Checking out a New Build

jujumbura

Distinguished
Dec 16, 2008
25
0
18,530
Hello all,

I am putting together a new build in the next week or two, and I am hoping that somebody could take a quick look at the specs. It is based off the $1000 build from the September Marathon, with a few parts swapped/upgraded. As a note, I do NOT plan to Overlock anything, and I am looking for out of the box performance and stability. My usage will mainly be gaming, internet browsing, and a bit of software development.

If anything here seems like it will be problematic or a bad buy, I'd greatly appreciate a heads up. Here are the primary components:

CPU : Intel Core i5-760 Lynnfield 2.8GHz
Mobo: ASUS P7P55D LGA 1156 Intel P55 ATX Intel
RAM: G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Model F3-12800CL7D-4GBRH
Disk: Crucial C300 CTFDDAC128MAG-1G1 2.5" 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive
Video: EVGA 01G-P3-1373-TR GeForce GTX 460 (Fermi) Superclocked EE 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16
PSU: CORSAIR CMPSU-650TX 650W ATX12V / EPS12V
Monitor: ASUS VH242H Black 23.6" 5ms HDMI Full 1080P Widescreen LCD

Thanks much for any advice!
 
Solution
With even just the OS on an SSD you should see a huge increase in boot speed and much faster reaction when jumping from screen to screen, alt-tabbing between applications. It makes the computer more reactive so it feels faster. I have yet to see anyone who bought an SSD say it wasnt a great upgrade. Some do say it cost too much, but the prices are way down so those people who felt the expense was too much back then might not now.

The C300 is the fastest throughput SSD right now. Its not alot faster than the Sandforce SSDs, and they write faster so to me its not worth the money to get the C300. The OCZ Vertex2, Corsair Force, Patriot Inferno and Gskill Pheonix are all bascially the same and are dropping in price right now because...

Juanchioo

Distinguished
Jul 21, 2010
740
0
19,010
its all ok... personally i would get an amd build with a better gpu but thats ok... also i would change ssd for 1tb samsung spinpoint f3... 128gb is very low space.... and just os use about 40gb..
 

jujumbura

Distinguished
Dec 16, 2008
25
0
18,530
Thanks guys,

Can I ask why, in regards to needing a secondary HDD? When I last built a system, I put two 350 gig HDD's in. Currently, I use about 200 gigs of one, and none of the other. I don't really download much music or movies, games are the only thing that take up much space ( and I definitely have some games installed that I should remove on the 200 gigs mentioned above ).

Is there any reason for me to have an HDD other than 128 gigs seeming too small for most people?
 

uelazar

Distinguished
Jan 11, 2010
100
0
18,680


My thoughts ...

MOBO: Get the Asus P7P55D-E as was suggested by dndhatcher. I recently got one and am very pleased with that decision.
RAM: This board "natively" supports up to 1300. If you are paying a premium for the 1600 - replace it.
GPU: IMHO, get an ATI 5770 or preferably the 5850, if your budget allows.
PSU: Corsair are very reputable. However, if you ever want to SLI/CrossFire - you will need a little more than 650. 750 should do it.
HDD: You want to have a separate HDD for the OS, and preferably SSD. If you have no need for large data volumes and are not planning to install lots of space consuming applications - you will enjoy very much having a single SSD, although 128GB appears on the small side of things (consider paging, temp files, and others)
 

jujumbura

Distinguished
Dec 16, 2008
25
0
18,530
Hi guys, thanks again for all the responses. I took your advice and went with the updated motherboard, dropped down to 1333 RAM, and popped on an extra HDD. The overall price change was pretty minor actually.

