Rebuild using some existing parts + new ones

[duallydave]

Hi, I am looking for some advice on rebuilding my current computer by replacing the mobo, cpu, and ram, with a new SSD boot drive.

The current PC is 4 years old, takes a while to boot, raid 5 needs to go, too many hard drives. I enjoy building computers, I've built a number of them in the past, but nothing in 4 years. I originally used a SAS mirror for my boot drive, and raid5 data drive, then did an upgrade install from Vista to W7HP, but when I tried going back to a previous restore point it blew up in my face due to the SAS drivers and the upgrade install from Vista. I then made the raid 5 set my boot disk, but it takes several minutes to boot, and the raid5 set is always hiccuping

currently: LIAN LI PC-V1010B, Asus P6T deluxe, core i7 920, 12G corsair XMS3, Noctua cooler, 5 x WD6400AAKS as raid 5, 2 x 136G SAS 10k as raid1, GTX 550 Ti, ASUS Xonar DX 7.1, LG GGW-H20L DVD

new (not purchased yet): Asus Z77 sabertooth, core i7 3770, corsair CMD16GX3M4A1866C9, samsung 840 pro SSD, corsair H80 cooler

What I am thinking is to clone the existing boot drive to the samsung 840 pro SSD, replace the mobo, cpu, and ram, then do an upgrade install to the SSD so it will see the new hardware. I would then use the other disks as several raid1 mirrors for several data drives. I know I would have to move a lot of data out of the way to reduce my boot drive size so I could clone (would like to use the 256G 840 pro rather than paying for the 512). I do have a seagate external backup drive with my data backed up, but I'm hoping to clone so I don't have to reinstall everything. I only have about 600G of data on this 2tb raid 5 set, so I don't really need all those drives. I'm concerned they might start failing before long, and depending on my backups and a new SSD instead of a raid boot disk.

Does this plan seem reasonable? I usually do new installs, but in those cases I have two computers, old and new, rather than a rebuild of the hardware. I'm concerned about cloning, I have not done that before, and hoping that a clone + upgrade install will make it go a lot faster so I'm not without a completely functional computer for a while. I would not care to reinstall all my software if I don't have to.

I'm a Unix sys admin at work, so kind of a computer junkie , I tend to overbuild because I can. A full new build would probably double the cost with a new case, PSU, GTX 660, etc.

Parts to Upgrade: (CPU, mobo, RAM, SSD) CMPSU-750TX

Do you need to buy OS: No - use existing upgrade W7HP from newegg

Preferred Website(s) for Parts: newegg.com

Location: Seattle area

Parts Preferences: Asus Z77 sabertooth, core i7 3770, corsair CMD16GX3M4A1866C9, samsung 840 pro SSD, corsair H80 cooler

Overclocking: Yes

SLI: Maybe

Your Monitor Resolution: 1920x1200

 

[DSF]

You'll be wasting money on that motherboard. Even if you wanted to leave the option for SLI open, which seems highly unnecessary for your described usage, there are less expensive boards that will do that just fine and achieve mild overclocks.

I'm not clear on whether you are planning to purchase the 750TX or already own it, but it's way more power than you need if you haven't bought it yet.

You said you typically overbuild, but why? I can understand the 3770K for video work, but why the super expensive motherboard and SLI-readiness?

 

[duallydave]

Thanks for the reply! I could save even more money by not building a computer at all, but money is not the issue. The issue is will the clone + upgrade install work to save a lot of time reinstalling everything. I do more than I listed - but I like tech for tech's sake. My intention is not to build the minimum that I can, but to push the limits and have fun building it.

 

[Torn Mind]

Sabertooth board is indeed overpriced. The P8Z77-V PRO/THUNDERBOLT offers practically the same features but with a couple more useful ones in Thunderbolt and onboard WiFi.

 

[Steltek]

Sabertooth board is indeed overpriced. The P8Z77-V PRO/THUNDERBOLT offers practically the same features but with a couple more useful ones in Thunderbolt and onboard WiFi.

I actually agree about the Sabertooth Z77 (and yes, I do have one, but in my defense: I needed a motherboard ASAP, I had a Best Buy gift card I wasn't going to otherwise be able to use, they had one in an open box, and they cut me a deal which made it the cheapest board in that particular store after gift card. Otherwise, I probably wouldn't have touched it). I suspect that all that "thermal armor" is going to do is collect dust underneath as it has a small fan blowing air under it.

