system builders?

[wwo]

I built one last year for <$1k and it still runs '13 games on 99% max settings. Now I don't have a reason to upgrade or build a new one, and I am fucking jonesing to do so.

Someone feed my hunger with a nerdy tale of new hardware, particularly if it stars Mr. Haswell.

[adrenaline]

I recently built a teleportation machine, but it isn't fully operational yet. Still need to custom fit my flux capacitor to the transmogrifier.

[dac]

tell me your specs wwo.

ssd or gtfo

[punkUser]

ssd or gtfo

Word. Best upgrade people can do to anything semi-modern, and definitely the best upgrade/option in laptops.

[Arsenal]

This is now a spec thread.

I have always built systems for myself, friends and family and even a few servers. But my latest purchase was a high powered laptop I bought about two years ago.

Sager NP8150, Sagers are customized and all the parts are easily upgradeable, nothing is soldered in, the main reason I went with this brand.

i7-2760QM quad core 2.4-3.5ghz
16GB DDR3 1600mhz
Intel SSD 520 120gb
nVidia GeForce GTX 560M 1.5gb

Not too shabby for a two year old laptop.

[punkUser]

Not too shabby fo a two year old laptop.

Not too shabby at all...

Alright I'll bite... my current main desktop:

i7-3930K six core 3.2-3.8Ghz
16GB (4x4) DDR3 1600mhz quad channel
Intel 520 SSD 240GB + WD Black 2TB
NVIDIA GTX 680

Other desktop/wife's system (IIRC):
i7-940 quad core 2.9-3.2Ghz
8GB (2x4) DDR 1333mhz dual channel
Intel 320 SSD 120GB + WD Black 1TB
AMD Radeon 7970

And yeah, I get the Intel parts cheaply else I wouldn't have gone for the 6 core It definitely makes a big difference compiling and a few other tasks, but few games make good use of it.

Have a pile of laptops - mostly from work - kicking around as well, but I only really use them when travelling. Hence I typically take something as thin and light as possible (11-13" ultrabook usually).

[wwo]

samsung 840 pro 128 ssd

I could probably upgrade my mobo (asus m5a97 r2) and gpu (msi 7970 3gb), but I honestly don't have a reason to do so.

Has anyone tried one of the new hybrid drives? (~32 to 128gb ssd + Xgb hdd, but the hdd seem to be capped at 5400 rpm).

[punkUser]

samsung 840 pro 128 ssd

Nice! If I didn't get Intel stuff cheaply I'd definitely go for a samsung.

Has anyone tried one of the new hybrid drives? (~32 to 128gb ssd + Xgb hdd, but the hdd seem to be capped at 5400 rpm).

I haven't but I'm slightly skeptical to be honest. I've been leaning more towards having all the "big/slow" stuff on network attached storage or a file server with lots of big, conventional hard drives and single SSDs in each of the client machines. Even with increasingly large games, SSD size increases are making that pretty viable. I think with my next machine I'll be able to get away purely with something like a ~600GB-1TB SSD, which are increasingly becoming more reasonably priced (still a little to go though).

There's also some likely shake-ups in the storage world coming in the next couple years... not sure I see a place for HDDs with moving parts for much longer.

[Aki]

Just built this this month to replace a 2010 Sager laptop:

Intel Core i5-4570 CPU
ASRock H87 Pro4 motherboard
Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3-1600 RAM
MSI N760 TF NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 GPU
Corsair 300R case
Corsair Builder CX600 PSU
Windows 7

above was just over $800.

Plus a Crucial m4 256GB SSD I had been using in my laptop since last year ($170).

Plus peripherals:

Dell u2312hm IPS monitor
mechanical keyboard with cherry brown switches
Swan D1010 IV semi-active speakers

[Captain]

tell me your specs wwo.

ssd or gtfo

SSD so you can load faster when it really doesn't matter!!! Only $200 more dollars!!!

Yes they are kick ass, just not very practical at the moment

[Captain]

Intel i7 3770k
16 GB Corsair
Geforce GTX 660Ti
320GB SATA drive
some cheap case I got at Microcenter
I don't remember what mobo I got, mainly because they bundled it with my processor so I got the i7 and board for $300 dollars. Kick ass deal at the time.

[punkUser]

SSD so you can load faster when it really doesn't matter!!! Only $200 more dollars!!!

Yes they are kick ass, just not very practical at the moment

Well, it matters to desktop responsiveness (a lot), particularly on laptops which otherwise have very slow drives. You don't need a huge SSD to feel this benefit - 128-256GB is plenty for your OS and frequency used applications and that's less than $200 these days.

So sure, load time in games is not always a huge issue, but the rest of using your computer sort of is...

