Show off your Rig; Warning could get image heavy

Mpire wrote:Intel X25-M SSDSA2MH080G1 80GB SATA Internal Solid state disk (SSD)

My only problem is this is only 80gigs and mega expensive. $350+? Hate for it to turn into a $300 brick after a few months. Cost performance wise id still go 32mg cache 7200/10k Rpm Raid-0 for much much less and you'll have gobs of space. Also keep in mind that less then 500meg-1g of free space regardless of HD size is needed for pagefile. 80 gigs will not cut it anymore unless you plan on using a Ext 1TB Harddisk to drive all your music/movies/etcetc.

Imho..not worth it..everything else is nice

PS- also it being EPROM-ish you can lose data overtime from static discharges or power flux.

Expensive yes, but price wasn't a real barrier. If it bricks, then I'll get something else. The reviews for the SSD are incredible though - universally hailed as the king of drives for speed. My page file I never put on the boot disk anways. I'll use one of my 300gb drives for that.

And I now avoid raid0 like the plague. Drives don't last like they used to, and raid0 doubles your chances of an unbootable PC. I have a WD Raptor 10k 150gb right now as my boot drive and it works very well. I bought my first one when they first came out with the 150's. I've had two of them die on me though (this is my third). Short of putting them in a bucket of ice they run really, really hot. After about a year they can start getting flakey. I have mine in a heatsink shell now with a 120mm fan blowing over it, but one went south even in that config. I'm just tired of mechanical disks and the failure rates and thought I'd try an SSD. I'll let you know how it goes though and if I have any problems with it.

And I do have everything on my 1.5TB QNAP server, so the boot drive has no data except for applications and any app config stuff.

Lontano wrote:
Expensive yes, but price wasn't a real barrier. If it bricks, then I'll get something else. The reviews for the SSD are incredible though - universally hailed as the king of drives for speed. My page file I never put on the boot disk anways. I'll use one of my 300gb drives for that.

And I now avoid raid0 like the plague. Drives don't last like they used to, and raid0 doubles your chances of an unbootable PC. I have a WD Raptor 10k 150gb right now as my boot drive and it works very well. I bought my first one when they first came out with the 150's. I've had two of them die on me though (this is my third). Short of putting them in a bucket of ice they run really, really hot. After about a year they can start getting flakey. I have mine in a heatsink shell now with a 120mm fan blowing over it, but one went south even in that config. I'm just tired of mechanical disks and the failure rates and thought I'd try an SSD. I'll let you know how it goes though and if I have any problems with it.

And I do have everything on my 1.5TB QNAP server, so the boot drive has no data except for applications and any app config stuff.

Well the fact it doesnt have heads or cylinders is a huge plus. Theres no seek time, only memory addresses. Its a huge EPROM stick. Heat wont be a factor, bad platters wont be a factor, only electricity and static. In any raid i always use a fan blowing over the HD's. The fact your drives were 10kRPM alone, i bet you did have heat issues. I just have 2x
Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD2500KS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM-Newegg
I got for $60 bucks each and have had for 2 years now in raid-0. Problem free. (I would like to get the 32meg blacks though) Cache..is where its at. This is just my humble opinion but over $370 bucks for 80gigs? If you reaaally want it that bad go for it lol. Keep our economy alive! lol Also might want to consider the impact of having multiple drives has on a OS. The 64 bit will help alot though!

Mpire wrote:
Well the fact it doesnt have heads or cylinders is a huge plus. Theres no seek time, only memory addresses. Its a huge EPROM stick. Heat wont be a factor, bad platters wont be a factor, only electricity and static. In any raid i always use a fan blowing over the HD's. The fact your drives were 10kRPM alone, i bet you did have heat issues. I just have 2x
Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD2500KS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM-Newegg
I got for $60 bucks each and have had for 2 years now in raid-0. Problem free. (I would like to get the 32meg blacks though) Cache..is where its at. This is just my humble opinion but over $370 bucks for 80gigs? If you reaaally want it that bad go for it lol. Keep our economy alive! lol Also might want to consider the impact of having multiple drives has on a OS. The 64 bit will help alot though!