Here is a second pass at the list:

CPU : Intel Core i5-760 Lynnfield 2.8GHz
Mobo: ASUS P7P55D-E LGA 1156 Intel P55 ATX Intel
RAM: G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Model F3-10666CL7D-4GBRH
SSD: Crucial C300 CTFDDAC128MAG-1G1 2.5" 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive
HDD: SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD502HJ 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5"
Video: EVGA 01G-P3-1373-TR GeForce GTX 460 (Fermi) Superclocked EE 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16
PSU: CORSAIR CMPSU-650TX 650W ATX12V / EPS12V
Monitor: ASUS VH242H Black 23.6" 5ms HDMI Full 1080P Widescreen LCD

Regarding the video card ( that a few people have mentioned ), it may seem a bit underpowered but I can always change that later. I'm currently using a GTS 8800, so it'll be a huge difference for me anyway >_< And I have no plans to do SLI, so hopefully that PSU will be enough.

Any other thoughts/comments?
 
SSDs work differently than HDDs. You should read articles about SSDs here and at Anandtech.com. SSDs performance degrades very rapidly when they get over half full so the size is deceptive relative to HDDs. They also are physically degrade as you write to them. They are awesome fast for reading basically static files, but if you use it for data that gets constantly rewritten you will wear it out. Thats why you Install only the OS and a few most used applications on the SSD and make sure all your constantly updated data and seldom used data are on the HDD.
 

jujumbura

Distinguished
Dec 16, 2008
25
0
18,530



Ok, so this is something I wouldn't mind discussing a bit more.

I'm familiar with how SSD hard drives work, and I have looked up several articles about their performance and degradation. The general consensus that I got was, older SSDs had quite a few problems handling general purpose writes for file manipulation, but with better wear-leveling and TRIM, those problems are no longer an issue. Most articles say that even MLC SSD drives last as long or longer than traditional HDDs, provided you aren't continuously running defrag or other massive writing operations. The only major problems they mention now are price and size compared to an HDD.

So that's why I've been going for the SSD; I'm down to pay more and lose space if I will see awesome performance when running the OS and loading my most frequently used games and applications. I will be using Windows 7, which as I understand it, intelligently detects the drive and enables TRIM and disables defrag.

But if you guys have real world experience using the SSD I have listed above ( or a comparable model ) and have encountered problems, I would definitely like to hear about it. You mentioned that performance goes way down after the SSD is half-full; how much are we talking about here? 50% slower? To break it down, all I'd probably put on the SSD would be the OS, Visual Studio, and probably Starcraft2 ( maybe DoW2 ). Any other "now and then" games would end up on the secondary HDD I mentioned above. So given those constraints, am I going to see much gain with the SSD and the handfull of apps or should I chuck it?
 
With even just the OS on an SSD you should see a huge increase in boot speed and much faster reaction when jumping from screen to screen, alt-tabbing between applications. It makes the computer more reactive so it feels faster. I have yet to see anyone who bought an SSD say it wasnt a great upgrade. Some do say it cost too much, but the prices are way down so those people who felt the expense was too much back then might not now.

The C300 is the fastest throughput SSD right now. Its not alot faster than the Sandforce SSDs, and they write faster so to me its not worth the money to get the C300. The OCZ Vertex2, Corsair Force, Patriot Inferno and Gskill Pheonix are all bascially the same and are dropping in price right now because of the C300s SATA3 label more than an overall performance difference.
 
Solution

jujumbura

Distinguished
Dec 16, 2008
25
0
18,530
Thanks much, that's good to know. Given that advice, I have swapped out the Crucial C300 and put in a G.SKILL Phoenix ( still 120 gigs ). This dropped the total by 30 bucks and lands me right at my price point, so I'm happy about that. I assume there is still significant reason to have the P7P55D-E, even though I no longer will be using SATA3...? Hopefully that locks this build down.

As a last request, does anybody know about any potential installation "gotchas" I will need to watch out for? I have heard that I may need to adjust my memory timings manually in the BIOS, and also enable AHCI. Any other common advice?
 
The P7P55D-E is a new motherboard. Everything should default working except the RAM voltage/timings. It did on my P7P55D-E Pro at least. The reason to get the -E model with SATA3/USB3 is as much USB3 as SATA3. All those mp3 players, external backups, digital cameras, smart phones should be getting USB3 connections over the enxt couple years so the uploads and downloads will be twice as fast.