KVR Audio

JCJR · Post by **JCJR** » Thu Jan 15, 2015 2:45 am

So, I used to build all my PC's, but haven't built one lately.

Will list the prospective components for critique, but first a specific question--

I could use a Samsung 850 1 TB SSD, but was thinking of maybe using a Mushkin Reactor 1 TB SSD as boot drive instead.

On a fresh build, it would be most convenient to install direct to the SSD from the Win 7 Pro install disc. As opposed to first installing on a hard drive, then imaging to the SSD and swapping the SSD as boot drive.

Are there issues, where the SSD needs special preparation before simply installing win 7 onto the blank drive? Would I need to put the SSD in another computer and prepare it in some fashion before installing on the new puter and installing win 7?

I've web-searched this detail, but can't find much on the topic. As best I can gather, there are win 7 modules to properly deal with the SSD. Will winders automatically decide what it needs to use, and apply the correct settings?

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So here is the prospective component list. Object is get something faster than my 6 year old 3.3 GHz i7 975, reliable, and up'n'running before the old pc decides to die on me. Without either cutting corners or breaking the bank.

Was thinking about just installing an ssd in the old 975 pc, imaging my stable win 7 install onto a new ssd. The computer still runs fine. But it is getting a bit old and would be a shame to go to much trouble upgrading the old pc just to have it die on me pretty soon.

NewEgg prices, most convenient buy everything from same vendor.

i7 4790k cpu = $339 (no overclocking, it will always run at the quoted 4 GHz speed)
ASUS Z97-A LGA mobo = $144
G.Skill Ripjawsx 16 GB (4 X 4 GB) = $142
Mushkin 1TB SSD = $380 (I've got plenty of 2 TB 3.5" hard drives laying around so don't need to buy any new hard drives)
Pioneer Bluray Burner = $64
Firewire PCIE card = $30
Antech Sonata Solo II case = $109
Antec Earthwatts Platinum 650 watt ps = $100 (I don't need nuclear-powered gamer video cards, just lots of slow pixels for 3 monitors)
Win 7 pro 64bit = $140
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Total = $1450

No video card is listed. This mobo should support 2 or 3 monitors onboard, and if not, I've got multiple old dual-head cards that worked fine for my purposes in the past, and might be talked into working ok in the new pc. If not, I can buy a cheap three head video card later on.

In an earlier thread, folks advised that there are better/cheaper cases and power supplies than antec-- So I did a lot of research looking at newegg user reviews, and the antec case and ps listed, have a bigger percent of happy customers, and lower percent of unhappy campers, compared to the other brands, as best I can tell.

But am ignorant of modern pc building and welcome any advice.

Gonga · Post by **Gonga** » Thu Jan 15, 2015 4:04 am

You'll find that installing the SSD is just like a traditional HDD. You can install Win7 directly to it easily. Windows 7 will automatically trim the drive. The most important thing is to make sure you install it on an AHCI controller channel, not an IDE channel.

I recommend getting the Samsung if you can afford it. The included Magician software will allow you to set up overprovisioning and other settings much more easily than any other solution. If you do use a different SSD, make sure to set aside 10% for overprovisioning.

JCJR · Post by **JCJR** » Thu Jan 15, 2015 3:46 pm

Thanks Gonga, will research provisioning.

Difficult to figure on a big ssd. 840 and 850 have lots of happy users, and has been the "bargain" choice as well compared to intel and such. But there are the occasional complaints.

The mushkin is rather new, but the brand has happy campers as best I can tell on previous products. There are not yet zillions of user reviews on that Mushkin Reactor, but I haven't yet read a horror story review. Tis hard to evaluate user reviews, though I try.

Odds are higher that un-greased wheels will squeak, so it seems more likely that an unhappy camper will post a review, compared to a happy camper who has no problems and just goes about his business without bothering to post a review. Dunno what the ratio would be among happy customers who review, vs malcontents who review. And then one has to read the review contents to make sure that unhappy reviewers are not simple idiots who are not smart enough to use the gear.

I get a bad feeling when more than 25 percent of reviews are 1 or 2 star, and the complaints seem to be coming from non-idiots. So far, the mushkin reactor is zero bad reviews, but over another month or two that could change quickly with a relatively new product.

The memory tech in the mushkin is supposedly somewhat more durable than the samsung memory tech, which may somewhat avoid the need for intensive software driver coddling of the drive to avoid over-writing and trashing any particular piece of the memory space.

Ya pays yer money and takes yer chances.

Gonga · Post by **Gonga** » Fri Jan 16, 2015 5:40 am

Samsung is the SSD to beat, especially the EVO and 850. They have no competition - they are superior technology, and a great value. Testers are finding that Samsung drives outlast others in ongoing perpetual-use tests, and Samsung is the only major manufacturer that doesn't outsource parts, oh, and they have the best bundled software!