While I do like the board, I don't feel that the build quality is any better than comparable boards from ASRock or Gigabyte. There is also the fact that Socket 1155 is a dead platform with no future.

If you are going to spend a good deal of money on an overbuilt system, it might be worth waiting a few months to see what Haswell will bring to the table. Or, at least go with a Socket 2011 (X79) board which at least might have the potential for an upgrade down the road.

 

[mfenn]

Buying an under-featured and over-marketed motherboard like a Sabertooth isn't "pushing the limits" of anything except for Jerry's bank account. In short, yes I agre with DSF.

Also, as I'm sure you're aware, Windows isn't Unix. You have all kinds of nasty stuff hiding in your install from the Vista -> 7 upgrade, and yet another clone isn't going to help it at all. You should bite the bullet and do a fresh install.

 

[duallydave]

Thanks - I will take a look at the The P8Z77-V PRO/THUNDERBOLT - I'm not stuck on the sabertooth, I like that it is built like a tank. I don't need a lot of features, as I've learned more I think the 1366 P6T was a mistake, a dead end platform with not many upgrade options. The 1155 platform seems like it would have a better future than the 1366 from what I have been reading about processor technology. I don't really need the multithreaded capabilities of the 2011, I more want a hot rod than a BMW. I like Asus, but there are so many choices it is hard to figure out which one would work best for me.

I did do a fresh install after the initial raid/sas driver blowup - no choice as it was completely trashed, so there are no Vista remnants. W7 did not like the SAS driver at all and did not need it. Its been running fairly well since, except for a number of lockups from when I had worldcommunitygrid, had to keep rebuilding the raid5 set until I figured out that worldcommunitygrid was the problem and removed it.

The 750TX is what I already have, since I was running 7 hard drives, two DVD drives, and two video boards, so I would just keep it. If I did a completely new build I would probably get a smaller seasonic.

 

[Sleepingforest]

Erm... the Sabertooth is actually less "durable" than normal motherboards because dust gets caught underneath, which can cause heating issues. You don't really need the features of the P8Z77V Pro/Thunderbolt--by the time Thunderbolt is at all practical and widely adopted, you'll see cheap PCIe add-on cards. Wifi is only another $10 for a PCIe card. That means that even a $115AR board can match the features of the P8Z77V Pro/Thunderbolt with only another $10 in spending.

You'd literally be wasting around $115--the price of another motherboard (or 128GB SSD, or 2TB HDD, or a good quarter of a 7970, or going from a budget case to a high end case).

EDIT: Just looked at the rest of your build, and OH SH*T that's a ton of money going down the drain for no reason. Seriously, I'm pretty sure that your chosen RAM is more expensive than buffered ECC RAM. If you want to get 16GB, this is a much better option. It's half the price and will perform the same. Even that's kind of overpriced--I'd look for a $75-85 kit of 8x2GB RAM. The Noctua D14 will also blow the Corsair H80 out of the water (pun intended) for $20 less. If you genuinely need to do huge amounts of writes everyday, the 840 Pro might be a good idea--but then, you'd probably just go with an enterprise SSD with over-provisioning. Since I assume this is for average consumer use, a normal 840 is fine (and costs $55 less). For the money you could have saved over those parts, you could get a GTX670 or a 7970 instead of a GTX660.

Also, if you're getting this kind of cooling, you better be getting the i7-3770K, not the i7-3770.

 

[Torn Mind]

Unless you sorely, sorely need the eSATA ports and/or need them to be controlled by the Intel controller instead of the Marvell controller, I cannot see with Sabertooth as a viable with the many P8Z77-V variants available. ASUS has a compare tool on their official site, and the plain P8Z77-V is simply almost the same as the Sabertooth sans the eSATA ports and the "TUF" stuff, but is has WiFi while the Sabertooth does not.

The motherboard is not the first component to blow money on if you want a hot rod. You look at the CPU, RAM, storage, and if you do graphically intensive things, the graphics card, and figure out what you need. Then you look for features you need on the motherboard.
One way to transfer the current install is to clone the drive, insert the drive into your current drive, and then run sysprep. You will have to reactivate Windows.

Also, RAID 1 is not a suitable alternative to a backup. If your Windows installed gets fucked by a virus or something, they all get fucked. RAID 1 is to prevent downtime, not backup data.

