My computer build

[KrazeeXXL]

I think it will. 480 GB is a lot for a system drive.

My 120GB is still fine, too. What fills it up quickly are games. I'm not a big gamer and just install what I'm playing or like to play. But what are 50, 60GB today? Iirc the new COD was supposed to need 50 GB alone (I think after the bad press it's like 40 GB now). And that's only one game. In the future, this'll be standard.

Definitely the right decision to grab a 480GB SSD. 256 might sound good, too. But that's the same as 120 GB sounded 2 years ago. May seem enough at first but you'll run out of space quickly. Especially when you like to play a couple of new games every now and then.

Good to see the SSD prices going down. I read an article by Anand from a couple of years ago and he thought about the future of SSDs and the players in the market. He guessed that the major hdd manufacturers would play a big role. A solid prediction but it came otherwise. Since the prices of SSDs are going down, WD and Seagate are kinda forced to move into that market, too. I read a while back, that Seagate has a new technology for bigger drives. So we haven't seen the end of the magneto-optical drives just yet.
But as everywhere else, it's getting harder and harder to come up with something new as things become smaller and push on the edges of the laws of physics.

I can't wait to see affordable 1TB SSDs. We really need that. There's demand. Give it to us!

now!


But seriously. SSDs are among the best things which happened in the computer market since the core2duo was introtuced. Makes me happy to see more and more people using them.

Was about damn time

[thunderchero]

But seriously. SSDs are among the best things which happened in the computer market since the core2duo was introtuced. Makes me happy to see more and more people using them.

while looking at this build I was thinking the next big thing will be to do away with the memory modules, and replacing them with custom ssd's modules or sharing of the ssd for HD and memory in one unit. Could you imagine 128 GB's of memory or more?

Btw, it looks like my build will be slightly delayed psu looks like it will not arrive until late next week or first of the week after. But I will still be able to start assembling other parts mid next week.

thunderchero

[cleverwise]

SSD's are getting closer to RAM but still don't have the transfer rates due to the limited bus, although a new standard coming out will help. SSD PCIe cards are closer right now. Plus SSD's don't have the wear cycle of RAM. So I wouldn't be ready to swap RAM for SSD's yet unless you are doing something like caching ZFS or a file server where things don't change that much. SSDs are great for main system drives, but obviously for things like mass storage (NAS, SANs) etc still need more density.

The biggest thing with SSD's besides the wear cycles is the controller chip/card. I would stay clear of Sandforce controlled drives, other than Intel which edits the controller. Tom's Hardware and others don't rate Sandforce controllers that well; research the controller chips yourself. Marvell is better. OCZ's own controller and Samsung's rate the highest. However with OCZ you still have to becareful as many of their HDDs don't use their own controller chip (which they bought and now Toshiba is buying them). SSD's are known to just quit working because the chip dies and unlike HDDs where often you can get something from a damage drive you are basically hosed on SSD. So key here is BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP and running them in RAID1, RAID5, or RAIDZ (requires ZFS) helps too.

I have heard about that new spindle tech, also, that will allow up to 50TB drives in 3.5" and something like 20TB in 2.5". It is a hybrid with a laser that preheats the surface before the magnetic write. So soon we can buy optical spindle hdds. :-) I am sure companies like Google, Facebook, etc will love those densities.

[KrazeeXXL]

a couple of links for those interested:

new hard drive tech will help Seagate crack 5 TB barrier in 2014 - 20 TB in 2020

the tech is called SMR (shingled magnetic recording)

original source from Seagate here


and here, what cleverwise talked about:

how a laser could make your hard drive 1000 times faster

haven't heard of that yet. Sounds fascinating.

###

About RAM. The concept reminds me of the human brain and the zoning of short and long-term memory.

to the comparison between SSD and RAM: Kinda apples and oranges.

not only are they made for different purposes. The speed differences are blatant.

Whereas a SSD has something like 300-500 MB/s, your 1600 RAM (PC3-12800) has a peak of 12800MB/s. Make this triple-channel and you should have 38400.

[cleverwise]

SSD's can handle the transfer, but the SATA bus right now can't. However a new standard coming out will be putting SATA connections on a dedicated PCIe bus which has a max of almost 32GB. So in the future you could have a system with eight SATA connectors each with a dedicated 32GB bus per dual port. That would actually make it faster than RAM. Right now PCIe SSD cards can do a million IOPS and over 1GB per second.

However the write cycle limit really needs to bumped up as 3K, 5K, even 10K per block isn't much for RAM. Yeah its fine for standard file saving but not the constant changes RAM receives. Enterprise SSD's have 100K writes per block.

[KrazeeXXL]

Speed isn't just determined by the transfer rate of data.

Just think about the access time of RAM which lies withhin nanoseconds, where SSDs are like a couple of thousand times slower (µs).

It'll be interesting to see what the future will bring. Non volatile memory sounds really cool. But this will probably take a couple of years (or a decade) to get to regions when it'll be really able to beat today's RAM.

