While I've been waiting for my sound card RMA to get back to me from Newegg I've been looking at their site a little more. Yeah, that was a bad idea. The temptation got the best of me so I placed an order to get my system upgraded again. It won't be anything cutting edge or super fancy but it will still provide me with a bit of a performance boost and better storage. Things not being upgraded are my optical drives and CPU as I'm keeping my current i5-750.

Case:
COOLER MASTER CM690 II Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Case
Motherboard:
ASUS P7P55D-E LX LGA 1156 Intel P55 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
Memory:
Corsair Vengeance 8GB DDR3 1600
PSU:
Corsair HX750 750 watt PSU
HDD:
Two Western Digital 1TB Caviar Black 7200RPM 64MB SATA 6.0Gb/s HDD
Graphics Card:
EVGA GeForce GTX 560 Ti (Fermi) 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 Video Card
Monitor:
HP Debranded Black 25" 5ms HDMI Widescreen LCD Monitor
Mouse:
Razer Naga Molten Edition gaming mouse
Keyboard:
Microsoft Sidewinder X4 keyboard
Software:
Operating System - Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit

I'm really looking forward to putting it all together. I should be good to go when Bioware sends me a Star Wars beta key! (Hey, I can dream)

I'm kinda shocked there's no SSDs in there... it's really an amazing improvement.

Good luck!
--Micah

I keep getting conflicting information on these things.

Here's what I need to know about SSD:
Do they compare to HDD's in terms of reliability, or are they better/worse?
You say its an "amazing improvement" over a HDD. I see a lot of people that buy them just as a boot device. Would I be able to buy a larger drive (say 120) and also put a few programs on it, or would that kill performance?

I have a OCZ 90 gig SSD and loved it. The only issue i have is if i ever take my pc apart or add something new for somereason it wont register once i start the pc back up it takes me to the windows installer.

I then have to mess with it and try to get it to read my SSD.

just recentley it did it again thats about 3 times in less then a year and its frustrating and its never the same simple solution.

Right now im only running my HDD the SSD is just sitting on the desk lol. Maybe ill try toi get it working again but ill prob only have steam on it.

SSD is about 90% stable in my opinion while HDD is about 99.5%

in order to bring SSD to it's maximun potential

- AHCI should be setup in Bios before installing Windows
there is a way to enable AHCI after window is installed by tweaking drivers.
but won't be as stable as clean install with AHCI mode active in bios.
i think win xp doesnt support AHCI mode.

- if your SSD (boot drive) is no greater than 120G, you might want to tweak windows Memory dumpings. if you have 16g of memory 16g will be lost in SSD to Ram. after changing some setups you can find that lost space again. It may sound like a little space but, lately people tend to use Rams over 4G so... considering 40g or 60g SSD, it could be 10% of lost space.

- Disable windows backups! Eating more space and not even solid (wonky!!!!)

- Update you firmware on SSD!!!! really important!
you want to update your firmware using another computer... works best and then do a clean windows install

- You must have latest dirvers for your Host Controllers!!!!!!

- installing steam on SSD...... not really a good idea.
i used to have 240g ssd for Steam.... stupid idea.
steam checking game copy rights and keys and so on.... on internet when it's launching. Steam games are usually internet required games.. lags and loading on internet speed anyways.... Black WD drives are amazing for steam




Reasons why ppl think SSDs are not as stable as HDDs (my opinion)

- not using AHCI and hoping for the best performance
- old drivers for host controler... wonky!
- having Defrag programs working on SSD! <--- not a good idea
- SSD can only read and write so many times and they die, but!!!!!!!!
they will last long time. if you are planning to get SSD and use it for Boot drive for next 10 years,.,,, then.... you might have a problem...



