The problem with hard drives is that they're slow.  In order to read anything from a hard drive, you have to wait for the platter and head to physically move to the right spot before it can start reading.  The amount of time this takes varies, but it's typically on the order of 10 ms.

But wait, 10 ms sounds fast, you say?  Well, what happens if you have to load a thousand things at once?  Now you're looking at 10 seconds.  And a loading screen, which is boring.  Hard drives may cite speeds on the order of 100 MB/s, which is plenty fast, but that's only for sequential transfers, such as when you need to load one really big file that is not fragmented at all.  If you're loading small files, it's more like, read a little bit, wait 10 ms, read a little bit, wait 10 ms, and so forth.  In some cases, you spend over 99% of the time waiting for the platter and drive head to physically move to the next spot before continuing.

In fact, when your computer makes you wait for something, if it's not downloading things from the Internet, it's probably making you wait while it loads stuff from a hard drive.

Wouldn't it be great if you could skip the 10 ms penalty for switching to a different spot that hard drives bring?  Well, solid state drives can do exactly that.  They won't eliminate loading times entirely, but they will mean that you're usually not waiting on an SSD.  Many things will load in 1/2 or 1/3 of the time that they would have with even a relatively fast hard drive.  Some things will see a much bigger jump in performance than that, even.

The upshot is that when you tell your computer to do something, it just does it, rather than make you sit there and wait and wait and wait and then eventually getting around to it.  Big games will still take a while to load, but many programs will be loaded and ready to go faster than you are.

That only happens for loading things off of a solid state drive, though.  What a lot of people do is to get both a solid state drive and a hard drive, and install the OS and programs on the SSD, while putting bulk data (e.g., videos, music, or pictures) on the hard drive.

Originally posted by Quizzical

The problem with hard drives is that they're slow.  In order to read anything from a hard drive, you have to wait for the platter and head to physically move to the right spot before it can start reading.  The amount of time this takes varies, but it's typically on the order of 10 ms.

But wait, 10 ms sounds fast, you say?  Well, what happens if you have to load a thousand things at once?  Now you're looking at 10 seconds.  And a loading screen, which is boring.  Hard drives may cite speeds on the order of 100 MB/s, which is plenty fast, but that's only for sequential transfers, such as when you need to load one really big file that is not fragmented at all.  If you're loading small files, it's more like, read a little bit, wait 10 ms, read a little bit, wait 10 ms, and so forth.  In some cases, you spend over 99% of the time waiting for the platter and drive head to physically move to the next spot before continuing.

In fact, when your computer makes you wait for something, if it's not downloading things from the Internet, it's probably making you wait while it loads stuff from a hard drive.

Wouldn't it be great if you could skip the 10 ms penalty for switching to a different spot that hard drives bring?  Well, solid state drives can do exactly that.  They won't eliminate loading times entirely, but they will mean that you're usually not waiting on an SSD.  Many things will load in 1/2 or 1/3 of the time that they would have with even a relatively fast hard drive.  Some things will see a much bigger jump in performance than that, even.

The upshot is that when you tell your computer to do something, it just does it, rather than make you sit there and wait and wait and wait and then eventually getting around to it.  Big games will still take a while to load, but many programs will be loaded and ready to go faster than you are.

That only happens for loading things off of a solid state drive, though.  What a lot of people do is to get both a solid state drive and a hard drive, and install the OS and programs on the SSD, while putting bulk data (e.g., videos, music, or pictures) on the hard drive. 

Ok that helps a lot. Now i'm wondering if i should skip the hard drive and get one of them bigger 500 someone GB SSD but at same time I don't have an SSD on my PC right now and not a prob far as i can tell. Hmm choices lol.

My thought on the 3T hard drive was that games are getting bigger every year not that I in fact need one and only have a 400gb one now I still don't fill.

My standard guideline on storage space is to look at how much you're using now, double it, and figure that's now much you'll need on your new computer.  That's not just how much you have now, but how much you're actually using.

If a few years from now, you discover that you need more space than you thought, then it's easy to buy another hard drive and add it later.  It will probably be cheaper a few years from now than today, too.

The downside of SSDs is that they're very expensive in $/GB.  SSDs with about 500 GB of capacity start around $300, and you should expect to pay closer to $400 for the better ones.  On a $3000 budget, you can go ahead and pay that and not worry about it, but on your budget, I wouldn't.

You can get both an SSD and a hard drive.  Some things don't benefit from the speed of an SSD; it's really only when you want to read or write a bunch of files at once that the SSD offers a big benefit.  Programs tend to load a lot of files at once.  Browsers will both load and save a lot of files at once.  Games will load huge numbers of files at once at nearly any loading screen.

