1. #1

    Question New rig on the way; what to expect once built?

    Greetings,

    I've been out of the hardware game for a while, but with my return to 25man raiding and the associated graphic draw it entails, I wanted to upgrade my platform. Currently using a quad core 2.3 AMD laptop with nvidia APU, so certainly no beast machine; running low settings in 25 I get some brutal graphic lag to the point that it's nearly unplayable (hi Elegon phase 3). So I bit the bullet and bought the below:


    CASE ROSEWILL| CHALLENGER-U3 RTL
    MB MSI|Z77MA-G45 Z77 LGA1155 R
    VGA EVGA|01G-P3-1561-AR GTX560Ti 1G R
    PSU ROSEWILL | HIVE-650 650W RT
    CPU INTEL|CORE I5 3570K 3.4G 6M R
    MEM 4Gx2|CRUCIAL BLS2KIT4G3D1609DS1
    SSD 30G|CORSAIR CSSD-V30GB2A R
    HDD 1T|ST ST1000DM003 7K 64M %
    DVD BURN LG | GH24NS90 %
    CPU COOLER CM| RR-B10-212P-G1 RT

    Apologies for the lack of links, copy/pasted from my invoice, but basically a 3570 with an MSI z77 board, 8g DDR3 1600, EVGA 560Ti, 30g SSD and 1TB HDD.

    I am planning to leave the CPU and GPU factory clocked for now, until I see what temps are in the case. I've never OC'd before and am a bit paranoid, admittedly...I may come back looking for help on that once the initial "newness" becomes par.

    After reading bench tests and whatnot, I'm not really sure what to expect once I get it all built. Running good (not ultra) settings, what can I expect in 25m raids FPS-wise? Assuming an OC down the road, how would those numbers change?

    Also, since my SSD is only 30g I am going to use it solely as a boot drive (planning on Win7, but not sold yet), as I have heard that the mpq file architecture of WOW lends itself to burning out SSDs. Is this correct? Is there anything I could/should do to help prolong the life of my SSD? I have heard things like moving the page file to a mech drive can help, but to be honest that's a little odd to me. Is there some ideal way to set up the 2 drives to work the most efficiently? The HDD is SATAIII (which I know doesn't really matter at this point), and I'm not too familiar with RAID type setups, so if you can explain like I'm 5 it'd help

    Thanks for any input, and if there are suggestions for basic upgrades or add-ons that I am missing, please feel free to chip in.

  2. #2
    Seems to be a pretty solid setup. I would expect at 1920x1080 20+ fps for 25 man raids. This depends on the fight and abilities being used of course. It also depends on whether or not you use the consoloe command to increase your max view distance. It will peak above that, but the 20 is a good average/baseline. I would suggest not using the SSD as your boot device because of the limited space available. I personally have a OCZ vertex 2, one of the worst SSD's ever made imho, and although one blew up after 3 months the replacement has lasted and had no problems with WoW, SWTOR, GW2, and any number of other MMO's running off of it.

    The drive blew up because of a horrible firmware build on the initial batches, and i do view corsair as a higher quality SSD than mine. Boot times being in the ~10 second range is somewhat nice, but I prefer my SSD functions the most for the applications I often use instead of boot times.

    If you really want to have a neat computer, and invest a bit more into this one than you have in the past lookup a utility called HDtune. This utility will show you where the speed of your HDD drops off and if you partition it correctly you can then use that partition as a far quicker partition for starting up windows. This is called short striping, and for me WEI had a change from 5.9 to 6.2 with a simple short stripe. My WD 1TB drive had a serious drop in speed at the 200GB point, so my short stripe is 200GB, and my other partition is ~800GB.

    I then use MKlink to transfer any Steam games that I use to my SSD if it is used often, or my shortstripe if it is not used quite as frequently. Games like plants vs zombies etc stay in my overflow partition having near to no load times to begin with.

    Anyhow this may be alot of information, but congratz on your new build!

  3. #3
    Deleted
    I have heard that the mpq file architecture of WOW lends itself to burning out SSDs. Is this correct? Is there anything I could/should do to help prolong the life of my SSD?
    The mpq file architecture is totally irrelevant to burning out SSDs. SSDs burn-out because they have a limited number of writes, therefore if you constantly write to it you will wear it down faster. This is the reason why things that are constantly updated (such as page files) shouldn't be stored there.

    Another thing you should never do is defrag your SSD. Basically, keep the writes to a minimum. Still, no need to panic, current drives are able to survive several years of regular use.

  4. #4
    30gb SSD is pretty useless, For the same price range on the video card I would have got a 7870ghz newer tech, lower power, and out performs a 560ti in every way. Not a big fan of rosewill PSUs. Corsair and Seasonic are the way to go. Would of bought an Asrock Z77 extreme 4 for the 5 bucks extra. Youll be able to sustain decent frames and fairly good settings with this build.
    OCing now a days is a joke just google your board and processor should find something. Its normally as simple as changing a setting or 2 and going to a x42 multiplier for a 4.2 simple clock with no voltage changes. Most SSD come with a software disc for optimizing your system for SSD usage turning things off like defrag and page files and what not. You wont be able to RAID a 30gb SSD with a 1tb HDD if thats what you are asking.
    CPU:i5 4670k@4.3Ghz GPU:Gigabyte GTX760 WF3 Mobo:Asrock Z87E-ITX RAM:8Gb GSkill Ares@1600MhzCase:Atomic Orange Bit Fenix Prodigy Cooling: Corsair H100i HDD:1Tb WD Cav Black SSD: Samsung 830 128Gb PSU:Seasonic M2II620 KB:Razer Black Widow Mouse:Razer Naga 2014

  5. #5
    Well 30g is JUST about perfect for WOW and interface, so I could shove it all on there, since 90% of what I will use this for is WOW related...so that would be the better option then? I can spring for another, larger SSD in the future, but this was kind of a "test run" so it was kept small for either a dedicated boot drive, or dedicated WOW drive.

