want a fast boot PC - what do you think of this?

RaMDOM

RaMDOM

RaMDOM

Associate
Joined
20 Nov 2005
Posts
1,664
Location
Birmingham
Okay guys, my current PC does me fine however it takes quite a while to boot. Maybe it is because of all the stuff I have on it during start up but I pretty much use it all.

I have been waiting for a while for a PC upgrade and said I would upgrade when EFI Mobos were out and SSD's were of a decent size and affordable. So with that in mind I have selected the following from the OcUK catalogue:

MOBO: Gigabyte H67A-UD3H-B3 Intel H67
I have chosen this board for the EFI (and because it is Gigabyte - they have never let me down :cool:). I am not interested in booting from 3TB or anything else, I am only interested in the faster boot time.

SSD: OCZ Agility 3 60GB 2.5" SATA-3 Solid State Hard Drive
One of the latest drives which is a reasonble price and looks like it will go blisteringly fast.

CPU: Intel Core i5-2300 2.80GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155
Cause new mobo means new CPU, so more money :( (I currently have a Intel Core 2 Quad)

RAM: OCZ Platinum 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3
Cause at that price why the hell not! :p

And then a copy of Windows 7 to put on it (will have to buy this as well), because why the hell would I install my copy of Vista on the above?!?!?!

I intend on reusing my PSU, the 1.5TB and 500Gig hard drives I already have and also transferring my ATI 4890 card. The ATI card is doing fine in games for now so I will wait for a new video card upgrade maybe around the end of the year.

So the total of the above will be £457.90

So what do you all think? Will the above give me my 'fast boot' dream machine? It has been a while since I have built a PC so I will read up on the new tech, but anything I may have missed (compatability wise) or any better parts I could get over the above?

Cheers in advance all!
 
Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor £164.99

Asrock Z68 PRO3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £105.98

OCZ Agility 3 60GB 2.5" SATA-3 Solid State Hard Drive (AGT3-25SAT3-60G) £101.99

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-00599) £79.99

Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX4GX3M2A1600C9) £39.98

Total : £502.54 (includes shipping : £8.00)



K branded chip and a Z68 board to overclock:)

EDIT: I've just looked back over the OP and realised I misread the price for £497.90 instead of the £457.90 so may be over budget lol
 
Last edited:
Just a suggestion but you could do this as an alternative:

Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor £164.99
(£137.49) £164.99
(£137.49)
Asrock Z68 PRO3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard Asrock Z68 PRO3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £105.98
(£88.32) £105.98
(£88.32)
OCZ Agility Series 30GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive (OCZSSD2-1AGT30G) OCZ Agility Series 30GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive (OCZSSD2-1AGT30G) £49.99
(£41.66) £49.99
(£41.66)
OCZ Platinum 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C7 1333MHz Dual Channel Kit (OCZ3P1333LV4GK) OCZ Platinum 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C7 1333MHz Dual Channel Kit (OCZ3P1333LV4GK) £27.95
(£23.29) £27.95
(£23.29)
Sub Total : £290.76
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £8.00
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £59.75
Total : £358.51

You use the Z68 and the SSD for SSD cacheing, you get a better CPU and keep your cheaper ram and you save about £100 which you could put towards windows 7 64-bit OEM and a decent air cooler.

EDIT:

Or go with sk82jack's....
 
I agree with the above. If all you want it to do is boot quicker. Why not try putting the PC into hibernate rather than shutdown and maybe do a clean install of Windows. Vista does have ridiculous boot and shutdown times. Perhaps obtain a copy of Windows 7 and do a clean install. Forget the SSD, see what it's like when you install Windows 7 onto a freshly formatted drive. You will be guaranteed to knock a lot of time off boot.
 
LEUVEN said:
An SSD and a fresh install of Windows would be my first port of call before buying a new rig. :)
Click to expand...

This, with win7. My e6600 with win7 on a ssd (sata2 so not even the blinding fast stuff) will resume from hibernation outrageously fast, and boot not a lot slower.
 
core 2 quads are still pretty fast. i think they are comparable to a phenom II X4 if you get them both at the same clock (correct me if im wrong here though)

no idea what sata slots your current mobo has so i included SATA 6gb/s card as well.
SATA 6gb/s + USB3 card was a PCIe x2 slot card, so i removed that from this list

Your basket
Product Name Qty Price Line Total
OCZ Vertex Series 120GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive (OCZSSD2-1VTX120G) £149.99
(£124.99) £149.99
(£124.99)
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-00599) £79.99
(£66.66) £79.99
(£66.66)
Startech 2-Port SATA III 6Gbps PCI-Express Controller Card £31.99
(£26.66) £31.99
(£26.66)
Sub Total : £218.31
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £8.00
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £45.26
Total : £271.57

*edit*
the card i had put in used a PCIe x2 slot, which not a lot of computers have spare these days.
replaced with a PCIe x1 slot card
 
Last edited:
Cheers for the responses guys. Good point about the fresh windows install.

I think I will, for now, just go for the Win7 and SSD option. Makes sense. the only reason I included the DDR3 RAM was because it is so cheap. I currently have 4GB of Cosair DDR2 RAM; would upgrading to 4GB of DDR3 make much difference? I am guessing probably not. I can then see if the boot time is improved and if not then go for the mobo and CPU.

