building a rig, advice please.

[ecookman]

Alright, so within the next few months I am looking to build a gaming rig, and I haven't really followed the hardware market for almost a year now :/.
the budget would be around 1.8k leaving approximately 300 bucks for the OS and software. The computer will definitely run win7. As a possible hardware configuration I was thinking something along the lines of: Single or maybe dual gpu [not sure if SLI or ATI's equliv is better], 2HDD's one small Solid State to run the OS and then a 7200rpm HDD for files and games. Or if Solid State HDD's are relatively inexpensive with a good read write speed maybe just one big one. As for the processor, I have no idea, I5, I7, Quadcore?....likewise with case and cooling.
So I have a general direction that I think would be a good setup but interns of the physical components [like which mobo to get] I haven't the foggiest which make or models to use.
Any advice would be great.

[mirhagk]

Solid State drives are expensive, but I agree with your suggestion of a small one for the OS (and to compile programs onto may I suggest).

Go for the I7 processor. You can easily get a new graphics card later on, but processors are a lot harder to upgrade. Basically as long as you don't buy a mac, 1.8k will get you an amazing computer.

[DemonWasp]

Advice: consider spending more money on hard disks to get a redundant setup. Eventually, one or more of your hard disks is going to die unexpectedly, and data loss sucks.

I have been down this road. I have 14 HDDs in active service, and so far I have had 2 quit on me. I am now in the process of setting up a variety of RAID systems to avoid losing data.

One of the easiest things to do is RAID5, with 3 drives. If you buy 2TB drives, they're about $90 each, so that's $270. You have 4TB usable, and if one dies you can replace it without losing data. There are advantages and disadvantages to the different ways of implementing RAID, so research it yourself. Edit: forgot to mention that this provides you with about twice the read speed of a single drive, which makes that entire 4TB partition competitive on bulk read speed with an SSD. You don't get the same low-latency that an SSD offers, but the entire setup is about the same price as a medium-sized SSD, so...

Beyond that, skip the second GPU and buy more CPU / RAM. The CPU is difficult and expensive to upgrade (you pretty much lose any value remaining in the old one), while RAM is just plain always good. Make sure you get a competent PSU so you can power any additional graphics cards you want to add later.

[2goto1]

Sounds like you're getting a desktop. Your biggest bottleneck from a gaming perspective would be your graphics setup. Whereas SSD / hard drives will be more minor, i.e. faster game / level loading times, but will also offer you better all-around system performance such as OS booting time, starting applications, and even programming (especially larger projects).

Like DemonWasp suggests, a RAID configuration can perform as well as SSD. SCSI RAID configurations can be very fast but they're more common in application servers, not end-user systems. The costs for and end-user system usually outweighs the benefits.

I'm running OCZ Vertex 2 and Kingston V-Series SSD's and love both. The OCZ models are really great for random IO with small files (good for programmers), whereas the Kingston V-Series ones are lower-end and don't offer the same level of performance. Still, I find that both are still light years ahead of a non-RAID configuration, and compared to traditional SATA drives. The OCZ has crazy read throughput. Booting into Windows and starting apps is insanely fast...plus a lot quieter.

I'm not one for high-redundancy and fault tolerance for my home computers since I only have laptops, so I just have some automated back-up processes that I run and backup to separate hard drives.

If you go for SSD I've found the best deals have been through online sites like ncix or newegg.

[Amailer]

DemonWasp wrote:

One of the easiest things to do is RAID5, with 3 drives. If you buy 2TB drives, they're about $90 each, so that's $270. You have 4TB usable, and if one dies you can replace it without losing data.

Yes but buying a controller its self is expensive. They range from $100+ from what I've seen.

As well, are SSD's really worth it, they seem to have a very short lifespan for the amount of money you are shelling out.
Also, new Sandy Bridge CPUs are out with new sockets, so keep that in mind if you are planning on going with an i7.

[2goto1]

[quote="Amailer @ Wed Feb 23, 2011 6:00 pm"]

DemonWasp wrote:

As well, are SSD's really worth it, they seem to have a very short lifespan for the amount of money you are shelling out.

