Homebuilt CPU upgrade advice appreciated

[MADe]

I use a 30 GB SSD for a puter. OS and Drivers only, XP Pro 32 bit. Works great, plenty room.
But to each his own. The OS is the brain, better it works..............

[MrRiplEy[H]]

I use a 30 GB SSD for a puter. OS and Drivers only, XP Pro 32 bit. Works great, plenty room.
But to each his own. The OS is the brain, better it works..............

Ok, that's actually a second problem. Windows XP is not designed for SSD use and it lacks necessary features (TRIM support etc) required to make the SSD work properly. XP does indeed fit easily to 30Gb but then again it's not a suitable OS for SSDs.

Using the SSD with XP is going to shorten its lifespan and degrade its speed very fast. Write operations will be as slow as some laptop hdd

[Denniss]

No problem with XP and SSD, both sector orientation of a partition and Trim should be overcome by SSD manufacturer's software. But I agree, 30GB is far too small and 60GB acceptable if you only have the OS and standard program loaded on the SSD. 128Gb should be minimum.

And a tip - ovoid OCZ SSD, they are not really known to be reliable over the long run, they are only top in the drive return rate for warranty.

[MADe]

I use OCZ vertex's, I have 8 of them. Many years old, only 1 has failed, this was recently.

OCZ firmware has garbage collection, GC. TRIM not needed. SSD works great with XP.
Ripley you are full of absolutes.
The op wants to spend less and get more. 1000 ways to get there. My suggestions, I currently use. They are not opinions.
30GB OCZ Vertex SSD, $80. read/write speed, 230Mb/s/175Mb/s???
Only OS and drivers!, will get more peformance than a 1 TB spin drive. Granted, you do want SSD performance for all applications, so you want apps on the SSD, but your on a budget.

OP its not that expensive for SSD. Just keep it simple and stay away from the current releases. Ultimately it about how you use your machine. Some AH and a little web surfing, or heavy intensive application editing.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

I use OCZ vertex's, I have 8 of them. Many years old, only 1 has failed, this was recently.

OCZ firmware has garbage collection, GC. TRIM not needed. SSD works great with XP.
Ripley you are full of absolutes.
The op wants to spend less and get more. 1000 ways to get there. My suggestions, I currently use. They are not opinions.
30GB OCZ Vertex SSD, $80. read/write speed, 230Mb/s/175Mb/s???
Only OS and drivers!, will get more peformance than a 1 TB spin drive. Granted, you do want SSD performance for all applications, so you want apps on the SSD, but your on a budget.

OP its not that expensive for SSD. Just keep it simple and stay away from the current releases. Ultimately it about how you use your machine. Some AH and a little web surfing, or heavy intensive application editing.

It's not only trim, XP doesn't make automatic optimizations for SSD like Win7/8 do. Using XP and SSD _will_ wear the SSD down faster. The problem is worse when the SSD is small and the overprovisioning space is limited. There are often huge performance differences between different SSD sizes of the same model even if we leave OS out of the picture.

[TequilaChaser]

After some further tweaking, this is the current upgrade list ~

Intel Core i5-3570K Ivy bridge 3.4 GHz $219.99
G.Skill Ripjaws X Series (2 x 4 GB 240 pin DDR3 - $79.99
Asus P8Z77 LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb's USB 3.0 ATX Intel MOBO - $134.99
Seagate Constellation I TB 7200 SATA - $114.99 (budget cut from SSD)
Sapphire Radeon  7850-OC 2 GB - $185.99
Cooler Master Hyper 212 - $36.99

Total cost $772.94

Assume I have to do a clean install of Win7?

Opinions?  Thanks for all the help & suggestions. You guys rock 

Good morning Max,
Just a few questions , Sir...
* have you ordered your pc parts yet?
* I am assuming you are going to use your existing Antec 900 case, correct?
* are you still on the old mail list? if so, I'll email you my thoughts/ideas/suggestions/and reasoning

Also, is there any specific reason you rather use that listed Seagate HDD, over using a WD caviler black model???

Cheers

TC

[MADe]

It's not only trim, XP doesn't make automatic optimizations for SSD like Win7/8 do. Using XP and SSD _will_ wear the SSD down faster. The problem is worse when the SSD is small and the overprovisioning space is limited. There are often huge performance differences between different SSD sizes of the same model even if we leave OS out of the picture.

and yet, mine works fine. SSD runs on XP as well as on W7 equally well. hmmmmmmmm. Proper installation is required for any piece of hardware. Something does not have to be automatic to be of use.

OP,
do the research, make sure your hardware choices will work with each other, see the QVL for mobo. Update mobo firmware before OS install. Enjoy the new goodies. The new boards use QPI, so set ups are a little different from pre X58 mobos.
S

[Mano]

Set up is fine.  I would get a SSD like OCZ's latest. Prices are just over a dollar a gig now. Before installing set your mobo to AHCI mode in the storage section and Win7 will boot up in 15 seconds. No kidding. Fresh install required no way around that. A 240 Gig SSD is all you need. Apps on the SSD open instantly. You'd be surprised how quickly AH opens. I only have iTunes, AH, and my OS on my first SSD.

