It looks like this is my final build. I've bought about half of it already, the rest will happen Friday when I get my next paycheck. The Crossfire setup is because I lucked out on an Amazon price error and got each for about $125 each shipped.
That's fucking crazy the 2 cards are usually $600. Just make sure you have an awesome power supply. That is a freaking beast build for the price, I think 2 or 3 months ago that would have cost about $2500.
I would recommend switching from the Gigabyte motherboard back to the MSI Gaming 5 or have a look at the Asus Z97 boards in the same price space unless there is a specific feature on the Gigabyte you like.
Also you can get the Asus STRIX or MSI Gaming 4G versions of the 970, both are super quiet in comparison but about $30 more.
The 980 isn't really required unless you're running on 2560 or 4k. On my current 1920x1080 monitor renders most games at 4k and then downscales them.
I'd ordered the motherboard and CPU as a combo from Fry's, but they decided to cancel that without telling me, so now I'm back on the market. I'm probably going to wait until memorial day for that and the processor. Video card is already ordered so that's too late. I'm fairly set on the 4690K but what motherboard I get will probably depend a lot on sales.
Hah, the one time not having adblock on my laptop active pays off.
So I'm trying to figure out, for like GTA V, maybe the new Battlefront coming out, Hardline... some other games... worth to upgrade to a GTX 980ti from 2x 660ti in SLi now? Or wait for a better card to make a more substantial jump? I'd be looking at a card in the sub $600 range, I can't justify more than that for a GPU and even that is tops blooby crazy sauce. But I want to maximize what I can get from my investment within the next, say, year.
My 2x 660ti cards smoke along pretty good and I've never had a problem with them in terms of graphical anomalies that some people report with SLi.
I would personally only upgrade if you know your cards are struggling. e.g. I upgraded 2x AMD 7850's in Crossfire to a nVidia 980 a few months ago because they were constantly spinning up and Farcry 4 couldn't be run at an appropriate frame rate.
900 series from the 600 series is definitely worth it if you have the cash and feel inclined to but if the cards aren't struggling I personally wouldn't.
So I have a NAS with 4x2TB drives in it. That only comes out to be 5.4TB of capacity due to the space used by parity and such. I use this to backup everything. I also download media to it, like movies, so I can access them on any computer on the network. It still has 1.36 TB of free space, and I could probably easily free up a whole bunch by cleaning out files I no longer need.
In my PC I have
C: 256 GB SSD - OS Drive E: 1TB Media Drive - Where I put video files I recorded or just encoded F: 500GB User Drive - Where I put all the folders such as My Documents, Downloads, Desktop, iTunes, etc. G: 500GB Storage Drive - Where I put especially big applications. Steam Games, Blizzard Games, Adobe Apps, VIrtualBox machines, etc. H: 128 GB SSD - Scratch Drive for cache of Adobe apps
The C: drive was filling up, but I was able to uninstall a bunch of applications and use disk cleanup utility to remove temp files. Now it has 126 GB free. I'm going to format the whole thing anyway once Windows 10 comes.
The E drive is filling up. It only has 90GB free. Video files are big. The F drive is even more full. It only has 9GB free. Most of that is because Lightroom stores my photo catalog in the My Pictures folder. The G drive has 200GB free. It's not really a problem. I can always uninstall Steam games after I've beaten them.
I think I need to buy more storage. Should I get 4TB drives? They're big! Should I get 2TB hybrid drives? They're supposedly fast!
I'll probably just wait for Windows 10 to come out and then redo everything.
My goal would be, In the immortal words of Trinidad James, "All SSD Everything" in the case, and use network storage for any bulk storage.
At the price of SSD memory I don't see why not, right? I mean maybe a 2Tb hybrid if you really need a bulk program/media drive that's not hampered by network speeds. But a 4 terabyte drive is overkill for anything beyond being part of a redundant bulk storage solution in my mind, it juat seems like a lot of data eggs in one basket.
