Worth it to upgrade?

D

DrexelDragon

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 16, 2012
Messages
193
Hey all,

I currently have a Corsair TX 650 running my system. I have an i5-3570k, 670 SLI and one SSD and a regular HDD running off of it. I'm thinking about upgrading the power supply so I can get one or more new SSDs or HDDs. I actually don't think it has enough connections that will reach to power them anyway because I have a large case (Thor V2). Could you guys recommend a PSU that has enough long cables to reach? Thanks!

Also, do you guys think it would be worth it to upgrade my storage devices as well? I have my OS running on a 128 GB Samsung 830 and my programs mostly installed on an old 320 GB HDD. If so, what is the best of the best in each category?
 
Samsung 840 or Corsair Neutron GTX and the new caviar blue 1tb EZEX(single platter) Caviar Blue is not the fastest mechanical drive out there no, but it is still quite fast overall considering they are not that expensive, they are among the fastest in their category(general usage)

My Corsair HX 750 has reasonably long cables, have it in my raven 3 and I have lots of leftover slack that I cannot get rid of :p

Silverstone, Antec maybe should have decently long cabling due to the cases both of them make, otherwise if you feel crafty make some "cuts" in the case or do some wire extension mods to get the cables where you need them?
 
Why do you have your programs on your HD instead of your SSD? They'll start much faster on the SSD. The Samsung 830 is a fast and reliable SSD. Are there faster SSD's, yes. Would it be worth it to upgrade simply for speed, no (unless you need larger size for install of games). If you need a larger SSD, I would look at the newer Crucial M500 series. Pay attention to the IOPS and Sequential R/W or each size. The larger the SSD, the faster they are.

On sale
Crucial M500 480gb SSD- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=20-148-695&ParentOnly=1&IsVirtualParent=1

You need to decide how many new drives you're going to add (now & later), and any other possible peripherals, to make a decision on what size (wattage) PSU you need. Larger is better for future proofing.

I have both the Corsair HX750w and Seasonic Platinum 860w. I would recommend both as reliable with plenty of long modular cables. The Seasonic is fully modular, the Corsair is semi-modular.

On Sale
Corsair- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139010
Seasonic- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...1&Tpk=SeaSonic Platinum 860&IsVirtualParent=1

Since you run SLI, I would probably lean toward the Seasonic because of wattage. Google "power supply calculator" to check your PSU size needs, then add 100w.

Always remember, the most important part in your computer is the PSU. Don't skimp...

Just my two cents.....
 
HX750 is plenty powerfull, it can handle dual 480 with a heavily clocked i7 950 so it can handle near everything you can throw at it, granted seasonic platinum is higher caliber as well it should be, the one can be gold rated the other is platinum rated with 860 sustained other is 800 or so sustained.

Crucial M500 are decent but do not forget they are not enthusiast ended the ones I mentioned are, 840 raw performance, Neutron GTX and Crucial M4 are rounded performance, in most things the M500 happens to be slower on average then the M4/830 seemingly due to their choice of using the 20nm flash which has less endurance, M500 was and will be the lower cost alternative to the higher performing SSD that are out there, even the Agaility 3 is a decent drive considering its specs and price where it can be found.

Not all programs benefit from SSD, some are fine to be on mechanical, unless you happen to have gotten a great deal on a 512gb ssd for like $250 or so, 256gb SSD are best price/performance generally speaking, most of us cannot afford to shell out like $250 for a hard drive of any sort though :p

But am in agreement, any modern SSD if you swap it and go to a different one the speed boost will be next to impossible to notice.

All SSD generally speaking are better at certain things then they are at others, better they keep the speed they have over long periods of time with heavy use then to have one be wicked fast but lose that speed in a short time by being to aggressive with the cleaning routines, generally its a tradeoff for performance/endurance between raw speed on an empty drive or still great speed on a full one(not advised)

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-recommendation-benchmark,3269-6.html
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6884/crucial-micron-m500-review-960gb-480gb-240gb-120gb/10
over all the sites I have been in most things SSD in this order currently obviously it depends on how they are being used, the M500 is basically M4 performance made less expensive(supposed to be but is new)
OCZ Vector and Revo Drive 3 pci-e ssd
Samsung 840 Pro
Corsair Neutron GTX
Samsung 840
Corsair Neutron
Plextor M5 Pro
Crucial M500/Crucial M4
Samsung 830, Corsair Force Series GT etc
 
Thanks for the responses guys, sorry I took so long to answer back I've been super busy.

I install most programs on my HDD so I don't take up space on the SSD. Games and programs I use most I install on the SSD and remove them when I'm done with them in order to keep the drive clutter free.

I think I am going to go with the Seasonic Platinum and am still deciding if I want another SSD or if I want a large capacity HDD. If I get another SSD do you think I should RAID it or what?
 
not many drives deal well with RAID some of them do just fine cause everything works the way it needs to, garbage collection and trim, some however by RAID it loses these and that is not good.

I would have them both as single drives, and keep one specific for games if you go the other SSD route, not to mention the speed increase will be nearly imperceptible maybe a bit in some places.

I will not comment on paying a premium for a platinum rated power supply, 80+-bronze-silver are small bumps, silver-gold is usually a fair premium, gold-platinum is usually also another jump of course, but it is your $ afterall :)
 
dragonstongue said:
not many drives deal well with RAID some of them do just fine cause everything works the way it needs to, garbage collection and trim, some however by RAID it loses these and that is not good.

I would have them both as single drives, and keep one specific for games if you go the other SSD route, not to mention the speed increase will be nearly imperceptible maybe a bit in some places.

I will not comment on paying a premium for a platinum rated power supply, 80+-bronze-silver are small bumps, silver-gold is usually a fair premium, gold-platinum is usually also another jump of course, but it is your $ afterall :)
Click to expand...

Yeah I probably won't RAID it. I think I'm just going to get a nice large capacity HDD b/c my current SSD is fine for now. Do you know of any programs that I can use to move all my installed programs from my old HDD to the new one I'm getting?
 
Acronis or similar to "clone" the drive. Myself I just manually moved over what I wanted to keep as last time I did a proper clone I lost some things cause stuff didn't get registered properly in the OS, so I had to reinstall most everything anyways :(

How large of a HDD? the new caviar blue line from western digital is excellent performers. I have a 1tb EALX model and its fast, the newest models are EZEX are 1tb per platter and faster still, though if you want the warranty or larger then this you need to go with Caviar green(I wouldn't if you want performance) or Caviar black(expensive, better warranty, and larger, but not much faster in real world then most of the newer blue drives)

There is numerous programs to do cloning if you want or need to do this, here is a few.
Acronis
Norton Ghost
Clonezilla
Easeus backup
 
Do not upgrade your PSU. Hdds and ssds require very little power, and if the TX can reach your current hdds it can reach some a cm below.
 
dragonstongue said:
Acronis or similar to "clone" the drive. Myself I just manually moved over what I wanted to keep as last time I did a proper clone I lost some things cause stuff didn't get registered properly in the OS, so I had to reinstall most everything anyways :(

How large of a HDD? the new caviar blue line from western digital is excellent performers. I have a 1tb EALX model and its fast, the newest models are EZEX are 1tb per platter and faster still, though if you want the warranty or larger then this you need to go with Caviar green(I wouldn't if you want performance) or Caviar black(expensive, better warranty, and larger, but not much faster in real world then most of the newer blue drives)

There is numerous programs to do cloning if you want or need to do this, here is a few.
Acronis
Norton Ghost
Clonezilla
Easeus backup
Click to expand...

I went with the 2 TB Caviar Black. Yeah I figured I'd have to clone. I might just uninistall and reinstall; takes more time but it's cleaner. Plus it'll give me a chance to clear out old stuff I'm not using :p
 
PCunicorn said:
Do not upgrade your PSU. Hdds and ssds require very little power, and if the TX can reach your current hdds it can reach some a cm below.
Click to expand...

I had to. The TX barely reaches my SSD and HDD at the same time. I had to have one all the way at the bottom and the other at the top of the cage because of the strange cable position. I have a big case so I couldn't fit anymore HDDs or SSDs without upgrading the PSU. Plus, I couldn't even fit any 5.25/3.5" drives up top because the cables wouldn't reach lol
 
you can easily get extensions, I do not recommend their use for graphics card power, but hardrives and the like use far less power so I think they are reasonably safe.

2tb caviar black being the sata 3/sata 6gb model FAEX is model name, or FASS is other model but I believe this one is slower and uses sata 2 not 3, not much difference, but the FAEX is faster and slight optimized.

Yeh cleaning and reinstalling sux, but it gives you time to create partitions and such to better organize as well as to get the right "zones" for keeping the drive fast for certain tasks where you need the best speed.

partitionwizard home edition is what I use as well as HDtune to find the best speed zones. More then 1 harddrive I also have a paging file per drive, it does help the performance department.
 
It's the FAEX version, SATA III.

And I didn't even know HDDs had speed zones lol I'll have to use the tool you mentioned and check that out haha
 
:p its not really speed zones bad term. Sectors or portions of the harddrive. generally the leading edge of the disc is the fastest, so when making partitions you usually make the partitions according to size of the various sections that tend to be fast to slow.

For example.
my caviar black 640 from 0-~54gb is the fastest section of the drive, so I made a partition here for the paging file, I made the size 20gb which is way more then needed, but gives room for the expansion of the page file
70-180gb or so was the next fastest section I made this 150gb for my most used games and more important stuff
190-380gb was the next fastest I called this games 2 I use this for my drivers, movies, music, excess games and such that do not require quite as much speed I made this 200gb
last partition was OS junk which is really all the extra stuff that rarely if ever is used I made this 125gb
I left the rest unused as this overall was the slowest portions of the drive
so of 620gb if I recall I have partitioned 4 partitions of a total ~495gb addressed and usable.

They call this short stroking as the sections have a certain speed in their use, so if you make the partitions more or less a match for the speed you have found out through HDtune or the like, the read head is moving very little if any its just reading or writing as needed so is therefore much faster. By doing stuff like this you can make slower drives act as faster drives, when it comes to defragging or cleaning it is also a lot faster as stuff is not moving around the whole entire harddrive it is just staying in its little "cabinet" Sometimes this can actually make for example caviar blue 1tb aals becomes faster then caviar black 640, caviar black 640 approaches speeds of a velociraptor, though some drives like the mentioned Vraptor do not gain any real benefit from doing this, they can only read so fast to begin with. Caviar black really do benefit from this, the dual chip they have allows read and writing at the same time, so it can buffer more to its cache and for example use paging file and access game section at same time without losing much of its performance, I would pull up the info if you wanted, but suffice to say, it makes a difference, depending on the drive in question.

hope this makes sence, I know some do not bother, I have been doing this for quite awhile, it makes a very noticeable difference for mechanical drives in many ways.
 
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