Still, RAMs biggest weakness is the constant energy flow required to keep data stored. It's just logical to advance over that. Perhaps we'll see some unified memory in the future. One which could be really fast and also used to store mass data. But those are architectural and mostly business choices. Those often don't have in mind what really would be the best. But how something could be exploited over a long period of time.

SSD is a great example for that. And compared to conventional RAM and HDDs, there's still a lot of room for innovation in it. It's exciting to see where this tech is heading. But it's way to early to declare death on stuff which worked successfully for the last decades. There's still life in it. That they come up with some laser tech to speed up HDDs by factor thousand speaks a pretty clear language to me.

We could really benefit from this little competition between conventional HDD manufacturers and the new guys in town. At the end, probably only one league will survive.

[cleverwise]

Yup I agree. Transfer rate doesn't equal access time but it is cool to see they are working on getting fatter pipes to SSDs.

Interesting times in memory.

[KrazeeXXL]

I remember the times when I had a Seagate drive with a size of 120MB. That's as much as modern HDDs transfer per second nowadays. Just imagine that.

Back in the days when CD ROMs for PC were new, I was never able to really enjoy the demo of Rebel Assault as my drive only was single speed. (150kb/s). That sucked so much... You needed at least a double speed drive (300kb/s) to play avi vids without stuttering. I remember another game which I wanted to play but had the same stuttering ofc. I copied the stuff to my hard disk drive and it still wasn't fast enough to play the vids without that stuttering. Imagine that. A transfer rate below 300kb/s for a hard disk drive.

Now, 20 years or so later, we're faster by the factor 500. And that's just for normal spinner hdds. With more advancement in nano techs and everything going 3D and laser and whatnot, it'll be interesting to see where we're heading.

technological singularity ftw!

[cleverwise]

Back in the days when CD ROMs for PC were new, I was never able to really enjoy the demo of Rebel Assault as my drive only was single speed. (150kb/s).

Remember the caching CD drives that would automatically load the disc onto your hard drive? I remember having a double speed with like 650ms access time and thinking I am sitting high. When I bought my first 8x I was like hell yeah!

The first hard drive I used you had to manually park the heads. If you didn't there went your hard drive. When auto parking heads came out that was huge. However I am older than that and I used many systems that had no hdd you had to boot from a floppy to load the OS then swap that out for your application. Oh how far we have come!

[KrazeeXXL]

Remember the caching CD drives that would automatically load the disc onto your hard drive?

Can't remember such a thing tbh.

I remember having a double speed with like 650ms access time and thinking I am sitting high. When I bought my first 8x I was like hell yeah!

yea, the access time was pretty ridiculous. I jumped from double speed to 8x as well. It was amazing. But unfortunately that Goldstar drive didn't last too long. It made weird noices and loading stuff took forever. As a pupil I didn't have the money to replace it for a couple of months. Things were like 200 bucks at the time. :/

Kinda the same what SSDs are now. Iirc the single speed Mitsumi was 400 bucks when it came out. The last DVD-RW drive I bought was 20 or 25 bucks afaik...

The first hard drive I used you had to manually park the heads. If you didn't there went your hard drive. When auto parking heads came out that was huge. However I am older than that and I used many systems that had no hdd you had to boot from a floppy to load the OS then swap that out for your application. Oh how far we have come!

Yea, I remember the times too, when there where no HDDs. I think the first one we had was one 20 or 40 MB for the Amiga 500(+). Huge advancement to before and pretty expensive, too. But that's always the case with new tech in the computer sector. When you want it, you have to pay the premium prize. After a couple of years, it's normal and everyone got it, too.

I remember when I calculated prices per MB...

[cleverwise]

Remember the caching CD drives that would automatically load the disc onto your hard drive?

Can't remember such a thing tbh.

Well those were the supposedly 100x CD-ROM drives. It was a trick as those drives would copy the CD contents to the hard drive. You had to give the CD-ROM drive 650MB of dedicated hdd space. I know I know there are 700MB discs but when these drives were sorta of popular it was 650MB land.

I remember when I calculated prices per MB...

Me too.

[thunderchero]

Hi Everyone,

I am so screwed,

I am going to have to rethink my entire build.

I started assembling adding MB, and cooler.

first problem, mounting cooler the top tank of radiator is to tall to fit in normal mounting holes.

second problem, top exhaust fan might barely fit but will be on or very close to memory latches.

I am about to give up.

Edit; I gave up on using V3 case for new build and had to order new case. I will use v3 case for backup system since it is too late to return it.

thunderchero

[KrazeeXXL]

lets hope it'll fit into the new case. (I hope you did some research)

What did you order?

[thunderchero]

lets hope it'll fit into the new case. (I hope you did some research)

I did as much research as I could do. But my problem is I hate those alien type case. so choices are very limited in black any more.

What did you order?

Cooler master Elite 330U is what I ordered but if it does not work out I will be able to return it to a local store.

http://www.coolermaster.com/case/mid-tower/elite-330u/

I lost the top cool vents (fans would never fit) but gained side cool fans.

thunderchero

[cleverwise]

It is unfortunate about the old case and I hope the new case works out for you!