Starting to look at bits for my brother as he's wanted a PC for a while. I built mine with a i5 3570k a few years ago and it's been great. Thinking of the following bits for him:

• Asus X99 Deluxe Motherboard - DDR4 compatible, and LGA 2011V3 socket type.
• 32gb of DDR4 RAM, still looking into speeds.
• I7-5930K CPU @ 3.70Ghz 6 core.
• Case will be an Antec 1200 like mine purely because it's huge and easy to keep cool.
• 2x 2TB drives in a RAID config for backup.

What I'm undecided on is a graphics card and what SSD type to do. This board supports M.2 SSD's so faster than the standard SATA connection. But reading up on it, it maybe a fiddle to install an OS on one? Anyone installed on before?

 

 

I have a MSI GTX 970 4Gb GFX card installed in my machine. 

 

It's total overkill for what I use it for, as I hardly play games & I only use it occasionally for watching Blu-rays. Just be aware that it's a RPITA to setup, but once done, it's seriously great as I did some graphical tests on it and it's worth it.

 

I have a Samsung 500Gb EVO SSD installed for my Windows 10 installation (via upgrade), it boots Win 10 Pro up in about 15-20s, in addition to that I have two 2Tb mechanical HDDs but they're separate entities in their own right, I've never fancied setting up RAID or the intrinsic hazards of it, so they're separate, but the contents are similar.

 

Installing Windows 10 via either optical media or USB drive onto a SSD is simple, it's just a case of telling the BIOS to look for the medium that you're installing from, just remember to have your licence key handy, if you're using a retail copy of Windows 10 or whatever OS you're using.

 

I have two Pioneer BDXL drives installed to allow me to burn & read most types of optical media. A multicard reader lives in the floppy drive slot & a Soundblaster Z sound card provides the audio output to my speakers.

Edited 28 November, 201510 yr by TheWanderer

Amazon has/had spome cracking deals on SSDs. Tb SSDs for under £150 and 240Gb for ~ £40.

I know how to setup a normal SSD drive as that connects to a normal SATA port and away you go. I'm on about one of these:

You are better off asking on a tech forum like Toms Hardware, or asking Asus directly; I know what a M.2 is, and I even know about its faster cousin, but I dont know if it is detected as a bootable drive by the BIOS.

 

TBA it is a bit of a gimmick originally meant for servers, and completely OTT for anyone using one in a PC.

You are better off asking on a tech forum like Toms Hardware, or asking Asus directly; I know what a M.2 is, and I even know about its faster cousin, but I dont know if it is detected as a bootable drive by the BIOS.

 

TBA it is a bit of a gimmick originally meant for servers, and completely OTT for anyone using one in a PC.

 

A lot of laptops have them as they don't take up as much room.

M2 sata comes in two forms; two at least. One is a marked step up in performance on paper. From what I've read as I was about to do a similar build, a bit depends on the bios and a lot depends if you're trying to dual boot operating systems. I wasn't as nowadays and certainly the above spec, could easily run any os in virtualisation.

 

Socket 2011 is good, expensive motherboards, but supported out into the next chip cycle. I was looking at the asus x99 too, maybe the sabertooth...I was going down the silent/quiet air path.

 

Alot depends on your use case, most games today won't use multicore cpu's effectively. If you're doing 3d render, video, music, photoshop stuff that can use cores and threads then the 2011 x99 is at the moment about the same price as the 'skylake' hype.

 

 

 

So it depends on your use case as ever

 

A topic I was following made a great  on the 5930k v 5820k, there's nearly a hundred pounds difference, you'll get more day to day value from a upgraded ssd or other component, like the ram. Worth considering unless budget isn't an issue.

 

Today is the day to buy obvious components, an this week should see more bargins, although be wary the pile of parts sold cheap for they have not sold well clue

 

RAID is all well if you're using software, or can obtain a bios rev copy of the motherboard. If you're using a fancy raid controller, you'll need to find the same one to do a disaster recovery, more a server issue, but relevant to mention.

 

The io channels are huge now, and storage is cheap. I have a spare spinning rust hd an I simply rsync my boot drive to it. From that I rsync to the nas. That in turn is pushed to another nas. and once in a blue moon I push to a remote server. 

