Here is what is left on my list: MSI ATX DDR3 2600 LGA 1150 Motherboard, Z87-G45 GAMING http://www.amazon.com/MSI-DDR3-Moth...TF8&colid=1TOPGTIZHYNYQ&coliid=I22OZ40FG3Z5HG Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO - CPU Cooler with 120mm PWM Fan (RR-212E-20PK-R2) http://www.amazon.com/Cooler-Master...UTF8&colid=1TOPGTIZHYNYQ&coliid=IG6BF24EZ4PZL Samsung Electronics 840 Pro Series 2.5-Inch 128 SATA_6_0_gb Solid State Drive MZ-7PD128BW http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Elect...UTF8&colid=1TOPGTIZHYNYQ&coliid=IF36AXII1PPZ6 Corsair Vengeance 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 1600 MHz (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory (CMZ16GX3M2A1600C10) http://www.amazon.com/Corsair-Venge...TF8&colid=1TOPGTIZHYNYQ&coliid=I2WURTGBX0S4EJ This what I already have: COOLER MASTER Silent Pro Gold Series RSA00-80GAD3-US 1000W ATX 12V v2.3 / EPS 12V v2.92 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817171056 MSI AMD Radeon HD 7870 2GB GDDR5 DVI/HDMI/2xMini DisplayPort PCI-Express Video Card R7870 HAWK http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00883VAUK/ref=oh_details_o05_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 (Just ordered) WD VelociRaptor 500 GB Workstation Hard Drive: 3.5 Inch, 10000 RPM, SATA III, 64 MB Cache - WD5000HHTZ http://www.amazon.com/VelociRaptor-...0966560&sr=8-1&keywords=wd+velociraptor+500gb Intel Core i5-4670K Quad-Core Desktop Processor 3.8 GHZ 6 MB Cache - BX80646I54670K http://www.amazon.com/Intel-i5-4670...TF8&colid=1TOPGTIZHYNYQ&coliid=I3PMCM9WJ95V6K Hows it look? I was thinking of picking up another Velociraptor, to do a Raid0 later. I can also pick up another 7870 down the road for scalability.
Out of curiosity, why the VelociRaptor and Ivy Build? If you are going to go for Intel, you might as well get onto the new socket in the process and relative difference in price is minimal for a 10% increase plus increased efficiency for certain operations. And while VelociRaptor are nice for the speed, if you are using them as storage devices then you are basically shitting on your cost/performance gain ratio. I was thinking about doing something similar for my new build last month (/2 month ago) and just ended up going for a 2TB Western Digital Black. The only games that get a performance boost are ones with large memory textures that load off of HD (generally speaking this almost never happens unless you are playing certain MMOs or Battlefield 3). And generally speaking unless you are actively playing 3-4 MMOs at the same time, they can just go on the SSD until you aren't interested in them anymore.
The VelociRaptor is kind of a best of both worlds, at half the price of the same size SSD. Also I manage my space pretty well, I currently have a Raid0 with two 7200rpm 150GB drives. I could probably do without the SSD, I was thinking about doing it, since I have never used one before. Also what is the new Socket? I am mainly looking at this setup to keep the costs, relatively, low.
Socket: LGA 1150 Article: http://www.extremetech.com/computin...-intel-is-shifting-focus-to-low-and-mid-range So the next model of Intel Core i5-3570K is the i5-3670K which is expected to be $30-40 more on release. In my opinion, not enough to warrant going with the older Ivy unless you find it on a large markdown. Edit: Seems that the 1TB VelociRaptor are down to $230 here. I would honestly go for a single drive setup with cloud backup instead of a raid configuration. But that is really just preference. In response to the SSD - they are purely luxury. Load times are a faster, and the odd windows update/scan/other IO access will never bother you but no one will ever NEED one. I do like mine thought, I consider it a worthwhile investment now that they have dropped in price.
So this looks comparable to what I have listed above. (I am upgrading from a C2Q Q9550, that I picked up used two years ago.) Intel Core i5-4670K Quad-Core Desktop Processor 3.8 GHZ 6 MB Cache - BX80646I54670K http://www.amazon.com/Intel-i5-4670...TF8&colid=1TOPGTIZHYNYQ&coliid=I3PMCM9WJ95V6K MSI ATX DDR3 2600 LGA 1150 Motherboard, Z87-G45 GAMING http://www.amazon.com/MSI-DDR3-Moth...TF8&colid=1TOPGTIZHYNYQ&coliid=I22OZ40FG3Z5HG
Looks good and the previously picked out CPU cooler works for the new socket as well. My only other comment is that if you are looking to overclock the CPU, I would suggest a higher end cooler but if that isn't in the plans then everything looks set. Plus you can always swap the cooler later, a year or two down the road.
