Proposed system upgrades:

[Agnostic Bear]

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-003-IN
to use as my main os hdd

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-231-IN
to replace my q6600

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-147-CM
to replace my non-modular psu

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-280-AS
to replace my "P5Q" (not pro)

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-053-SA
4 of these to complete my raid array

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-173-CS
to replace my 667mhz ram


I will be buying these / whatever I decide based on your suggestions early July, as well as a few other things (raid controller from ebuyer though, as overclockers use dpd but they don't have the controller i want).

I wont buy i7 for the time being, and I definitely will not go DDR3 or any other brand apart from Corsair XMS2, they're the only brand I trust for RAM as every other has had RAM problems with me (g.skill, ocz).

So yes, go wild. Suggest things and tell me things I am all ears (apart from issues listed above).

[Recursion]

Whats with the Q9650? You could easily overclock your Q6600 to around 3.6GHz stable.

Also, why not go i7 and 6GBs DDR3 RAM if you have so much money to blow?

[Agnostic Bear]

Whats with the Q9650? You could easily overclock your Q6600 to around 3.6GHz stable.

Also, why not go i7 and 6GBs DDR3 RAM if you have so much money to blow?

Basically at the moment DDR3 latency is pretty poor and i7 is being phased out or something stupid because of AMD, so until it's all stable and starts to mature I wont be buying i7, in the future I will though. I want 45nm because it's pretty much faster (the architecture, not the process) and I'm not all that keen on overclocking, too much effort.

[N!ck]

Good choice of SSD, one of the best, but also extremely expensive for what you get. I'd probably save a few quid and see not that much of a performance dop from one of these. I can't find any benchmarks comparing the two, the nearest I see is the the Intel against the 256GB Samsung which kills it in the read/write times but has nothing on it in everything else. http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2009-flash-ssd-charts/compare,938.html?prod[2325]=on&prod[2333]=on

CPU - I personally don't think you're going to notice much of a performance increase over a Q6600 unless you're constantly doing CPU intensive tasks.

PSU - Nice choice, but at that price you're in range of the high end Corsair PSUs. I don't know if you'll need 850W? You won't if you're only running 1 graphics card. The HX series are pretty much the best you can get as far as PSUs go. 750W - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-018-CS&groupid=701&catid=123&subcat=1084 850W - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-019-CS&groupid=701&catid=123&subcat=1084 The TX series are very similar, but not modular.

Motherboard - Fine, just make sure it has what you need for your RAID controller. I'd be tempted to spend a little more on the board considering the rest of your system.

HDDs - Probably the best 1TB consumer drive available.

RAM - whatever, but you could save £10-15 per 4GB if you chose a different brand. I've never had any trouble with some of the others.

[Agnostic Bear]

Good choice of SSD, one of the best, but also extremely expensive for what you get. I'd probably save a few quid and see not that much of a performance dop from one of these. I can't find any benchmarks comparing the two, the nearest I see is the the Intel against the 256GB Samsung which kills it in the read/write times but has nothing on it in everything else. http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2009-flash-ssd-charts/compare,938.html?prod[2325]=on&prod[2333]=on

CPU - I personally don't think you're going to notice much of a performance increase over a Q6600 unless you're constantly doing CPU intensive tasks.

PSU - Nice choice, but at that price you're in range of the high end Corsair PSUs. I don't know if you'll need 850W? You won't if you're only running 1 graphics card. The HX series are pretty much the best you can get as far as PSUs go. 750W - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-018-CS&groupid=701&catid=123&subcat=1084 850W - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-019-CS&groupid=701&catid=123&subcat=1084 The TX series are very similar, but not modular.

Motherboard - Fine, just make sure it has what you need for your RAID controller. I'd be tempted to spend a little more on the board considering the rest of your system.

HDDs - Probably the best 1TB consumer drive available.

RAM - whatever, but you could save £10-15 per 4GB if you chose a different brand. I've never had any trouble with some of the others.

