At the moment I have the following on the SSD front... OCZ Vertex 3 120GB - Operating System Drive. OCZ Vertex 3 240GB - Game Drive for Origin + Other Individual Games. Crucial M4 Drive 64GB - Max Payne 3 (no seriously!). Crucial C300 - Vacant Space. Samsung 830 256GB x2 in Raid 0 (Intel Controller Card) - Steam Games full with only a fraction of my library. Finally on the HDD end I have... Samsung F3 1TB - Since the SSD is almost full I use this as an alternate Steam Games installation folder. Samsung F4 2TB - File storage including large movie files and photos. The above configuration has maxed out all my Sata Ports so I'll have to switch and ditch some old drives. Primarily my motivation is to provide ample capacity for games over the next couple of years. With the likes of The Witcher 3, Mad Max, Cyberpunk 2077 and the ever increasing size of game installations I want a configuration that can adapt to my changing needs. The aforementioned games will be installed on SSD since I've experienced the difference with load times first hand. Specifically The Witcher 2 installed on an SSD eliminated loading screens when traversing the games world helping immersion no ends! I have a Samsung 840 Pro 256GB SSD sitting unused on my desk. Asides from that any recommendations on SSD and configurations would be most welcome!
Maybe using my approach would work for you? I just have a single 240GB SSD in my gaming system. I only play a game or two at any given time. When I'm not playing a game I uninstall it. For games that take too long to download I copy the files over to my server where all the rest of my media lives on 2 3x4TB parity arrays. That way when I want to play it again, I can just copy it over to steam and let it recheck in case there are updates or whatever. Otherwise... I would get nice newer fast 512GB ssds to replace the mess of smaller ones as several make/models can be had at lower prices than ever now, and 2x 4TB seagate sshd to replace your samsung hdds.
It's a thought but my style is to dip and dive into different games as and when I have the free time. Thoughts on the Crucial CT512MX100SSD1 512GB MX100? http://www.amazon.co.uk/Crucial-CT5...&ie=UTF8&qid=1425234370&sr=1-2&keywords=mx100
That's a lot of SSD storage you have already. Like above I'd be tempted to basically sell all the current drives to fund a wholesale refresh of your storage. A single large SSD (512GB or 1TB) and a new large HDD for overflow, media and to backup the SSD makes sense to me. Then maybe either utilise the existing HDDs or buy another for backup of that.
From experience around me the Crucials are a good way to go. Looking forward to a 5xxGB MX100 or MX200 myself.
Obviously the problem atm is too many smaller drives. Now whilst you could certainly replace semi-wholesale, an alt option would be to buy a cheap pcie 3Gb/s SATA card for the HDDs... ...freeing up, i assume, the two Marvell ports... ...then connect all the SSDs up... & then add/replace from the smallest to the largest. Now obviously the Marvell ports aren't fabulous in the scheme of things, but you will have games amongst the collection which aren't as time critical on loading (esp older non-multiplayer ones)... ...& trim's irrelevant as the data's effectively static. The only other choice is whether it would be better to put the OS (& pagefile) onto the fastest drives... So that'd currently be the 830 R0 array - followed by the 840 Pro - & obviously on the 6Gb/s intel ports. Now, i'm not saying that this is the best way - as if money were being no object then you'd replace everything (& have a top end X99 build & whatnot) - but it would be both by far the cheapest option, & allow you to upgrade more gradually; spreading the cost for when you can afford more SSD capacity. it's not that much SSD space imho... But obviously i agree that backing up is always a good idea - & you could obviously get a 4 port 3Gb/s SATA card to allow the extra drive(s) needed.
RAID on SSDs isn't that useful. Samsung RAPID mode is much faster for caching and apart for benchmarks you won't notice the difference between a single or two drives.
That's simply not true - as you *always* have to look at usage... ...so, whilst you're correct that some r/ws will show no real gains, in general, any task that heavily uses more sequential r/ws (generally 64KB or 128KB r/ws & above) or high QD random r/ws will gain noticeably from R0. So, for my personal usage, i do bunches of batch conversion & video editing & stuff that is highly sequential & is limited by the drive speed, so there is a gain from R0 - whether that's using SSDs or 15K7 SAS HDDs... ...&, whilst i am not saying that the OP definitely plays games within the context of the specific usage mentioned below (it's simply an illustration of how they could gain solely within a gaming usage) it's not correct to assume that either i or they don't have a usage that will benefit. Now, whilst the OP's situation doesn't naturally appear to be one of these two, if they're using the 3Gb/s intel ports for the R0 array, this will almost take the more sequential r/ws up to the level of a single SSD on a 6Gb/s port... ...or double them if they're both on the 6Gb/s intel ports... ...so, playing some multiplayer game which works on a first load, first start the level basis this would gain a small amount of time that could be important in gaining an advantage in, say, a FPS - as whilst lots of game data is low QD & random (so there'd be no noticeable gain), a decent percentage will be large enough for there to be an improvement. Similarly, the potential need to transfer data from the pagefile into memory (& vice versa) may also have a benefit in the same specific scenario for the same data transfer type. Now, this is a *very* specific gaming scenario where, whilst there certainly will not be significant gains the overwhelming majority of the time, there can a valid rationale for R0... ...however even if their actual gaming usage isn't as critical as that FPS example, beyond doubling the tiny risk of data loss from drive failure, it obviously wouldn't hamper or slow any loading times down. &, naturally, the OP's already got the 830s set up in R0, so it's not messing with something unnecessarily that they're happy with. The more important thing imho, particularly d.t. pagefile usage, would be to have the OS on the 6Gb/s ports - but whether they do it with the 830s or the 840 Pro is choice.