CHASER!!!
update your SSD Firmware!
update your Host Controller drivers
Make sure you have AHCI enabled in Bios

this is my windows score with SSD sorry it's in korean
img204.imageshack.us/img204/739/66377173.jpg
www.clanbbf.com/Thread-How-does- ... er-Windows

Thanks Sleepwalker that information is greatly appreciated. I'll take the weekend to check around for a decent deal on a reputable SSD and cancel ordering my second HDD.

I have an SSD and the improvement is amazing. By far the most dramatic improvement in performance I have seen in a long time.

Also I disagree about not installing steam to it. I have a 120 and have zero performance issues when running steam games. In fact, going to back to a mechanical drive for games would be a huge performance hit. Granted, I have to uninstall games occasionally, but being steam, it is just a matter of downloading them again.

This is the SSD I have. www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820148348

My WEI is also 7.9 for HDD. It does make that big of a difference.

Okay.. so here's the skinny on SSD's ::

They have a reputation of being unreliable. It's a reputation. What's happened is there's been firmware issues on many of them which have complicated things. There's a lot of companies in the mix for producing SSDs - even more than for regular hard drives because they are memory based.

In my opinion if you get a GOOD SSD from a GOOD Company, you do very, VERY well with them. I have used Intels, OCZ, Kingston and Corsairs and have had very, VERY good results across the board. SSD as a technology is embraced all across the board - even by EMC for use in many of their high-end SAN solutions. It's worth moving to.

Performance wise, there's absolutely no comparing a SSD to a Mechanical Drive. SSDs can actually be slowed down by your SATA Controller - many SSDs can crank speeds of up to 300-400MB/s.

Where is it useful? Everywhere. Your system will boot up in a fraction of the time. Big programs will spend a fraction of the time reading/loading data from the drive - it's entirely noticeable in games.

It comes at a premium - money. You will pay often 6-8 times as much as you will for the same amount of space from a SATA Drive. You will need to manage your applications (moving big things off when you're not running them, etc) in order to leverage the small size properly. Many big games.. you can generally just move the application folder to another drive in your system and then move it back when you want to run the game. Bit of a pain in the neck, but when you run that game... yeehaw! =)

The other recommendations about not using Windows System Restore / Windows Backup and other things to minimize the impact on the C: are very valid and should be done so you have more space for "fun".

Right now I have two systems running - one with a 90GB SSD C: and another with a 512GB SSD C: I do a lot of the "moving" of files to leave space available on the 90GB.. and it's every bit as good as the 512GB.

Pros :: Performance is second to None.
Cons :: Cost
Recommendation :: Get it!

--Micah

ok, so what mobo would you guys recommend for a 2600K CPU? don't really want to shell out 300 bucks...prefer to get an asus as the the GPUs will be asus...[hr:29qduvi2][/hr:29qduvi2]
oh other thought...was plannig on doing the C drive using a P68 mobo with quicksync...160G SSD and 500G HDD..then for data storage another 1T HDD...

Right now Intel SSD is the best you can get.
companies coming right under would be OCZ, Corsair

the reason why i metioned Western digital Black 6g/s drives over SSD
for Steam is moeny!
Yes SSD would be faster and so on...
but would it worth for extra $200 to $300 ??
i would spend that money on GPU if you are a serious gamer

Well if money isn't a problem! go for SSD in Raid 0

To add something about SSD,
SSD is stronger to shocks! (Force) over HDD
cuz they don't have spinning parts

[hr:2rpwamag][/hr:2rpwamag]
[quote="[BBF"]DarkWater]
ok, so what mobo would you guys recommend for a 2600K CPU? don't really want to shell out 300 bucks...prefer to get an asus as the the GPUs will be asus...[hr:2rpwamag][/hr:2rpwamag]
oh other thought...was plannig on doing the C drive using a P68 mobo with quicksync...160G SSD and 500G HDD..then for data storage another 1T HDD...
[/quote]

I have 2600k and i have Asus Maximus Gene-z board
well they are great easy to use. great overclocker! all the functions in m-ATX
price is under $200

Running 2600k at 5.2ghz with this board... great buy