I get the case and PS today, the rest of the stuff tomorrow, so by Friday I can probably give some first impressions on how the beast does. OCZ are now coming out with a new SSD that is supposedly comparable speed to the Intel but at a better cost. I'm just too damned impatient. I'm sure in another year SSD's will be faster yet and dirt cheap. Ah well, someone has to fund these firms through the "early adopter" phase...

Lontano wrote:

Mpire wrote:
Well the fact it doesnt have heads or cylinders is a huge plus. Theres no seek time, only memory addresses. Its a huge EPROM stick. Heat wont be a factor, bad platters wont be a factor, only electricity and static. In any raid i always use a fan blowing over the HD's. The fact your drives were 10kRPM alone, i bet you did have heat issues. I just have 2x
Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD2500KS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM-Newegg
I got for $60 bucks each and have had for 2 years now in raid-0. Problem free. (I would like to get the 32meg blacks though) Cache..is where its at. This is just my humble opinion but over $370 bucks for 80gigs? If you reaaally want it that bad go for it lol. Keep our economy alive! lol Also might want to consider the impact of having multiple drives has on a OS. The 64 bit will help alot though!

I get the case and PS today, the rest of the stuff tomorrow, so by Friday I can probably give some first impressions on how the beast does. OCZ are now coming out with a new SSD that is supposedly comparable speed to the Intel but at a better cost. I'm just too damned impatient. I'm sure in another year SSD's will be faster yet and dirt cheap. Ah well, someone has to fund these firms through the "early adopter" phase...

Give us some pics Lontano!

Yeah. I'd love to hear your opinions on the performance and pics of it! They just need to come down in price. Like a 16gig USB stick is $20 now. Will always pay thru the nose for the newest technology regardless.

Ok, so last night I got the HAF case and the power supply.

My wife had a shit. You should see the case. Now it's a full tower, which is great as I was tired of scraping skin off my hands working in a mid-tower. But it's really, really BIG. That didn't set her off that much since my desk is also pretty big so it can hide it well. The thing that made her shit were the fans. I can't even really describe them. This is what freaked her out:

1 x 230mm front fan
1 x 230mm top fan
1 x 230mm side fan

I tried to explain that bigger fans are more efficient and therefore quieter, but she's not buying it. I hope that this thing doesn't sound like the Luftwaffa coming in to bomb London or she's going to make me sleep next to it.

The case itself is fantastic though. Great cable management, plenty of room to work. Lots of neat features to make your life easier.

The rest of my stuff should come in today so tonight I build!

Lontano wrote:Ok, so last night I got the HAF case and the power supply.

My wife had a shit. You should see the case. Now it's a full tower, which is great as I was tired of scraping skin off my hands working in a mid-tower. But it's really, really BIG. That didn't set her off that much since my desk is also pretty big so it can hide it well. The thing that made her shit were the fans. I can't even really describe them. This is what freaked her out:

1 x 230mm front fan
1 x 230mm top fan
1 x 230mm side fan

I tried to explain that bigger fans are more efficient and therefore quieter, but she's not buying it. I hope that this thing doesn't sound like the Luftwaffa preparing to bomb London or she's going to make me sleep next to it.

The case itself is fantastic though. Great cable management, plenty of room to work. Lots of neat features to make your life easier.

The rest of my stuff should come in today so tonight I build!

LOL 230mm? Uhh yeah..maybe. Find out if the mobo has built in temp control for the fans then manually set them for roughly 30%...those are huge. Might sound like a Huey chopper (whup, whup, whup..thatd be neat) Also did you happen to see the noise level of the fans. Most vendors will post the decibel levels on their fans. Cant beat a full tower though..ive had the same one for 6 years now. Its electric blue w/plexi side panal, black DVD LS, and beige DVD+R and (bleh) had to put a floppy in the other day..beige..ugly as sin, but i aint trying to win no beauty contest. I just have 6x 80mm Rosewell fans, its in the same room i sleep, but i dont have to worry about W-agro

Side note- With 3 fans you're going to have to build positive pressure in the case forcing heat out. Depending on how many fans your PS has Id go 2 blowing in 1 blowing out. As heat rises id make the top fan blow out. Just my 2cent

This is my last thread on this old, tired PC. I'm now stealing the video card etc. to put into the new monster. Hopefully my next post will be on the new PC sometime later tonight. If not, you know I'm probably depressed over having to RMA something.