[wwo]

Intel i7 3770k
16 GB Corsair
Geforce GTX 660Ti
320GB SATA drive
some cheap case I got at Microcenter
I don't remember what mobo I got, mainly because they bundled it with my processor so I got the i7 and board for $300 dollars. Kick ass deal at the time.

That hdd is disproportionately small for a rig carrying 16 gb of ram, but it's more likely that's a waste of ram unless you do video editing or 3d modeling, which isn't the case with a hdd that small, and so the circle rejoins.

I am curious how this configuration came together.

SSDs have been <$1/gb for a while (at least a year). Going cold to desktop in <10 seconds or having programs like Photoshop open nearly instantly is definitely worth it, especially in a laptop.

[Captain]

SSD so you can load faster when it really doesn't matter!!! Only $200 more dollars!!!

Yes they are kick ass, just not very practical at the moment

Well, it matters to desktop responsiveness (a lot), particularly on laptops which otherwise have very slow drives. You don't need a huge SSD to feel this benefit - 128-256GB is plenty for your OS and frequency used applications and that's less than $200 these days.

So sure, load time in games is not always a huge issue, but the rest of using your computer sort of is...

Desktop response? Very little, it will load your OS faster on Startup/logon, thats about it. Also read opening programs/etc you will notice some speed increase.

I would say that is not very practical for the large increase in price.

[Captain]

Intel i7 3770k
16 GB Corsair
Geforce GTX 660Ti
320GB SATA drive
some cheap case I got at Microcenter
I don't remember what mobo I got, mainly because they bundled it with my processor so I got the i7 and board for $300 dollars. Kick ass deal at the time.

That hdd is disproportionately small for a rig carrying 16 gb of ram, but it's more likely that's a waste of ram unless you do video editing or 3d modeling, which isn't the case with a hdd that small, and so the circle rejoins.

I am curious how this configuration came together.

SSDs have been <$1/gb for a while (at least a year). Going cold to desktop in <10 seconds or having programs like Photoshop open nearly instantly is definitely worth it, especially in a laptop.

Yes they have been getting lower, But I just can't justify the extra $ when it really does very little for the CPU performance, besides taking a 1 second of most load times, 1 second probably isn't going to kill me.

I actually don't know the real HD size of my CPU, but I think that sounded right.

Yes it is probably more RAM then I actually need, however it was priced very good and it was the same as 8GB, so why not go for it, plus I will eventually get a SSD but as of right now, they are not even close to worthit, wait till they come down 50% then it will be.

[punkUser]

Desktop response? Very little, it will load your OS faster on Startup/logon, thats about it..

Simply untrue. Check out any tech site... they all say that an SSD is the best thing you can do for your machine for several years now. And trust me, I know what I'm talking about too

I could buy the price argument a few years ago, but frankly they're pretty cheap now. You're *far* better off getting a 128GB SSD for $100 than going to 16GB RAM, i5-i7, or similarly priced upgrades - doubly so for laptops. We're quickly approaching the day where it makes more sense to have a single SSD in client machines then use NAS (LAN)/server/cloud storage for all the big/slow stuff like media depending on bandwidth needs.

The thing you seem to be missing is that "1 second" each time you launch something compounds to be the majority of waiting time on your machine. There's no CPU, GPU, RAM, etc. upgrade that is going to make a larger difference than that to a decently configured machine.

Absolutely you will not go back once you pick up an SSD. It is night and day. I laugh at the concept of a laptop without an SSD, and think it's a pretty poor configuration for any desktop more than $600 or so as well.

[Captain]

I am not arguing about the quality of the SSD, I think they are definitely neat, however at this stage and point, they are not practical for the cost/speed increase.

Like I said, you will not get a huge performance increase at all. You will get faster loading/opening/closing.

I personally don't mind spending the extra 5 seconds a day where it might be bothering me instead of paying $100 dollars to get something.

Once they become more practical where the SSD drive is actually bigger or bigger and still at a reasonable price, I will definitely go that route.

Until then, I cannot justify spending $100 on a few seconds a day.

[punkUser]

Until then, I cannot justify spending $100 on a few seconds a day.

Well, it adds up to a lot more than a few seconds a day. It's a few seconds each time you do something really.

The real argument is not so much about how much that time is worth to you, but is there a better place to put that $100 that will save more time? In any decent system (say an i5ish, 4+GB RAM), I'd argue that there isn't, outside of very specific mostly-professional uses (CAD, video encoding, etc). i.e. going to an i7 will save you maybe milliseconds compared to seconds in every-day tasks.

So yeah, it's no that I will claim to know how much money X amount of performance is worth to everyone (it's totally up to the individual to put a value on his/her time) but when constructing a new PC config or looking for upgrades that have a noticeable effect, I will sooner recommend an SSD these days than most other things.

