Need partial build recommendation

**jmw_man** · 01-02-14, 03:12 PM

And which one did you get? MLC or TLC?

**Phyrelight** · 01-02-14, 03:24 PM

Amazon.com: Samsung Electronics 840 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5-Inch SATA III Single Unit Version Internal Solid State Drive MZ-7TE250BW: Computers & Accessories

That is the one I bought, its a second generation 3-bit MLC

No it shouldn't last as long as a 2 bit MLC and a 1bit MLC will outlast them all. With that said the cost per GB of storage going up dramatically for a 2 bit MLC and again for the 1 bit MLC.

the 840 EVO line has Sequential Read Speed 540 MB / Sequential Write Speed 520 MB / Random Read Speed 97K / Random Write Speed 66K

It has a 3 year warranty

I can boot into the windows 8.1 pro login screen in about 6 seconds from when I push the power button. I load into BF4 maps with more than half the countdown clock remaining. (BF4 is loaded to a second SSD, not the EVO 840)

**jmw_man** · 01-02-14, 03:37 PM

Is there that much benefit to having BF4 loaded to a second SSD? I mean, if you have the space on the same SSD, it seems like it wouldn't make any difference...

**Kanati** · 01-02-14, 03:44 PM

probably doesn't make THAT much of a difference but basically you are eliminating any lag that OS access to the same drive would introduce.

I have my games on the second SSD as well. I don't always load into bf4 during the countdown timer but I'm definitely one of the first into the game.

**Kanati** · 01-02-14, 03:45 PM

I bought two of these on black friday for 250 bux apiece.

Newegg.com - Toshiba Q Series HDTS251XZSTA 512GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

**Phyrelight** · 01-02-14, 03:56 PM

Originally Posted by jmw_man

Is there that much benefit to having BF4 loaded to a second SSD? I mean, if you have the space on the same SSD, it seems like it wouldn't make any difference...

I am running dual 250GB SSDs. Primary is the EVO 840 with windows 8.1 pro, office 2013 and any productivity applications I may need for programming (.net etc). The second I have Origin, Steam, uplay, guildwars 2, hearthstone and anything else that allows me to alter the install location. I have filled 200GB of the 250GB with games on the second drive. I try to keep my primary drive as clean and smooth running as possible because that is what I have my windows home server backing up.

I don't want to backup 200GB of games. I want my main OS and my productivity software only. Should I have a primary OS drive failure I simply replace it boot to my home server with a boot DVD and restore from the previous days backup. That is the only advantage of having a second ssd. This also allows me to have itunes or a photo editing software open on the primary drive simultaneously with a game from the second SSD with no noticeable lag. This comes in handy during system backup or system scans.

I also have a 3rd drive installed which is a 1TB SATA3 6 GB/S HDD that I use for ripping video and such from my video camera before it gets uploaded to the home server. I also use it as the default download location for my browsers so as to not clutter my SSDs as well as general storage

**jmw_man** · 01-02-14, 07:31 PM

What's yalls take on the technologies listed on asus.com: thunderbolt, M.2 (NGFF), Wi-Fi, NFC Express, etc?
Is there something there I should consider for future proofing my machine?

Also, I'm trying to understand the difference between going 4-way SLI and Quad-GPU SLI. Is one way better than the other?

**Phyrelight** · 01-02-14, 08:11 PM

quad sli is two two core gpus, for example 2 gtx 690. Each 690 is a 2 680s on a single card so its pairing two duals taking up 2 PCI express lanes. 4 way sli is 4 individual cards taking up 4 pci express lanes.

Thunderbolt is the apple proprietary connector which is essentially a mini hdmi connector

Bluetooth is nice to have if you don't want to use bluetooth doggles.

NFC uses near field communication similar to a payment wallet to transfer data (ie photos) from yoou phone to your PC.

m.2 is next generation form factor (NFF) which is a type of ultra small solid state drive

next?

**jmw_man** · 01-02-14, 08:21 PM

So, 4 way SLI.... 4 cards are better than 2 cards, right?

Oh, and you went the quad route, why only 2 cards?

When would I want or need m.2?

**salty99** · 01-02-14, 08:56 PM

Originally Posted by jmw_man

So, 4 way SLI.... 4 cards are better than 2 cards, right?

Oh, and you went the quad route, why only 2 cards?

When would I want or need m.2?

Depends on the card and the architecture. I can't recall which card I was looking at the benchmarks for, but due to the way it was designed, you actually lost performance by having 4 cards. Basically, the load is being divided up so much that it would be better to just keep it on 2 cards than having more cards in the mix. Like I said, it depends on the cards and the architecture. Some of them lend themselves well to quad SLI, some do not.

Edit: Err...you might not lose performance, but for certain cards you would stop seeing performance gains by adding in another card