JCJR · Post by **JCJR** » Fri Jan 16, 2015 7:06 am

Yeah, I "chickened out" and ordered the 1 TB 850 EVO. The 850 PRO is just too pricey.

camsr · Post by **camsr** » Sat Jan 17, 2015 1:31 pm

I got a feeling my next storage purchase is going to be an SSD also

Long live hard drive platters, but they are too prone to wear and tear, and sensitive to magnetics.

chokehold · Post by **chokehold** » Sat Jan 17, 2015 1:38 pm

Used to have an Evo 840 as my boot drive, now I use an 850 Pro. I don't see any impressive improvements regarding boot time, I count the same 12 seconds from switching on up to the OSX login screen as before. But moving huge files from Evo 840 #1 to Evo 840 #2 seems to be slower than Evo 840 to 850 Pro (yes, I did the performance restoration thing), so I guess the write speed has improved.

Anyway, the Samsungs are pretty solid drives, and any "old" Evo 840 will be a significant improvement against any previous mechanical HDD.

Like someone correctly mentioned before me, just make sure you activate AHCI mode in the BIOS before installing Windows.

JCJR · Post by **JCJR** » Sat Jan 17, 2015 9:43 pm

Thanks, will be sure to enable AHCI first thing.

The main "serious sounding" complaint I've so far read about the new 850 evo-- Some laptop users complain it takes too long to reply to the mobo on powerup, and the bios fails with no boot drive error. But it works fine to do a restart after that failure, because on reboot the drive is finally awake and can reply to the bios.

Dunno how common that is, or even how factual. It is just the only "serious sounding" complaint I've seen.

My stuff is supposed to arrive tuesday. I hate the thought of installing my apps and dev tools. The dev tools are a house of cards, and it usually takes quite a few hours to fresh install everything and get all the settings right. Boring work. One of the biggest reasons I rarely buy a new pc.

chokehold · Post by **chokehold** » Sun Jan 18, 2015 8:24 pm

All of my Desktop's internal drives are Samsung 840/850 SSDs, I have never had any troubles of that sort. When I cold-start the machine, all drives show up where they should, both in the BIOS and boot drive selection menu, as well as in Windows or OSX. No trouble booting into either at all, ever.
Yet. *knocking on wood*

Check if there's new firmware available for your SSD, and if there is then update it as soon as possible. After so-and-so many hours of operation (there's an official number available on the manufacturer's forums), my last set of Crucial M4 SSDs would start ejecting themselves from the operating system roughly an hour after being powered on, you know, like disconnecting a USB drive in the middle of copying stuff to it. Basically meant I had to completely shut down my computer every 55 minutes, wait a few seconds, then boot again to use it another 55 minutes.
Turns out all it needed to fix this (pun intended) crucial bug was a firmware update... (which I believe still has no Mac compatible installation, although it was announced for October 2012)

JCJR · Post by **JCJR** » Mon Jan 19, 2015 8:15 pm

Thanks for the good info, chokehold.

Do you primarily use your systems for audio?

Gonga · Post by **Gonga** » Mon Jan 19, 2015 8:42 pm

JCJR wrote:Yeah, I "chickened out" and ordered the 1 TB 850 EVO. The 850 PRO is just too pricey.

Part of that price is the 5-year warranty vs the EVO's 3-year.

Astralv · Post by **Astralv** » Tue Jan 20, 2015 1:44 am

First of all you realizing that processor you selected is a year old- well- July release. They just released Broadwell. It is not available in stores yet but will be available any minute now- it is released- you may want to research that.

You want to install Windows 7 on a new build just when Microsoft ended support for it. Bad move. Get Windows 8.1 Pro. You will be able to upgrade to Win 10 this summer/fall may be for free.

I would not buy Asus Z97 A. Get at least Pro or Pro-V (video). Make sure it has WiFi if you need it.

Do not buy G.Skill Ripjawsx. Corsair is better. Also DDR 4 was released lasy year- you may want to have motherboard that supports DDR 4 and go with DDR 4 memory.

SSD- I would go with Samsung. Mushkin has good reviews- it is young American company...

I would also buy 2 HDDs- one for recording on it, one for software synths if you use them or storage. You need to have your programs run from different drive than your samples libraries and record on different drive than everything else.

Old Graphics may have issues with your new hardware. You can connect 2 monitors to onboard video card.

Kaine · Post by **Kaine** » Tue Jan 20, 2015 9:47 am

Broadwell laptop and some ultraportable BGA based chips are available, Broadwell desktop still isn't due anytime soon however, best estimate is second half of the year at this point. Given it's a die-shrink with minimal performance increases, it's not going to be something to get overly concerned about if you need the system now.

