£1000 to spend

[Redddraggon]

Looks good, but IME and through my research Sandforce SSDs have good specs, but they slow down significantly, and have a high failure rate.

[Stan]

I'm using an OCZ Vertex 2 SSD, I think its fantastic and reasonably priced (got mine at overclockers.com).
I'm not sure how they have a better write speed than most others, or even if its bull shit, but it made a massive difference to ancient rig.

I have been building PC's for over 20 years and stuck to AMD all that time, I just decided to rebuild my rig and though I would try an Intel CPU instead, right up till the point I checked out the best prices I could get. Now I'm back to AMD again - they are a bit off on performance, but at half the price I am going to have to stick with the AMD (looking at X6 cpu's)

I'm going to have one last trawl for CPU prices this week before I make a final choice - anyone got any tips for bargain cpu prices?

Stan

[Stan]

Here is the list of junk I ordered today (you are all bad people making me spend this money with this thread!)
CPU - AMD Phenom 11 X6 1090T Black Edition 3.2 GHz £147.98
MB - Gigabyte GA-890FXA-UD5 £129.98
Video - XFX ATI Radeon 6950 2048MB GDDR5 £199.99
Mem - G.Skill RipJawsX 8GB (2x4) DDR3 PC3-12800CB 1600Mhz Dual Channel Kit £77.99
SSD - Vertex 2E 60GB £95.99
OS - Windows 7 Home Premium £101.39 (inculudes a 500Gb SATA 6Gb/s HDD in bundle)
PSU - Corsair TX 650W £69.98
Case - Coolermaster Elite Midi Tower £29.99
Cooler - Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 £25.99
Rom - OcUK 24 DVDRW Sata £14.99

All for £849.27 inc Vat from Overclockers.
I ordered 2 of 21.5" Widescreen LED monitors too for £108 each, because one of my current screens has gone a bit duff. Total shipping charge (next day) £20.10 - bargain.

EDIT ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Don't buy the Arctic Cooling Freezer unless you are seriously overclocking
Its absolutely MASSIVE and doesn't fit well to an AMD (silly little extra brackets that you cant screw in).
Im serious, its bigger than the PSU!
I fitted the boxed cooler in the end 1/4 the size, and runs nice and cool anyway (I'm not overclocking).
I didn't include sound, Keyboard or mouse because I buy them like my wife buys shoes.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I checked ebuyer and scan prices, overclockers were nearly 10% less on all items, but a lot of these prices are "this week only"

Good luck with your build..

[Gavac220]

Classic, and sadly familiar line

I didn't include sound, Keyboard or mouse because I buy them like my wife buys shoes

Good luck with your new build mate. Some impressive kit there!

Here is something interesting for ALL ATI 6950 OWNERS/BUYERS

READ THIS: AMD Radeon HD 6950 to HD 6970 Mod

http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/ove ... idcard/159

Easy and free upgrade

[MegaYoda]

Lol Stan talk about being impulsive but hey I envy a man who knows what he wants

More to the point I envy the man who can afford it

[Gavac220]

Liking the specs you did MegaYoda, and the prices look sweet. The AMD is usually more future proof than any Intel product, as they tend to make their new products compatible with the previous sockets. Makes a 'stepped' upgrade much easier in the future.

[MegaYoda]

Cocaine and Hookers

After much soul searching I think I am going to take Slarti's advise! Uncle Slarti obviously knows what is best for me!! Lol 

[bambam]

Question for those that have ssd was it not a bit of
A faff setting them up

The short answer is "yes, you have to plan what you put on the SSD and move stuff around". However while SSD's don't change your life, they do make a *radical* difference to quite a few Windows operations (like app load times) and I think a reasonable statement would be anyone that now has an SSD in their PC wouldn't consider *not* having one in their next PC.

There is one technique for managing SSD's that just kicks ass - anyone that doesn't know this method has just received a major critical freebie piece of advice here:

1) Install the SSD as your BOOT drive (i.e. C:) - say min 60GB - now you have a fast boot but have already used 25GB. FYI turning hibernate off (see web) saves at least the amount of mem you have, e.g. 8GB so it's worth considering.

2) Install a decent sized hard drive - e.g. 1TB (e.g. E:)

3) Create a folder on your hard drive E:\Games (I also have E:\My Documents, same idea)

4) Install games as per normal to the C: drive - this makes things easy with Steam

5) When a game is less performance-critical (i.e. you play it less), e.g. Left 4 Dead:
5.1) COPY the C:\..\Left4Dead folder to E:\Games
5.2) RENAME the C:\..\Left4Dead folder to C:\..\Left4Dead_backup (just in case you fuck up)
5.3) Open a "CMD" window as administrator in the C:\.. folder that has Left4Dead
5.4) Use the command mklink /d "C:\..\Left4Dead" "E:\Games\Left4Dead" i.e. create a symlink pointing to the new E: folder with the exact same name the folder used to have.
5.5) test your game Left4Dead and it should be fine. If so, delete the C:\..\Left4Dead_backup folder.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/libr ... 10%29.aspx

See? This method simply moves whole folders from your SSD to your hard drive, and then creates a 'symlink' back on the SSD where the folder used to be so that PC software still thinks it's on C:. It's easy to check in Windows Explorer - you just click through the C: folders as normal and you'll move onto E: as you click on the folder that still appears to be on C:. I.e. to software the PC behaves 100% as if the "C:\..\Left4Dead\Zombies\BloodEffect\Spurt" folder still exists on the C: drive. The move is so seamless even Windows Explorer will give you folder-size stats for the Steam folder that include the stuff that's actually been moved (confusing, given the point of all this) but the *disk* stats correctly show the saved space on C:.

