Serious Business

[Armatus]

Here's my Black Friday-Cyber Monday list thus far,

I had to cut back on my original budget which was 1,500-2K

This one really needs to be under 1K and include a monitor (22")

CPU: i5 2500k $219.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115072

SAMSUNG 830 Series MZ-7PC128B/WW 2.5" 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) $104.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820147163

MOBO: Asrock Z77 extreme4 $104.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813157293

RAM: 8gb Crucial Ballistix Sport $36.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820148543

GPU: HD 7850 $189.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814202004

PSU: PC Power & cooling 750W (80 PLUS SILVER CERTIFIED) $109.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817703027

DVD drive: Lite-On DVD burner $17.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16827106289

OS: Win7 home premium x64 $99.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16832116986


Total : $884.92

Lacks,


Heat sink fan
Second Harddrive
Case
Monitor

[Bolkonsky]

Just get the same exact build as bdd:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...9#post12261509

Don't bother with an SSD.

[Armatus]

Oh my God I can't tell you much I hate mechanical hard drives, how many I have laid to rest and replaced.

[Bolkonsky]

Yeah well an SSD is way out of your budget.

[Armatus]

The SSD is only a cool hundy, and for the last 5 years I've had about 160 GB and survived, how big are games these days?

Now then, what if I added a 1 TB SATA to the mix on top of the SSD and just used that for the OS and the mechanical for games?

How much space do you need for Windows 7?

[Bolkonsky]

My Shogun 2/FOTS folder, with no mods installed, is 29.3 gigabytes. My Empire folder with one mod is 17.4 GB, and my Napoleon folder is 22.5 GB. For three games, that's 69.2 Gigabytes of memory. For Windows 7 you need a bare minimum of 25 GB, maybe more with all the patches and service packs. That's not including any programs, videos, pictures, music, drivers, etc. It adds up, really quickly. Also, SSD drives can fail as well.

What I'm doing right now is a 128 GB SSD, and a 2 TB HDD. I have Windows 8 and any programs I use all the time (web browser, programs that start with my PC, etc) on the SSD. And games that take a while to load. They all fit pretty comfortably, but with Windows + 3 games it's full.

On the 2 TB HDD, I've got all my games and videos and music and documents.

[Armatus]

That sounds like what I want to do, I've always used to create a separate partition for Windows on my old drives, I never noticed the difference though. I used to give XP 20 GB for itself.

So I found a deal on a SSD

OCZ Vertex 4 VTX4-25SAT3-128G 2.5" 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) $74.99

As for mechanical I was thinking Western Digital.

[Bolkonsky]

Vertex 4 is a good one I guess. Any name brand that isn't using a Sandforce controller is good. Samsung 830 might be the most well rounded, but that OCZ is good too.

For mechanical drives it's pretty hit or miss. I've got a Seagate Barracuda 2 TB that's treated me well, just go name-brand and choose the company with the best customer service since some day, you will need it.

[mrmouth]

Im living off a 128gb Crucial M4 that replaced a 300gb VRaptor. I almost had a freakout after I saw what Win7 took up even after removing the unnecessaries. But Im alright. Ive got more than enough installed right now. The 300gb mechanical drive was always full of games I totally forgot about, anyhow. Now everything that in on here is being played.

And Ive also installed my less intensive games like Faster Than Light, etc, on my 1tb WD Green storage drive, and that works just fine.

I sold the VRaptor for $70 as the warranty was going to run out, and got the M4 for $30 more. Not a bad upgrade for thirty bones. Although there isnt much of a noticeable difference in load times, even on boot. I imagine coming from a 7200rpm drive might be more noticeable.

[Armatus]

So what did you remove from Windows 7?

[mrmouth]

The usual stuff. The pre-installed games (I leave chess and solitaire), turn off hibernation, remove backups of windows updates after an initial install (this can also be done periodically), turn off system restore and memory dumps.

Hibernation is the biggest culprit. Mine was 12gb (equal to the size of your ram) which is just nuts. No reason for that, and that is a blockbuster game size right there. But there are some other things that some people might want to keep active.

This thread has some other things: http://www.overclock.net/t/929553/wi...up-and-secrets

[Bolkonsky]

There's lots of guides of getting more space out of your SSD. You can set it up so that all your user files are stored on a HDD, you can delete redundant data, turn off the pagefiles, if you have enough RAM you can nuke your virtual memory etc.

[irishron]

There's lots of guides of getting more space out of your SSD. You can set it up so that all your user files are stored on a HDD, you can delete redundant data, [COLOR="Red"]turn off the pagefiles, if you have enough RAM you can nuke your virtual memory[COLOER] etc.

Except total War games, the last one someone tried it on was Shogun2. It will nuke the game.

[Bolkonsky]

Except total War games, the last one someone tried it on was Shogun2. It will nuke the game.

Ah, can't say I've tried it with Shogun 2. Makes sense though, huge games require huge amounts of memory.

[Armatus]

Does Windows 7 add a lot of useless nonsense?

[Bolkonsky]

Yeah, it's a huge installation of pointless crap.

[Armatus]

Any guides to reducing stuff?

[Bolkonsky]

Here:
http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/07/25/sa...e-on-your-ssd/

Here:
http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/08/03/tw...ving-ssd-tips/

And here:
http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/07/05/ho...e-on-your-ssd/

[Armatus]

Ok so I had to attempt a piecemeal build between what I posted and the other guy's build because stuff is out of stock..

But I'm over budget... so I'm thinking rather than just go for squeezing everything into an $800 purchase, I'll pick the parts with the best deals tonight and then as I have additional money I'll buy whatever's left in a couple weeks.

[Armatus]

Progress!

ASUS P8Z68-V/GEN3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard with UEFI BIOS
Item #: N82E16813131792
$179.99 (-$50 Rebate)

SAPPHIRE 100355-1GOCL Radeon HD 7850 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card OC Version
Item #: N82E16814202004
$189.99 (-$15 Rebate)

SAMSUNG 840 Series MZ-7TD120BW 2.5" 120GB SATA III TLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
Item #: N82E16820147188
$109.99

Western Digital WD Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
Item #: N82E16822136533
$109.99

Antec Three Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
Item #: N82E16811129042
$54.99

DISCOUNT FOR AUTOADD

-$69.99

Subtotal $644.95
Tax $0.00
Newegg 3 Day $7.83

Order Total $652.78

Forgot to mention there's a $50 rebate on the MOBO and $15 dollar rebate on the GPU