Rate my build... any suggestions?

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ZenDragon

[H]ard|Gawd
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Oct 22, 2000
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It was time for some updating. My old system, though still running strong, was starting to show its age. Dual core black edition kuma 7750, 6gb ddr2 memory, origional 30gb OCZ vertex 30gb SSD and a 150gb raptor, 2TB storage array. Will make a good file server! haha

So just got the new build together over the weekend. The primary goal with this build was just to get something that would give me an upgrade path through individual components without having to buy all new hardware all at once, again. I know I could have waited for bulldozer but the new board is AM3+, and supposedly supports bulldozer with a BIOS upgrade. Though I know I wont be taking advantage of all of the features of bulldozer right away, this should at least give me the option to upgrade in peices. This machine is mainly used for development, running several VMs simultaneously, and the occasional gaming.

Motherboard: MSI 890FXA-GD65
CPU: AMD Phenom II X6 1055T
Memory: CORSAIR Vengeance 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR3 1600
Video Card: MSI R6950 Twin Frozr III PE/OC Radeon HD 6950 2GB
OS Drive: OCZ Vertex 3 120GB SATA III MLC SSD
Program Drive: Momentus XT Solid State Hybrid Drive
Power Supply: XFX Core Edition PRO750W
Monitors: Still using dual 19's @ 1440x900 for the moment, might see some dual 23's in the not so distant future.

Only one thing I regret in hindsight, I should have opted for the MAXIOPS version of the SSD. But honestly Im not THAT much of a perfromance nut that I would notice. Also, yes I know the the momentus xt is a laptop drive, I just wanted to try out the hybrid SSD thing and this seemed to be the only option. Might swap this out for something else and toss this in my laptop if you all think it would be that much of a performace difference. This is primarily just a "Program Files" drive, so I figured I might see some benefit from the SSD storage here.

Anyhow I just wanted to hear what you all think. I know there are plenty of faster (and much more expensive options) but I have already used up my budget for this build. With that in mind, I'm still inside the return window for all of this stuff so if you have any suggestions that are truly worth replacing, without adding extra cost, I would very much appreciate your input.
 
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I would either go sandy bridge or wait to see what bulldozer produces. An x6 right now isn't a good buy.
 
Get the MSI 990fxa,

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1626/1/

it's either out now or in the next few weeks, it will run your 1055t the same as the 890 fxe but it supports bulldozer, probably about $50 more.

That way you can build now and sell your 1055t and upgrade whenever you want.

The 890fxa has a much lower HT speed I think than the 990fxa.
 
bastage said:
I would either go sandy bridge or wait to see what bulldozer produces. An x6 right now isn't a good buy.
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I considered that as well, and though I linked newegg for the processor, I actually got this thing for free (brand new) from a friend so I figured I would build something around this. That unfortunately is the only thing I cannot return! haha So far ive only got about $1000 invested in this build, most of which is the SSD and the video card.
 
matteos said:
Get the MSI 990fxa,

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1626/1/

it's either out now or in the next few weeks, it will run your 1055t the same as the 890 fxe but it supports bulldozer, probably about $50 more.

That way you can build now and sell your 1055t and upgrade whenever you want.

The 890fxa has a much lower HT speed I think than the 990fxa.
Click to expand...

Oh that looks snazzy... hmm might grab that and resell the 890 when it comes out. Thanks for the suggestion. :) The 890 does support bulldozer as well (this one at least), though not at its full potential.
 
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Since you got that X6 for free, then the AMD route wasn't a bad a choice at all.

You defeinitely overspent on the RAM by about $35: You wouldn't have noticed an iota of real world performance difference between that Corsair RAM set and four of this RAM stick:
$40 - G.Skill Ripjaw Series F3-10666CL9S-4GBRL 4GB DDR3 1333 RAM

I personally wouldn't have gone with a OCZ SSD in light of their SSD track records and relatively poor customer support. While yes the OCZ Vertex 3 is a fast SSD, it hasn't been out long enough to fully show that it's a solid SSD in terms of longevity and quality.

The GPU is definitely overkill for 1440x900. So that 23" upgrade better be coming soon (as in a month or two or now). Otherwise, you pretty much wasted money here.
 
