(Minor) System Upgrade

[Wimmel]

After a lightning strike some of my components where fried. Thanks to the quick response of my insurance, I could quickly order some new stuff:

Mainbord: Gigabyte MA790XT-UD4P (Socket AM3)
Processor: AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition
Memory: OCZ Platinum PC3-12800 (DDR3-1600) Low Voltage 2x2GB kit
Housing: Antec Solo
PSU: Nexus RX5300 modular
SSD: Intel postville X25-M 160GB

Leftovers from my old rig:
Graphics: ASUS Geforce 8800GTS 512MB
HDD: Samsung HD103SJ 1000GB
CPU Cooler: Scythe Ninja
and some silent Nexus fans.

The memory wasn't available yet, but I couldn't wait, so I started to build with some leftover memory.

Tuesday the posties delivered some boxes containing some eagerly awaited stuff:


Quickly unpacked:


A beautiful empty space to be filled:


Mounted the processor, memory and cooler:


Flashforward to the built system, including some decent cable management:


And from the other side:


This is the reason I almost always take an Antec housing, room to work and integrated cable management.

Installed Windows 7 ultimate and did some harddisk benching, the Intel brings a snappiness to the system. Click a shortcut and the program is already started



For now, I'm utterly happy with the upgrade, can't wait till my new memory arrives.

[CDB[SWE]]

intel ssd disk awsomeness

welcome to the world of tomorrow!

[GanjaRider]

Nice insurance. Hopefully you didnt lose any data. Cool system. I like the cpu cooler. The fan on the side is simple but effective. Good thing it didnt get fried. And the ssd will be a great improvement. Im wondering, are you gonna install both windows and programs on it? I had a discussion with a collegue and he said its better to have 2 ssd disks for seperate windows and programs (like I use now on 7200rpm hdd's). While I think one ssd is fast enough for both because it can simultaniously reach multiple clusters unlike an old hdd because it has only one needle. Sure using two ssd's could be faster but only by a few %? That's what I think at least. I just like to know in case I buy a new system.

[ripbox]

It is a very nice rig.... I can only wish for a SDD drive now, I was saving for one but my BFG9800GX2 broke last Saturday so what I saved went on buying a new card :/
I couldn't quite afford a replacement GX2 so I opted for a shiny new Gigabyte 9800GT silent cell..... It does worrie me that It has no fan to cool it but they say the 3 copper pipes and stupidly large heat sink makes it 8% more efficiant that a stock fan cooled card hmmm
we will see..... Maybe it will give up on the day after it's 3year RMA

[TopTrog]

Very nice setup dude.......those CrystalDiskMark results look very convincing . Naturally, it´s got me thinking seriously about putting my OSes on such a shiny new gadget . As I understand it, the drawback (besides cost / MB) is performance degradation over time due to the write-erase cycle lifetime limits for the NAND flash memory, similar to what I already know from digital photography CF cards - where it really is not really a problem due to comparably modest data volumes. So it appears to be a kind of trade-off between speed and reliability/lifetime. Do you have any idea on what the useful lifetime of such an SSD will be ? Naturally, opinions on the usual web sites seem to differ vastly, so I´m keen to hear your take on this .

[Wimmel]

Quick reply from work as my system doesn't work at the moment My Geforce has died, the last survivor from the lightning strike decided to call it quits. Currently shopping for something new, wil get back to previous questions when I get my system back up again.

[ripbox]

get your self a Gigabyte 9800GT Silent Cell http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/FileList/Web ... index.html
It makes all the difference not having a fan on the gpu even though i though eeekkk at 1st

[Tiggr]

Very nice setup dude.......those CrystalDiskMark results look very convincing . Naturally, it´s got me thinking seriously about putting my OSes on such a shiny new gadget . As I understand it, the drawback (besides cost / MB) is performance degradation over time due to the write-erase cycle lifetime limits for the NAND flash memory, similar to what I already know from digital photography CF cards - where it really is not really a problem due to comparably modest data volumes. So it appears to be a kind of trade-off between speed and reliability/lifetime. Do you have any idea on what the useful lifetime of such an SSD will be ? Naturally, opinions on the usual web sites seem to differ vastly, so I´m keen to hear your take on this .

So these SSD's do degrade over time, how long does it take and how much does it affect its performance ?

T.T.F.N Tiggr

[CDB[SWE]]

the degredation of ssd... no one has any figures what i have seen... I think i read soome where that if you cleanswipe the full disk three times a day it will last about 3-4 years... but to be honest... I swap my systemdisk atleast every 2-3 years... so cant really see the problem...

[Wimmel]

Back with a new graphics card

I've got me a Sapphire Radeon HD 5770 VaporX 1GB. I went to my dealer to talk about his promise 1,5 years ago about having 3 years warranty I accepted his first offer, an Asus Geforce 250GTS 1GB which is comparable to my late 8800GTS 512MB. After placing it in my silent system I discovered that the stock fan is all but quiet, even my neighbors complained about the noise. Some digging on the Asus website led me to an updated bios which would resolve the noise problem, too bad it wasn't meant for the revision I had. The next day I went back to my dealer and got me the aforementioned Sapphire at an additional cost of 20 euros. Not to shabby for a noticeably faster card. And it is really silent, even under load. I guess not as silent as Ripbox's card but quiet enough for me.

My system is humming along nicely again.