Z97 also doesn't support DDR 4 either and neither will Broadwell, so if your looking for DDR4 your either waiting a year or two for Skylake or paying out for a X99 chipset.

Op is also correct and current Z97 chipset can support 3 monitors natively if the outputs are available.

tehlord · Post by **tehlord** » Tue Jan 20, 2015 10:09 am

You don't need a 1TB SSD as an OS drive. Even 1/2 TB is overkill.

I got away with a 120GB Samsung 840 Evo and have Cubase 6.5 and Live 9 installed plus all the usual other programs and still have 30-40GB left. All my libraries are shunted over to storage drives and the system is snappy as anything even after a year of use.

JCJR · Post by **JCJR** » Tue Jan 20, 2015 4:29 pm

Thanks Astralv. I asked for critiques and you provided them as requested!

Astralv wrote:First of all you realizing that processor you selected is a year old- well- July release. They just released Broadwell. It is not available in stores yet but will be available any minute now- it is released- you may want to research that.

You want to install Windows 7 on a new build just when Microsoft ended support for it. Bad move. Get Windows 8.1 Pro. You will be able to upgrade to Win 10 this summer/fall may be for free.

Yes perhaps it was a mistake not to get a socket 2011 system. Initially thought that quad channel memory is desirable enough to pay extra money on. Then went web-searching and couldn't find many opinions that the quad channel memory is substantially faster in other than artificial memory tests.

If I need a further rev of winders I can buy it later, but am familiar with win 7 and it doesn't bug me. Intentionally looked for win 7 systems, specifically avoided 8.1 systems. Perhaps that is a mistake as well, but the win 7 UI is tolerable and I know that all my software, even the ancient crap, will run on it.

As long as the system is stable, doesn't matter if microsoft eventually quits sending win 7 security updates. If the machine is still getting the job done, will just disconnect it from the www and keep using the machine til it goes up in smoke.

Astralv wrote:I would not buy Asus Z97 A. Get at least Pro or Pro-V (video). Make sure it has WiFi if you need it.

Do not buy G.Skill Ripjawsx. Corsair is better. Also DDR 4 was released lasy year- you may want to have motherboard that supports DDR 4 and go with DDR 4 memory.

SSD- I would go with Samsung. Mushkin has good reviews- it is young American company...

I would also buy 2 HDDs- one for recording on it, one for software synths if you use them or storage. You need to have your programs run from different drive than your samples libraries and record on different drive than everything else.

Old Graphics may have issues with your new hardware. You can connect 2 monitors to onboard video card.

All good advice, thanks.

I bought the 1 TB 850 EVO, but slacked even worse than the original parts list ordering the computer.

The total on the parts list was getting fairly outrageous even going for "budget items" except the ssd. A Dell XPS X8700 configuration as good or better than my parts spec, sans ssd and firewire card-- I7 4790, 16 GB ram in 4 sockets, 1 TB HD, 4 GB three-head GTX 745 video card, win 7, for $879.

Adding a ti-chip firewire card, 1 TB 850 EVO and 2.5" drive tray, ran the tally up to less than the tally on my previous parts list. I don't have to assemble all the parts, and if the computer develops infant mortality problems it is somebody else's responsibility to fix it.

The primary disadvantages of the Dell versus my parts list-- 3.6 GHz I7 4790 rather than 4.0 GHz 4790K, and a less powerful PSU. However, as long as the PSU will drive the machine, who cares. If the PSU turns out to run too hot or show evidence of strain, will replace it later.

It might turn out a regrettable decision, but I've had fairly good luck with factory-built computers. My current HP i7 975 machine, 8 GB memory, 3.3 GHz, win 7 ultimate, has run flawlessly for 6 years, and was a "hi perf budget build" similar to that dell X8700 I ordered.

Though the ssd ought to make the new machine snappier, speed benchmark of faster cpu and ram looks like only maybe a 50% speedup over the old I7 975. However, the benchmarks of the most expensive i7 systems currently available are barely approaching 2X the speed of my 6 year old computer.

Tis one reason I've waited so long to get a new computer-- The performance improvements of a new one didn't seem worth the money, considering that the puter I had already was basically satisfactory.

But it would be inconvenient to have an outage whenever the old HP finally lays down and dies.

Also, stayed too busy to do much music while I was programming full time. Now that I'm "mostly retired" want to install the newest DP and not-seriously toy with sequencing. Just something to play with at leisure. I didn't want to install a bunch of new copy-protected software on an old machine, where in a month or twelve might have to reinstall again if the old computer dies.

I could get more tracks than I could ever tastefully arrange or mix on digital performer more than 15 years ago, on suffering old PPC macs and a raid-0 of scsi 10000 rpm drives. If such pitifully weak old iron could do dozens of tracks, am not too concerned that a 16 GB 4790 will have any trouble recording any sparse little arrangements I might decide to make.

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