    As for the mpq, I thought I understood that it was constantly written and rewritten, but I am admittedly quite novice at understanding much of anything about computers, so it's entirely possible I misunderstood what I read.

    Also, I debated partitioning the mech drive, since my rig stays on nearly 24/7 so boot times aren't of paramount importance (I just thought having the OS on an SSD would be beneficial to overall system performance). So perhaps short striping is a good option, to make a small dedicated sector for OS/boot, and rest as long term low access storage? I was hoping to get a better deal on a WD Caviar Black, but the Seagate was stupid cheap and I've had good luck in the past; assuming that a 7200 HDD is an HDD is an HDD for the purposes of HDtune/striping?

    If I opted to do the above partitioning and put WOW on the SSD, would I need to do any fancy RAID type set-up of the drives to keep seek times low since it would be pulling off of the SSD almost exclusively?

  6. #6
    Nope, Raid is not necessary for your setup. Simply partition off the fastest portion of your drive first (This is most likely between 100GB and 200GB). Then Install your OS to that partition. Go into disk management after you have installed the OS, and setup your larger partition as well as your SSD. Mine are C: system partition, E: Overflow partition, and F: Vertex 2 partition. Then install WoW to your SSD by changing C to F. These letters will change depending on how many optical drives you install etc.

    You will only need to use MKLINK when you want steam to load a game from a different partition, because steam by default always installs games where you have steam itself installed.

    My steam is installed on my overflow, with GTA4, Skyrim, Sleeping Dogs, and Deus Ex HR all having a MKLink to my SSD, and Crysis having a MKlink to my System partition.

    The speed of your partitions are going to be SSD>System partition>Overflow partition.

    As kind of a point of reference, if you did use your SSD as your system partition you will undoubtedly be stressing your SSD more rather than if you use it specifically for WoW. This is one reason I only have games installed on my SSD. My computer is on 24/7, that kind of strain may have been what killed my first SSD (I initially installed the OS on the SSD). Also, god it is a bitch to redo EVERYTHING because your SSD dies and the system partition is there.
    Last edited by Elgand; 2012-11-14 at 07:33 PM.

  7. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by Elgand View Post
    Nope, Raid is not necessary for your setup. Simply partition off the fastest portion of your drive first (This is most likely between 100GB and 200GB). Then Install your OS to that partition. Go into disk management after you have installed the OS, and setup your larger partition as well as your SSD. Mine are C: system partition, E: Overflow partition, and F: Vertex 2 partition. Then install WoW to your SSD by changing C to F. These letters will change depending on how many optical drives you install etc.
    Ok, I follow. Just the one optical so C: for OS/system critical files, E: as default storage/overflow, and then F: as SSD. Easy enough.

    You will only need to use MKLINK when you want steam to load a game from a different partition, because steam by default always installs games where you have steam itself installed.

    My steam is installed on my overflow, with GTA4, Skyrim, Sleeping Dogs, and Deus Ex HR all having a MKLink to my SSD, and Crysis having a MKlink to my System partition.
    So, since my SSD is so small, I won't have room for anything besides WOW on it. As such, I can just install other games/STEAM to C or E and run as normal, correct?

    The speed of your partitions are going to be SSD>System partition>Overflow partition.

    As kind of a point of reference, if you did use your SSD as your system partition you will undoubtedly be stressing your SSD more rather than if you use it specifically for WoW. This is one reason I only have games installed on my SSD. My computer is on 24/7, that kind of strain may have been what killed my first SSD (I initially installed the OS on the SSD). Also, god it is a bitch to redo EVERYTHING because your SSD dies and the system partition is there.
    A valid point, as I have the same routine with leaving my rig on, so boot times would be inconsequential gains with an SSD, as well as unneeded wear and tear. Thanks for all the help

  8. #8
    As for steam you should install it on your overflow partition. Otherwise you will most likely fill your system partition and not have the suggested 15% of free space. If you look up MKLINK it is built into windows now, and basically ghosts the location of the files to another drive. So MKLINK allows steam to *Think* the games are still in its /common folder while they are truly on my SSD or in your case on your short stripe. WoW filling up your SSD is great, and as you change to different games just install your most played game on the SSD.

  9. #9
    Return the SSD IMHO, even if it's just for store credit. With the dropping prices on SSD $ per GB, and the two biggest sales event days of the year just a couple weeks away, there is no reason for you to settle on such a small drive. Hell, with it being this close to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, I wouldn't even dare to make a purchase without seeing what I could check off my list from those sales events first.

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