The obnoxious but not so obnoxious build or buy a new pc thread questions thread thre

[GilaMinumBeer]

Started this is another place and the ADD of the room took over it seems, "oh look squirrell!", it went like this;

"My current PC had 16gb of ram and I don't think I ever saw it use more than 8gb (based on a widget).

Now I am looking at PC's and motherboards (i3, i5, and i7) talking about having slots for up to 32gb. Some up to 64gb. I know there was a time that systems just couldn;t make use of anything beyond a certain limit. Is that still the case?

Does it make sense to plan on having 32gb of ram?

The heaviest load my system sees is on the fly video transcoding via play-on. Which can bog it down if someone is streaming a DVD to a tv while anyone else is actually using the PC. Worste case scenario is the pc could be transcoding while a graphics application is running (SketchUp) or photo processing (Adobe Lightroom).

What is the bare minimum I should be looking at for processor (i3, i5, i7) and ram (16, 32, ??) be it build it or just buy it?

And, finally, are SSD drives really making that big an improvemnt as an OS drive or a cache drive? Just about the only time my pc is ever turned off is after an update, a power failure, or during an active electrical storm."

to which I got;

"Maybe"

and,

"Ssd are blinding fast. You don't want anything but an ssd for os, cache, or anything random access.

You want a current i5, ssd in the range of 256Gb with a storage drive of 2Tb, backup drives for that data, and at minimum 8Gb of Ram with a 64 bit os."

and,

"I run an i5 3570k with 16GB RAM and a 160GB SSD for the OS. It's plenty quick for me, and I'm usually running a bunch of stuff at the same time with 4 monitors. Visual Studio can be a hog during development and even with several other programs running at the same time, it performs great.

The SSD will be a more noticeable upgrade than going to 32gb RAM. I'd start with an SSD and 16GB RAM in a configuration that will allow you to move up to 32GB if you want to later, such as 2x8GB instead of 4x4GB. Just make sure the mobo has 4 slots."

and,

"Also, the SSDs have come down a bunch in price. I think I paid $150-175 for the 160GB in my desktop ~2 years ago, and just bought a 512GB drive for my Macbook for $210 a couple months ago. It's the only way to go now, IMO."

to which I responded / asked,

"I plan to re-use drives I already have, IF, the mobo has available SATA connections. I currently have (4) 750Gb WD Caviar and (2) Buffalo 3Tb drivestation Axis USB3.0 (which IIRC, use WD Greens).

I am pretty sure the current mobo had 6 sata connection and all 6 were full. I "think" the OEM (samsung) optical drive used one, but can't remember for the life of me what used the last one. Multi Card reader maybe(compact flash/sd/etc...)?

I also have a sony external optical drive that I adore (damned thing will read anything). Is it possible to strip these out of there cases and use as an internal?

The current system used one Internal HDD as the boot drive and program drive. Another drive was dedicated to personal files. The third was used for system image backups/ghosts. And the fourth was used solely for photos.

One of the 3Tb USB drives is used as the video bank and the other is used as a backup for the video bank. (both connected to a USB3.0 PCI/PCIe to USB3.0 card)

Is there a more efficient way to use this storage after I get a ssd for boot drive and/or cahe drive? (RAID?)

I have the install disc for Win7 Ultimate. Is Win8 any better than this once the GUI learning curve is passed?

Lastly, and then I am done, you said a min of 8gb for 64bit os. Does it make any sense to go with more? Will an i5 or i7 actually use it for what I do?"

and,

"Does it make any sense to have an ssd for the os and another as a cache drive? And are the PCI cards for SATA expansion effective or reliable if I need to expand available SATA connection for all this crap?"



So far, I think the squirrell is still winning.

Anyone else care to offer a response?

 

[Homercidal]

For anyone using a computer for more than surfing FB and checking email, I recommend an i5 to start with. If you are gaming, you might get by with that, but an i7 would be better.

For RAM, 4GB is the basement, 8 is probably a safe amount for middle of the road users, and 16+ for heavy users (video, sound, image editing, gaming, etc).

This is not to say that you couldn't get by with less, but I like to try and plan for 5 years out.

You also didn't mention discrete video, which is recommended for FPS gaming and some other types of games or any 3D rendering such as Maya, Solidworks, etc. A decent card for home use is probably in the $75-150 range, and goes up from there depending on the game and your level of "have-to-be-faster-than-everyone-else" ness.

On-CPU video is commonplace now, and for anyone that isn't gaming or rendering should operate "fine".