 

I also use linux so can now avail from zfs however Im happy with a single disk setup with a good rebuild plan. Worst case I order one next day and I loose 2 days. So an internal raid1 is fine.

 

sites like pcpartpicker are handy for finding a route to saving, or as I prefer to think, upgrades within budget

 

HTH

M2 differences now I found my note.

 ACHI is the last spec, NVME version is the newer "faster" one. But I doubt anything other than benchmarks will percieve it.

Honestly I'd just get in with the normal cheaper SATA SSD.

 

They're brutally fast even the slow ones.

 

Quick look online show that the M2s are 2-4x the price of the current SSDs.

 

If you were fussy you might want to use a smaller one for a boot drive but tbh I find the BIOS startup takes longer than the OS now with a SATA SSD. An even faster SSD wouldn't change that a lot more.

A lot of laptops have them as they don't take up as much room.

 

mSATA and M.2 are very different products, mSata is a small format SATA drive for netbooks and similar small portable devices, I have one in my 901;  M.2 is a ultra fast SSD running on the PCIe bus to avoid the bottlenecks perceived (by some people) in the SATA bus; unless you have a bleeding edge, overclocked cpu and memory it is a waste of time (currently).

 

A year or two (or three), from now it might be relevant, but right now it is like go faster stripes and a spoiler on a Berlingo.

Starting to look at bits for my brother as he's wanted a PC for a while. I built mine with a i5 3570k a few years ago and it's been great. Thinking of the following bits for him:

• Asus X99 Deluxe Motherboard - DDR4 compatible, and LGA 2011V3 socket type.
• 32gb of DDR4 RAM, still looking into speeds.
• I7-5930K CPU @ 3.70Ghz 6 core.
• Case will be an Antec 1200 like mine purely because it's huge and easy to keep cool.
• 2x 2TB drives in a RAID config for backup.

What I'm undecided on is a graphics card and what SSD type to do. This board supports M.2 SSD's so faster than the standard SATA connection. But reading up on it, it maybe a fiddle to install an OS on one? Anyone installed on before?

 

Why go Haswell-E, when broadwell now skylake are out? It's not like the haswell or broadwell prices have dropped through the floor.

 

Personally, unless you're using it in a silly set up, I'd look at a quad core and think 16GB of RAM should be a bucket load.

 

The 2*2TB drives, I'd look at 4TB, as they're only marginally more and if you're going to do that, look at something with a longer warranty.

For example WD SE are good drives for a good price anbd the others make similar enterprise drives.

 

Look at a decent 256GB or higher SSD, m2 is a lot faster, but few will really notice it at home.

At that point it comes down to a cost trade off. if SATA is a lot cheaper, go that route, if not, go M2.

PCIe SSD are not that regularly used in HPC systems, with SATA/SAS being the route to go due to cost.

The only people who really use it are in a central filesystem or who really really can't rewrite the app to do less disk I/O and more in RAM.

NVMe is interesting, but again it's always a cost benefit trade off unless you really really need it.

 

Oh and yes you can boot from an M2 drive, as a number of systems have it exactly for the purpose of a boot/OS drive.

Check your motherboard supports this feature, but it shouldn't be an issue.

 

Also RAID is not a backup, so make sure you've got a cloud backup or a USB3 HDD for backups.

Edited 30 November, 201510 yr by cheezemonkhai

I was looking at skylake as many will do given it's the main marketing target. For the difference in price, as of a week or so ago, about 50 quid on my notes you're gaining cores and threads and debatable a better platform, unless you need the features the new gen brings.

 

I used to make RAM disks before ssd, create & sync the code to it. Then launch tools. As you really cannot get faster, with 16/32Gb ram it's even more tempting than before when 8 was a stupid amount to buy for the productivity party trick... Just write back to disk every 60seconds, most you'll lose in a crash is 'mentally' recoverable.

mSATA and M.2 are very different products, mSata is a small format SATA drive for netbooks and similar small portable devices, I have one in my 901;  M.2 is a ultra fast SSD running on the PCIe bus to avoid the bottlenecks perceived (by some people) in the SATA bus; unless you have a bleeding edge, overclocked cpu and memory it is a waste of time (currently).