CPU Socket: Intel Socket LGA 1150/2011/1366/1155/1150 AMD Socket FM1/FM2/AM3+ Source: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103099 So as far as I can tell. Yes.
I like the core of the system. Your harddrive configuration confuses me...SSD and velociraptors? I say this a lot and no one seems to care, but you can actually have the best of both worlds. Get a small SSD, ~50gb and a big-ass, cheap Seagate Barracuda and use the Intel Smart Response caching stuff. Lots of money saved. You'll get nearly all of the SSD performance out of anything higher-useage on your big volume. Booting, game loads, programs. The hit-rate on what you actually need to load programs or levels or whatever is usually very good so 50gb goes a very long way. Keep the other SSD if you want for some things (recording video for ex. cache can work on writing, but not as well as it does on reads). But I found that using the SSD as a volume and using it as cache was indistinguishable. Except the cache works on lots more stuff at once.
That sounds like a good idea. Say in my case. I have the OS installed on the 500GB drive and have a partition (say 60gb) setup on the SSD for caching?
Yeah, so I have a 2tb disk and a 50gb SSD. I installed (make sure the controller is in RAID mode, read the instructions) Windows on it first and then plugged in the SSD after I was done configurating things. Then opened up the Intel hard drive control panel thingy and told it to use the SSD to accelerate my boot volume. It thinks a bit and you're done. So you'll notice that at first there's no difference, but then after using the computer a while it learns and speeds everything up. Including start-up. I'm pretty sure it has to use the whole SSD for the cache and it can only use up to a 62gb size (and not smaller than 20gb). My understanding is that it's basically doing a modified raid-0, so I don't think you could have partitions.
It looks like I can make it use a "small part" of the drive. I think I am going to look in to this. It makes have a SSD worth more, and I can always change configurations later.
I'm not sure why you want to use the 128 Gb drive as just a cache... unless that has changed. Just install the whole OS on the drive and go about life normally while installing most things on the HDD. I have 60 Gb of free space on my 128 Gb SSD which is my main OS drive. It's enough room for a couple games that would benefit from the load times.
I can use 64Gb for cache and same as you mentioned, still install games and such on the other 64Gb, by creating a partition. It seems that the default value for the smallest section of cache is 18Gb, also most people are noting that 30Gb is the sweet spot. The only downside to the Cache partition and drive partition being on the same drive, is wasted space. So most likely I will end up using the 64Gb partition for movie editing.
IMO it is a waste of an SSD to just use it as a cache and not as the main OS drive. Sure, if you have a 50Gb or less drive I may understand wanting to use it as a cache but you have 128 Gb. Install windows to it and all the programs you have that you would use on a regular basis (Word processors, media players, internet browsers, anti virus, photoshop and whatever other application you so desire). You're still going to have half the drive space leftover most likely. Throw a couple games on there and the rest of your files can go on your HDD (media, games, etc.) It just doesn't make sense to partition a 128 Gb drive just to use as a cache.
Using it as a cache makes it work as if it was the main OS drive. Except far more efficient in SSD utilization. Most programs don't require all of their data most of the time. You don't get any SSD benefit from data not on the SSD. If you put the "extra" stuff on the drive with the important stuff you're accelerating data that you don't need to and excluding other data that could be accelerated. So installing whole programs is the definition of wasting SSD space. Instead of having a couple games installed and doing active management of what is fast he'll have whatever he does fairly often get accelerated. In my experience it's pretty much everything you use more than twice in a week.
I'm selling a bunch of stuff I've been hoarding to fund the rest of this build. Ordered up the rest of the parts, so I should have this built by the end of the week. I'm going to build it at work with my Boss, and we may run some benchmarks on it, etc.
My build is complete, posting this from the new rig. I won't be gaming till next week sometime, I am going to leave my PC on over the weekend. Once my Boss checks it out, we will run some tests. Everything went really well, the only problem I had was I bent two pins on my USB3.0 pin-out header on the MB (I made sure the pins aren't touching, but am still pissed that I messed this up.) That's the only thing that isn't wired up. I will post some pics as well.