Planning for a new PC build, need clarify a few things

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#1553035 15-May-2016 13:53

pstar008:

M.2 SSD, is it tricky to set up as boot/OS drive?

Had no problems with an M.2 drive in a PC I put together for someone else, my usual windows 7 UEFI stick booted and installed just fine. I cant recall doing anything at all in the UEFI setup to change it over etc. Just booted and worked.

No idea how you would get on with legacy boot with it since noone should be doing that anymore.

This was not a fancy nvme one, I think it just showed as a normal sata connected drive.

Richard rich.ms

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#1553036 15-May-2016 13:59

timmmay:

Run your VMs from SSDs - get one SSD for OS (120GB should be heaps) and one for data like VMs. Spinning disks for bulk storage, backups, images, etc. Graphics card performance is likely mostly irrelevant. Get plenty of RAM if you'll run multiple VMs, i7 and maybe 32GB RAM. If you get one large SSD you can partition - makes image backups like Macrium easier / faster / smaller.

No need for multi VMs at once, but certainly can see myself upgrade to 32 GB later. 512 GB SSD would be ideal, but does seems going to be easily over-budget for me, I might be got into the habit to move VMs around so that the used often ones would be on SSD.

Jax

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#1553149 15-May-2016 16:56

pstar008:

Jax:

I built a PC not long ago. I went with a smaller form factor - ITX

For your requirements, I don't see you needing a large case? the onboard intel grpahics will be fine for now, do what you suggest and buy mid-range GPU when required (kind wish I'd done this)

I have the H170 chipset + Non-K CPU, if you are not overclocking, this is perfectly fine.

You should be able to go under $2k

I like the M.2 SSDs too

My build for reference: http://pricespy.co.nz/list.php?l=185265&view=m

I probably would be fine with ITX, but find it much easier to working on larger case after had a full tower, that's when I used to O/C and keep adding HDDs with old ones. But I think ITX would be the future direction.

Non-K, yeah, still not sure that I want a K CPU and not planning to O/C, I might end up O/C if I got the hardware, MB/large case etc. But the main reason is that in my current build CPU doesn't seems faster enough quite often, and my current position is that it is probably not worth the hassle to O/C and has a hotter nosier system, but worth paying bit extra to get a faster CPU. The 6700K does have a higher running frequency than the 6700 one, still not sure how much the performance would be different if not O/C.

M.2 SSD, is it tricky to set up as boot/OS drive?

My ITX case can take a least 3 x 2.5/3.5 HDDs as well as the M.2 underneath the motherboard - http://www.fractal-design.com/home/product/cases/core-series/core-500

With the size of drives these days, that is plenty for me. It is a bit cramped building it and you have to be careful choosing certain parts, but once its done its fine.

I never really got into overclocking, but my guess is the bang for the buck is less than it used to be - I find my stock (i5) CPU perfectly fine and stock cooling is also fine.

I did have some challenges with M.2 - mine is a NVME, for memory, you have to get the BIOS settings right, I had to create a particular USB O/S media (used s/w called rufus) and when installing, I had to supply the NVME driver from the Samsung website. For what its worth, it was benchmarking crazy higher than some $30k enterprise SANs at work. Googling you particular part will get you there - oh also make sure motherboard is on latest firmware.

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#1553300 15-May-2016 20:17

To be honest, I think I need more research/reading to consider that ITX is right for me or not. To begin with, my new build will be more like a work horse rather to HTPC, so without too much research, I am planing more expandability than I may need as I am planning to use it for at least five years without major upgrade (replace case, MB etc). But then if I am not planning for SLI or high end GPU and water cooling solution. ITX would be enough for me, it seems, but then I need a M.2 SSD in that case as I already had a SSD and HDD in my plan. But without much research, it seems M.2 could be tricky for Linux. What's your reason choose an ITX form-factor Jax?

Bang for the buck is where most OC to start from, at least for me, but the fun/challenge for me is push the limit, find out how each part of the system become the bottle-neck for the OC to success or fail, then later found the perfect balaance point of a quite, reliable yet over-clocked system. It certainly a learning experience for me. But again, as you mentioned, the scenes changed quite a bit in recent years. So the stock cooler/fan will works fine as it is designed for stocked operation condition, if you are trying to push the limits, it might be different story. But myself and as I read lots of people used to able to OC their Intel or AMD cpu using the stock cooler/fan.

Still more reading for me regarding M.2 SSD setup, I've read a bit your post in PriceSpy, 11 seconds boot into Win 10 seems blazing fast! do you includes BIOS test screen time, and do you happens to have comparable result on normally SSD?

