Gaming PC build - *Is this an O.K. system*

[Rvenger]

I live in Nova Scotia. Where are you?

Pennsylvania... heh not even in the same country.

 

[Justinator]

Pennsylvania... heh not even in the same country.

Perfect. I'll leave now. What will you have ready for breakfast?

 

[T_Yamamoto]

haha. lol

 

[mfenn]

The first thing I would cut to trim the budget is the SSD. It's nice to have but is kind of a luxury item and can be easily added later.

4. Leaving SSD for later (easy drop in upgrade)

I'm not sure that I agree with this. Sure, physically installing the part is easy, but you have to reinstall Windows to do an SSD install properly. If you just do an image, your partitions will be misaligned.

 

[lehtv]

Reinstalling Windows takes a couple of hours total. Not really anything to worry about, plus you get to cleanup unused programs and registry in the process.

 

[T_Yamamoto]

Reinstalling Windows takes a couple of hours total. Not really anything to worry about, plus you get to cleanup unused programs and registry in the process.

True, true

might be worth it

 

[Justinator]

I think I'll stick with the SSD right off the get go anyways since it just squeezes it's way into my larger budget than what my wife knows about...

 

[mfenn]

Reinstalling Windows takes a couple of hours total. Not really anything to worry about, plus you get to cleanup unused programs and registry in the process.

Sure, reinstalling Windows itself is pretty easy. I don't know about you, but it usually takes me 1-2 days to get the rest of the system back the way I like it after that.

 

[T_Yamamoto]

Sure, reinstalling Windows itself is pretty easy. I don't know about you, but it usually takes me 1-2 days to get the rest of the system back the way I like it after that.

so? lol its easy so there you go

 

[Al-Truistic]

If you are buying the 2500K I would suggest a good aftermarket heatsink and fan. The Coolermaster Hyper 212 would be a good choice.

I would also take advantage of Intel's SRT with the SSD. If you go that route unless you want a lot of hassles, a 60-64 GB drive is better suited. Intel's SRT can only use up to about 64 GB of Cache, so unless you want to try to partition your SSD, the 80 would be overkill.

 

[Justinator]

I'm aware that I can take advantage of an ability my MoBo has with my SSD but I don't understand the whole thing and I'm also wondering if I have to do something to make them do this "Special" thing or once it's all hooked up will this feature take place on it's own?

My main purpose of purchasing the SSD is to put BF3 on it and that alone so it will load faster and free up my HDD but knowing the SSD and MoBo have something more to offer make me curious...

Any help or info that I might understand would be appreciated.

 

[T_Yamamoto]

here

 

[Justinator]

Well that helped me some. I guess it lets you gather info from and transfer info to the HDD through the SSD with the speed perk of the SSD but you loose a good chunk of space from your SSD.
Once the SSD loads up your requested command it then passes it along to the HDD in the background while you keep going about your business. Also working in reverse to use the speed of the SSD by having it hold your more used items (being called the catche) and bringing them out faster than the HDD could.

Is this worth it? Should I make use of this feature or choose not to use this feature and just use the SSD for holding games?

I still don't know if I have to enable this feature somehow or if it does it all on it's own once I build and load up the PC.

 

[lehtv]

Sure, reinstalling Windows itself is pretty easy. I don't know about you, but it usually takes me 1-2 days to get the rest of the system back the way I like it after that.

Huh. It really shouldn't take that long

1. Download drivers and apps you need to install on a fresh Windows = 20min or less (bigger files I leave for later e.g. Open Office)
1. Take backups from C:\ (application data e.g. profiles and config files etc, and whatever else you store on C = 10 min
2. Delete old C:\ (now unallocated space), install Windows on SSD = 30 min
3. Customize Windows = 15min
4. Install and customize drivers and apps = 30min - 1hr

Done less than 2hr. Ofc. the times are just approximations off the top of my head.

 

[T_Yamamoto]

atleast you arent spending a whole day trying to find the CD for your wireless internet card -___- now THAT was a hassle

 

[mfenn]

Huh. It really shouldn't take that long

1. Download drivers and apps you need to install on a fresh Windows = 20min or less (bigger files I leave for later e.g. Open Office)
1. Take backups from C:\ (application data e.g. profiles and config files etc, and whatever else you store on C = 10 min
2. Delete old C:\ (now unallocated space), install Windows on SSD = 30 min
3. Customize Windows = 15min
4. Install and customize drivers and apps = 30min - 1hr

Done less than 2hr. Ofc. the times are just approximations off the top of my head.

You must have a lot fewer apps than I do. Just installing some of my software packages is like 45 minutes (Fuck you Adobe).

 

[mfenn]

I still don't know if I have to enable this feature somehow or if it does it all on it's own once I build and load up the PC.

You do have to enable SRT once you're up and running. The basic procedure is:

1. Only plug in your HDD at first.
2. Before installing Windows, set your Intel SATA controller to RAID mode, but do not create any RAID volumes.
3. Install Windows to the HDD, using the Intel RST F6 drivers.
4. Install the full RST package once in Windows.
5. Reboot and plug in your SSD.
6. Go into the RST control panel and choose accelerate.

If that sounds like a pain in the ass, it's because it is. If you have a decent size SSD, I recommend just installing Windows to the SSD normally and manually managing where you put programs.

 

[lehtv]

Yeah, YMMV. 2 days though... Adobe isn't that bad :E

 

[mfenn]

Yeah, YMMV. 2 days though... Adobe isn't that bad :E

To be fair, I didn't mean 1-2 days of real time, but 1-2 days of working on it. So probably like 10 hours or so.

 

[lehtv]

That's still alot. I guess it helps if you first put some time into planning it and doing it in an organized way, i.e. in steps like I outlined. That saves time later when you actually do it

 

[mfenn]

That's still alot. I guess it helps if you first put some time into planning it and doing it in an organized way, i.e. in steps like I outlined. That saves time later when you actually do it

Oh, I pretty much do your 1-3, it's just that my 4 takes a lot longer than yours.