I might get a different mobo, but I use a p5q currently and it's rock solid, so I'd imagine the pro would be just as solid. Also I'll be getting the 750w you specified if it's in stock when I order next month.

[N!ck]

I might get a different mobo, but I use a p5q currently and it's rock solid, so I'd imagine the pro would be just as solid. Also I'll be getting the 750w you specified if it's in stock when I order next month.

Yeah, sure they're a decent motherboard series.

I'd probably get an aftermarket cooler on your CPU even if you're not overclocking just to make it quieter than the stock one. Get some decent case fans as well so the only noise you here will me the whir of all them hard drives.

[Agnostic Bear]

Yeah, sure they're a decent motherboard series.

I'd probably get an aftermarket cooler on your CPU even if you're not overclocking just to make it quieter than the stock one. Get some decent case fans as well so the only noise you here will me the whir of all them hard drives.

My PC is really quiet as it is (thankyou lian-li!) I will be buying another cpu cooler, I'll look about for some reviews, check it all out.

[Flisker]

Looks like you are splashing some serious cash there. I can't see anything wrong with all that. Good luck :)

[Josh-H]

You have £550 to spend on a SSD ... wow.. just wow. Is the improvement worth that much?

[Mentor]

Outside of laptops i really dont think ssd's are worth it. for that price you may as well just raid 0 a rew raptor drives together, which would probabaly increase speed and save you money at the same time, (not so easy on case space though :p)

[N!ck]

Outside of laptops i really dont think ssd's are worth it. for that price you may as well just raid 0 a rew raptor drives together, which would probabaly increase speed and save you money at the same time, (not so easy on case space though :p)

No, he'd probably see a better performance with two Samsung F1s in RAID0 than two Raptors off the top of my head.

Even a cheap £100ish SSD will outperform a RAID 0 array as far as standard desktop performance is concerned (not read/write throughput) due to the low access times which is what's important when accessing lots of small files in a small space of time rather than reading/writing large files.

I do think he's way overkilling on the SSD for standard desktop use though.

[Mentor]

No, he'd probably see a better performance with two Samsung F1s in RAID0 than two Raptors off the top of my head.

Even a cheap £100ish SSD will outperform a RAID 0 array as far as standard desktop performance is concerned (not read/write throughput) due to the low access times which is what's important when accessing lots of small files in a small space of time rather than reading/writing large files.

I do think he's way overkilling on the SSD for standard desktop use though.
Raptors just the first fast drive that came to my head, i dont really keep up with it to well so ill assume the F1's are better.
Plus assuming theres minimal fragmentation, seek times arnt really that bigger overhead. Equally although 7 has im told upped the anti in terms of making better use of ssd performance, as far as ive heard on vista/xp theres little difference speed advantage in em "/

Though again, i dont follow hardware in excessive detail so may be wrong.

[N!ck]

Raptors just the first fast drive that came to my head, i dont really keep up with it to well so ill assume the F1's are better.
Plus assuming theres minimal fragmentation, seek times arnt really that bigger overhead. Equally although 7 has im told upped the anti in terms of making better use of ssd performance, as far as ive heard on vista/xp theres little difference speed advantage in em "/

Though again, i dont follow hardware in excessive detail so may be wrong.

The F1s are not really in the same category as Raptors as they are just standard 7200rpm drives. What makes them fast is their large capacity (1TB) and the fact that they only use 3 platters. Meaning lots of data in a small space so a little bit of a rotation covers more data than a similar lower capacity or higher platter drive. Raptors spin at 10000rpm and have just 2 platters (as far as i am aware) but are only 150GB in capacity, so the F1s are a cheaper alternative, quieter, more energy efficient, much more of a storage to price ratio and better performers. I think the only advantage of the raptor is a slightly lower seek time which brings it's overall performance almost up to par with the F1 which has a much better read/write rate.