Danny Bui said:
Since you got that X6 for free, then the AMD route wasn't a bad a choice at all.

You defeinitely overspent on the RAM by about $35: You wouldn't have noticed an iota of real world performance difference between that Corsair RAM set and four of this RAM stick:
$40 - G.Skill Ripjaw Series F3-10666CL9S-4GBRL 4GB DDR3 1333 RAM
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No doubt about that, honestly the only reason I went with these ones is because I liked the heat spreaders, they match the rest of my case a little better lol :)

Danny Bui said:
I personally wouldn't have gone with a OCZ SSD in light of their SSD track records and relatively poor customer support. While yes the OCZ Vertex 3 is a fast SSD, it hasn't been out long enough to fully show that it's a solid SSD in terms of longevity and quality.
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Interesting point. I guess the question is, have any of them really been around long enough to show longevity and quality? I only use these for my OS drive, all my sensitive data goes into a raid array. Anyhow, the only other SSD I could see in that performance/price range is the Corsair Force Series 3 120gb drive. Do you think that that would have been a better purchase? Any other options that you would suggest?

Danny Bui said:
The GPU is definitely overkill for 1440x900. So that 23" upgrade better be coming soon (as in a month or two or now). Otherwise, you pretty much wasted money here.
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Its on my shopping list :)
 
What do you guys think about those Seagate hybrid drives? Ive read that they have some issues due to over agressive spin up/down settings. Also that they have some issues on intel chipsets? Can anybody attest to that? Like I said I know this was a laptop drive, I bought this thing more out of curiousity than anything and am seriously considering just putting it in my m14x instead. So far however it seems to be performing quite well in my desktop, but do you think I would be better off just getting a 500gb raptor or something? Not really sure where to go with this one.
 
From the reviews that I've read on the Momentus XT hybrid drives, they essentially were not worth the money. Since you already have an SSD, you should stick with a 7200RPM hard drive (ideally, one that uses 500GB drive platters) for your program drive and (possibly) a large capacity 5400-5900RPM "green" drive for storage.

I personally no longer recommend any VelociRaptor drive as they are generally slower compared to SSDs and have a worse price-per-GB than a standard 3.5" HDD.
 
ZenDragon said:
Interesting point. I guess the question is, have any of them really been around long enough to show longevity and quality? I only use these for my OS drive, all my sensitive data goes into a raid array. Anyhow, the only other SSD I could see in that performance/price range is the Corsair Force Series 3 120gb drive. Do you think that that would have been a better purchase? Any other options that you would suggest?
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Well there are good SSDs that have been out for a while now or come from manufacturers with a significantly lower failure rate than OCZ. These include Intel's 320 and 510 series SSDs, Crucial's C300, C400, and m4 series SSDs and Corsair's Performance 3 SSDs. While still using a relatively new Sandforce controller just like the OCZ Vertex 3 SSDs, the Corsair Force Series 3 SSDs are being sold by Corsair, a manufacturer with a better SSD track record, IMO of course, than OCZ.

As for a program drive, I highly recommend this:
$65 - Samsung Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
 
ZenDragon said:
I considered that as well, and though I linked newegg for the processor, I actually got this thing for free (brand new) from a friend so I figured I would build something around this. That unfortunately is the only thing I cannot return! haha So far ive only got about $1000 invested in this build, most of which is the SSD and the video card.
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That said then yea the x6 was an excellent buy & I would have done the AMD build for sure as well..

As for the rest of the components.. The 890fx chipset is tops for sure, but I would have done the ASRock 870 EXTREME3 since the feature set will pretty much match everything of the more expensive 890fx chipset except at a much lower cost. The ram as danny already pointed out wasn't a great buy. That said it doesn't completely suck either (like the dominator used in alot of prelim builds). I Also agree with him on the SSD. I Just sold a OCZ drive (vertex 2) that I got back from RMA when it died after about 6 months. I replaced it with a smaller c300 & the performance difference is immense in favor of the c300. That said even the c300's replacement the m4 is considerable cheaper then the OCZ. As for the Seagate hybrid drive.. well I will just simply said I wouldnt trust it at all.. The Samsung f3 that danny mentioned I will endorce as well. I have 7 Mechanical samsung HDD's running currently (6 in my server & 1 in my desktop) & all have been flawless.
 