An SSD is a great investment in OS/cache drive. I'd go with minimum of 256 for the price these days. I think you will be amazed at boot times and load times. If you are backing up a drive with an identical drive, you may consider running them in a RAID as a mirror set.

I'd probably set it up with an SSD for boot and main applications. Then have a drive for personal files. Then have a RAID for backup/images. I'd use the SSD for Cache, sinc eyou really WANT the fastest transfer you can get for cache files.

The optical drive can probably be use as an internal drive IF it's a standard 3.5 size. If it's a slim portable, then I'm not sure it will fit inside a standard case without modding the case.k

A good SATA card would be fine for adding drives, but you will want to check specs and reviews.

Windows 8 is an interface nightmare IMO.(For desktops). You can get around that by spending $5 on Start8, an interface mod from Stardock. It makes the desktop look almost completely like Windows 7. I've had several people thank me for pointing it out to them. My daughter used Win8 for many months before adding Start8, and she was so happy to get the Windows 7 interface back. Even after all that time she never got used to 8.

That said, I would not spend any money, or want to mess around with Win8 if I had a legal Win7 install disk. I'd use 7 and hold up and see what Windows 10 ends up being like. If history tells us anything, it should mean that Windows 10 is a solid release.

And like with most things, different people will have different opinions and will do things differently from others. My opinion is, if you are putting together a system with better specs, and you have an OS already, buy parts from Newegg.com and build it. You can probably save money and get better parts over a brand name machine.

 

[betarhoalphadelta]

Not sure on your budget, but the Intel X99 based systems have just been released by most of the motherboard vendors and now support DDR4 memory (higher performance, lower power). If this is going to be something you have long-term, you may want to make that jump now. Of course, that puts you at the bleeding edge cost-wise, so you'll need to make that choice. These systems have 10 SATA IIRC, so expansion shouldn't be an issue. (IIRC most other motherboards are pushing up to ~8 SATA these days anyway.)

Full disclosure: I work for WD and have both HDD and SSD experience. My thought -- get an SSD for your OS/Boot/application drive. Don't go above 256GB (current sweet spot for price/capacity IMHO). Only buy from one of the major brands, as the biggest failure point of an SSD is firmware, and only the biggest guys in the market have the budgets to be able to afford firmware validation test labs that will find the deeper bugs. And *BACK IT UP*. Whether HDD or SSD, I trust nothing to a single drive, so you should be backing up everything.

Sounds like you've got a lot of HDDs around. They're fine for all your bulk data storage needs. Video, music, files, etc, none of this need the performance of an SSD so there's no point to buying a 512GB or 1TB SSD to store stuff that is just going to sit there.

If you have a 256GB SSD for the OS/apps, no need for one as a cache drive. The benefit of caching on anything stored on the HDD in that case just doesn't justify the cost of the SSD. If you think you'll need a file *so* often that you want it that fast, store it on the boot drive.

Also no need to get two SSDs and RAID them. The random performance of an SSD is great enough that even a "slow" SSD is worth it. You reach a point of diminishing returns very quickly. (Perhaps this isn't true if you're a *hardcore* gamer or perform absolutely crazy-intense workloads, but otherwise it is.)

For your RAM question, I think you'll find that most workloads will see a greater bang-for-the-buck improvement in user experience due to the SSD than going to more RAM. Given that a 256GB SSD is running $150-175. I'd do that before even thinking about jumping up to something as crazy-sounding as 32GB RAM.

Oh, and thank you for buying WD

 

[BrewerinBR]

I agree with Homercidal, i5 is good but an i7 is better choice for long term usability. SSD is fast and an excellent choice for boot device and for high usage files. Use SATA for large volume and less used files. DO NOT USE Windows 8, my testing of 8.1 has proven it a much better release, but if you have legal WIN 7 use it and download SP1.

If your doing work with high definition video I suggest the highest end video card with on board CPU ... will certainly improve video performance.

From your description it appears you have multiple users using the same processor or multiple high usage programs running at one time?

Have you ever considered a small server with twin QUAD CORE ZEON's and SSD RAID 0 and running the VMWARE ESX hosting multiple operating systems? You could run an Apple OS for video rendering and a Windows OS for you office type applications, and a LINUX OS for all of the gaming apps...?
Just a thought.

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

The bulk use of our machine is to serve video to multiple Roku video bridges. My son watched a lot of youtube minecraft, my wife shops. I do some Sketchup modeling for a woodworking hobby and we edit photos.

I got tired of hearing my son whine about not having a pc to watch youtube (despite having a Kindle HDX, youtube availability on every tv through roku and through Xbox), blah blah blah.