Reaper; you reccomend a SATAII SSD but then mentioned getting the SATA III Controller Card? Surely it would not make a difference with that drive?

My current mobo supports SATAII and I was going to the OCZ Agility 3 in SATAII, however now I know about these cards I may get one of them and run it in SATAIII.

Just out of interest; no one agreed with my choice of mobo. That Asrock looks pretty good and they are they only other brand I have bought. Better than the Gigabyte board then? Or not much difference?

J-FRO - good savings there - however I think I would want a larger SSD.
 
RaMDOM said:
Haha :p. No problem. I did not know that those cards existed so cheers for posting it!
Click to expand...

at least my idiocy helped in some way.

a sensible suggestion from me though, go to http://www.anandtech.com/bench/SSD/65 to compare some of the SSD's. not all of them are on that site, but it makes for some interesting comparisons. the newer ones arent as fast as you might think compared to the old ones
 
RaMDOM said:
Just out of interest; no one agreed with my choice of mobo. That Asrock looks pretty good and they are they only other brand I have bought. Better than the Gigabyte board then? Or not much difference?

J-FRO - good savings there - however I think I would want a larger SSD
Click to expand...

Nobody agreed with your choice of motherboard because it is a H67 motherboard which means no overclocking, which is fine for an i5-2400 but we specced i5-2500Ks with unlocked multipliers specifically for overclocking;)

I think the idea from J-FRO was not to use the SSD as a boot drive but to use it with the Z68 board for SSD caching, which will speed up access to your most common files:)
 
Make sure if you decide to go the Windows 7 and SSD route that you purchase a Retail boxed copy of windows 7, last thing you would want to do is decide to upgrade motherboard, cpu etc in a year or so time and have to re purchase windows 7 again!

You do realise that any new motherboard which you purchase would only be compatible with DDR3 memory and that you will not be able to install DDR3 memory into your current PC unless you were to upgrade the motherboard?
 
gamesaregood said:
Make sure if you decide to go the Windows 7 and SSD route that you purchase a Retail boxed copy of windows 7, last thing you would want to do is decide to upgrade motherboard, cpu etc in a year or so time and have to re purchase windows 7 again!
Click to expand...

Good tip - cheers!

gamesaregood said:
You do realise that any new motherboard which you purchase would only be compatible with DDR3 memory and that you will not be able to install DDR3 memory into your current PC unless you were to upgrade the motherboard?
Click to expand...

Aye - looking at the MoBO specs they are all DDR3 only - good job that DDR3 is nice n cheap now. My current mobo (Gigabyte P35C-DS3R) supports both DDR2 and DDR3 (one of the reasons I got it) :p
 
sk82jack said:
Nobody agreed with your choice of motherboard because it is a H67 motherboard which means no overclocking, which is fine for an i5-2400 but we specced i5-2500Ks with unlocked multipliers specifically for overclocking;)

I think the idea from J-FRO was not to use the SSD as a boot drive but to use it with the Z68 board for SSD caching, which will speed up access to your most common files:)
Click to expand...

Okay I see that the Asrock would be better. I am intrigued about using the SSD for caching. In regards to that am I right in thinking that because you would not boot from the SSD so that the boot times would not benefit from anything the SSD would bring, however if I booted from my 1.5TB drive and had the 30GB SSD for caching, then once in windows, everything would benefit, office docs, video editing, games, etc.

Am I right in my interpretation of this?

edit: fyi my 1.5TB drive is a Samsung SpinPoint F2 EcoGreen 1.5TB SATA-II 32MB Cache.
 
Last edited:
sk82jack said:
I think the idea from J-FRO was not to use the SSD as a boot drive but to use it with the Z68 board for SSD caching, which will speed up access to your most common files:)
Click to expand...

That's the one :)

RaMDOM said:
however if I booted from my 1.5TB drive and had the 30GB SSD for caching, then once in windows, everything would benefit, office docs, video editing, games, etc.

Am I right in my interpretation of this?
Click to expand...

Yeah precisely mate. The Z68 boards (as a new feature not previously available on the H67 and P67 boards) now allow you to add in a smaller cheaper SSD that will give you some added benefit. The idea is that people on a budget can still speed things up.

It works by documenting all the files you use most often, such as the start up files and various programme files, and lowers the time it takes to load them by taking the load from the SSD as oppose you your HDD. I'm not sure how well it works but that's what it's there for.

One thing I would like to know though that I've not seen anywhere else on the forums is can you use a SSD to cache from another SSD?
 
J-FRO said:
That's the one :)

One thing I would like to know though that I've not seen anywhere else on the forums is can you use a SSD to cache from another SSD?
Click to expand...

Cheers for the response. That last line was my thought exactly when I read up on the board. I couldn't imagine that it would make much of a difference. But hey lets go one further:

One thing I would like to know though that I've not seen anywhere else on the forums is can you use a SSD to cache from another SSD.. in RAID?
 
Would be pretty insane if you could install windows 7 and all your programmes on one ssd and use a smaller one to increase their boot time. Would really consider doing it myself if it worked.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom