Ordering soon :)

[jacktimson]

Basically i shall be ordering my PC this week or the next, and just want to run over my spec and for peoples inputs
Case
COOLERMASTER HAF 932 FULL TOWER GAMING CASE
Overclocked CPU
Overclocked Intel® Core™i7-2600k Quad Core (3.40GHz @ max 4.80GHz)
Motherboard
ASUS® P8Z68-V: USB 3.0, SATA 6GBs, NVIDIA®SLI™, ATI®CrossFireX
Memory (RAM)
8GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz, X.M.P (2 x 4GB KIT)
Graphics Card
1.5GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 580 - 2 DVI, HDMI, DP - 3D Vision Ready
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
1TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD1002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Memory Card Reader
INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (XD, MS, CF, SD, etc) + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT
Power Supply
CORSAIR 650W TX SERIES (TX650) 80+ ULTRA QUIET PSU (£72)
Processor Cooling
COOLIT ECO A.L.C (ADVANCED LIQUID COOLER) (£49)
Thermal Paste
STANDARD OVERCLOCK THERMAL PASTE
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Facilities
ONBOARD GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS 802.11N 300Mbps PCI-E CARD (£19)
USB Options
6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD
Operating System
NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED
Office Software
NO OFFICE SOFTWARE
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Surge Protection
6 Socket Compact 2M UFO Surge Protector (£9)
Warranty
3 Year Gold Warranty (2 Year Collect & Return, 2 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£69)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 10 to 12 working days
Quantity
1

Price: £1,358.00 including VAT and delivery.

Ive heard people say about adding an extra side fan? Would i have to ring them up and ask for this?

Cheers people

 

[Wozza63]

recommend getting the better cooling paste and you can get the PCI wireless card if you can fit it in a port, it has no performance difference, just size and often convenience if no ports are available

 

[jacktimson]

Yea i supposed to go for the better cooling paste So is the PCI-E just bigger and less convenient than the PCI?

 

[jacktimson]

If im ordering a PC overclocked, is this still possible when ordering without an operating system?

 

[TrustMeItsWorthIt]

the PCI-E is placed in a better slot in the MoBo, its above the GPU's instead of in-between. Go for the PCI-E.
PCS will install there own version on Win7 to test your machine so when you get yours it will have an un-activated version, you just wont be able to do much on the OS

 

[tom_gr7]

Why not get the intel 20gb SSD cache? It's shame to miss out on the z68's abilities, and pcs should set it up for you, will increase loading times and general speed.

 

[TrustMeItsWorthIt]

^^^^^Agreed^^^^^

Although it is £104, for 20gb, tbh its what ill be getting though, the 5 year warrenty does it for me

 

[jacktimson]

Dont really want to be spending anything more than £1350, its luxury but i can live without it. Can always buy that or an SSD in the future when they are a bit cheaper though

 

[tom_gr7]

Dont really want to be spending anything more than £1350, its luxury but i can live without it. Can always buy that or an SSD in the future when they are a bit cheaper though

You can, but remember then you will have to reinstall windows if you do add a SSD later on. Also my experience of setting up the caching drive is not very positive, its pretty complicated lol. BUT if you do buy a SSD for caching i would wait till the price goes down and get a 60gb one, just in case you really struggle like i did with setting it up, i ended up sacking it off and installed windows to the OS instead. I recommend a 60gb one as it's big enough for the OS and a few programs or you could use the 60gb for a massive cache. I only say this as i wouldn't wanna buy a small 20gb SSD and not be able to set the cache up properly.

Hope this helps

 

[TrustMeItsWorthIt]

you could also partition a 60gb and use, say 20gb, for caching and then install your OS in the other 40gb and youll still have enough room for your most used programs on the SSD, that way youll get the best of both worlds

 

[Wozza63]

^^ you cant partition it sadly well i think you can but i dont think you can use a partitioned part for caching it must be a full drive under 64GB

 

[TrustMeItsWorthIt]

Nope, sorry Wozza but you can partition and just use said partition for caching, leaving the rest of the SSD for other things.
In fact i think myself and Tom_gr7 answered this for you in the thread "New SSD"

perhaps i could partition it, 60GB for OS + programs 60GB for cache this will speed up loading of games i guess..?

