SSDs. SATA or M.2?

[DaveB]

Allan..

I've just a lump sum as part of my pension from the RN. SWMBO said I should buy a new PC. Bless.. she has no idea how much these things can be. A quick look on Alienware was enough to put me off

Fingers crossed you get a great deal of use out of your new rig
ATB
DaveB

[Vancouver]

Dave you should look into a self build it's easy.

[DaveB]

But for the first 2 PC's I ever had.. one from Dixons and one from a now long gone high street retailer, I've built all the others (and there have been MANY!!) As a few bob had fallen my way courtesy of the MoD.. I thought I'd treat myself and go for a ready built rocket ship that I could just turn on and add what I wanted without all the heart-stopping moments in between. Having looked at Alienware.. their cheapest rigs aren't what you'd call cheap and spec isn't earth shattering either. They leave it to you to swap out bits and/or upgrade then hit the button. At this point, heart failure is almost guaranteed

If I actually DO upgrade this rig.. it'll almost certainly be by starting from scratch and a self-build. I CBA these days to be honest which is why I've not got a floor full of bits in front of me already
ATB
DaveB

[Buggyman]

Dave

After nigh on 30 years in the Army - I joined at 15 when 'Boy Soldier' wasn't seen as some obscenity by the trendy wendies - I left with a host of problems. Goes what? The MoD denied all responsibility and claimed I had them before joining It took 7 years of hard fighting to get a medical pension which is by far not generous but enough if saved up to buy stair lift, electric powered arm chair, special bed, double shower so SWMBO can get wet too while hosing me down. Anything to improve life or help my lady look after me.

Last Tuesday night I effectively died in ICU and tonight I'm home and on the mend so you can bet the farm that I am not going down without a fight. Thanks for your thoughts.
ATB
Allan

[DaveB]

Bloody hell Allan Don't get going anywhere while the MoD can still afford to pay you

I was an old git of 16yo when I joined the mob. I'd not thought of joining earlier though I could have and gone to HMS Ganges. Thinking about it.. they might have upped the school leaving age to 16 by the time I left. Can't imagine staying at school any longer than was absolutely necessary

You hang in there fella
ATB
DaveB

[Jon.M]

I've not noticed any perceivable difference in speed Jon, but its simply a lot neater, and if you don't intend in handling it often (I know folk who swap drives like sharing sweets) then its fine and dandy.

I watched a YouTube video yesterday which demonstrated that while an SSD is a noticeable improvement over a hard disk they didn't find any measurable speed increase during normal tasks with M.2 over SATA connections. Even though there should be an improvement in theory. Still as you say M.2 is neater.

Allan,
I'm dead jealous of your new computer. I hope you get to use it for a long time yet.
Maybe I should have sent Rita to New York and Niagara Falls by herself in April while I built a computer with more SSDs.





Jon

[511Flyer]

Expensive yes, but I'm sure you're worth it Allan.

Wishing you all the best and better health in the future.

Den.

[Buggyman]

Thank you for the kinds words guys, it gives me a lift to know complete strangers care.

Slowly getting up to speed although it will, apparently, take a few weeks to get to where I was before all this began. Until then I'm on limited PC time so bumps and circuits only for me................

ATB


Allan

[Jon.M]

To round off this thread I've now built my computer and it's still working 10 days later.



The parts. The graphics card is an Nvidia GTX960 which I put in my old computer last year in an attempt to improve FSX frame rates. It had practically no effect.



Motherboard in. The M.2 250Gb hard drive is the small card near the bottom of the motherboard with '960 EVO' written on it. You may notice that at this point I've put the RAM modules in the wrong slots. I originally thought they should go in slots 1 and 3 but after checking discovered that slots 2 and 4 are correct for two RAM modules.



All done. There's plenty of space for air to circulate mainly due to being able to get a lot of the cables threaded through the back of the case and because I used a semi-modular PSU so unlike my older computer there aren't a lot of unnecessary cables present. Spending more money on a better quality power supply is one piece of advice that I saw regularly and I'm glad I didn't buy a cheaper option.



This shows the temperatures of the motherboard and CPU which given that the room temperature was over 30°C is pretty good. All of the fans are turning slowly which leads to one of the nicest improvements with this computer, it's almost silent. The old computer sounded like a VC10 even before starting FSX and would regularly shut down due to overheating during the summer.

All in all the actual building of the computer was easy. The hard part is choosing the parts to get a combination that works well together. Once I'd decided to go for an i7 CPU that meant getting a motherboard/chipset and RAM to match. The idea was to have a computer that can be upgraded with more RAM a better graphics card and more drive space in the future.

Thanks again for the advice.

Jon