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#1553307 15-May-2016 20:46

M.2 is a format for the connector, not for the bus it uses to transfer the data, there are different bus's it can use to transfer data, currently the most common is sata 3, which makes the drives speed no different to that of a 2.5in SSD connected to a sata 3 port. there are also PCI and PCIe NVME M.2 SSDs these are 3-4x faster again. You need to check what the motherboard supports. currently its more the high end stuff that supports the PCI version.

My laptop takes about 11 seconds including bios to get to the login screen on windows 8.1. Its using the SATA version of the M.2.

Jax

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#1553683 16-May-2016 19:20

pstar008:

To be honest, I think I need more research/reading to consider that ITX is right for me or not. To begin with, my new build will be more like a work horse rather to HTPC, so without too much research, I am planing more expandability than I may need as I am planning to use it for at least five years without major upgrade (replace case, MB etc). But then if I am not planning for SLI or high end GPU and water cooling solution. ITX would be enough for me, it seems, but then I need a M.2 SSD in that case as I already had a SSD and HDD in my plan. But without much research, it seems M.2 could be tricky for Linux. What's your reason choose an ITX form-factor Jax?

Bang for the buck is where most OC to start from, at least for me, but the fun/challenge for me is push the limit, find out how each part of the system become the bottle-neck for the OC to success or fail, then later found the perfect balaance point of a quite, reliable yet over-clocked system. It certainly a learning experience for me. But again, as you mentioned, the scenes changed quite a bit in recent years. So the stock cooler/fan will works fine as it is designed for stocked operation condition, if you are trying to push the limits, it might be different story. But myself and as I read lots of people used to able to OC their Intel or AMD cpu using the stock cooler/fan.

Still more reading for me regarding M.2 SSD setup, I've read a bit your post in PriceSpy, 11 seconds boot into Win 10 seems blazing fast! do you includes BIOS test screen time, and do you happens to have comparable result on normally SSD?

I chose ITX because I liked the idea of having something small but every bit as powerful as a full size system - the case can take full size Graphics card. It used to be you needed a motherboard with slots to take modem, sound card etc, but now everything is built in, unless you want SLI or large amounts of RAM (my board has two slots)

You dont need to have an M.2 SSD, you can go with whatever drives you have or want.

That boot time I think was a warm boot, so probably cheating, but it does boot quickly.

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#1553695 16-May-2016 19:51

Jase2985:

M.2 is a format for the connector, not for the bus it uses to transfer the data, there are different bus's it can use to transfer data, currently the most common is sata 3, which makes the drives speed no different to that of a 2.5in SSD connected to a sata 3 port. there are also PCI and PCIe NVME M.2 SSDs these are 3-4x faster again. You need to check what the motherboard supports. currently its more the high end stuff that supports the PCI version.

My laptop takes about 11 seconds including bios to get to the login screen on windows 8.1. Its using the SATA version of the M.2.

What's kind of Laptop it is, I got a virtual machine Windows 10 boot in about 30 seconds on HDD and LVM and thought that was reasonable quick, as I found that in general Virtual machine boots much faster than real machine, not sure why.

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#1553698 16-May-2016 19:53

pstar008:

What's kind of Laptop it is, I got a virtual machine Windows 10 boot in about 30 seconds on HDD and LVM and thought that was reasonable quick, as I found that in general Virtual machine boots much faster than real machine, not sure why.

If you are running a legacy boot then it has a hell of a lot of stuff to initilize before handing off to the operating system. I find on machines doing that and with an SSD that its about 3x longer in the bios than windows doing its thing.

Richard rich.ms

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#1553699 16-May-2016 19:59

Jax:

pstar008:

To be honest, I think I need more research/reading to consider that ITX is right for me or not. To begin with, my new build will be more like a work horse rather to HTPC, so without too much research, I am planing more expandability than I may need as I am planning to use it for at least five years without major upgrade (replace case, MB etc). But then if I am not planning for SLI or high end GPU and water cooling solution. ITX would be enough for me, it seems, but then I need a M.2 SSD in that case as I already had a SSD and HDD in my plan. But without much research, it seems M.2 could be tricky for Linux. What's your reason choose an ITX form-factor Jax?

