Buying a new computer

I know he's not. I was saying that because it is, IMO, the gaming/enthusiast community who puts the newest tech through all the rigors. SSD have solidified their role as boot/OS drives. Prices on them are dropping, getting close to $1.50/gb.Secondly, as far as the sequential times are concerned: this is moot with the advent of SATA3, which yields double the speed the SATA2. I admit that what I proposed was a very rough first draft. It was by no means meant to be an end all be all. I also really like the ROG series. I actually almost picked up a Crosshair IV the other day. I would really say that your only limiting factor in waiting should be price. Good god man! Clean up those cables! You do realize that cable management is far from being only for aesthetic purposes? Good cable management promotes better quality airflow.I'd put some pics of mine up, but it is nowhere near complete. I just got my new chip (phenom II X4 840) and cooler (Cooler Master Hyper 212+). I also just got my RAID built early last week, so I haven't had a chance to do any cable management myself. Having 4 hard drives and a Radeon HD 5770 in an Antec 300 is no small feat lol. You know, come to think of it, I don't really think a layperson should go with a muli hard drive set up because it is a lot of work. I think it is a better idea to just go with a single large drive for regular joe schmoes until NAND comes down in price. I got my first Spinpoint before I got my SSD (this was meant to be a budget build that went waaayyyy over budget) and had Kubuntu on it. It ran great for being a mechanical. It's been so long since I've ran windows on a mechanical of my own that I can't remember. I'm hooked on SSD's.

The Samsung Spinpoint F3 is hands down the best deal for a large mechanical hard drive. It beats the Caviar Blacks and is very often on sale for $49.99, which is how much both of mine were. Caviar Blacks are great hard drives, but they are just too expensive.{abe}
7200 RPM, 32mb cache is what to look for. Sure, the Caviar Blacks are SATA3 compatible, but mechanical hard drives can't even saturate SATA2 yet so it doesn't matter.{abe #2}
Here is a good review done at bit-tech. You'll see how the F3 is not only top tier when it comes to performance, but also one of the cheapest 1tb mechanical hard drives, and IS the cheapest when on sale. Bit-tech review of Spinpoint F3Edited by hooah212002, : No reason given.Edited by hooah212002, : No reason given.

I know you replied to Crash, but I can respond just the same. Nope, that's about it. If you have any sort of IT knowledge, it's not difficult. That depends on how much you want to spend. My SSD is 64gb, which is plenty for Windows, Office and plenty of programs. My games and whatnot go on my RAID array. I've had mine for ~2 weeks: Says I've got 8 years left.What you need to look for with SSD's is what controller they use, as that is the determining factor when it comes to performance and stability.The last generation Intel X series were top of the line when it came to reliability, but lack in performance. The same is true for this year's models.I can safely say, that with firmware updates, any SSD you pick up will last as long, if not longer, than any other piece of hardware.

It's entirely all up to you and what you feel comfortable with. There really is no "average", per se. Some people want 128gb, some want 250. It just depends on how much you want to be able to put on it. Apps and OS...no, it shouldn't. But that depends on what applications you are talking about. If you have games you want on your SSD, I would recommend at the very least 90gb SSD. What you can do is calculate how much space everything takes up now and figure out how big you need your boot drive to be. Definitely. HOWEVER.....they are not, by any means, the end all be all only place to go. Amazon has some good deals as well. I just found a site called superbiiz and they have good prices too, except the shipping sucks lol. I normally do stick with Newegg though.

This is true if you short stroke (explanation of Shrot Stroking further down), but not for SSD's.However, for SSD's the converse is true. Larger SSD's perform better than smaller ones because they have more NAND chips (NAND is the storage tech used in SSD's) to write across. With SSD's, you can think of the NAND chips being in somewhat of a RAID fashion and that is why they are faster than mechanical drives. Yes, except that SSD's no longer lose performance when filled up. They perform just as well having all your programs on them as they would if you had OS only. Actually, no. It depends entirely on what type if disk your are loading the game on.You can also do what is called "short stroke". Short stroking is where you take one hard drive, SSD or mechanical, and create two or more partitions. Generally, you create a smallish partition on the front of the drive for your OS, while leaving the remainder for media nd storage. This will also give you an increase in load times for OS and apps.So, if you do decide to go with a single mechanical, you can do a smallish partition on the front of the drive for OS and apps, say ~100 gb, then another for games, say ~300gb, then the remainder for media and storage of stuff. This, of course, is under the assumption you get at least a 1tb hard drive.Or....you get an SSD and a 1tb. You can do the same ~300gb for games and the rest for media/storage/backups/whatever.I recommend AT LEAST a 60gb SSD if you go that route. However, it really all depends on how well you can manage disk space and how much you want to spend. A good 64gb SSD is going to run around $100 and 128gb around $200, so on and so forth.Here is my hard drive set up:

Modern SSD's have a lifespan of greater than 1 million write cycles. Here is an Anandtech article duscussing SSD lifespan:The Intel X25-M is not even a current model and uses an older controller. Plus, this article is from 2009. Technology increases every year.

Further Samsung defends flash reliability in solid-state drivesIt is difficult to find recent articles because it is pretty well established that they are just as reliable, if not more so, as standard mechanical drives, particularly due to the fact that they do not have any moving parts. And, as stated before, each year controllers get better and wear leveling gets better.

Just to further the point that an i7 isn't worth the extra cost, here is a post over at my other internet home that I just made. I know it's testemonial evidence and that doesn't bode too well around these parts, but it really is the consensus that an i5 is sufficient.I honestly am having a hard time anymore even convincing myself as to why I should stick to AMD, let alone recommend it to anyone other than someone on an EXTREMELY tight budget. The price to performance just isn't there. I've heard tell that an i3 (which is a dual core) can perform just as well as a AMD quad. Plus, there's the whole memory limitation deal.Hopefully with Ivy Bridge, Sandy Bridge comes down in price so I can make the leap.

The memory controller is extremely limited. The RAM I have is rated 1600MHZ, but I'll be damned if I can't get it to run past 1300. I wouldn't have that problem with ANY Intel rig. Some proof at the G-Skill forumsSome at the AMD forumsThis isn't something I think AMD is forthcoming about because if they did, it would be basically admitting defeat and saying they can't compete with Intel. It's more something that has been discovered in the community.

TechReport when the Phenom II came out on AM3: (better than forum posts, no?) That said, it is not impossible, per se, but it IS a bitch to get RAM to run above 1333. The trade off then, it seems, is to underclock and get timings as tight as possible.