It's ALIVE! Only reporting 8 GB ram though... hmm...

Ok, so the beast is up and running.

The HAF case is amazing. Tons of airflow, almost NO noise whatsoever.

The SSD absolutely flies. Couple with the 12gb RAM, and there's no need for indexing, defrag, page files, you name it. The thing boots in complete silence, which is quite eerie. Vista just "pops up" - booting is seconds.

It's now reporting all 12GB ram (CMOS config needed).

I took a few photos so I'll have to post them once I get all my software installed.

Now I just need to get a game up and running. Since Warhammer is the worst thing on the planet for FPS, I'm going there first. More updates to follow.

grats on the beast!

Lontano wrote:Ok, so last night I got the HAF case and the power supply.

My wife had a shit. You should see the case. Now it's a full tower, which is great as I was tired of scraping skin off my hands working in a mid-tower. But it's really, really BIG. That didn't set her off that much since my desk is also pretty big so it can hide it well. The thing that made her shit were the fans. I can't even really describe them. This is what freaked her out:

1 x 230mm front fan
1 x 230mm top fan
1 x 230mm side fan

I tried to explain that bigger fans are more efficient and therefore quieter, but she's not buying it. I hope that this thing doesn't sound like the Luftwaffa coming in to bomb London or she's going to make me sleep next to it.

The case itself is fantastic though. Great cable management, plenty of room to work. Lots of neat features to make your life easier.

The rest of my stuff should come in today so tonight I build!

Lol I just bought a HAF cooler master case myself to hold my SAN I am building lol, I did the same double take you did, I bought it at fry's had it down stairs.. it was big and posh and all.. then I get it up stairs and I am like ohh shit.. lol I hope this fits on the shelf in my rack, or I am going to have to move around all the shelves to fit the monster in...
My San has 3 HDD in it atm, but I suspect I will be running it into 6-8 by next couple of years.. I noticed that the Seagate drives I was running in my first test rig where running hotter then a mother..

Since I will be running my company off of this and roughly 9 different computers will boot ISCI off it.. I thought the extra cooling would be good. If this san is down my company is down..

Lol and grats on the monster.. My HAF system would be gameable actually but only running a Text based OS so the system will never be flexed.. now my Xenserver, will be running 16 GB or ram, a quad core, and SCSI HDDS in a Hardware Raid 1, and actually since it was the only spare PCI-Express card a nvidia 6800 ultra.. If that had a video card would be a screamer of a game rig..

Coolies! Glad the fans dont make to much noise 230mm i was visualizing chopper blades lol.. (whump whump whump...gogogo!) lol Wish i knew someone close by that had that drive or anything near it in SSD. Id love to see the performance first hand. I do want to see how you got it all set up!

I don't want to bum lontano out so I am going to say nothing about the MTF on these drives or the massive recall Apple is having on the macbook airs that started around 11 months or so..

I had a long conversation with a HDD expert about 6 weeks ago and we discussed current SSD technology in detail...

attius wrote:I don't want to bum lontano out so I am going to say nothing about the MTF on these drives or the massive recall Apple is having on the macbook airs that started around 11 months or so..

I had a long conversation with a HDD expert about 6 weeks ago and we discussed current SSD technology in detail...

It wouldn't be the first time I've been burned by new technology - but I'm fine taking that risk. I have some regular 300gb drives I'm going to be backing up to anyway besides my NAS, so there's not much risk if it decides to tank.

I heard that a lot of the problems with failure are related to folks who don't take the time to set things up properly. Turn off defrag, indexing, etc. to avoid constant unnecessary writes to the disk that reduce the lifespan. No page file for me either (who needs it with 12gb ram).

But you will definitely hear from me if it goes tits up!

I am with you on that, I was very tempted to do SSD for my next PC.. but I ended up doing a new laptop instead since I need it for work.

First test for the new rig: Warhammer scenarios.

All graphics card settings on highest.
All in-game options for graphics at highest.

FPS... 90. I think it dropped to 50 a couple of times, but was a pretty steady 85-90. I still need to try a keep take in the lord room to see what it's made of, but so far I'm impressed.