 

A year or two (or three), from now it might be relevant, but right now it is like go faster stripes and a spoiler on a Berlingo.

 

It doesn't stop me being right though -M.2 devices are being put into higher spec laptops - for instance:-

 

http://www.ebuyer.com/719039-msi-ge72-2qd-apache-pro-gaming-laptop-9s7-179211-238

 

I think mainly for the advantage of the smaller form factor.

Edited 30 November, 201510 yr by io1901

The Samsung 850 evo ssd was on sale on Amazon this morning. It's 1tb so over kill really but next year when m.2 becomes more common he can buy one and another 1tb ssd and have those for storage.

Was thinking haswell-e because from what I've read they seem to run as well as the skylake stuff which seems to cost a fair bit more.

 

Personally, unless you're using it in a silly set up, I'd look at a quad core and think 16GB of RAM should be a bucket load.

 

Also RAID is not a backup, so make sure you've got a cloud backup or a USB3 HDD for backups.

 

100% this.

 

Recently built a High spec machine for my airline pilot mate who wanted a mega rig for playing modded versions of FSX and P3D (for training/revision....so he said).

 

16gb is more than enough for a high spec gaming etc. Spend your money on the best processor / GPU combo you can. RAM won't help for FPS for example.

 

RAID is not a back up, it's just a way to keep a machine 'up' if a drive(s) fails. A house fire won't care if your drives are in RAID lol

 

My servers are all setup with RAID 10, but the backups are tape and offsite.

I was looking at skylake as many will do given it's the main marketing target. For the difference in price, as of a week or so ago, about 50 quid on my notes you're gaining cores and threads and debatable a better platform, unless you need the features the new gen brings.

 

I used to make RAM disks before ssd, create & sync the code to it. Then launch tools. As you really cannot get faster, with 16/32Gb ram it's even more tempting than before when 8 was a stupid amount to buy for the productivity party trick... Just write back to disk every 60seconds, most you'll lose in a crash is 'mentally' recoverable.

 

Skylake has some nice features that are worth having.

Keep your eyes out for announcements on the server platform versions, I can't say any more or I'd end up in a massive personal sueball from a very well funded team of lawyers.

 

At the end of the day it's horses for courses, but if I was looking haswell, I'd be looking at the E5-Xeon line, as it has DDR4 2133 and you can have 8 cores for not too much cash.

 

Realisitically what is he going to do on it?

If it's just desktop, the Graphics on the skylake and broadwell are much better than the haswell.

If it's got a seperate gfx card, that's a mute point.

 

Also, the usual question of is it a christmas gift?

If not wait until January.

 

Also on the RAID thing, I should mention that in R1 configurations, you usually find that the drives are subject to the same read/write patterns, are usually the same drives and have similar environmentals as they're next to each other. This means they often fail at about the same time, or annoying the rebuild onto a new drive puts extra stress on the old drive and can kill it.

Obviously a pre-mature failure and replacement of a drive means this might not happen, but it's just another good reason why RAID is not a safety net.

Edited 30 November, 201510 yr by cheezemonkhai

I'll start looking into it but what special features does Skylake have? I remember I went i5 3570k instead of i7 at the time for similar reasons.

 

Said for years I need to sort a NAS out. Or buy a server somewhere to store to.

I'll start looking into it but what special features does Skylake have? I remember I went i5 3570k instead of i7 at the time for similar reasons.

 

Said for years I need to sort a NAS out. Or buy a server somewhere to store to.

 

Hopefully you got my PM, so if it's interesting just let me know.

 

I know what you're saying re the previous generation, but in this case, it just doesn't seem to be cheap enough to be worth it.

The i5 versions of skylake are not bad either.

 

On the info front, sorry to sound like an arse and to say, have a google for the public information pack.

 

I say this as I have a lot of info on them and some I know is public and other parts under varying levels of NDA.

As such I have to be super careful what I say, so won't post any of it here just in case I get it wrong.

 

I'll see if I can find the public pack and will share it with you if I do have the public info in a format that I am permitted to share.

Edited 30 November, 201510 yr by cheezemonkhai