I'd just replace your top 4 ssd's with a 1TB ssd and replace at least the 1TBhdd with a 3 or 4TB drive to increase your back up space and free up some sata ports. Sell the spare drives and get some money back.
Given me plenty to think about PocketDemon, thanks for the descriptive reply! Very helpful The setup has lasted me well over the years. Started with the two OCZ drives almost 4 years ago and still as fast as the day they were installed!
No probs... Yeah, R0 will always be at least as fast as using drives singularly - with anything other than small low QD r/ws being faster - however if there's a free choice & no price difference between getting a single drive that's twice the size then it's all about usage as to whether any gains will be really noticeable... ...& as you're solely talking about a gaming usage, the one time that i could think of that would be meaningful is that type of multi-player gaming. Okay, you'll also knock a small amount of time off for level loading & whatnot more generally, but it's not constantly happening - though it'd be more pronounced when using the 3Gb/s ports. Now obviously i wasn't saying that you shouldn't buy all new drives if you can afford it &, more importantly, it'd make you happy - but your original post wasn't suggesting that there was all the money in the world, so it's solely about trying to maximising the SSD space as cheaply as possible... (as i'm generally replying to the OP, they're the 'you' - though obviously they didn't write this or the other quoted bit below) ...&, tbh, the drives that you're most likely to want to sell really aren't worth a great deal; to the extent that you may as well use the space (as i was suggesting) or maybe repurpose them into friends/family machines for a few beers, as imagining them being a major contribution to one or more 1TB SSDs simply isn't realistic. So using them or doing someone a good turn is a much more sensible outlook imho. As to the comment about rapid, which i'd neglected to comment upon, the biggest problem i can see for your usage is that you've only got 8GB & you're looking at playing up-to-date games... Well, whilst 8GB is certainly still adequate for most games, i assume you're going to be having other things running in the background (browser & email & whatnot) the 25% or 4GB maximum (whichever is the lower) is eating into a relatively ltd amount - which could instead lead you to be doing more swapping into & out of the pagefile & slow things down... ...& rapid only works on 1 drive, so you couldn't be accelerating the majority of your games. Otherwise, as a point of fact, whilst larger writes are generally accelerated quite significantly with rapid (small writes show far less of a gain) - though both leaving data liable to be lost if there were a power failure (this is far less robust than R0) your primary stated usage simply isn't going to be hugely write intensive even if you put some games on the rapid accelerated drive... [NB this lack of robustness isn't me telling anyone not to use rapid, but it's about being aware that any large non-battery backed write cache is typically vastly more prone to losing some data than using R0 without a cache (naturally both windows by default & lots of SSDs themselves will cache date prior to writing, but the amounts are far smaller) - though obviously you could lose ~50% more data with R0, vs 2 drives, *if* you don't have things backed up & a drive failed.] (& certainly steam games tend to do their updating & whatnot in the background - & the majority of the time will go in downloading the games/updates) ...typically, the more data that you're accessing during a session then the lower any improvement in read speeds will be (esp as, with 8GB of memory, you're ltd to a 2GB cache for *both* the read & the write cache from the one drive) & the greater the level of multitasking &/or new data being read (which is what will be happening with games to a large extent) the better a R0 array will compare for reads. Now, whilst for very different reasons, this would be the same as someone claiming that R0 is always vastly faster, as it's obviously not... [hence being very specific about where the major gains are in my original response to the comment] ...&, whilst it won't be slower unless enabling it noticeably increases pagefile usage, most overall application usage (inc gaming) with rapid simply doesn't show the same gains as artificial b/ms for reads; esp as the memory that it's sensible to allocate to rapid gets lower & lower based upon usage. Anyway, enough words.
I own one and its been great, no issues from my end. Several mates have brought them as well and also have no issues. The BX series is slightly cheaper but the MX is so cheap they aren't really worth considering.
Good to know. Also the price has dropped a bit further since the MX200 iteration has been released! Might pull the trigger on the 512GB MX100 then that will be my RPG SSD drive!
Bought the MX100 512GB for under £140 in the end with over half the payment coming from accumulated Amazon vouchers! My plan at the moment is to migrate the Operating System from the OCZ Vertex 3 120GB over to my Samsung SSD 840 PRO 256GB using the supplied Data Migration Software. Next I'll switch the OCZ Vertex 3 240GB with my new MX100 512GB SSD. Then I plan to recycle the two OCZ Vertex 3 SSD and play with my motherboards capability to operate these in a Raid 0 configuration. That'll probably become the storage I'll use for Origin, Uplay and other miscellaneous wares.
Just transferred my operating system drive from the OCZ Vertex 3 120GB to my Samsung 840 Pro 256GB using the migration software offered by Samsung. Simply can not praise how straight forward it was! Within 5 minutes the drive had been cloned, shut down the PC and switched the drives internal sata ports and it booted flawlessly. Brilliant software and well worth going with a Samsung drive for a painless upgrade. Next up I'll install the Crucial MX100 512GB and see about repurposing the OCZ drives in a Raid 0 configuration.
YELLOW GUNK! Installed the MX100 512GB and swapped around the SSD order in my Fractal R3 cages. Noticed that underneath all my SSD towards the backend by the screw holes there was a yellowish oily liquid substance. Like it had sweated between the SSD and the Fractal drive cage. Not sure what the hell it could be but every single SSD is wet in the exact same place! My rig is exclusively air cooled and well away from any liquid source so I'm a little puzzled by this. Anyone encounter this before?
is there a fan in line with where the liquid is? Simply that there were some reports of some Noctua fans leaking a yellow oily substance & needing to be rma'd going back - & it 'might' be the case that it's something similar with whatever intake fan you're using.
Couple of SilverStone Air Penetrator fans (SST-AP121-WL) at the front. I'll have to swap them around when I give my computer a spring clean!