@Ganjarider
Great insurance, they didn’t even mention depreciation and covered all the damage. Luckily I didn’t lose any data, it does pay to back-up. The cpu cooler is a Scythe Ninja. I’ve been using a Ninja since it was first introduced in June 2005. It’s a great solution for silent cooling and can even be used for passively cooling a modest processor. The 120mm Nexus fans are among the quietest in the market and are spinning at a mere 700RPM while keeping the system running at ~35°C
I’m using the SSD for both Windows and my programs. I’ve moved my space hoggers (music, pictures and movies) to an 1TB harddisk. I believe that an additional SSD for your programs will be faster still, but I think you’ll only notice it in benchmarks, not through daily use. Due to the low access and seek times, it handles concurrent requests beautifully. It is possible to do something else while unrarring some big archives. Even I had the spare cash for an additional SSD, I don’t think I would buy it. The performance leap of just 1 SSD is enough to last me through several other upgrades and I would rather wait for a next generation SSD.

@Performance degradation
With SSD’s we're talking about 2 kinds of degradation, wearing of the flashcells and poor write performance due to non-released blocks.

Ten thousand erase/write cycles isn’t much, yet SSD makers are guaranteeing their drives for anywhere from 1 - 10 years. On top of that, SSD makers across the board are calling their drives more reliable than conventional hard drives.
The only way any of this is possible is by some clever algorithms and banking on the fact that desktop users don’t do a whole lot of writing to their drives.
Think about your primary hard drive. How often do you fill it to capacity, erase and start over again? Intel estimates that even if you wrote 20GB of data to your drive per day, its X25-M would be able to last you at least 5 years. Realistically, that’s a value far higher than you’ll use consistently.
My personal desktop saw about 100GB worth of writes (whether from the OS or elsewhere) to my SSD and my data drive over the past 14 days. That’s a bit over 7GB per day of writes. Let’s do some basic math:
NAND Flash Capacity 256 GB
Formatted Capacity in the OS 238.15 GB
Available Space After OS and Apps 185.55 GB
Spare Area 17.85 GB
If I never install another application and just go about my business, my drive has 203.4GB of space to spread out those 7GB of writes per day. That means in roughly 29 days my SSD, if it wear levels perfectly, I will have written to every single available flash block on my drive. Tack on another 7 days if the drive is smart enough to move my static data around to wear level even more properly. So we’re at approximately 36 days before I exhaust one out of my ~10,000 write cycles. Multiply that out and it would take 360,000 days of using my machine the way I have been for the past two weeks for all of my NAND to wear out; once again, assuming perfect wear leveling. That’s 986 years. Your NAND flash cells will actually lose their charge well before that time comes, in about 10 years.

So I'm not worrying about my disk dying before it's time. Intel does back it up with an 3 year warranty.

Secondly, poor write performance was fixed with the release of TRIM capable firmware. Read more about TRIM here:
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3667

For now, I'm as happy as a dog with two tails with my setup and I would recommend a SSD to everyone. There will be beter, cheaper and faster SSD's coming this year, but the current leap is big enough to fully justify getting one now.

[TopTrog]

Thanks, that makes things more clear . Seems now like the speed limit on my rig´s HDD ops may be pushed a bit forward in the near future .

[ripbox]

Back with a new graphics card I guess not as silent as Ripbox's card but quiet enough for me.

LMFAO

OMG i so never realised how noisy my 9800GX2 was..... all i hear now is the wind from my case fans and the odd clicking of my HDD's, I can only now wish for some SSD's and a way to reduce the voltage further on my case fans and id have a 100% silent system..... oh bugger i forgot about the cpu fan but then again thats inly the sound of the wind being forced threw the heat-sink...
i guess i can live with that

I was very sceptical about this fan-less card though..... i did think well maybe its going to over heat after a few hours of HD gaming and that it wouldn't perform as well as my old 9800 but boy im impressed.....12 hours solid CODMW2 then movie play and net browsing.... iv not got any ideas to what the temps wer running at since iv not installed any monitoring equiptment yet but ill do that now and see how it performs in numbers over this next week

[GanjaRider]

Thanks for explaining Wimmel. That's what I thought. One sdd is fast enough for now. Ah well I think I don't need a new system for at least a year and maybe even two years and sdd's will be much cheaper by then so maybe I'll buy two afterall.

[ripbox]

Well to get back to my temps from my G-card..... idle + browsing ect the temp fluctuates between 34-35°c
Ill do some tests after and during some game play of CODMW2 later


10,000 write cycles is the same as a standard HDD though isn't it??

[ripbox]

As stated above i changed to a Gigabyte 9800GT Silent Cell..... yeah well all well and good but huummmppphhhhh just short of 2 month..... yes the Gigabyte 9800GT Silent Cell died a horrible death..... dont seem to be having much luck with graphics cards just of late

well this one was slightly different in its dying hours....
after a night of watching a few videos and playing a few game i sent my sytem into sleep mode, next morning (more like afternoon, im lazy ) i came to wake up my system, did my daily wakeup brew ect and came back to find my pc on but no signal displayed upon my screen after several tests i found that DVi would not attempt to display anything, HDMI would display only the windows vista glob on boot and only an inch of screen set off to the for right of the monitor... same with AGP and and old AGP monitor, so yes the good old Gigabyte 9800GT Silent Cell was gone, confirmed by Tech support, the GPU no more

R.I.P Gigabyte 9800GT Silent Cell

well since the place i got it didn't have a replacement in stock i had to opt for an alternative replacement/exchange

Yay!!! Hello Zotac GeForce GTX 260² (that's amp2!) AMP! GeForce GTX 260² 896MB 448-bit GDDR3 (650MHz/2100MHz) [ZT-X26E3KD-FCP]
http://www.zotacusa.com/amp-geforce-gtx ... d-fcp.html

yay im so happy but sad at the same time, i do so miss the quietness of the old silent cell