My goal would be, In the immortal words of Trinidad James, "All SSD Everything" in the case, and use network storage for any bulk storage.
At the price of SSD memory I don't see why not, right? I mean maybe a 2Tb hybrid if you really need a bulk program/media drive that's not hampered by network speeds. But a 4 terabyte drive is overkill for anything beyond being part of a redundant bulk storage solution in my mind, it juat seems like a lot of data eggs in one basket.
A convention worth of video/audio assets is easily a few hundred GB. I have good use of spinning disks for large large files that are useful to have around for making quick edits or renders of things later.
Scott, hold out for Windows 10. There is some good stuff happening with Windows using hard drives in RAID-like configurations in a super awesome way. You may well be able to stick 4 4TB drives in there and get Drobo-like redundancy and huge storage alongside some paired SSDs for blazing speed.
For the OS (and maybe applications too), get an M.2 hard drive.
My motherboard doesn't have a slot for an m.2 hard drive. Also, in my PC I need actual separate drives, not a combined raid-like thing. Lightroom doesn't allow network backups. I need at least two separate drives attached. On for Lightroom catalog and one with Lightroom backup.
I think I need to buy more storage. Should I get 4TB drives? They're big! Should I get 2TB hybrid drives? They're supposedly fast!
I'll probably just wait for Windows 10 to come out and then redo everything.
My setup is to have 2 fast operational drives and all the rest to be regular hard drives. I think you're missing a fast moderate sized operational drive where you can install applications and games e.g.
The hybrid drive only makes sense if all the data is of the same sort, non application, like a media drive or a User Drive. Only the files that you are regularly working on will be stored in NAND. If you include applications to this type of storage, I guess you might get inconsistencies when starting up applications you don't commonly use.
I think you simply need a larger operational SSD for applications and possibly games (500GB to 1TB). OS drive: SSD Applications and games drive: SSD User Drive: fast HDD or Hybrid drive Storage and Media drives HDD
I think you need a larger operating SSD (500GB to 1TB) and that leaves you with getting a 4TB HDD or the hybrid if you have a use case for such a drive.
Edit - apparently there is software which allows you to link an SSD to a HDD like the hybrid drives do, you could probably make one with your 128GB SSD and a 4TB hard disk, currently there are no hybrid drives which could match that high a NAND capacity, this type of drive could also be used for an application and data drive.
A 500GB SSD costs about $275. My existing SSDs are not full. I don't think I'm really going to gain that much by changing my 500GB storage drive to an SSD other than slightly faster loading times on games and Adobe apps. The drives that are filling up are the drives where I store photos and videos that I have recorded.
A 500GB SSD costs about $275. My existing SSDs are not full. I don't think I'm really going to gain that much by changing my 500GB storage drive to an SSD other than slightly faster loading times on games and Adobe apps. The drives that are filling up are the drives where I store photos and videos that I have recorded.
This is a quick spec on what a badass new workstation would look like if I built it today and didn't care to try and shave a few hundred dollars off the price.
Comments
EDIT: Now in for 2. At this price I may as well Crossfire.
It looks like this is my final build. I've bought about half of it already, the rest will happen Friday when I get my next paycheck. The Crossfire setup is because I lucked out on an Amazon price error and got each for about $125 each shipped.
Just make sure you have an awesome power supply. That is a freaking beast build for the price, I think 2 or 3 months ago that would have cost about $2500.
Also you can get the Asus STRIX or MSI Gaming 4G versions of the 970, both are super quiet in comparison but about $30 more.
The 980 isn't really required unless you're running on 2560 or 4k. On my current 1920x1080 monitor renders most games at 4k and then downscales them.
Note: I'm kind of lazy with sausage fingers. I'm going to commission a friend to do this.
I'd use it to play mostly indy side scroll or rogue like games. Stuff made for a controller: yes.
I would play any FPS or RPG with a heavy graphics load on my PC. Stuff made for a mouse and keyboard: no.
