Quick SSD question.

[Tim Watts]

Yes - I had a v4 - put me off SSDs for a year!

[chris French]

It's not just size, but things like browsing lots of thumbnails etc. can be quicker/smoother. And batch operations

I use Adobe lightroom a lot.

It's based around a catalogue file, with stored image previews.

Scrolling through the catalogue is a lot smoother with it all on an SSD, ditto any bathc operations.

[polygonum]

I have recently seen several SSDs that have failed to last even a couple of years. They were in otherwise quite decent HP workstations. At least one was replaced by a perfectly ordinary hard drive - a bit slower but much of the performance of the box was actually due to having plentiful processing power and memory.

[David Paste]

This is what I've got on the list so far, Unsure about the case, not looking for some flashy thing. Is 500 watts enough? All comments / advice / ridicule appreciated :-)

Crucial BLS8G3D1609DS1S00CEU Sport 8GB, Ballistix 240-pin DIMM, DDR3 PC3-12800 Memory Module by Crucial

£57.47

Intel Core i5 4440 Quad Core CPU Retail (Socket 1150, 3.10GHz,

6MB, 84W, Extended Memory 64 Technology, Execute Disable Bit by Intel £128.67

Samsung 840 EVO 120GB 2.5 inch Basic SATA Solid State Drive

£59.95

Gigabyte H87-HD3 Motherboard (Socket 1150, H87 Express, DDR3, S-ATA 600, ATX, Haswell, Supports 4thGeneration IntelCore Processors, GIGABYTE UEFI Dual BIOS) by Gigabyte

£68.28

Dell UltraSharp U2414H 23.8 inch Widescreen IPS LCD Monitor (1920 x 1080, 2M:1, 250 cd/m2, 8 ms, HDMI/DP/mini DP/USB)

£179.99

710 BLACK DESKTOP PC GAMING TOWER CASE WITH VENTED SIDES - Front USB & HD Audio (Inc. 500w SATA Power Supply) by OEM

£35.50

AmazonBasics High-Speed HDMI Cable 3 Feet / 0.9 m Supports Ethernet / 3D / Audio Return (Newest Standard) by AmazonBasics

£3.49

[The Natural Philosopher]

My linux mint boots in 35 secs with a stock disk of spinning rust

[Vir Campestris]

It's earth shattering for most workloads.

To read a random sector of spinning rust: Say 5ms average seek, then

1/7200/2 = 4mS latency.

So maybe 9 mS to a random sector. Then read, which isn't much different to an SSD.

But on the SSD - Seek time: zero. Latency: zero.

Andy

[Tim Watts]

500W - more than enough unless you are planning lots of disks and/or insane video cards (gamers rig). I'd say you could scale down a bit. Check the quietpc link below.

Good choice Crucual never let me down for RAM

More money but I can vouch for it.

I prefer either pure Intel boards or ASUS boards.

Is that Dell basically a Samsung? (Many were). Otherwise get Samsung.

You might look at

[chris French]

In message , David Paste writes

500 watts is more than enough. Unless you are going to be running some meaty graphics cards (unnecessary for general purpose computing nowadays with the quality of the built in graphics) the machine will probably not draw much more than 100W or so. 150W tops

£35 is cheap for a case+psu. Which makes me doubt the quality of the psu. A decent PSU is a worthwile purchase. I'd look to get a separate decent PSU and case (unless buying a case with a known psu inside)

[David Paste]

Cheers, I'll have a look at that.

Dell is LG panel, apparently. Got a good write up on TFT Central. Can you recommend a good Samsung screen?

Thanks again.

[David Paste]

Can you suggest any PSU brands? I know nowt about them!

Thanks.

[D.M.Chapman]

I've been quite impressed with the Corair builder series PSUs.

CX500 would be the 500w one, with the CX500M being the same with modular cables (you only plug in the cables you need, makes things neater, and theoretically, better airflow).

I'd go for the 500M tbh - it's only a couple of quid more.

Darren

[Tim Watts]

Anything that says Samsung really.

The rest is upto you - eg size, number of ports.

I am looking at a Samsung SyncMaster 205BW right now, bought around 2007 and it's as good now as the day I bought it.

My Samsung TV is still excellent - 2004-5 ish.

Got another Small Samsung TV, 2009 vintage.

I've found all their monitors/TVs good and long lived.

[Martin Brown]

Since you intend to use it for image editing it is well worth having an IPS screen at HD resolution (or more if your budget will stretch to it).

24" is enough. Don't be tempted by an even bigger TFT screen...

Also maybe consider the i5-4570 CPU (about 10% more expensive for not quite a 10% improvement in speed). Don't spend more than you have to on the memory just get a solid makers basic offering as you have specd.

[Andy Burns]

Are you sure they all are? Some Dell monitors are only 6bpp which is not ideal for photo editing, also some have an unusual gamut (which may be better for photo editing providing you can calibrate it).

[www.GymRatZ.co.uk]

I LOVE my QuietPC Not a single fan in sight. Not even on the PSU.

Not a "QuietPC" but a totaly and utterly "SilentPC"

:)

[John Rumm]

Also found mostly the same - and those that have gone wrong are relatively easy to fix in most cases.

[John Rumm]

OCZ...

at the budget "included in a case" end of the market, I have had very few failures with Antec boxes (one or two replacements out of 100+ in the last decade)

[www.GymRatZ.co.uk]

BeQuiet! Dark Power Pro.

Was the choice for my own I7 Home build. Not cheap but plenty of leads and connectors etc. along with other things. Big fan that is still silent after 2 years....

Pete@

[Theo Markettos]

...but you didn't hang the drives off the USB port on the router, which was my point. The router just can't push the bandwidth from USB out to ethernet, let alone what happens after.

But you have a point - additionally many '4-port' routers are actually a

6-port switch with VLAN tags inside (4 LAN, 1 WAN, 1 port to the CPU). If the router is trying to push out data onto a LAN port, that will try to saturate 2 links. If it's additionally doing routing (WAN to LAN) or simple LAN-LAN switching that will eat up more bandwidth. Depending on the switch architecture you might end up running of internal switch bandwidth before you hit the CPU bottleneck.

Theo

[Theo Markettos]

Look for 80-plus certification. There's a list here:

These are high efficiency PSUs, but also implies they've put a bit more effort into the PSU design rather than the cheapest parts.

It's particularly relevant if the machine is going to be on for a long period - eg overnight or every day 9-5. The rough rule of thumb is that 1W continuous will cost about a pound per year - so an inefficient PSU could cost maybe 20-30 pounds extra per year to run.

Theo