Vriess said:
Sandy Bridge or don't upgrade, buy it piece by piece if you have to
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Dude, can you read?

ZenDragon said:
bastage said:
I would either go sandy bridge or wait to see what bulldozer produces. An x6 right now isn't a good buy.
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I considered that as well, and though I linked newegg for the processor, I actually got this thing for free (brand new) from a friend so I figured I would build something around this. That unfortunately is the only thing I cannot return! haha So far ive only got about $1000 invested in this build, most of which is the SSD and the video card.
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The OP is essentially trying to finish up his new build.
 
Thanks for all the suggestions guys, I snagged up a couple of those samsung drives, good price for a 1TB drive! I am going to throw the seagate drive in my HTPC, where Im less concerned with reliability, hoping it will at least help with bootup time there. Was an interesting experiment! lol :)

I do get your points regarding the SSD; I decided to keep it, not worth the hassle and the restocking fee at this point. Though I'm going to put it in my laptop and take you up on your recommendations for one of those other drives for my desktop, which I use quite a bit more and for more important functions, so it maybe worth it for piece of mind. My only question about those other SSD's is; why are the write speeds so considerably slower than the OCZ drive? Obviously just an older controller, but that just seems like a rather huge leap! I guess, its an OS drive the write speeds aren't as crucial here, but difference more than double in most cases.

I thought long and hard about forking out for a sandy bridge build, but I'm hoping bulldozer is at least not too far behind performance wise as that would at least give me an incremental upgrade path from here. I'm an AMD fan if not simply because I want to encourage competition in the market. I may still go to the dark side if bulldozer falls on its face, but for now I'm at least happy with my motherboard choice. And if the only complaint about the ram is that I paid to much, than I can live with that! lol

Honestly so far what I am least impressed with is the video card, getting all kinds of weird anomalies with this card. Could be a driver issue I suppose, but thats part of the product experience as well, and it's not as though I have another choice there. I think Im going to return it and exchange it for a similarly priced nvidia card. Any suggestions in that class/price range?
 
ZenDragon said:
I do get your points regarding the SSD; I decided to keep it, not worth the hassle and the restocking fee at this point. Though I'm going to put it in my laptop and take you up on your recommendations for one of those other drives for my desktop, which I use quite a bit more and for more important functions, so it maybe worth it for piece of mind. My only question about those other SSD's is; why are the write speeds so considerably slower than the OCZ drive? Obviously just an older controller, but that just seems like a rather huge leap! I guess, its an OS drive the write speeds aren't as crucial here, but difference more than double in most cases.
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Several reasons probably:
- It is indeed an older controller and firmware item
- Write speeds aren't the major factor that determine how good a SSD is
- OCZ is trying to capitilize on two simple facts:
a) Most online stores only list the read and write speeds of the SSD
b) Most people aren't going to do their research when it comes to SSDs. They're just gonna compare solely on the listed read and write speeds

The lower price (due to lower quality) and the high write speeds compared to their Intel and Crucial counterparts were initial reason why OCZ's Vertex 2 SSDs sold so well. However, most people can easily tell a performance difference between OCZ's Vertex 2 SSD and Intels and Crucial SSDs despite the lower write speeds.
- The other manufacturers are concern more with longevity and quality rather than acheiving the fastest performance possible but at the cost of longevity and quality. This bit OCZ in the ass with the Vertex 2 SSDs. Hence why I'm not sure if OCZ learned their lesson this time.
ZenDragon said:
Honestly so far what I am least impressed with is the video card, getting all kinds of weird anomalies with this card. Could be a driver issue I suppose, but thats part of the product experience as well, and it's not as though I have another choice there. I think Im going to return it and exchange it for a similarly priced nvidia card. Any suggestions in that class/price range?
Click to expand...

The GTX 570 would be my recommendation as the GTX 560 Ti's performance would be a step down from the 6950.
 
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