Seek times aren't a big overhead in normal file access, but in the situation of starting up an operating system a drive like the F1 and raptor only averages something like 10MB/s read in the process (when the F1 is capable of around 120MB/s read on large files). It's because it's not getting the chance to read at high speeds as by the time it's read a file it's having to seek another. That's where the SSD's big seek time drop gives a nice performance increase on things like boot times.

That's my understanding/theory of it all. I could be wrong?

[Agnostic Bear]

The F1s are not really in the same category as Raptors as they are just standard 7200rpm drives. What makes them fast is their large capacity (1TB) and the fact that they only use 3 platters. Meaning lots of data in a small space so a little bit of a rotation covers more data than a similar lower capacity or higher platter drive. Raptors spin at 10000rpm and have just 2 platters (as far as i am aware) but are only 150GB in capacity, so the F1s are a cheaper alternative, quieter, more energy efficient, much more of a storage to price ratio and better performers. I think the only advantage of the raptor is a slightly lower seek time which brings it's overall performance almost up to par with the F1 which has a much better read/write rate.

Seek times aren't a big overhead in normal file access, but in the situation of starting up an operating system a drive like the F1 and raptor only averages something like 10MB/s read in the process (when the F1 is capable of around 120MB/s read on large files). It's because it's not getting the chance to read at high speeds as by the time it's read a file it's having to seek another. That's where the SSD's big seek time drop gives a nice performance increase on things like boot times.

That's my understanding/theory of it all. I could be wrong?

Correct, I'm going to look at the raid controller now, see if it support multiple raids on different drives, if so I'll pair up 2 HDD's in RAID 0 for my main OS drive, probably a few 10k RPM drives.

[Agnostic Bear]

Looks like I'll be grabbing 2x300gb 10k rpm drives, I think they're velociraptor, don't have the information on hand, using laptop.

[N!ck]

Looks like I'll be grabbing 2x300gb 10k rpm drives, I think they're velociraptor, don't have the information on hand, using laptop.

Are you not getting a SSD anymore? What's your new plan?

[Agnostic Bear]

Are you not getting a SSD anymore? What's your new plan?

Using 2x300GB velociraptors as main drive in raid, I am seriously considering i7 now.

[N!ck]

Using 2x300GB velociraptors as main drive in raid, I am seriously considering i7 now.

Good choice on the VolociRaptors, looking at the benchmarks. Its up to you about i7, it's your money.

[Agnostic Bear]

Using 2x300GB velociraptors as main drive in raid, I am seriously considering i7 now.

Ok I've decided to go i7, I'm also buying another 4890, here's how it's looking now:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-036-KS
New RAM

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-280-IN
New CPU (I will overclock this as high as I can get it stable)

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-155-GI
New Mobo

The raid card is compatible with this mobo (a couple of seconds googling) and should work very well in tandem with my crossfire setup, should be *****in!

Just gotta save £6k to pay my mother's debts (how fun).

[Agnostic Bear]

I was going to buy another 4890, but I decided not to and I have no idea why, if anybody knows please tell me.

It might be the space it would take up I am not sure. Definitely going i7 though. Gonna serve some forumites some pooncake.

[Recursion]

Get two.

[Agnostic Bear]

Get two.

Get 2 what? If 4890: why? (I need a PCI-E slot for my RAID Controller)

[Recursion]

O_o Ahh nevermind then, I never knew RAID cards used PCI-E slots O_o

[Stephen!]

It's going to be a monster.

[Mentor]

I'd assume you could probably get a raid card for pretty much any interface "/ Though a x16 user would have to be one hell of a raid card :p

@stephen : i keep waiting for your avatar to load lol, its killing my mind :p

[Agnostic Bear]

I'd assume you could probably get a raid card for pretty much any interface "/ Though a x16 user would have to be one hell of a raid card :p

@stephen : i keep waiting for your avatar to load lol, its killing my mind :p

PCI-E scales down to whatever is needed, the RAID card I want is x4.