New Comp - Thoughts?

[Freecare Spiritwise]

I am going to use SSDs just to run slimmed down VMs. Just Windows, SQL Server, VS 2010/12 and a couple other things. All the stuff I like having at my fingertips is getting moved to a file server and I'll have it at 1Gbps over the wire when I need it.

Not sure I trust asymmetric RAID. Sounds like a fucking nightmare waiting to happen. I could picture the tech support call:

"Hey, I've got this RAID array made up of a slow green drive, a 10,000 RPM raptor, an SSD and a cheap flash drive from Walmart .. why doesn't my system work? Where did all my data go?"

[Ddrak]

It should just work, dammit!

Did some searching, came up with this: http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ ... brief.html

Dd

[Freecare Spiritwise]

The $149 SSDs on black Friday came back on a 1 day sale for $159 so I begged the boss for one for my work computer. Not bad, an OCZ 240 GB SSD. I am just going to put a couple of my most-used VMs on it and they should fuckin' scream. Bumped my RAM up to 16 GB of DDR3 1600 and my work computer should be golden for another year or so lol. I wish I had enough money to pickup a few of those SSDs myself, but I didn't want to press my luck with Santa.

[Freecare Spiritwise]

Tiger direct is having another SSD blowout. Get 'em while they're hot!

[Minute]

I got 4 x 256GB SSD's for $109 each. Deal was dead almost instantly but I shat myself. Wooty woot woot

[Freecare Spiritwise]

I got 4 x 256GB SSD's for $109 each. Deal was dead almost instantly but I shat myself. Wooty woot woot

Oh shit, that's nice. I wish I would've scored some SSDs on black Friday. But we still got a nice haul, and the missus got a bunch of random crap like white bath towels for like $1.40 each. My son went back at 3AM and scored a TV. I got a laptop that's sitting under the tree. So, we scored some righteous schwag, but those SSDs slipped through my fingers.

At least I have the boss' credit card and don't have to suck up to buy them for work. My new OCZ Vertex 3 fucking screams. My compile times on our insurance policy management system went from 5 minutes to half that. My work VM has that SSD all to itself, which did the trick.

[Ddrak]

SSDs are awesome for compile times. Switching in an SSD from 7200rpm drives dropped our system compile time from 120 minutes to around 46. We switched back to the corporate SAN for our build servers in the end though which pushed the time back up to 55-ish but lets us VMotion the build boxes around to whatever host has spare CPU. Mwahahaha.

Dd

[Taxious]

New comp has been up for a while and purrs like a dream! Having games and the OS on the SSD is pretty awesome, wow what a difference! The boy and I can play League of Legends together now, him using the TV and my old comp, me using the new comp sitting next to him. It's pretty fun. Also, how did I go this long without having a dedicated media PC?! I've been on a downloadapalooza with HD movies lately.

[Freecare Spiritwise]

My media player setup has evolved and now the media PC just gets its content from a phat file server in the basement, packed full of 2TB drives. And it's all running gigabit Ethernet, which seems about has fast as having the hard drives mounted locally. So any device on the network can stream media. It can pretty much stream as many devices simultaneously as it needs to. It's a dream setup with all that spinning, heat-producing shit in the basement.

[Ddrak]

This looks pretty awesome for movie storage: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/12/ ... -home-nas/

Expensive though...

Dd

[Freecare Spiritwise]

I'm running a 6 core phenom II full on server my sister gave me. She built it for about what that Drobo box costs. It looks neat though, but I think I'll keep rolling my own NAS.

[Harlowe]

I wish I knew what you guys were talking about with your acronyms and inner computer gut tech talk. My computer set up (other than a new hard drive when mine pooped out, some RAM and a new monitor) is like 4-5 years old and I need me a new one. The last one I built with my own little hands was probably 7-8 years ago.

I want a build that's like my computer is tearin' ass around the basement, but it's stayin' still. Still waters run deep.

Okay, so what are the top YA GOTTA HAVE'S for a good gaming computer, one that I can play Skyrim on "redunkulous" setting?

[Freecare Spiritwise]

Skyrim is a couple years old isn't it? Our $400 Black Friday AMD-A8 laptops play it cranked up, so I doubt you'll have a problem with any modern desktop build.

Buy the best CPU and video card you can afford. Get an SSD if you can, and go with at least 8 GB of RAM. But almost any build with modern components is going to give you a good Skyrim experience

[Harlowe]

Thanks Free!

[Ddrak]

Agree with Freecare.

Dd

[Fallakin Kuvari]

My media player setup has evolved and now the media PC just gets its content from a phat file server in the basement, packed full of 2TB drives. And it's all running gigabit Ethernet, which seems about has fast as having the hard drives mounted locally. So any device on the network can stream media. It can pretty much stream as many devices simultaneously as it needs to. It's a dream setup with all that spinning, heat-producing shit in the basement.

Everything I have gets put into .mp4, then loaded into itunes on my Storage drive. Then its viewable on my Apple TV over my AC wireless network on the 5ghz band (not that the Apple TV utilizes the AC at all...).