Ended up buying a $600 HP Envy 700-216. It came with a 2TB Seagate HDD, AMD RadeonHD onboard graphics GPU (6GB), 12GB DDR3 12800 ram, an AMD A10-6700 Quad core processor, and Win8. To this I've installed (2) 750GB WD drives and a 640GB WD HDD, and attached my (2) USB3.0 3TB WD (Buffalo DriveStations).

As luck has it Win8.1 released about the same time and by time I got all my applications installed and figured out where everything is in Win8, Win8.1 was already running. I really like it.

I still do not have a SSD and I am still on the fence about spending the money considering I already have a crapton of storage, this PC will likely never have to reboot except for updates and power outages, and I've never had issues with load times on mechanical drives.

I am still considering it tho'.

One thing I am seriously considering doing, since I already have the hardware, is cloning the OS drive over to the 640GB HDD as the boot drive/recovery drive. And freeing up the 2TB drive for dedicated file storage in a RAID pool.

Good idea, bad idea?

 

[podz]

Nobody buys (or builds) PCs anymore unless they are gamers or building a server. People have moved on to laptops and even moreso iPads and iPhones.

 

[Homercidal]

One thing I am seriously considering doing, since I already have the hardware, is cloning the OS drive over to the 640GB HDD as the boot drive/recovery drive. And freeing up the 2TB drive for dedicated file storage in a RAID pool.

Good idea, bad idea?

I'd consider it. IMO the 2TB is wasted as the OS drive. Nobody needs that much OS space *yet*. The worst part about doing it, is actually doing it.

I'm surprised your kids wants a PC to watch shows. Usually a Kindle is good enough and much more portable.

I am on the fence about an SSD too. I mean, I really want one, I just don't think I need one at this time. We are running out of storage as a household, so I think a new drive is on the agenda, but I may be looking at a 1-2TB backup drive and doing a little drive shuffling to make the wife happy (And get my 2.5" laptop drive out of her computer and back into my spare laptop.)

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

Nobody buys (or builds) PCs anymore unless they are gamers or building a server. People have moved on to laptops and even moreso iPads and iPhones.

I don't like laptops. I just don't. I like having a desktop PC. Mostly because we have a large DVD library of things not found on Netflix/Hulu/Amazon. I use the desktop as a video server. And I just don't trust "the cloud".

We do have a couple tablets (Kindle and a Nook). I refuse to go SmartPhone until life absolutely forces it.

I'd consider it. IMO the 2TB is wasted as the OS drive. Nobody needs that much OS space *yet*. The worst part about doing it, is actually doing it.

I'm surprised your kids wants a PC to watch shows. Usually a Kindle is good enough and much more portable.

I am on the fence about an SSD too. I mean, I really want one, I just don't think I need one at this time. We are running out of storage as a household, so I think a new drive is on the agenda, but I may be looking at a 1-2TB backup drive and doing a little drive shuffling to make the wife happy (And get my 2.5" laptop drive out of her computer and back into my spare laptop.)

Yep. I just see it as a waste to keep that drive as the OS drive considering how many drives I have available to dedicate to storage. As far as the time it takes, I have been keeping that drive as strictly an OS/Programs drive as I have always had plans to switch over to a smaller drive, be it SSD or HDD. So the time to clone should be minimal. Hell, it'll take longer to reformat the 2TB drive after the clone to get it clean and partition free.

The boy is fickle. The Kindle is a great tablet but he likes having his face smushed into the PC screen, and likes the keyboard. Plus watching youtube on the PC means he can play minecraft on teh tablet too.

I really like the idea of getting a SSD but I am spent. This month I've had to replace a refridgerator, and a computer, and evicted a tenant from a investment property. And I am still paying on a home remodel. Ugh.

I think I will wait on the SSD for now.

 

[betarhoalphadelta]

The bulk use of our machine is to serve video to multiple Roku video bridges. My son watched a lot of youtube minecraft, my wife shops. I do some Sketchup modeling for a woodworking hobby and we edit photos.

Have you considered buying a dedicated NAS for the video streaming? You already have the HDDs, so you can just put them in there and that offloads the transcoding from your desktop.

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

Have you considered buying a dedicated NAS for the video streaming? You already have the HDDs, so you can just put them in there and that offloads the transcoding from your desktop.

Not sure I follow. Isn't what you are proposing essentially a secondary PC for a dedicated HTPC? I just don't see the need for that. Acting as a server is the bulk of what this PC is for. The rest comes secondary simply because it is there.