Upgrade Advice?

[CharlZ]

Hey Guys, I'm planning to upgrade my system and would like some advice on mainly SSD's and HDD's, Il post my system specs and explain what I want to do.

CPU: QuadCore AMD Athlon II X4 640, 3000 MHz (15 x 200)

Motherboard: Asus M5A78L/USB3 (3 PCI, 2 PCI-E x1, 1 PCI-E x16, 4 DDR3 DIMM, Audio, Gigabit LAN)

Chipset: AMD 760G, AMD K10

RAM: Kingston 99U5471-028.A00LF [2x 4GB]
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450 [1 GB]

Primary HDD: Seagate ST3500418AS ATA (500 GB, 7200 RPM, SATA-II)

Secondary HDD: Western Digital WDC WD3200AAKS-00VYA0 ATA (320 GB, 7200 RPM, SATA-II)


I have recently upgraded the CPU, Motherboard and RAM from something a lot worse but I think im ok for now with what I have, I casually game and can run WoW BF3 and things pretty fine with the GPU I currently use though I am wanting to upgrade that in the near future.

Question1
Im wanting to upgrade to a small SSD say a 64GB for the OS only then maybe a 1 or 2 TB Mechanical drive for installing games ect, I have been reading reviews upon reviews about what SSD drive to go for due to reliability and price as for the 2nd HDD I dont really mind, just stuck with deciding which SSD.

Question2
Another thing im wanting to add to my buy list is a "Blackmagic Intensity Shuttle" so that I can record HD Gameplay from mainly an Xbox 360, Ive read that the best thing to do here is to also have a RAID setup of about 4 HDDs for the uncompressed footage, so which HDDs for price and quality should I go for?

Any tips or advice would be much appreciated, I am the kind of person who would like the best of the best, but seeing as though I dont even own an i7 just yet Im open to any suggestions.
Thanks Guys

 

[alpenwasser]

Hi there, and welcome to the forums!

Question 1

The brands on my short list are currently Intel, Samsung, Corsair and Kingston. That's not to say every one of their drives is great or that there aren't any other good options out there, but the market is evolving so fast I just don't have the time to keep myself up to date on all fronts . But if you've read some reviews you should be able to make a good decision. I have yet to hear of any horrible drives being made by one of those manufacturers.

Someone else might be more up to date though and might give you a more accurate recommendation. The last SSDs I bought were an Intel 520 120 GB, and an Intel 330 120 GB. They are excellent drives, but probably not the absolute best you can buy at this point.

One remark regarding size: Where I live, a ~128 GB drive is usually only about 20% more expensive than a ~64 GB drive. I would heavily recommend going for a 120 over a 60 drive. Some people recommend not going below 240, but I personally have no use for that much SSD capacity (or rather: if I went big, I would need around 3 to 4 TB of SSDs). Also keep in mind that larger capacity drives are usually faster than their smaller berthren from the same model range (more memory chips to simultaneously write to/read from).

Naturally, you can best assess your own needs and make the appropriate decision for your situation. If you can use those 20 bucks or so somewhere else, you might not want to go for the larger drive.

As for the HDD for storing games, I'd recommend a Western Digital Caviar Black if you're not going to run it in RAID. They are very fast (for HDDs ) and not laughably expensive.


Question 2

I'm not familiar with what you're trying to do here (I understand the concept, I'm just not familiar with the technical details), so this is a bit tricky for me.

In theory, if you want the best RAID drives money can buy, the Western Digital RE SATA version is probably the best RAID (non-SAS) right now. I have four 2 TB RE4 (the predecessor) in my machine and they are absolutely phenomenal. However, they are ridiculously expensive, to say the least.

If you wish to go for something a bit more reasonable, I can recommend the Western Digital Red drives. I also have a few of those and they have been serving me quite well. They are designed to be run in NAS and RAID so there shouldn't be any issues on that front.

Review 1, Review 2.

However, the Reds are not exactly speed optimized, and I don't know how much performance you'll need for what you want do to. So check the reviews (maybe some others as well) and compare the numbers to your needs.

The Western Digital Caviar Blacks are basically the desktop version of the RE and are similarly fast, however they are not designed for RAID deployment, so if you need more performance than a Red RAID can give you and want to go for the Blacks, I highly recommend reading up on whether there are any hickups/incompatibilities to be expected when trying to run these in RAID.

You will notice I've only listed WD drives. Since having some serious issues with Seagate drives a few years back I switched first to Samsung (excellent drives back in the day) and then to WD, and I've been very happy so far so I haven't switched again.

I'm not necessarily advising you to stay away from Seagate, I'm just saying I don't know enough about their current lineup to say anything about it, good or bad.

As for size, I recommend assessing your needs and keeping an eye on the sweet spot when it comes to capacity/$.


Alternatively,

you might want to look into not running a RAID for doings this, but saving the HD stream to an SSD instead. This would most likely alleviate any performance issues HDDs might carry with them. After you're done, move the data to an HDD for permanent storage (for that, even a Caviar Blue would be adequate imho). I don't know if your usage scenario would allow this, but I thought I'd mention it. In that case, you would need a much larger SSD though. How large is for you to know, I have no idea how much space those streams eat up.

 

[Mark3Max]

Hi CharlZ and welcome to the OC3D forums,
For question 1 , as alpenwasser said , Corsair ,Samsung and Intel are good brands of ssd's . I don't know enough about Kingston to recommend them.
I would recommend at least 120-128gb though because a 64gb will fill up real fast.
My first ssd was a Intel 520 120gb and I thought it filled up fast , but only you will know what you will need depending on the amount of data you plan on storing on it.
The price of ssd's are now dropping to around $1 a gb , depending on the manufacturer , I would say to stick with one of the better brands for reliability and longevity.
For question 2 , I don't know anything about raid or recording game play , so I can't answer that one. I know there are members here more familiar with raid that can help answer that for you.
Again , welcome and enjoy your time here on the forums.