Shifty wants to build a PC. Help!

[Arwin]

Agreed on most counts - I bought my PC with a similar idea as yours: I need a PC for productivity, and being able to run VMWares well and such made the i7 (though I have 3rd gen) a good choice for me. Price difference wasn't that big either.

SSD as windows / most used programs and a second large capacity HDD for data is a huge deal for performance, probably the most important one. 500MB/s read and write is what I get on my 128GB SSD, and then about 100MB/s on the 2TB second drive.

I would recommend Windows 8.1 ... while there may be a few downsides, it's mostly upsides. Being able to access the App Store is a bigger plus than you might think, you get access to the latest DirectX, etc. And it's easier to run an older OS VMWare on a newer OS than vice versa, typically.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Probably a stupid question, but I might as well ask while I'm here. If I buy a Windows 8 disk, I download the update to 8.1, right? Only reason being the Win 8 disk is a few quid cheaper and I had a £605 price tag by shopping around a little more, buying different parts from different places. So the magical under £600 target is maybe possible (without HSF, which perhaps is cheating)

 

[Arwin]

Probably a stupid question, but I might as well ask while I'm here. If I buy a Windows 8 disk, I download the update to 8.1, right? Only reason being the Win 8 disk is a few quid cheaper and I had a £605 price tag by shopping around a little more, buying different parts from different places. So the magical under £600 target is maybe possible (without HSF, which perhaps is cheating)

Yeah 8.1 is a free update (I personally updated two machines), so you should be fine with a Windows 8 disc. Should be able to get an OEM version (obviously, but you never know)

 

[Grall]

Probably a stupid question, but I might as well ask while I'm here. If I buy a Windows 8 disk, I download the update to 8.1, right?

Aye.

And, as a mod and all, you know that there's no stupid questions, right?
Edit: beaten by the flying dutchman by three lousy seconds!

 

[Arwin]

I think that's three lousy minutes ...

 

[Grall]

Ah yes, of course. Except I didn't spend anywhere near three minutes typing up that post! Really weird.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I can splash out on the Win 8.1 disc

i7 4770 - £219.99
ASUS H81-MA - £42.99
Be Quiet L8 - £44.60

Toshiba Q SSD - £77.60
Silverstone SST case - £59.07
Kingston 8 GB RAM dual ported - £49.74
WD 500GB Blue - £39.90
Windows 8.1 - £71.60

total = £598.21

 

[Grall]

Whee. If you dislike coins jingling in your pocket you can go buy yourself a mcdonald's cheeseburger with the change...

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I can splash out on the Win 8.1 disc

i7 4770 - £219.99
ASUS H81-MA - £42.99
Be Quiet L8 - £44.60

Toshiba Q SSD - £77.60
Silverstone SST case - £59.07
Kingston 8 GB RAM dual ported - £49.74
WD 500GB Blue - £39.90
Windows 8.1 - £71.60

total = £598.21

Are you getting the 500 GB HDD based purely on price? 500 GB 3.5" HDD's aren't great value per GB. For 4x the storage space you only have to spend less than 2x the price (for a 7200 RPM drive). For 2x the storage space you have to spend less than 1.25x the price (for a 7200 RPM drive).

Regards,
SB

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I'm getting it because in 5 years I haven't filled up 200 GB of space (and that's leaving loads of WIP files that are no longer needed). I won't fill half of it, which means even though the price per GB is higher than a 1 or 2 TB disk, that's money I save. No point spending an extra £5 on HDD capacity you'll never use. If I ever fill 500 GBs, I can buy the latest new technology to replace it, which'll be organic brain goop or holocubic dimension rifts.

 

[Malo]

Personally I've been really happy buying a larger SSD for the primary drive and placing some games on there. The difference is quite significant for a lot of games.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I'm getting it because in 5 years I haven't filled up 200 GB of space (and that's leaving loads of WIP files that are no longer needed). I won't fill half of it, which means even though the price per GB is higher than a 1 or 2 TB disk, that's money I save. No point spending an extra £5 on HDD capacity you'll never use. If I ever fill 500 GBs, I can buy the latest new technology to replace it, which'll be organic brain goop or holocubic dimension rifts.

Gotcha. I forget sometimes that not everyone does most of their gaming on PC, or collects fan subbed Japanese anime in HD.

Regards,
SB

 

[homerdog]

Shifty, how big of an SSD could you get if you dropped the HDD? Maybe you could get a 240GB SSD which sounds big enough for your needs.

Also on the RAM, what is "Dual Ported" ?

 

[Grall]

I can buy the latest new technology to replace it, which'll be organic brain goop or holocubic dimension rifts.

First the brain goop will become sentient and attempt to wipe us all out, and then demons will start pouring out of the rifts and almost finish the job, until a lone space marine saves those few who remains.

I'd strongly urge you to refrain from buying either tech!

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Shifty, how big of an SSD could you get if you dropped the HDD? Maybe you could get a 240GB SSD which sounds big enough for your needs.

I don't want to wear out the SSD with writes. Call me paranoid, but I think of the SSD as principally for read-only applications and system stuff for speed, and HDD for content and project files

Also on the RAM, what is "Dual Ported" ?

If you get two sticks of the same memory, they can be accessed faster than one stick of larger RAM. You can even get quad ported now. I dunno how much difference it makes but I thought it worth going for.

Can't make any changes now anyway as I've bought the stuff. There were 2 CPUs at eBuyer and I needed the CPU from there to get free P&P. While looking up OS stuff, that dropped to one CPU in stock, so I had to grab it quick! But the stuff from Amazon isn't coming for 2 weeks so it'll be while before I put it all together. I'm in no rush.

 

[homerdog]

I don't want to wear out the SSD with writes. Call me paranoid, but I think of the SSD as principally for read-only applications and system stuff for speed, and HDD for content and project files

Aw shucks, you couldn't kill that SSD if you tried
http://techreport.com/review/25559/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-200tb-update

If you get two sticks of the same memory, they can be accessed faster than one stick of larger RAM. You can even get quad ported now. I dunno how much difference it makes but I thought it worth going for.

Of course. I've always refered to that as "dual channel". It does make a difference as it doubles your effective memory bandwidth - especially if you're rocking integrated graphics

 

[Davros]

I'm getting it because in 5 years I haven't filled up 200 GB of space

The Horror...

I forget sometimes that not everyone does most of their gaming on PC,

The Horror 2.....

 

[zed]

zed what did you upgrade from?

Last one i5-2415M 2.3ghz, before that IIRC e2200 dual core

£71 is good for win8 I got mine for £88.
Also when I booted up last it said do you want to upgrade to 8.1 and a button (goto store) there was no option to say no, so I had to goto the store before I could use the PC!

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Aw shucks, you couldn't kill that SSD if you tried
http://techreport.com/review/25559/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-200tb-update

SSDs aren't as susceptible to wear as I feared then, I guess. Does Windows pagefile still thrash it though? Have we yet managed to get to a Windows using RAM instead of storage for general operation?

Of course. I've always refered to that as "dual channel".

Yeah, I used the wrong term. Dual ported is something else.

As you may notice, I'm not really a PC guy.

 

[Grall]

Does Windows pagefile still thrash it though?

With a decent amount of RAM (you're getting 8GB at least I would expect) the pagefile should not see that much action. Also, writes don't really muck up modern SSDs unless you really write a lot to them and keep them very full. So as long as those two conditions aren't met at the same time you should be in the clear...