!
I recently completed my second build ever, salvaging some of the parts from my last build (btw I still consider myself a noob at all this). After I first put this new build together and installed Windows 10, I got what appeared to be a total boot time of about 8 seconds (awesome I thought). Initially, I only installed the new SSD for the OS. Later, I added my other drives, and then I noticed that the boot time increased to about 16-18 seconds. I decided to decommission two of them (after transferring the data to a newer bigger drive) since one was old and full and the other was a green drive that I could just tell was slowing things down all the time by having to spin up. However, boot time is still the same...about 16-18 seconds. Last BIOS time is usually around 13.5 seconds, and I think I can reduce that somehow.
I did a bit of reading but I am still unsure of how to go about reducing the BIOS boot time. One of the things people seem to recommend is installing the latest BIOS version, however, I am really nervous about doing that and would rather avoid it if not necessary.
Here is my list of parts (with userbenchmarks grades):
CPU: Intel Core i5-7500 - 85.3%
GPU: Intel HD 630 (Desktop Kaby Lake) - 8.1%
SSD: Samsung 960 Evo NVMe PCIe M.2 250GB - 217.3%
SSD: Crucial M4 128GB - 62%
HDD: WD Red 4TB (2013) - 95%
HDD: Samsung Spinpoint F4 2TB - 70.5%
HDD: Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB - 17.5%
RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws V DDR4 2400 C15 2x8GB - 72.3%
MBD: Gigabyte GA-Z270-HD3P-CF
Sound card: HT Omega Claro Halo
The old HDDs that I disconnected since doing the above benchmark are the Samsung spinners.
And yes, I know the motherboard is overkill for a non-k i5 but I figured, why not, I like the other features plus I might get an i7 k one day.
So, my questions are:
1) Do I really need to update my BIOS? Current version appears to be F2 and there is F6 available that won't let you go back to older versions. (Sys Info says my version is 3.0, which seems odd to me)
2) Is it possible my optical drives, my old SSD or the WD Red are the culprits? I removed everything from the boot order except the 960 EVO.
(Regarding the old SSD, there is actually a funny thing that happened yesterday. The EVO was showing up twice (!) in the boot menu in UEFI, except one also had Windows [something][something] in parentheses next to it. That's what I had as primary boot drive. I decided to see what would happen if I put the other EVO instance as primary...so I boot up and my old Win7 OS loads apparently from the Crucial (had a GB mobo for the old build too), looking kinda funky. Freaked me out a bit. Anyway, switched the primary boot drive back to the real EVO. Plan on formatting the old SSD, but not before I tried that experiment, which happened unwittingly sooner than I planned.
Another side point...I believe after installing everything and realizing that boot time was longer, I did try disconnecting all the drives except the EVO and the boot time was still long. I honestly don't remember if I did that or not because I've opened the case so many times at this point to add stuff (like front USB 3.0 panel) and manage cables and whatnot. I supposed it doesn't really hurt to try it one more time.)
3) Anything else I can do to reduce the boot time? Any BIOS settings for things I don't need, like SP/2 port or anything like that? I enabled XMP but that did nothing in terms of boot time.
4) Any other tweaks to make sure all my components are playing nicely together?
5) Am I getting good read/write speeds with the EVO? Here are pics of benchmarks: http://imgur.com/a/G9wtb, http://imgur.com/a/WnfO4
I should note that I tried my best to download all the latest Intel drivers and the Samsung driver for the EVO (even though Device Manager still says Windows driver). I have Magician installed and drive condition is Good with latest firmware installed. I know I'm forgetting stuff to mention so let me know if you need more info. Sorry if too many questions and if too nooby, I would appreciate any help. The main questions really are: is BIOS flash really necessary for potentially reducing boot time, anything else I can try, and is 960 EVO performing up to snuff?
Thanks in advance.
I've been lurking for a while and finally have a question of my own. Any help will be much appreciated!
I recently completed my second build ever, salvaging some of the parts from my last build (btw I still consider myself a noob at all this). After I first put this new build together and installed Windows 10, I got what appeared to be a total boot time of about 8 seconds (awesome I thought). Initially, I only installed the new SSD for the OS. Later, I added my other drives, and then I noticed that the boot time increased to about 16-18 seconds. I decided to decommission two of them (after transferring the data to a newer bigger drive) since one was old and full and the other was a green drive that I could just tell was slowing things down all the time by having to spin up. However, boot time is still the same...about 16-18 seconds. Last BIOS time is usually around 13.5 seconds, and I think I can reduce that somehow.
I did a bit of reading but I am still unsure of how to go about reducing the BIOS boot time. One of the things people seem to recommend is installing the latest BIOS version, however, I am really nervous about doing that and would rather avoid it if not necessary.
Here is my list of parts (with userbenchmarks grades):
CPU: Intel Core i5-7500 - 85.3%
GPU: Intel HD 630 (Desktop Kaby Lake) - 8.1%
SSD: Samsung 960 Evo NVMe PCIe M.2 250GB - 217.3%
SSD: Crucial M4 128GB - 62%
HDD: WD Red 4TB (2013) - 95%
HDD: Samsung Spinpoint F4 2TB - 70.5%
HDD: Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB - 17.5%
RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws V DDR4 2400 C15 2x8GB - 72.3%
MBD: Gigabyte GA-Z270-HD3P-CF
Sound card: HT Omega Claro Halo
The old HDDs that I disconnected since doing the above benchmark are the Samsung spinners.
And yes, I know the motherboard is overkill for a non-k i5 but I figured, why not, I like the other features plus I might get an i7 k one day.
So, my questions are:
1) Do I really need to update my BIOS? Current version appears to be F2 and there is F6 available that won't let you go back to older versions. (Sys Info says my version is 3.0, which seems odd to me)
2) Is it possible my optical drives, my old SSD or the WD Red are the culprits? I removed everything from the boot order except the 960 EVO.
(Regarding the old SSD, there is actually a funny thing that happened yesterday. The EVO was showing up twice (!) in the boot menu in UEFI, except one also had Windows [something][something] in parentheses next to it. That's what I had as primary boot drive. I decided to see what would happen if I put the other EVO instance as primary...so I boot up and my old Win7 OS loads apparently from the Crucial (had a GB mobo for the old build too), looking kinda funky. Freaked me out a bit. Anyway, switched the primary boot drive back to the real EVO. Plan on formatting the old SSD, but not before I tried that experiment, which happened unwittingly sooner than I planned.
Another side point...I believe after installing everything and realizing that boot time was longer, I did try disconnecting all the drives except the EVO and the boot time was still long. I honestly don't remember if I did that or not because I've opened the case so many times at this point to add stuff (like front USB 3.0 panel) and manage cables and whatnot. I supposed it doesn't really hurt to try it one more time.)
3) Anything else I can do to reduce the boot time? Any BIOS settings for things I don't need, like SP/2 port or anything like that? I enabled XMP but that did nothing in terms of boot time.
4) Any other tweaks to make sure all my components are playing nicely together?
5) Am I getting good read/write speeds with the EVO? Here are pics of benchmarks: http://imgur.com/a/G9wtb, http://imgur.com/a/WnfO4
I should note that I tried my best to download all the latest Intel drivers and the Samsung driver for the EVO (even though Device Manager still says Windows driver). I have Magician installed and drive condition is Good with latest firmware installed. I know I'm forgetting stuff to mention so let me know if you need more info. Sorry if too many questions and if too nooby, I would appreciate any help. The main questions really are: is BIOS flash really necessary for potentially reducing boot time, anything else I can try, and is 960 EVO performing up to snuff?
Thanks in advance.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram