My New Computer Upgrades... :D

[Wrend]

Among some of the other somewhat less thrilling components I'm getting to upgrade my computer, I'm getting a Samsung 840 EVO 1TB SSD, and two, yes two EVGA Titan Black Superclocked video cards.

Made the orders earlier tonight, and should be getting the components sometime this next week.

I'm very excited to test these bad boys out, and am looking forward to improved gaming and crunching performance. Will let you guys know how it goes, and maybe offer up a little more competition in the Benchmarks section of this forum.

 

[paulpicks21]

I for one would be very interested to see how they stack up in some of the benchmarks compared to the regular 780s and 780ti's.

I look forward to seeing the results Wrend. Should be a lot of fun for you!

 

[linnemeyerhere]

Do you have that many games that a 1tb SSD at this time was needed? Prices are falling but I see the 1tb really coming down in price in the next year.

 

[Wrend]

I'm not getting the SSD for my games in particular. Just to speed up my computer's reads and writes in general, loading, transferring, and recording files. I also plan on doing more A/V high data rate recording and editing.

As far as prices for 1TB SSDs go, I would hope and imagine that they will continue to drop, but you can only play the waiting game for so long. As there is likely always going to be higher performing and less expensive technology just around the corner, you'll be waiting indefinitely if you're always waiting for that next new thing. I've been waiting on getting this SSD in particular for almost a year now, since even before it launched. At $450.00 (USD) the price is low enough to make it worth my while and include it in this computer upgrade I'm doing.

Likewise, I'll be using the video cards for more than gaming. For just gaming, I might have gone for the EVGA 780 Ti Superclocked cards instead. For gaming, the Titan Blacks are a waste of money (no need to even look at cost effectiveness), plain and simple, as they offer no significant advantage (unless, maybe you're using a very high resolution multi-monitor setup, which I'm not).

What blows my mind though is the Titan Z, which, provided you have more than 1 available PCIe port on your computer, there are no advantages in getting it over 2 Titan Blacks (and actually, there are some disadvantages, such as heat/throttling/clock rates and total available PCIe bandwidth), and it costs $1,000 more than 2 Titan Blacks. (Has Nvidia gone mad?!) For an extended version of my mini-rant on the Titan Z, here is a link to a post I made on EVGA's announcement thread for it: http://forums.evga.com/FindPost/2175647

Anyway, might post some pics in here of the goods when they arrive. I'm getting a few other things as well, such as a Miracast receiver to display and possibly record my phone's screen wirelessly. I can already do this with SlimPort, but not wirelessly. I'm also getting a pass-through HDMI recorder/capture card and a Corsair H80i cooler for my CPU.

 

[Wrend]

Shipment of additional components has arrived. Haven't gotten around to installing them yet. (Trying to find the least painful and most effective way of copying over my HDD to my new SSD, possibly after I offload my media).

Took the liberty of updating My System Specs though... Counting my chickens before the chicks have grown, or something like that.

 

[Layback Bear]

Wrend this tutorial by whs might be helpful.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/149969-ssd-install-transfer-operating-system.html

 

[Wrend]

Looking pretty good. Case is a bit on the small side though, at least seems that way.

Will probably pick up a sharper looking SLI bridge from EVGA before too long.



The H80i is doing a great job. 4.6GHz, fully loaded. Should be able to push to over 5GHz without too much difficulty...



Trying to find a nice stable OC on the cards now...

 

[Wrend]

This seems about as high as I can safely push the GPUs on the Titan Blacks while keeping them stable in SLI. Not too shabby, but might not get me the high score on the Unigine Heaven benchmark scoreboard here. I'll likely be able to get the 3DMark Fire Strike top score though.

 

[paulpicks21]

Looks very nice Wrend. It certainly looks like a tight fit for everything lol.

 

[badger906]

I think you need a new case!! all that power and expense just to be shoved in a small case!!

get yourself a corsair air 540! let them breaaaaath!

 

[Wrend]

I think you need a new case!! all that power and expense just to be shoved in a small case!!

get yourself a corsair air 540! let them breaaaaath!

The case I have is decent, and it gets a lot of air flow through it with all the fans I have on it. But yeah, I hear you. I'll likely look into getting a new one soon. Would be nice for cable routing too.

 

[paulpicks21]

I have the opposite problem Wrend. My case looks kind of empty. I think I need 2nd card to fill it out a bit lol

Windows 7 Help Forums - paulpicks21's Album: My Rig - Picture

 

[badger906]

heres mine pre gpu upgrade



but theres just tonnes of room. mines still betting for a water loop!
imagine yours added performance underwater!!

 

[Wrend]

Nice setups guys. If I had open room on the top like that, I'd have to get something like the H100i for the CPU. Never ending cycle, I suppose.

Heh, maybe I should just do a custom liquid nitrogen setup and be done with it. (Might be able to get a better OC than Paul then, maybe.)

Hey Paul. Yeah, a second 780 and a Samsung SSD with rapid mode might do you justice.

But at the same time, there's no real sense in getting something you don't really need and wouldn't make much use of, if that's the case. Still, it's fun to test these things out.

 

[badger906]

you can nevet have enough SSDs!! ive got 4 nestled in the back of my rig and im still short on space! admittedly mine only add up to 1tb so the same size as your current one, but I still look at new ones when theyre cheap!

 

[paulpicks21]

Nice setups guys. If I had open room on the top like that, I'd have to get something like the H100i for the CPU. Never ending cycle, I suppose.

Heh, maybe I should just do a custom liquid nitrogen setup and be done with it. (Might be able to get a better OC than Paul then, maybe.)

Hey Paul. Yeah, a second 780 and a Samsung SSD with rapid mode might do you justice.

But at the same time, there's no real sense in getting something you don't really need and wouldn't make much use of, if that's the case. Still, it's fun to test these things out.

Well it's funny you mention it Wrend, I have been looking to get a bigger SSD for the last few weeks now. I am kind of torn between the Crucial MX100 512GB for £150 or the 500GB Samsung EVO for £170. I figure the extra £20 to beat you in Passmark could be worth it haha!

And the next upgrade I have planned after that is the cooling. I really want the new NZXT Kraken X61. It is supposed to be the best!. It has 140mm fans and I could mount 4 on it in my case. I think I will have one within 3 months. It's so new right now I can't get it in the UK. But the plan is the SSD in the next 4 weeks and then the cooler within 8 weeks after that.

Here's a link to the cooler - Kraken? X61 - NZXT

 

[Wrend]

...

Haha... Yeah, after all that OCing you've done, I think you've earned the top score in the PassMark benchmark anyway.

Something to keep in mind with the Samsung 840 EVOs, the larger the capacity the better performance you'll tend to get from them since they use a somewhat proportional amount of capacity (inconsequential to their rated capacity) converted from TLC to SLC (32GB to 12GB on the 1TB drive) that is used as a kind of additional internal cache on the drive itself. Unless you're able to fill up that cache while it is being offloaded, you'll see the higher performing SLC speeds. The TLC speeds are still pretty decent from what I can see, but they aren't at the current high-end performance levels. I don't think I'll be able to fill up the 12GB of SLC cache on my drive in routine daily use, especially since it's going to be faster than anything else I'm reading/writing to (excluding RAM).

Might be something you want to look into more if you're looking at picking up one of the 840 EVOs. I'm not quite sure about the specific breakdown levels for this SLC cache off hand. Either way, as far as I can see, they're great performers in both benchmarks and real world use.

That cooler looks like a nice performer. I'm a fan of NZXT too. The "solid state" heat sink I used from them previously (the HAVIK 120) worked quite well.

 

[Wrend]

Oh, and some more great news: It looks like I can still make use of Windows SuperFetch with my new SSD system drive.

The CPU load you see is my normal background load (in addition to my GPU loads) which I donate to scientific research. If you're curious about it, feel free to check out the link in my signature (I'm ranked fairly high up in the world's standing for a couple of these) and google the various projects at your leisure.

I also host a couple servers on this computer (the users of which are getting a little put off since I've had them down for these upgrades and system stability tests - but I provide them the services free of charge, so they can manage).

This is in addition to my normal home entertainment and general computer usage needs, such as gaming, watching Netflix and YouTube, chatting on forums, a little media editing here and there, and maybe a little work.

 

[Wrend]

Just for a bit of fun, here are my CrystalDiskMark results for my internal HDD, SSD, and RAM drive. All are NTFS formatted. It's interesting to note that the RAM drive (while not nearly as fast as my raw RAM speed, which is around roughly 38GB/s) is still much faster than the SSD which has RAPID Mode (Samsung's proprietary SSD caching in RAM scheme) enabled.

Normally I use the RAM drive for hosting a couple servers' data.

 

[Wrend]

New Case, CPU Cooler, & Fans!

I posted info on this already in the "Show Us Your Rig" thread, but thought it fitting to follow up and add it in here as well since I had previously discussed upgrading some of these components in this thread.

So, the long and the short of it:

Last weekend I switched out my old case for a Corsair Obsidian 750D, the Corsair H80i for a Corsair H110, and am now using all NOCTUA NF-A14 industrialPPC-3000 PWM fans with the new case and radiator (5 in total).

Wow, such a difference from the old setup now that I look at its pic earlier in this thread again.