Building a brand new gaming desktop

[lehtv]

The important differences are that an SSD is much, much faster than a HDD, making the system feel a lot snappier (so much so that you'll never want to go back to a HDD system), and that it is also a lot more expensive per gigabyte, even with the high HDD prices at the moment. I don't think it'd be a bad idea to buy a 500GB hard drive now. You'd save some cash and you wouldn't need to buy storage later. It'd still be an option to buy an SSD in 6 months or later. Their prices will surely decrease noticeably over time because it's still a quickly evolving technology.

 

[DominionSeraph]

Dominion's build looks pretty good to me, especially once you factor in the $65 worth of rebates. My biggest concern is the SSD capacity. A SW:TOR install is 20GB minimum, and that will only grow with content patches and expansions.

With no other games it could double in size and he'd still be good. 15GB windows + 40GB SW:TOR leaves 9GB.

He might want to use Opera as a browser, though. Chrome's method of updating where it leaves the old version, plus the non-configurable cache means it tends to eat up half a gig. (I've seen it over 1GB with history)

You'd save some cash and you wouldn't need to buy storage later. It'd still be an option to buy an SSD in 6 months or later. Their prices will surely decrease noticeably over time because it's still a quickly evolving technology.

They've been around $2/GB since Gen2, and to buy a SSD later means he'd have to reinstall Windows. Gen3's still pretty new... I think it might be more than 6 months before Gen4. (although I haven't heard anything in that regard -- just going off gut as a longtime technology watcher.)

 

[andrewboon]

So I just put in my order for my PC build.

I could just use the SSD for SWTOR only, and then put all my important files on my external hard drive? I have a 500 gb External hard drive.

 

[DominionSeraph]

I could just use the SSD for SWTOR only, and then put all my important files on my external hard drive? I have a 500 gb External hard drive.

Yup.
Although you should definitely have a backup solution for important files, especially if they're packed in an external drive. Those things are untrustworthy even if you don't move them (heat and controller failures), and adding the possibility of dropping it makes it so much worse.

Back up to DVD or something.

 

[lehtv]

They've been around $2/GB since Gen2

Back when I bought my Vertex 2 120GB about 7 months ago, it cost £200. Now it costs £140. At this rate, a Crucial M4 128GB will cost $150 in half a year

 

[DominionSeraph]

Back when I bought my Vertex 2 120GB about 7 months ago, it cost £200. Now it costs £140. At this rate, a Crucial M4 128GB will cost $150 in half a year

IIRC the later Vertex 2's used 25nm NAND which isn't as robust as the prior 32(?)nm, and I believe OCZ's overall reliability plummeted as well. Newegg is showing 39% one- and two-egg reviews. The Patriot Gen 2 SSD's (Sandforce as well) sell for higher than the Vertex 2's now and the c300's are still at $2/GB.

So don't take the Vertex 2 as being indicative of pricing of reliable SSD's.

And I'm pretty sure the 120GB Vertex 2 was dipping into the $1.8/GB territory even earlier than that.

E: The 90GB certainly did:
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2124013&highlight=

 

[mfenn]

So I just put in my order for my PC build.

I could just use the SSD for SWTOR only, and then put all my important files on my external hard drive? I have a 500 gb External hard drive.

Yep, the external will be fine. Just remember, any data that you only have on one disk is data that you don't care very much about.

Back when I bought my Vertex 2 120GB about 7 months ago, it cost £200. Now it costs £140. At this rate, a Crucial M4 128GB will cost $150 in half a year

OCZ drives don't count IMHO because the quality has gone to shit. It seems like whenever OCZ introduces a new product, it is good for a while. Then the bean counters take over and they start cutting corners.