re: Best place to buy a home PC?

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The SSD is nice but you'll get a lot more bang for your buck with the higher rpm drive.

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Please explain what you mean. In terms of storage space, you will get more bang for your buck with a 5400rpm drive. In terms of performance, you'll get much, much more bang for your buck with an SSD. An SSD with the OS + a 5400rpm 2nd drive for media>>>>> anything consumer-grade (so let's leave out 10-15K drives in RAID because that's really not in line with what's being discussed).

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i'd go mini itx if i were you if you dont want a graphics card (in which i highly recommend a even a low cost graphics card) and i think you might be able to fit a small card in a mini itx
make sure to get a SSD for software install 256Gb minimum boots and runs many times faster and regular HD for documents

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I had a SFF (Small Form Factor) case because it needed to be hidden inside of a digital sign. I took the sign out of service and began using that PC for my everyday stuff and eventually paid a terrible price because later on, my tasks went more and more to video stuff which requires more Horsepower from the graphics card. That SFF rig could NOT be upgraded to any kind of substantial graphics card because the room for a good graphics card simply wasn't there - physically too small - and in the end, terribly under-powered.

I'd also go with 8GB ram just for good measure/peace of mind (best to buy your belts one size too big). If it's a budget buster, then 4GB is probably ok.

I have a hardon for Samsung controllers because they are among the most reliable in the industry, but Sandforce is not nearly as bad as it used to be. Performance-wise, the Samsung will be marginally better but not in a way that you would notice unless doing benchmarks. Technically, the Kingston's NAND type (MLC) has a theoretically higher lifespan vs. Samsung's TLC NAND in the EVO. However, taking advantage of potential lifespan is highly dependent on the controller itself and the handling of wear leveling and other functions. Tests have shown Samsung to be superior in that regard and even having a lifespan (write cycle count) triple its advertised lifespan for the NAND chips. When it comes down to it though, I don't know anyone who keeps drives long enough for this to even be a factor. Based on my heavy usage with my Samsung 830 SSD (old generation), I have about 16 years left on it.

So, short answer, Kingston's fine and probably not worth the extra $25 for Samsung

In terms of specs, looks good. Just my personal preference to build one

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Speaking of 120gb SSDs, does a Samsung 840 Evo ($79) justify the 50% increase in price over the Kingston SSDNow v300 ($54.99)?

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Yes, although my opinion is like diabetes. So take it for what it is worth. And I am bias because I swear by the Samsung SSDs. It's what I run in my rig for the OS and programs. Smooth as titties with tan oil.

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Yes, although my opinion is like diabetes. So take it for what it is worth. And I am bias because I swear by the Samsung SSDs. It's what I run in my rig for the OS and programs. Smooth as titties with tan oil.

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I am biased as well, and against my better judgement will likely spend the extra $40 on Samsung when I get a 500GB SSD. But see my explanation above. You can't really say it's worth it just because you own one and like it (i.e., every Mac user on this site). I can say with absolute certainty that if I were placed in any sort of blind study comparing 10 similarly spec'd SSDs and I was not allowed to run benchmarks or view system information, my chosen "favorite" would have a 10% chance of being the Samsung.

Most PCs will have a traditional hard drive, which uses small magnetic platters that spin at rates up to 15,000 revolutions per minute (rpm).

Here's some self-plagiarism from my PC parts guide.



A traditional desktop hard drive will have 7200-rpm platters. Other than how fast the platters spin, the performance of a hard drive depends on a few things:

Platter Density – The amount of storage space available on a single platter. Hard drives can have several platters stacked on top of each other as a means of cramming as much capacity into one unit as possible. Higher density platters (i.e., higher storage capacity) allow more data to be read per revolution.

Cache – The hard drive moves data from its platters to its cache, which is a specific amount of DRAM storage capacity. Your PC can access the cache much faster than the actual platters, so higher cache means more data available for faster access at any given time. Mainstream performance desktop hard drives today have 32 or 64MB of cache, depending on capacity.

Drive Heads – The faster the drive heads can move into position over a given point on the platter, the faster it can access data.


Here's a look at the inside of a standard 2.5" SSD:



SSDs have no moving parts, no noise, less power—but most importantly, SSDs are several times faster than HDDs. At everything. They have no read/write heads and don't have to seek data blocks on a moving platter, so access latency is essentially non-existent. If your operating system needs to access data on an SSD, it does not have to wait for the data to be found. The data is always there and waiting for your OS. Sequential read/write speeds are also several times faster, but much of the everyday noticeable speed increase comes from its random read/write performance with small file blocks and ability to support a queue depth. In other words, there can be dozens of read/write requests pending at any given time, so hosts can submit requests simultaneously, which the SSD can execute with very low latency, improving random read/write speeds dramatically. Individual hard drives don’t have this capability.

In my current PC, I have a Samsung 830 SSD (old generation SSD) and two 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black hard drives. Last year, I ran a performance benchmark test on all three drives using a program called CrystalDiskMark. This tests how quickly a drive can read and write a specific amount of data in different scenarios. In this test, I choose 1000MB (nearly 1GB).

In the images below, you’ll see several rows of numbers showing read and write speeds for Seq, 512K, 4K, and 4K QD32. Without getting too detailed, sequential (Seq) speeds indicate how fast a drive is able to read or write in the same location (i.e. transferring/copying large files). The other numbers show the read and write speed of the drive when it accesses 1000MB of data in smaller blocks in random locations (for example, the 4K test means the drive had to read and write 1000MB in random 4-Kilobyte blocks).

As a general rule, benchmarks should not be trusted as indicators of real-world performance. However, in this case, you can see the obvious differences across several different tests.

This is my oldest Caviar black, which had been running for 2.5 years at the time of this test and was 65% full. The test shows that it’s beginning to degrade in performance.


My second Caviar Black was just over a year old, with a bit more free space (hard drives perform better the emptier they are)


Finally, here’s the result with my Samsung 830 SSD, also a year old at the time.


The differences in results are huge, especially in the random read/write tests. A hard drive’s random read/write speed is severely crippled by its access time. The hard drive’s read/write heads must seek every individual block of data. In a test like this, smaller blocks mean more seeks, and because these seeks involve mechanical performance, it takes more time. The last benchmark (4K QD32) is quite telling. It represents random read/write performance of individual 4KB blocks with a queue depth of 32.

You mean GB, not MB. I'm sure that motherboard will support 32GB if it has 4 DIMM slots, but it would be foolish to add any additional RAM to the 8GB it already comes with. Throwing money in the trash. You'd get the same experience taping the extra 8GB module to the outside of your case.

You won't even use all the 8GB you have, most likely. These days, 4GB is baseline, 8GB is optimal for nearly everyone including power users, 16GB is for extremely heavy multi-tasking and a higher tier of power users, and 32GB is hilarious except for the most hardcore of video editors, 3d modelers, maybe multiple virtual machines running in tandem etc. -- for people who fully understand and actively take advantage of atypical uses for it (such as a RAMdisk)

It will not make your computer faster.