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Regarding z68 boards and SSDs

A

Atheus

Diamond Member
Hi all. Been out of the loop for a while...

So are we using these built-in SSD connectors in the Z68 boards on their own with a old school mechanical HHD, or are we running them with a secondary larger, slower SSD? Or are the enthusiast community not using it at all?

Seems to me the ultimate setup would be 20-30GB ultra fast 'cache' SSD onboard, a 128-256GB slower SSD for apps and a few games, then a 2-4TB storage array for everything else.

// edit - drunk
 
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OK, I'm confused. First, I can find no "X68" boards on Newegg. I find Z68 boards, and X58; and the processors are X86. 😕

Second, by "these built-in SSD connectors", do you mean the SATA 6Gb/s ports, as opposed to the SATA 3Gb/s ports?

Third, generally, larger SSDs seem to be faster than smaller ones. More parallelism to exploit, I think. If you want an ultra-fast cache, RAM is cheap, and I think most OSes still use it for caching.

Finally, you had a "3rd party gaphics" question?
 
I think you mean Z68 and intel's Smart Response Technology support for a small cache SSD (20-40GB) to use to cache a large platter drive.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4329/intel-z68-chipset-smart-response-technology-ssd-caching-review

My take is it's only worth using with a small spare or dirt-cheap SSD if you have a platter drive for your boot disk. If you already have a 120+ GB SSD boot drive it isn't worth the effort.

Also, your thread title doesn't match the thread question very well. If you go to the Advanced view you can fix the title.
 
Sorry... very drunk when I posted that... title changed etc...

FYI I was referring to getting a new 2500k on a z68. It seems you can get that same chipset on some pretty dirt cheap boards so I guess it's down to featues and build quality? Looknig at ASUS and GB for that reason but I'd love to hear any of your suggestions!

I was also about the SRT - as I understand it, it's a small intrnal SSD you can install on the board itself, which acts a bit like like a L4/5 cache.
My question was, if I'm going to use a 128-256GB SSD as my OS drive, is there any point in getting something for the SRT too? Perhaps a large slow (for and SSD) drive for the OS and something truly fast for the SRT.
 
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Well, I just found out [post=32135375]how GB differentiates their build quality[/post], if that helps.
 
SRT is not a form of cache to the CPU but more of a cache to a HDD. You could say it is akin to the Seagate Momentus XT. AFAIK SRT is limited to around 60GB so and partitioning your SSD will allow you to have one partition as a boot drive and the second (60GB) partition as a SRT cache.

Forget about drunk posting, I can't even log in when I'm drunk. 😀
 
dma0991 said:
SRT is not a form of cache to the CPU but more of a cache to a HDD. You could say it is akin to the Seagate Momentus XT. AFAIK SRT is limited to around 60GB so and partitioning your SSD will allow you to have one partition as a boot drive and the second (60GB) partition as a SRT cache.

Forget about drunk posting, I can't even log in when I'm drunk. 😀
Click to expand...

Ah I see... so only really useful to cache my regular storage, not my SSD apps drive? Or still useful for a slower and large SSD?

Skip the SRT and have everything in a 128 SSD? Or go for the SRT and partition out the remainder?

/Edit - and what board? Machine will be a seriously fun overclocking/gaming machine, but nothing too drasric as it will also be used for work. I take backups of course. Budget is high but not stupid. Looking for the bang-for-the-buck option.
 
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Atheus said:
Ah I see... so only really useful to cache my regular storage array, not my SSD apps drive. So skip the SRT and have everything in a 128 SSD? Or go for the SRT and partition out the remainder?
Click to expand...
Having everything in a SSD is definitely faster but if you don't really need 120GB as a boot drive you could still do a 80+40 partition and use the 80GB as a boot drive and 40GB as a cache. That way you would still have a HDD with some SSD cache speed boost while booting up just as fast with a SSD.

ASRock has pretty good bang for the buck and Gigabyte's UD4 is going pretty cheap as well. I heard that Asus boards have good overclockability but so does the two options I mentioned earlier as SB are great overclockers to be begin with.
 
dma0991 said:
Having everything in a SSD is definitely faster but if you don't really need 120GB as a boot drive you could still do a 80+40 partition and use the 80GB as a boot drive and 40GB as a cache. That way you would still have a HDD with some SSD cache speed boost while booting up just as fast with a SSD.

ASRock has pretty good bang for the buck and Gigabyte's UD4 is going pretty cheap as well. I heard that Asus boards have good overclockability but so does the two options I mentioned earlier as SB are great overclockers to be begin with.
Click to expand...

What about the remainder of the small drive as swap space?
 
I'm still debating on this, but I'm leaning towards buying the Gigabyte Z68 SSD board with an onboard 20gb mSATA SSD using strictly as an SRT cache.
What I'm kicking around currently is whether my WD 1tb Black HDs in RAID are fast enough or whether I should pick up a 120gb SSD to use for the OS.

That would be one wicked fast disk subsystem, but I'm having a hard time justifying the expense of the 120gb SSD when I could use that money to get a better GPU instead to better balance out the build.
 
WT said:
I'm still debating on this, but I'm leaning towards buying the Gigabyte Z68 SSD board with an onboard 20gb mSATA SSD using strictly as an SRT cache.
What I'm kicking around currently is whether my WD 1tb Black HDs in RAID are fast enough or whether I should pick up a 120gb SSD to use for the OS.

That would be one wicked fast disk subsystem, but I'm having a hard time justifying the expense of the 120gb SSD when I could use that money to get a better GPU instead to better balance out the build.
Click to expand...

Loading your OS on a SSD will most likely give you better performance in the long run. Caching your WD's would boost performance on them and give you more storage on the same drive. Getting the 120gb SSD you can have both by making a partition of say 20gb and using as SRT on the WD's. You'd still have 90gb's or so on the OS partition to work with. With the quick google search prices of the 20gb mSATA drives I think I'd be looking at the 120gb or so SSD's.
 
Kenmitch said:
Getting the 120gb SSD you can have both by making a partition of say 20gb and using as SRT on the WD's. You'd still have 90gb's or so on the OS partition to work with.
Click to expand...

Problem with that plan is you are making the SSD work as both a cache drive and the OS drive. Does NAND memory deal with this well enough to alleviate the problem, or does the separate cache SSD and OS SSD make more sense ?
 
WT said:
Problem with that plan is you are making the SSD work as both a cache drive and the OS drive. Does NAND memory deal with this well enough to alleviate the problem, or does the separate cache SSD and OS SSD make more sense ?
Click to expand...

Not seeing a problem with that plan as long as you are OK with losing some space on the boot drive. You might see some performance decrease if you were hitting both drives really hard at the same time, but it would still be faster than a SSD + HDD.
 
Atheus said:
Ah I see... so only really useful to cache my regular storage, not my SSD apps drive? Or still useful for a slower and large SSD?

Skip the SRT and have everything in a 128 SSD? Or go for the SRT and partition out the remainder?
Click to expand...

I don't really see the point of trying to cache a SSD with another SSD. The general rule of thumb with SSDs is that higher capacity drives are faster. This is because a higher capacity drive has more NAND chips among which it can spread out the reads and writes.
 
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