Win 7 64 bit is also a better option. It can see as much ram as the mobo allows.

 

[MADe]

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00A9YQPME/cupcre06-20

I ran across this looking for other info.
Great prices now. 500Mb/s reads.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

and yet, mine works fine. SSD runs on XP as well as on W7 equally well. hmmmmmmmm. Proper installation is required for any piece of hardware. Something does not have to be automatic to be of use.

OP,
do the research, make sure your hardware choices will work with each other, see the QVL for mobo. Update mobo firmware before OS install. Enjoy the new goodies. The new boards use QPI, so set ups are a little different from pre X58 mobos.
S

Define 'runs well'. Does it 'run well' if it dies prematurely 1 or 2 years from now? Does it run well if it benchmarks at 20% the rated speed at the moment? Have you benchmarked your drive to see how much it has degraded?

[MADe]

Define 'runs well'. Does it 'run well' if it dies prematurely 1 or 2 years from now? Does it run well if it benchmarks at 20% the rated speed at the moment? Have you benchmarked your drive to see how much it has degraded?

Does what its suppose to do.
Its well past the 2 year mark.
You sir are a bummer. You act as if your word is law, it is not.
Buy the right product, install it correctly and walla, enjoyment.
Maybe your an industry professional, I do not know. I am not and yet I am using the equipment as I described. I do not baby the drives and I have only had 1 of 8 fail, and I bet a destructive FW flash will bring it back. Been over 4 years now. I even use the XP machine with GIMP, edit a lot. I use it as a bench machine as well to keep up with my game machine. Way too many people use SSD's with XP for your statements to be a concern.
Yes, W7 was coded with SSD's in mind. XP was not, considering it was coded way before SSD's were available to the masses, but so what. The reads and writes happen the same way with either OS, they are more the same than not. W7 is coded to make install of SSD easier but thats it, I use both, have installed with both W7 and XP. TRIM is unnecessary because the SSD FW handles maintenance by it self. You cannot even use TRIM when you RAID SSD's. When the XP SSD drive fails, I will lose the OS only, all else is on other drives. I will then use another small SSD and re-install the XP OS and move on.
It will cost me less than the 1st SSD purchase, to boot.
An SSD will not run AH better than a spinner. I will load faster but thats it. Pagefile use will be faster but who can really tell the diff. The SSD will however make other computer things nicer. It will work with the modern rams, vid cards and such, speeding up browsing and other apps. Why use a mobo with a 6GB/s SATA headers with a spin drive that cannot come close to using the pipe available.
The OS is the foundation for all that comes after. Giving the OS its best working environment is the battle. All apps work inside the OS. The OS works with the hardware provided. Its a no brainer.
But to each his own. I know it works, and any test or benchmark of an SSD will surpass that of a spinner.
The op wanted options, I tried to offer some.

[Mano]

I benchmarked my hard drives.......I get the numbers advertised. There are several benchmark apps for free at pcworld and cnet. Take your pick.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Does what its suppose to do.
Its well past the 2 year mark.
You sir are a bummer. You act as if your word is law, it is not.
Buy the right product, install it correctly and walla, enjoyment.
Maybe your an industry professional, I do not know. I am not and yet I am using the equipment as I described. I do not baby the drives and I have only had 1 of 8 fail, and I bet a destructive FW flash will bring it back. Been over 4 years now. I even use the XP machine with GIMP, edit a lot. I use it as a bench machine as well to keep up with my game machine. Way too many people use SSD's with XP for your statements to be a concern.
Yes, W7 was coded with SSD's in mind. XP was not, considering it was coded way before SSD's were available to the masses, but so what. The reads and writes happen the same way with either OS, they are more the same than not. W7 is coded to make install of SSD easier but thats it, I use both, have installed with both W7 and XP. TRIM is unnecessary because the SSD FW handles maintenance by it self. You cannot even use TRIM when you RAID SSD's. When the XP SSD drive fails, I will lose the OS only, all else is on other drives. I will then use another small SSD and re-install the XP OS and move on.
It will cost me less than the 1st SSD purchase, to boot.
An SSD will not run AH better than a spinner. I will load faster but thats it. Pagefile use will be faster but who can really tell the diff. The SSD will however make other computer things nicer. It will work with the modern rams, vid cards and such, speeding up browsing and other apps. Why use a mobo with a 6GB/s SATA headers with a spin drive that cannot come close to using the pipe available.
The OS is the foundation for all that comes after. Giving the OS its best working environment is the battle. All apps work inside the OS. The OS works with the hardware provided. Its a no brainer.
But to each his own. I know it works, and any test or benchmark of an SSD will surpass that of a spinner.
The op wanted options, I tried to offer some.

My 5400rpm laptop harddrive does what it's supposed to. But if I benchmark it I can see it doesn't perform very good. You have to realize that if you don't treat the SSD properly it will use up all it's fresh blocks for writing and then write performance will collapse badly. The problem is especially affecting smaller drive capacities.

I'm just saying that you could have planned the SSD setup better by doing some research in advance.