Please critique my $5k build plans...

[PP Mguire]

Get 2 120s and RAID them lol.

 

[Sean W.]

im thinking about getting a 120 SSD and thats it, then the rest for my media storage

 

[PP Mguire]

Ive been using a 64GB for over a year now. Its even a first gen. Suites me fine but when i go to LANs i install an extra drive to install all those extra games for a "just in case". Nobody wants to wait on Mr "Gotta wait up guys, need to install and patch". *45 minutes later* "Ok im ready!" "Nobody wants to play that game anymore".

 

[earwicker7]

So I'm a bit confused here... if a hard drive is running Windows and a game at the same time, doesn't it have to access two different areas of the disk, therefore slowing it down? Or is that only a problem with oldschool hard drives and not SSDs? I guess "no moving parts" could make that a thing of the past, but it still seems like doing two things at once is slower than doing one thing.

 

[PP Mguire]

No way to really explain this easy but ill try. SSDs are made of an internal RAID itself but with no platter seek it can access simultaneous things at once. And really your drive isnt doing "2 things at once" as opposed to say your RAM being accessed by both OS and Programs. The only thing that really kills performance is read and writes at the same time but newer SSDs dont have that problem AFAIK.

But in all honesty IF there is any hit in performance from what you say you probably wouldnt be able to notice it anyways. We suggested something more practical than spending cash on 2 seperate SSDs and i suggested a RAID 0 array with 2 120s because it would be much faster than 2 un-raided SSDs.

 

[earwicker7]

Thanks for the explanation! I'll go RAID 0.

Still waiting for someone to suggest a good heatsink to use until I go water cooling (even though it will be temporary, maybe a month or two, I'd still like to get the best one).

Also, I really need to know if I should buy a more expensive motherboard since everything else is maxed out; there was a deal on newegg I almost jumped on yesterday which had the GIGABYTE GA-X58A-UD9 with the case I'm wanting to use, for $200 off. Of course, it's gone today lol. Does something like that motherboard give you better performance or easier overclocking, or is it just bells and whistles? I want a motherboard that is high performance, has good overclocking tools, and is as future proof as possible.

 

[PP Mguire]

Well considering the next platform for Intel comes out next year (Q1 and Q3 for now) then nothing really this gen is future proof. Honestly to me each board has its own overclocking potential and everything else comes down to bells and whistles. The more expensive boards by certain companies have more bios options to really tweak your system for more advanced users. Or more so for extreme cooling people.

Any good air cooler will do justice like i said. Really its up to you which one you like the best and just check reviews to see if its any good. Most all of the top end air coolers to date practically all wield out about the same OC depending on the rest of your system. For example i basically can get a 4ghz clock on any top notch air cooler granted i have the right fans. My next step will probably be the H70 since its alot better than the H50 and actually yields better results on my particular chip than my current air cooler. If you would like i can give you some links to some popular air coolers among enthusiasts.

 

[earwicker7]

What about this one: Newegg.com - Noctua NH-D14 120mm & 140mm SSO CPU Cooler

 

[PP Mguire]

Great cooler to say the least.

 

[Slaymate]

if a hard drive is running Windows and a game at the same time, doesn't it have to access two different areas of the disk, therefore slowing it down?

Your hard drive isn't "running" windows. Your hard drive is strictly a storage device. When you start your PC "Windows" data is accessed from the hard drive and loaded into the system memory. Your hard drive is now finished working until you ask the PC to do something else. When you start another program the hard drive then loads that data into the system memory. If you continue to start more programs the same process applies until all of your system memory is used, then Windows will tell the hard drive to simulate system memory (this is called a Page File).

What about this one: Newegg.com - Noctua NH-D14 120mm & 140mm SSO CPU Cooler

That is a good heatsink but it's large and it can cause obstruction issues with memory modules that have "Tall" heat sinks and some Northbride heat sinks. What motherboard are you looking at now? And what memory modules?