2: call your power company to apologize in advance.
Sustainable energy people!
So I'm trying to figure out, for like GTA V, maybe the new Battlefront coming out, Hardline... some other games... worth to upgrade to a GTX 980ti from 2x 660ti in SLi now? Or wait for a better card to make a more substantial jump? I'd be looking at a card in the sub $600 range, I can't justify more than that for a GPU and even that is tops blooby crazy sauce. But I want to maximize what I can get from my investment within the next, say, year.
My 2x 660ti cards smoke along pretty good and I've never had a problem with them in terms of graphical anomalies that some people report with SLi.
e.g. I upgraded 2x AMD 7850's in Crossfire to a nVidia 980 a few months ago because they were constantly spinning up and Farcry 4 couldn't be run at an appropriate frame rate.
900 series from the 600 series is definitely worth it if you have the cash and feel inclined to but if the cards aren't struggling I personally wouldn't.
In my PC I have
C: 256 GB SSD - OS Drive
E: 1TB Media Drive - Where I put video files I recorded or just encoded
F: 500GB User Drive - Where I put all the folders such as My Documents, Downloads, Desktop, iTunes, etc.
G: 500GB Storage Drive - Where I put especially big applications. Steam Games, Blizzard Games, Adobe Apps, VIrtualBox machines, etc.
H: 128 GB SSD - Scratch Drive for cache of Adobe apps
The C: drive was filling up, but I was able to uninstall a bunch of applications and use disk cleanup utility to remove temp files. Now it has 126 GB free. I'm going to format the whole thing anyway once Windows 10 comes.
The E drive is filling up. It only has 90GB free. Video files are big.
The F drive is even more full. It only has 9GB free. Most of that is because Lightroom stores my photo catalog in the My Pictures folder.
The G drive has 200GB free. It's not really a problem. I can always uninstall Steam games after I've beaten them.
I think I need to buy more storage. Should I get 4TB drives? They're big! Should I get 2TB hybrid drives? They're supposedly fast!
I'll probably just wait for Windows 10 to come out and then redo everything.
At the price of SSD memory I don't see why not, right? I mean maybe a 2Tb hybrid if you really need a bulk program/media drive that's not hampered by network speeds. But a 4 terabyte drive is overkill for anything beyond being part of a redundant bulk storage solution in my mind, it juat seems like a lot of data eggs in one basket.
Scott, hold out for Windows 10. There is some good stuff happening with Windows using hard drives in RAID-like configurations in a super awesome way. You may well be able to stick 4 4TB drives in there and get Drobo-like redundancy and huge storage alongside some paired SSDs for blazing speed.
For the OS (and maybe applications too), get an M.2 hard drive.
I think you're missing a fast moderate sized operational drive where you can install applications and games e.g.
The hybrid drive only makes sense if all the data is of the same sort, non application, like a media drive or a User Drive. Only the files that you are regularly working on will be stored in NAND. If you include applications to this type of storage, I guess you might get inconsistencies when starting up applications you don't commonly use.
I think you simply need a larger operational SSD for applications and possibly games (500GB to 1TB).
OS drive: SSD
Applications and games drive: SSD
User Drive: fast HDD or Hybrid drive
Storage and Media drives HDD
I think you need a larger operating SSD (500GB to 1TB) and that leaves you with getting a 4TB HDD or the hybrid if you have a use case for such a drive.
Edit - apparently there is software which allows you to link an SSD to a HDD like the hybrid drives do, you could probably make one with your 128GB SSD and a 4TB hard disk, currently there are no hybrid drives which could match that high a NAND capacity, this type of drive could also be used for an application and data drive.
http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=24683771
i7-4790K 4.0GHz
32GB RAM
512GB M.2 SSD - main drive
512GB SATA SSD - video editing/workflow drive
2x 2TB SPDs - RAID for storage and generall cruft
Ridic motherboard
Don't really need anything else other than a case and cooling.