[Captain]

I agree with you there. Yes it does add up and I realize the $100 is a 1 time cost, but at that same time. It is a hefty cost for little improvement each day. I am not poor by all means but I just think waiting I will get a much better deal then I will now.(much like all technology)

I got my RAM dirt cheap though.

I also got my board and processor very cheap. I didn't want to spend the extra $100 on something I probably won't notice that much.

I got an i7 and 16 GB. I got the i7 cheaper then the i5 at the time. I got 16GB for as cheap as 8.

I really do like 3 things on my computer. I code(not large programs at all), I play games, and I internetz.

None of those things will make much of a difference with a SSD drive. I probably wouldn't put any games on there anyway.

[punkUser]

Sure, well it's always better to "wait" with technology in terms of price

I really do like 3 things on my computer. I code(not large programs at all), I play games, and I internetz.

Coding is improved by SSDs, particularly IDE stuff. Search/replace, "jump to definition" and all that sort of stuff is noticeably more responsive with an SSD. Compile times are marginally faster depending on what language you're compiling, but as you note it's not a big deal for small projects.

Browser stuff is definitely faster with an SSD since that's really the only bottleneck (none of it is CPU limited on anything decent). It's mostly stuff like opening new tabs/content and flash that will trigger some HDD activity, but I definitely feel the difference between two work machines (one with an SSD, one without) that are otherwise similar.

Games indeed it makes very little difference. Even in load times, most games are optimized for fairly sequential access patterns, so SSDs don't provide much of a boost. Poorly optimized games can see improvements in load time, but for AAA stuff it's not huge.

If you're one of the folks who runs any sort of anti-virus software, *everything* will be way faster with an SSD. I don't run AV these days, but some people still think it's 2001 when the OS itself had major problems or like to download questionable stuff, so yeah.

[Captain]

I would agree and even I would buy one if I didn't any large coding projects, I don't at home, so no need.

Browser stuff yes its faster, but Usually I am on a couple forums, maybe something like wowhead, and some espn sites....not constantly popping tabs etc...

I do run Microsoft Security essentials...but It doesn't bog my system down at all, so I don't really worry about it.

Yes I will eventually buy one, but I would guess not for at least 2 years(probably) because I and the average user, simply do not need it:)

[punkUser]

Yeah fair enough In a few years they should be in the range of being able to replace entirely conventional hard drives in standard machines (they already have in laptops), so that'll make the decision easier too since you'll just be talking about a price delta instead of an additional cost for an SSD *and* HDD.

[Arsenal]

An SSD is the single best upgrade you can get for a system, arguing otherwise is just silly. Just say you're too cheap to pay $100 and stop trying to rationalize it.

[wwo]

I actually put "modern" games on the hdd. Old (< '02) or "small" (<1gb) games go on the ssd. It's an odd thing that the old games benefit so much more from an ssd.

[punkUser]

Yeah, it's partially because "modern" multiplatform games that also target consoles are often optimized for optical media, for which sequential reads are even more important. It's typically PC-only games that are always expected to be installed to a hard drive that are the most random read/write heavy (for which SSDs are great).

[adrenaline]

quick question for you techies:

I am considering a budget rebuild... I like the processor I have right now, just wondering if y'all think it is decent... AMD Phenom II x4 965 Black Edition. I'm considering upgrading my mobo to the GIGABYTE GA-970A-D3P AM3+/AM3, which will support the phenom but allow for future upgrades if I feel the need. I already have 8 GB of RAM, so I don't think I need any more... graphics card is new and pretty decent... but my HDD is old and is a piece of shit (WD green... probably 3 yrs old or so). Thinking of keeping the HDD as a storage drive and getting a 128 gb SSD (SAMSUNG 840 Pro Series MZ-7PD128BW) as my boot drive/myth and frequently used apps. Pretty sure my current PSU is good... 750 watts I think. I wouldn't mind getting a second HDD as well... maybe a WD velociraptor if I can find a good price on one.

Anyways ya... does this sound like it will be a decent system? I really only play myth and a game called Urban Terror, which is an older FPS.

[punkUser]

Thinking of keeping the HDD as a storage drive and getting a 128 gb SSD (SAMSUNG 840 Pro Series MZ-7PD128BW) as my boot drive/myth and frequently used apps.

For a similar price (maybe $10-20 more) I'd actually recommend getting a 256GB 840 non-pro. As nice as the Pros are, there's a massive jump in performance from conventional HDD -> SSD, but pretty minor differences between the SSDs in desktop use. Having more space and being able to put more stuff on it will make more of a difference than the non-pro -> pro IMHO.

I wouldn't mind getting a second HDD as well... maybe a WD velociraptor if I can find a good price on one.

I wouldn't bother with the 10,000rpm stuff these days. If you want fast, you're better off with an SSD. If you want large, any conventional HDD will do fine. If you want a "games drive" with more space than you're willing to pay for an SSD, get a WD Black or similar 7200rpm drive.