My OCZ SSD has a 2,000,000 MTBF. Two million hours is roughly 227 years give or take. It largely depends on the product that you choose

[DemonWasp]

You appear to have mangled your quotes, because I didn't say that. However, I do agree with it.

Word to the wise: manufacturer-rated MTBF values are usually just a pile of poop. In 228 years, your SSD is going to be an unrecognizable lump of rust and decay, and the data on it will be gone a LONG time before that. You might be able to achieve that MTBF if your drive was sitting, unused, in a complete vacuum -- assuming the pumps and seals didn't give out after 1-10 years of faithful service.

My Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 drives have a manufacturer-rated MTBF of 700,000 hours (about 80 years). I have two such drives. One has worked great for years; the other died, was replaced, and died again.

Consider this: as a human being, your MTBF is around 80 years, minus your current age. Less if you're male.

The problem with SSD reliability is that the raw storage units in an SSD have a bad habit of dying over time, with use. This phenomenon occurs in all flash-based storage, so your USB keys are included here. Basically, the more you write to a "block", the more likely it is to fail. The manufacturers have a system to deal with this: the drive is actually somewhat larger (sometimes by 20% or so) than it is rated to be, so when a block fails there's an extra one waiting to take over for it. These are therefore "recoverable" errors. However, a block is typically only rated for 100,000 write/erase cycles before it'll tend to quit (and, you need a lot of them to die before the drive as a whole becomes inoperable).

That sounds like a lot, but it can be a very, very small number if, for example, your virtual memory page file is on that device. Or, if you're running a database...like the one in Firefox, or the one in your email client, or the one in your media-manager (iTunes, Banshee, whatever), or one of your own.

Point is, no hard drive is really that reliable. Work with the technology we have to make them more reliable, or treat your data as "transient".

[mirhagk]

Hey I'm sorry for being a bit off topic, but I'm looking for the fastest possible SSD drive, something that only has like 16gb of space or w/e because I want it to not be too expensive. I care more about speed than space.

[2goto1]

Whoops sorry about that Demonwasp, I mean to quote Amailer. Of course all the MTBF specs have to be taken with a grain of salt since it's just a number. Many of my hard drives have died well before their MTBF was reached. Newer SSD drives are more reliable than earlier generation drives, although you're right that's always been the biggest concern of end-users.

I use my SSD on a daily basis for development, and many higher end software development firms have replaced slow SATA drives with SSD drives, for developer productivity. Best bet is to use whatever you're comfortable using.

[DemonWasp]

I wish things here were replaced for developer productivity.

Sent from my work computer, a Pentium 4.

[2goto1]

mirhagk @ Thu Feb 24, 2011 8:32 am wrote:

Hey I'm sorry for being a bit off topic, but I'm looking for the fastest possible SSD drive, something that only has like 16gb of space or w/e because I want it to not be too expensive. I care more about speed than space.

Your best bet is to shop online for SSD drives in your price range, and then thoroughly research them online - reviews are a good place to start. Ncix is a good online shop for prices in general.

[2goto1]

DemonWasp @ Thu Feb 24, 2011 9:59 am wrote:

I wish things here were replaced for developer productivity.

Sent from my work computer, a Pentium 4.

Wow, I feel your pain. My day to day machine is a 14" I7 laptop with a 128GB OCZ Vertex 2 SSD. It's compact, but quite fast for day to day work and development

[mirhagk]

Our school computers for computer engineering are the worst. It's seriously a 512MB ram, 250 MHz processor. IT's seriously the most terrible thing ever.

[DemonWasp]

You aren't required to run 4 instances of Eclipse simultaneously for computer engineering. This problem gets even worse when our Eclipse-derived product / the test suite for it decides that infinite loops are awesome and proceeds to lock up my only CPU. Wouldn't be so bad if I had another CPU to kill it, but...

[ecookman]

alright, for MOBO selection, how should I go about that?