I found this site too, maybe worth an interesting read for anyone considering SRT

http://download.intel.com/support/m...ntel_smart_response_technology_user_guide.pdf

Tom

From tom_gr7's first link

"You can use a larger footprint drive but the software will only allow up to 64GB to be available for the caching system. When a smaller SSD is used the software will show the amount of capacity available for the cache layer. Larger SSDs can be divided into partitions, the first being the 64GB cache and the second made available as a separate drive letter."

not sure about two SSD's though

anyway hope this helps

been searching around and i found this on overclockers.com

"I talked to intel tech support through their Live Chat yesterday, see below


: Hi
: I have a question re the Smart Response technology and the way it is set up
: I wonder if it is possible to set up the following scenario
: 1 SSD with 2 partitions, one for the OS and 2nd for the HDD cache
: 1 HDD to be RAID with the 2nd partition of the SSD
Moorthy: I see.
: so essentially we end up with 1 partition on SSD with our OS, a SSD cached HDD drive
: can this be implemented?
Moorthy: As per the configuration guidelines, you can create two partition on the SSD one for caching and another for data storage.
Moorthy: As per your enquiry yo are not going to configure OS installation partition on RAID array, am I right?
: correct
Moorthy: If you are using the RAID array only for data storage its possible.
: the RAID is a 'storage' partition, while the system is installed on the separate SSD partition
Moorthy: To enable this technology we need to reserve one partition for the caching.
Moorthy: You can use other partition for the OS installtion..
: so how should I proceed with the actual set up
Moorthy: Yes you can go ahead and install OS on one partition.
Moorthy: Configure RAID with other hard drives.
Moorthy: Enable Intel® Smart Response Technology from Rapid Storage Technology Interface.
Moorthy: Select the second partition on the SSD for caching.
: superb
Moorthy: I hope it should workout.
Moorthy: I haven't checked the same yet in my LAB.
Moorthy: As per the configuration it should work with out any issues.
Moorthy: The reason for the same is, you can limit the caching partition as your needs.

Seems like all should work out ok"

although they did say no-one had actually tried it

hope this helps

sounds interesting, good find there mate, i wonder if it would work?

Also is there anyone who has actually used a SSD as SRT? Would be interesting to hear from someone's personal experience as well as reviews.

Tom

Just trying to maintain clarity

 

[jacktimson]

Thats very interesting tbh, kinda making me wait until the SSD's actually come down in price and do that cheers for all of the info, much appreciated

 

[Wozza63]

lol must have missed some of that :/ im still considering it, i may buy a 60GB then 40GB for caching and then the other 20GB for programs and perhaps regularly used games (1 or 2 of them probably BF3) i cant be bothered with completely re-installing OS, i change a lot of things and it will probably take half hour to customize it to my needs when i get my new PC, my laptop has been slowly changed with random things here and there, i actually use the taskbar up the right, i find it much more convenient and that way i dont feel like the browser windows are extremely wide, i also disable all toolbars in browsers to as little as possible, got it all in the top bar on firefox 4 so its almost full screen with necessary buttons

 

[TrustMeItsWorthIt]

No worries friend, tbh im thinking i might go for the 60gb vertex 2 as my first drive, the 311 20gb you can choose as a cache drive is good, especially with the standard 5 year warranty, but its £102 for 20gb, the vertex will be covered by the silver warranty for a year anyway and from the reviews ive read of the vertex 3 no-one has actually got any of them to run at anywhere near 550Mbs

 

[Wozza63]

yeh its just advertisement speeds, its like internet 'speeds' divide the number offered by 8 to get ur true maximum, and even that wont be hit, true story

internet providers show their speeds in 'bits' and there are 8 bits in a byte and therefore they can get a number 8x the size

i would dream to have 50 megabytes but sadly the max for a 50mbps package is 6MB/s

bits - 1mbps
bytes - 1MB/s

Know the difference, its a very useful thing to know