On Sat, Jan 7, 2012 at 6:28 PM, John Sessoms <[email protected]> wrote:
> My current (planned) configuration is a Gigabyte mainboard with Intel i7-960 > and 32GB ram (maxed out). You're buying new parts? I'm happy with my i7-930 that I built a year and a half ago, but I don't see any sense in investing in Socket 1366 parts at this time. It's at end-of-life: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5216/intel-discontinuing-some-clarkdale-lynnfield-and-sandy-bridge-desktop-cpus The Sandy Bridge (Socket 1155) parts are faster for the same price, and have at least a chance at an upgrade path. > I'll be using the on-board video to begin with. If you stick with the i7-960, you're sure you have a MB with onboard video? It's not part of the CPU or the X58 chipset. The 1366 platform is pretty focused on people adding high-performance graphics cards. Some (but not all) Sandy Bridge CPUs include on-CPU graphics, and some (but not all) motherboard chipsets allow you to use those graphics. > 2. But I am considering a SSD for the scratch disk. Is 64GB large enough? > That seems to be the current price point I'm comfortable with. Any brand > recommendations? I use a 64 GB SSD for my Windows 7 Pro installation, critical apps (Office, Lightroom, web browsers, etc.), LR catalog, some Windows virtual memory (2 GB), and hibernate file (6 GB). I have ~16.5 GB free at this time. Important to note that if you want to be able to hibernate your computer, the hibernation file will be the size of your RAM, and needs to reside on the boot disk. My user profile ("home directory") is *not* on the SSD; I relocated it following these instructions: http://www.starkeith.net/coredump/2009/05/18/how-to-move-your-windows-user-profile-to-another-drive/ I highly recommend an SSD for the kind of things I listed above. It's a huge improvement in system usability. If you get a Sandy Bridge CPU and a MB with Z68 chipset, you can take advantage of "Smart Response Technology", which lets you use an SSD as a cache for your mechanical HDDs. That way, you don't have to worry about what to put on the SSD, and what to put elsewhere. Based on reviews, this setup works quite well, and I would strongly consider it for a new build. http://www.anandtech.com/show/4329/intel-z68-chipset-smart-response-technology-ssd-caching-review -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