Without knowing your other specs, sounds reasonable to me. But as you note, it's all about what you do with the system. SSD is a no-brainer upgrade for most though, even without knowing the rest of your machine.

[adrenaline]

so the phenom II is decent enough to keep for now? from everything i've read, it's a pretty decent processor... or at least was.

[punkUser]

It really depends on what you do with it. If it runs the games that you play just fine, then who cares. It will get beaten by any Intel CPU from the past few years when push comes to shove (see http://techreport.com/review/23246/insi ... today-cpus for instance for a good summary for gaming - yours will perform maybe 10% worse than the X4 980 in those graphs), but that's true of most AMD CPUs these days. And of course switching motherboard, CPU and potentially RAM is probably more than you want to spend, especially if you're happy with it in the applications that you run. Certainly you'll have no problem with Myth 2

So yeah, I don't think any AMD CPU upgrades are worth it at this point. If you wanted to switch to Intel you could get a bump, but of course for more money.

[adrenaline]

interesting website there... so ya, I don't play on ever really playing modern games... simply don't have the time. I play on keeping this upgrade under $400 if possible, so probably just a ssd and mobo... and possibly a legit copy of windows 7 lol. That may not be necessary though... been running cracked versions for years and never really had an issue.

[punkUser]

Yeah I agree - SSD is the #1 priority I'd say... you'll feel that upgrade the most. Everything else is really only if you want to play modern games, do lots of video encoding, etc.

[wwo]

Don't bother with the mobo. Unless you're really into what's coming next, you're basically gambling that the am3+ is going to be the best option later, and that's a huge gamble for almost no real gain at this point. You'll have multiple bottlenecks that won't let you see much benefit anyway, unless you keep replacing a few parts at a time. Really suboptimal. Don't even think about a cpu upgrade; when that quad starts letting you down, you'll be able to get 10x the system via new rig for the same cost as trying to upgrade what you have.

The best two upgrades without overcommitting to the future (where you'd be forced to keep investing new tech into an obsolete build) is the aforementioned ssd, and the best gpu your mobo and budget can support.

re:hdd

Keep what you have as data storage, though if it's truly a piece of shit about to die, get a WD black (or blue), 1 tb should do you fine for years. Don't bother with a 'raptor. Those were cool a decade ago and then only in RAID (layman's: 2+ of them for parallel reads, basically).

[Captain]

An SSD is the single best upgrade you can get for a system, arguing otherwise is just silly. Just say you're too cheap to pay $100 and stop trying to rationalize it.

Simply not true at all.

For the average user it is not worth the upgrade at all yet. For people who want to save seconds of their day it is definitely worth it.

If you are on your CPU a lot, doing a lot of routine work throughout the day, yes it is definitely worth it.

If you are like me, and play games, do some browsing once in a while, which I consider the average user.

It is 100% not worth it at the moment. Wait until the drives get bigger so you don't have to have 2 HD's.

Anyone who says differently is on their computer a lot, and will notice it. If I were on my machine more then 6 hours a day, I would definitely NEED a SSD, however, I am not.

That is like saying anyone who doesn't have a fast car is driving a piece of shit. Yes, it is definitely a NICE upgrade, but it is not essential to the average user.

[adrenaline]

Yaaaaa I think I'm gonna wait until I get my tax return in February or March and then build a new system from scratch... hopefully some of the components come down in price a bit by then too... coincides nicely with my birthday and not long after xmas... can probably get the 'rents to cover a good portion of the costs as gifts lol...

[punkUser]

Cool, well post back when you're building - always fun to give suggestions on build parts/specs

[adrenaline]

will do... i don't know much about it myself anyways. i wanna keep it slightly on the budget side... so probably i5 cpu at best.

[Captain]

Dren not sure what the cost is up there...When I got my i7 is was $15 dollars more then the i5.

But something to peek at

[punkUser]

Yeah when it comes time just lay out your budget and primary uses and we can brainstorm the best bang for your buck in a given range. Honestly, the Tech Report system guide is a good place to start, but with tweaks depending on your usage:
http://techreport.com/review/25250/tr-b ... stem-guide

[adrenaline]

everything is more expensive here. For instance, the i7-4770 Haswell is currently $319.99 (on sale from $324.99). The i5-4670 is $224.99 (or $249.99 for the 4670K... not sure wtf the difference is). I'm going to assume it's significantly cheaper there.

[punkUser]

K-series ones have some additional controls for overclocking... nothing important for regular users. That's a great example though... for most folks who don't have lots of money to spend, I wouldn't recommend the i7. It's not a whole lot faster than the i5, and that $100 could be much better spent somewhere else (like on an SSD! ).