Major plusses of this approach are
* it's actually pretty simple
* you can move huge chunks of the filesystem over to the hard drive using the same technique, e.g. My Music, My Pictures, My Videos, without applications noticing you've done it
* the 'default' install of all software to C: is unchanged - Steam in particular installs to C: always so if you want an SSD boot drive you need to know how to do this
* it's not a 'sudden death' cutover - you can leave the C: folders in place (renamed) for a while until you're 100% confident you haven't fucked up - delete the link and rename the folder back reverses out the move.
* the 'default' for a game install is to have all files on the SSD for fast access, and you then move big chunks that you know are large volume, low performance. This is easier that starting with the game on E: (hard drive) and trying to find the bits that turn out to be important for performance and moving them to C:.
* there's a subtle benefit - moving some stuff that was in C:\Program Files to E:\ actually moves it out of the UAC controls, so pre-Vista software (like FSX) that clashes with UAC actually work better if you move their executable folders (i.e. Modules in FSX) over to E:\. In my case all the FSX scenery is still on the SSD so the app runs fast. The 'SimObjects\Airplanes' folder is huge but doesn't affect flight framerates (only aircraft load times) so that's moved to the hard drive. If/When I get bored with FSX I'll move all of it to the hard drive, not uninstall it.

Bamz

[Redddraggon]

4) Install games as per normal to the C: drive - this makes things easy with Steam

5) When a game is less performance-critical (i.e. you play it less), e.g. Left 4 Dead:
5.1) COPY the C:\..\Left4Dead folder to E:\Games
5.2) RENAME the C:\..\Left4Dead folder to C:\..\Left4Dead_backup (just in case you fuck up)
5.3) Open a "CMD" window as administrator in the C:\.. folder that has Left4Dead
5.4) Use the command mklink /d "C:\..\Left4Dead" "E:\Games\Left4Dead" i.e. create a symlink pointing to the new E: folder with the exact same name the folder used to have.
5.5) test your game Left4Dead and it should be fine. If so, delete the C:\..\Left4Dead_backup folder.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/libr ... 10%29.aspx

What about the "other way"? I've got Steam on a partition on my 2TB drive, and I copy what I play most to my SSD - at the moment I have BFBC2 and the two crysis games on there. Is there much a difference speedwise?

[MegaYoda]

Thank you Bamz for this info, I reckon your info on the ssd and Gavac's info on turning the 6950 gpu into a 6970 by bios flash would have saved me around £100. I was thinking about getting a bigger ssd drive but your advice shows me that I don't need to!! 

I love you guys

[bambam]

What about the "other way"?

Either way will work, it's the mlink command that really makes it.

Depends if you want to 'install everything on the slow drive" and then move bits across until you've successfully sped things up, or "install on SSD, and move things across to the hard drive checking you haven't moved something that slows the game down". I prefer the latter because it's easier to spot a big folder with a load of cut-scene video content and move it all than it is to realise the game is hammering a data file hidden somewhere and that needs moving onto the SSD. My experience has been a full game takes a few GB and if it's new I'm happy with it ALL on the SSD, and after a while I can move all the obvious stuff to the hard-drive and it's still playable ok but I've freed up a lot of the SSD for the next game. Presumably the 'old' games config or something is still in C: %APPDATA% on the SSD but that doesn't matter cos they're tiny. My CSS is all on the hard drive (but steam thinks it's on C) cos the game's so old there are mega framerates anyway, but I installed it via steam on C so the install was simple, and then flipped the folder over to the HD.

I recon if your SSD was marginal in size (i.e. 40GB or less) you really need the 'install on HD and pick-and-choose bits for the SSD', but 60Gb for me has enough for several full games so moving bits across to the HD is a bonus really and avoids the SSD filling up.

Also the 'bambam' way (SSD as 'C:') leaves you with a fast boot drive. But either way, an SSD is sexy.

Bamz

[MudShark]

Hi Bams, I was going to use your mlink to create some fast stuff on my underused SSD and I'm sure you described how to do it in a thread somewhere but it seems to have gone in the bin! Can you remember how its done again. I tried googling it and google kept insisting I meant syslink - stoopid gogle.

[MudShark]

Aha - you said mlink in the previous post and that was the only case of mlink in the whole forum but now I see you made a booboo - you mean mklink. OK I can find that on the net - one problem, only for fista and beyond. Ah well.