 

[Steltek]

Thanks - I will take a look at the The P8Z77-V PRO/THUNDERBOLT - I'm not stuck on the sabertooth, I like that it is built like a tank. I don't need a lot of features, as I've learned more I think the 1366 P6T was a mistake, a dead end platform with not many upgrade options. The 1155 platform seems like it would have a better future than the 1366 from what I have been reading about processor technology. I don't really need the multithreaded capabilities of the 2011, I more want a hot rod than a BMW. I like Asus, but there are so many choices it is hard to figure out which one would work best for me.

I did do a fresh install after the initial raid/sas driver blowup - no choice as it was completely trashed, so there are no Vista remnants. W7 did not like the SAS driver at all and did not need it. Its been running fairly well since, except for a number of lockups from when I had worldcommunitygrid, had to keep rebuilding the raid5 set until I figured out that worldcommunitygrid was the problem and removed it.

The 750TX is what I already have, since I was running 7 hard drives, two DVD drives, and two video boards, so I would just keep it. If I did a completely new build I would probably get a smaller seasonic.

If you don't see yourself running multi-threaded applications, you definitely want to go with the i5-3570k over the i7-3370k -- the 3570k has a smaller die and is actually a faster processor when overclocked as it doesn't have to support the additional 4 hyperthreads of the 3770k.

I also agree on the recommendation of the Noctua D14 cooler. I'm running a water cooler that I bought as I just wanted to try one out. However, I'll eventually be moving that to another system I'm building for somebody else and will be getting a Noctua for my own system as it does provide superior cooling.

 

[duallydave]

After looking at the plain P8Z77-V, I agree it will meet my needs - I see it can handle faster RAM than the sabertooth, and has more USB 3.0 ports. The wi-fi I don't need, but that might change in the future. The integrated graphics seems like a waste since I plan to use my existing GTX 550 Ti. I have a couple of SAS drives that I would not be able to use since there is no SAS controller.

I see that the samsung ssd is not on the QVL, neither is the GTX550. I picked the Samsung because it is highly rated, should I stick with an SSD on the QVL list? I'm guessing that the QVL is not as important with these devices as with CPU and memory.

I see that G.SKILL F3-17000CL9Q-16GBZH (2133) is on the QVL and might be a good choice.

If I get the non-pro 840 SSD, maybe the reduced price would make the 500GB model worth it. I'm concerned about the reduced lifetime of the TLC vs MLC, but if I move the pagefile elsewhere maybe that will help. How about the OCZ Vertex 4 VTX4-25SAT3-256G, it sounds good also and is MLC, but also not on the QVL.

I do have a seagate backup drive and software, I support Symantec Netbackup servers at work and I am well aware of the advantage of backups. If I use raid1 on the data drives, I can recover faster as you say, and those drives are 4 years old.

I may use multithreaded apps, I think my photoshop CS3 may be multithreaded, so I'm not sure about using the i5 3570, have to think more about that. I also do some video editing with cyberlink power director. I don't use either of these all that often.

I have an existing Noctua cooler with push pull fans, so I can use this and save money - a review I read of the H80 said that a Noctua actually performed better.

 

[mfenn]

After looking at the plain P8Z77-V, I agree it will meet my needs - I see it can handle faster RAM than the sabertooth, and has more USB 3.0 ports. The wi-fi I don't need, but that might change in the future. The integrated graphics seems like a waste since I plan to use my existing GTX 550 Ti. I have a couple of SAS drives that I would not be able to use since there is no SAS controller.

I see that the samsung ssd is not on the QVL, neither is the GTX550. I picked the Samsung because it is highly rated, should I stick with an SSD on the QVL list? I'm guessing that the QVL is not as important with these devices as with CPU and memory.

GPUs and SSDs aren't put on a QVL because there's so many of them and they all have standard interfaces. Your GPU and SSD will work as long as they're PCIe and SATA respectively (they are).

I see that G.SKILL F3-17000CL9Q-16GBZH (2133) is on the QVL and might be a good choice.

Anything above DDR3 1600 is a waste of money on Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge, especially since you're not using the IGP. Getting quality memory like this Crucial Ballistix is more important that buying from the QVL.

If I get the non-pro 840 SSD, maybe the reduced price would make the 500GB model worth it. I'm concerned about the reduced lifetime of the TLC vs MLC, but if I move the pagefile elsewhere maybe that will help. How about the OCZ Vertex 4 VTX4-25SAT3-256G, it sounds good also and is MLC, but also not on the QVL.

Lifetime is also directly related to the sheer amount of NAND onboard. With a constant workload, a 512GB drive will last twice as long as a 256GB drive because there are twice as many aggregate program/erase cycles to burn through.