My new Gaming Rig

[Kenadian]

Well I finally bit the bullet today and committed to building my new Gaming Rig. Thank you guys for the suggestions; I did weigh them however there were a lot of factors that came together which made my ultimate decision.

I did manage to come in slightly under budget on the build too which is a bonus.

The new System is as follows:

• Intel Core i7 2700 K Unlocked LGA1155 3.5 Quad Core CPU
• Asus P8Z77-V Pro LGA1155 Motherboard
• 1 x Crucial M4 SSD Micron C400 128 GB Sata 3 6GB/s (System C)
• 1 x Western Digital Caviar Black 1.0 TB SATA 3 6.0 GB/s 7200 RPM 64MB Cache (Slave)
• 8 GB (2 x 4 GB) Patriot Viper Xtreme PC3-15000 DDR3 @ 1866 MHz
• Noctua NH-C12P SE14 Heatpipe Cooler w/140 mm fan
• Thermaltake Chaser MK-1 ATX Full Tower Case
• Asus VE247H 23.6" 2ms Widescreen HD Monitor

For now or until I decide to upgrade to a PCIE 3.0 Video Card or SLI Set, I'll be using my N570GTX Twin Frozer III and Antec Earthwatts 750 Modular PSU.

I have some of the components here but the others are on order so the system may be up by May 10 or so (I hope).

I know some of the components may not make sense but my reasoning for the major flaws are as follows:

1. Asus Z77 Mobo: I had to pick this up as it supports IvyBridge CPU's. Even though my CPU is currently a SandyBridge, I may want to upgrade a few years down the road especially if IvyBridge ends up adding 6 and 8 core options (nobody knows for sure).
2. Crucial SSD: It is slightly slower than a OCZ Vertex 3 or 4 (for example) but has a low return rate for defects and doa (or so I've heard).
3. Noctua CPU Cooler and RAM choice were made together. The RAM has a reasonably low profile allowing it to be cooled by the downward force of the Noctua Cooler. Also, the RAM frequency is higher than the boards 1600 MHz but I had to allow for the possibility of overclocking out of the gate.
4. Thermaltake Chaser Case, I have issues with dust where I live so I needed something with small vents and ease of access for keeping them clean. This case isn't the most popular but it's reviewed very well by people who've bought them.

Anyway, I'm pretty excited, just too bad I don't have all the components yet

 

[Russm]

I just popped a boner looking at that

 

[Kenadian]

lol, I just can't wait to play on it.

 

[JohnnyK]

Hooah!

I'll leave these here:
http://www.overclock.net/t/1156654/seans-windows-7-install-optimization-guide-for-ssds-hdds
http://thessdreview.com/ssd-guides/optimization-guides/the-ssd-optimization-guide-2/

 

[Kenadian]

It looks like I'll be picking up the remaining system components on May 9. I'm also adding another Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB Drive to the system for media recording.

Just out of curiosity, are any of you playing BF3 and/or all of your games on a drive other than C:\? I'd really like to keep the SSD clean with Win 7, MS Office and Adobe Creative Suite, everything else such as Steam/Steam Games, Origin/Origin Games, etc., I'd like to have on one of the backup WD Caviar mechanical drives.

 

[Russm]

I do. Although I have a 300gb mechanical drive instead of your ssd. Make sure you check out the settings in origin so it doesnt download the updates to the c drive as well.

Typical load times are ~10-15 sec depending on the map.

Eh, I should be more clear:
I have 2 drives, 1x 300gb, 1x 1tb.
300gb drive is partitioned 50gb for OS (50gb is barely enough for Vista), rest for games and such. Turned off the swap file in this drive.
1tb drive is for movies mostly. Swap file is here, set to 16gb (amount of ram x2)

 

[JohnnyK]

Put BF3 on the SSD, it's worth it; I also have some Steam-games on the SSD via Junctions and the rest of the library on my mechanical drive.

Otherwise you will leave 60-75% of your SSD unused.

 

[Kenadian]

I've never owned an SSD so I'm a little protective of trying to keep as much off it as possible. It's very much the same thing as dipping your toe in the water before jumping in the pool.

I'll definitely put BF3 on C:\ but everything else including the entire Steam Library will be on one of the mechanical drives.

 

[JohnnyK]

If you follow the guides I posted you will ensure the longevity of your drive even if you fill it to the brim; SSD fault rates are actually often overstated anyway.

Just don't do excessive amounts of reads/writes, so don't write your torrents to the SSD for example.

 

[Kenadian]

I'll definitely be following the guides because I want to keep the read/writes as low as humanly possible.

 

[mondo]

If you look at the guides it shows you have to move games and the like to different physical drives without reinstalling, by using a feature in Win 7 called junctions

For instance the user folders are in my HDD but originally installed in the SSD so I used junctions to move it.

 

[Kenadian]

I'm having some trouble with my system finding the mechanical drives. They were found and easily added to the boot order when I first setup Windows 7 but it seems as if some updates may have screwed that up, not sure?

Either way, the only drives I can find right now are my System C:\ SSD and my DVDRom, neither of the Western Digital Caviar Blacks show up in "My Computer" or Boot Order yet both devices are found in the BIOS but still not bootable.

Anyone ever hear of this issue?

 

[JohnnyK]

What are your SATA ports set to? IDE, AHCI, RAID?

 

[Cpl.Anger]

Go to control panel > admin tools > computer management > Disk Management.
Play around with the partitions on there. Something has probably screwed and preventing it from showing up in windows.

That's my guess.