Bang for the buck is where most OC to start from, at least for me, but the fun/challenge for me is push the limit, find out how each part of the system become the bottle-neck for the OC to success or fail, then later found the perfect balaance point of a quite, reliable yet over-clocked system. It certainly a learning experience for me. But again, as you mentioned, the scenes changed quite a bit in recent years. So the stock cooler/fan will works fine as it is designed for stocked operation condition, if you are trying to push the limits, it might be different story. But myself and as I read lots of people used to able to OC their Intel or AMD cpu using the stock cooler/fan.

Still more reading for me regarding M.2 SSD setup, I've read a bit your post in PriceSpy, 11 seconds boot into Win 10 seems blazing fast! do you includes BIOS test screen time, and do you happens to have comparable result on normally SSD?

I chose ITX because I liked the idea of having something small but every bit as powerful as a full size system - the case can take full size Graphics card. It used to be you needed a motherboard with slots to take modem, sound card etc, but now everything is built in, unless you want SLI or large amounts of RAM (my board has two slots)

You dont need to have an M.2 SSD, you can go with whatever drives you have or want.

That boot time I think was a warm boot, so probably cheating, but it does boot quickly.

I can see that if ITX can have every thing you want, Full size motherboard/case seems like a waste of space/ money.

But I am still consider expandability is important to me, which brings the point, as I am going to have a SSD and HDD in my initial build, I probably want the SSD as M.2 as I consider only one 2.5/3.5 left doesn't seems really expandable to me. And I still consider that I might need a optical drive as I always had one.

Again, I don't think I will ever need SLI, and after looked yesterday myself, for same amount of total RAM, two memory stick are not much expensive than four sticks, so I don't really need four slots as I consider my RAM usage will be topped at 32 GB.

pstar008

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#1553700 16-May-2016 20:05

richms:

pstar008:

What's kind of Laptop it is, I got a virtual machine Windows 10 boot in about 30 seconds on HDD and LVM and thought that was reasonable quick, as I found that in general Virtual machine boots much faster than real machine, not sure why.

If you are running a legacy boot then it has a hell of a lot of stuff to initilize before handing off to the operating system. I find on machines doing that and with an SSD that its about 3x longer in the bios than windows doing its thing.

I am taken that with UEFI and SSD that kind of timing is not that un-usual?

pstar008

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#1553705 16-May-2016 20:23

Looking at CL for motherboard information, and found that a couple of Asus Pro Gaming MBs (H170 and Z170) have curious support for 4K at 60Hz.

ASUS Z170 PRO GAMING GPU

Edit: Just realized that 4K could means 4096 (4 * 1204) or 3840, which Skylake IGP supporting natively @60Hz.

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#1553706 16-May-2016 20:36

pstar008:

I am taken that with UEFI and SSD that kind of timing is not that un-usual?

So long as you set the UEFI fast boot stuff on, yeah its very common. First thing I see on the PC is the windows logo by the time the screen has sorted itself out.

Richard rich.ms

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#1553708 16-May-2016 20:38

pstar008:

Jase2985:

M.2 is a format for the connector, not for the bus it uses to transfer the data, there are different bus's it can use to transfer data, currently the most common is sata 3, which makes the drives speed no different to that of a 2.5in SSD connected to a sata 3 port. there are also PCI and PCIe NVME M.2 SSDs these are 3-4x faster again. You need to check what the motherboard supports. currently its more the high end stuff that supports the PCI version.

My laptop takes about 11 seconds including bios to get to the login screen on windows 8.1. Its using the SATA version of the M.2.

What's kind of Laptop it is, I got a virtual machine Windows 10 boot in about 30 seconds on HDD and LVM and thought that was reasonable quick, as I found that in general Virtual machine boots much faster than real machine, not sure why.

2+ year old i7 4700 with 16gb ram and M.2 Sata SSD. so nothing super flash

My ~3 year old desktop takes 21 seconds and its an i5 2600k with 8gb ram and a intel 520 SSD

any sort of new system should boot to the login screen under 30 seconds easily.

timmmay

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#1553883 17-May-2016 07:12

My work laptop goes from off to Windows login screen in about 7 seconds, including BIOS and stuff. My older i7 is very fast after the whole BIOS thing is done.

pstar008

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#1553906 17-May-2016 08:33

timmmay:

My work laptop goes from off to Windows login screen in about 7 seconds, including BIOS and stuff. My older i7 is very fast after the whole BIOS thing is done.

With M.2 SSD or just SATA?

Boot Speed never bother my much for work Desktop, as I rarely turned it off, and when it need install update or event just restart, I will take a coffee break. But on my home PC, I usually tuned it off after done, but BIOS seems took a long time. If I am starting build a new PC, might worth consider the difference between M.2 and normal SATA.

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