[RoAdRaGe912]

Picked up an i7 870 for $220 at Micro Center (in store only). I decided to stick with 1156 for motherboard and RAM pricing and this deal on the 870 made it that much sweeter. Pretty stoked about it.

Already ordered a motherboard and some memory, but haven't nailed down 100% what the rest will be. I know I'll be dual booting Windows 7 and Linux (probably Ubuntu 10.X but maybe something based on older Ubuntu version). I haven't found enough info to decide if I really want to boot Linux off of an SSD as an everyday thing.

More details and probably some questions to come later.

Edit- BTW my current machine is from 2002. It actually still does fairly well (although we trim back usage to what it can handle so that doesn't really mean anything), but I'm about to have the need for something better.
Pentium 4 2.0GHz
1.25 GB of RDRAM (originally only 256 MB, added 1 GB a couple years ago)
Windows XP
40 GB internal
350 GB external

This post has been edited by RoAdRaGe912: 19 August 2010 - 02:22 PM

[Sean]

Have you found any info as to why you shouldn't boot the linux off of an ssd? Are you thinking that it is a waste and you should just put it on a sata hd or something?

[RoAdRaGe912]

It looks like Windows 7 has features to maximize the longevity and performance of an SSD, by how it spreads the information across it. If I went SSD, it would only be a smaller one (like 30 GB) as a boot drive and I would want it to survive for as long as possible. I'm still just learning about SSDs.

I haven't found anything in Linux for managing how to write to an SSD, only a handful of commands solely for minimizing writes.

It also looks like delete block size is important in being able to partition an SSD to successfully dual boot.

[RoAdRaGe912]

Ok, I found some Western Digital Caviar Black 640 GB for $60 a piece and picked up two, so I'm not going to mess with the SSD at least for a while.

So far here's the list of parts.
Intel i7 870
ASUS P7P55D EVO motherboard
2 WD Caviar Black 640 GB HDD
Antec Three Hundred Illusion case (all i care for is decent airflow, easily accessible front mounted USB ports, and cheap but not flimsy)
4 GB (2 x @GB) G.Skill 1600 DDR3 CL7
video card- something lower end like an ATI 4670 (1 GB DDR3 version), want low power usage, cheap price and to purposely keep away from the high end cards for now
I actually got a brand new 500W OCZ modular PSU for free (regular $90) and it looks like it will work fine as long as I stick to a single mid-low end video card

After taxes and shipping I'm just over $600 so far. The video card will probably run $60, so I may get out of this under $700.

Since I won't be getting Win 7 64 until I get another .edu account next semester I'm going to try and hook everything up using my old PATA HDD. I'm interested to see how well it'll work since this new mobo only has one PATA ribbon to try and run both the old HDD and my DVD drive.

I wanted to build something that was going to be much nicer than what I have now, but also have the potential to be very upgradable and support the path that software/technology is headed. I think I was able to do that and pretty damn cheaply.

This post has been edited by RoAdRaGe912: 03 September 2010 - 03:39 AM

[Sean]

Are you planning on running RAID with the 2 hard drives? I have a NAS at home running some mirroring and i must say, i like it. i had a hd drive die a week ago and it was nice to be able to pop another one in and keep all my data.

[RoAdRaGe912]

Yes. I'm going to try to run RAID 1 using the controller built in to the motherboard.

This will be a home computer and I'll have it backed up, but I'm definitely looking for redundancy. I hope to be able to run this computer for years and if I have a HDD failure (like I've already had a couple of) I'd like to blow through it without any real problems.

[Sean]

Yea my NAS system uses (i believe) a software based raid system and it's really sweet.

[RoAdRaGe912]

Well I've had all the parts in for a few days, but haven't started assembling it.

I'm still not 100% on whether I'm going to try and pick up a couple SSDs to boot from or not. I'm battling with myself right now, because I know I certainly don't need them, but if i do it from the start it'll be so much easier. I set everything else up for some easy plug and play upgrades, but adding in the SSDs later on would really be a PITA.

The computer's not going to be up and going (unless I'm able to pull off the miracle of running the completely new setup from my old HD) for a while anyway so I've got some time to decide.

[Sean]

With the price of SSD's being so high, and the size of the hard drive small, i personally wouldn't go in that direction. BUT once they go down and the size gets bigger i will be going that route. I read that with the right brand SSD, you see huge performance gains.

[RoAdRaGe912]

I'm finding them in the 30-40 gig range for $70-$100 and up to 64 gigs for $120. Not cheap, but certainly not bank breaking (since I'm mainly considering 2 for another RAID 1). I don't think 30 would be sufficient, so that puts me in the $90-120 range (for decent OCZ, Intel, not bottom of the line, etc) for 40-64 gigs.

I guess this is what I'm considering. I don't NEED the SSDs, especially at this point, but I'll almost certainly be going to this type setup eventually. Since I'll be doing a completely clean install anyway, it will be far easier to start out with this setup than to place my OS(s), programs, and personal files all onto the HDDs now and then try to set up SSDs to boot from later.

I'm not sure. I went to great lengths to do the build for pretty cheap (at least cheap for what it is), but it's obviously not a complete budget build.

[Sean]

So you want to get 2 SSD's for Raid 1 to install your OS and programs? And then i'm guessing a larger hard drive for files? Maybe 2 SSD's for Raid 1 and then 2 larger SATA HD's in Raid 1 as well?

[RoAdRaGe912]

Yeah, that's pretty much what I was considering. Really I was just trying to do all the work up front so that I didn't have to jack with it down the road.

I'm just going to go ahead and scratch that idea for now though. There are still issues with every SSD I look at, and this computer is meant to be dependable. I'm just going to run what I've got for now. If I'm not happy with it down the road, then I'll revisit booting off of an SSD. That's also time for prices to come down and bugs to get worked out.

Assembly to start soon...

[Sean]

I have a Dell mini 9 that has a small SSD hd in it (i'm sure it's not the fastest model out), and i really cant tell a difference in speed. I personally run SATA and wont touch SSD until it gets to 256 GB and much cheaper.

[RoAdRaGe912]

Well, it's together and running enough that I'm posting from it right now.

There's still a memory issue. The BIOS is showing 2 GB RAM and Win 7 is showing 4 GB RAM available with 2 GB usable. The BIOS is a pretty old version, so the answer may be there. I haven't had time to try and swap DIMMs to figure out if it could possibly be the mobo or stick of RAM causing the issue.

Pretty sweet how Windows 7 goes digging for drivers on it's own.

[Sean]

Thats strange about the memory issue. I think you are on the right path by flashing the bios before looking into anything else.