But videos, pictures, and music tend to be loaded one file at a time, so the speed of an SSD doesn't matter.  If a large fraction of your used storage space is data files like these, then get a hard drive for them so as not to waste space on an SSD.

Originally posted by Quizzical

My standard guideline on storage space is to look at how much you're using now, double it, and figure that's now much you'll need on your new computer.  That's not just how much you have now, but how much you're actually using.

If a few years from now, you discover that you need more space than you thought, then it's easy to buy another hard drive and add it later.  It will probably be cheaper a few years from now than today, too.

The downside of SSDs is that they're very expensive in $/GB.  SSDs with about 500 GB of capacity start around $300, and you should expect to pay closer to $400 for the better ones.  On a $3000 budget, you can go ahead and pay that and not worry about it, but on your budget, I wouldn't.

You can get both an SSD and a hard drive.  Some things don't benefit from the speed of an SSD; it's really only when you want to read or write a bunch of files at once that the SSD offers a big benefit.  Programs tend to load a lot of files at once.  Browsers will both load and save a lot of files at once.  Games will load huge numbers of files at once at nearly any loading screen.

But videos, pictures, and music tend to be loaded one file at a time, so the speed of an SSD doesn't matter.  If a large fraction of your used storage space is data files like these, then get a hard drive for them so as not to waste space on an SSD.

How much will an SSD help with gaming? I will pretty much only have games on this pc which will take up an SSD space pretty fast i'm thinking so not sure of the worth of it for just games. So a friend told me today about power use of all the parts which i forgot all about. Add it all up and add 20% of that to it but not all the parts list the power use that i can see anyways.

---

Originally posted by DM19
How much will an SSD help with gaming? I will pretty much only have games on this pc which will take up an SSD space pretty fast i'm thinking so not sure of the worth of it for just games. So a friend told me today about power use of all the parts which i forgot all about. Add it all up and add 20% of that to it but not all the parts list the power use that i can see anyways.

---

SSD won't help with FPS for the most part, but it will help a lot with starting games, and anytime you see a loading screen (infrequent in some games, very frequent in others). Some games also stream textures from the disk, and SSDs can help a lot with the visual quality in these games.

So do SSD's help with gaming? It really depends. You can definitely notice in a group when someone doesn't have one - they will zone/load/instance over later than you (by a lot). But will it give you more FPS or crank up the graphics options (which is all some people care about)? No, it won't. But it makes using the computer a whole lot more enjoyable when it responds much better to you. SSD will help everything on the computer, from startup times, to even just little hitches like when you click on the Start menu and your computer has to "think" for a few seconds, to those times when your computer has to "wake up" when you right click on a file folder to load and display all the contextual menus... and your games all load a lot faster.

Personally, I recommend them to everyone, gaming or not, to the point where I will sacrifice video card budget in order to fit an SSD into a computer budget. But I don't play a lot of FPS games where FPS is all that matters.

To most people who are concerned with SSD size, I just recommend they keep the few games/programs they primarily play on the SSD, and everything else on a traditional drive. If they start to play another game more often (or get a new one), just shuffle them around (most games you can just copy/paste and update the shortcut and be fine).

As far as power draw:

Find the TDP of your video card (just Google "TDP" and your video card model) - most are between 100-200W. That's the maximum design power of your video card of choice - it very very rarely will ever hit that, so it's a good safe number to use. Double that if you plan on overclocking.

Almost every CPU uses right around 100W (again - max case, so it's a safe number to use). Double that if you plan on overclocking.

Figure in 100W for everything else - hard drives, motherboard, lights, fans, etc. It takes a lot of fans/hard drives/water pumps/whatever to go over 100W, and for the most part this number won't change if you overclock or not.

Add all that up - that's about what size you should get. I find that ~600W is a pretty good size for nearly all single video card builds - it's big enough to handle nearly any hardware combination you throw at it, but not so big as to be extremely expensive or overly wasteful.

---

Originally posted by DM19
My thought on the 3T hard drive was that games are getting bigger every year not that I in fact need one and only have a 400gb one now I still don't fill.

---

Stuff does generally tend to get bigger, but it all seems to have slowed down a good bit - hardware outpaced software there for a while, and right now I think the limiting factor is distribution media.

For games to get much bigger, they would need to start shipping on several DVDs (which some do, but it really starts to get ridiculous and costly much past 2 or 3) or Blu-Ray/Flash/similar devices (which just haven't really caught on, or the media would cost substantially more) - and for the most part software is trying to get away from relying just on physical distribution, with digitally distribution a requirement for many. Not everyone has a really fast connection and a lot of people sit on ISPs with data caps, so the install size is still a very important consideration.

Size has been constrained somewhat by some artificial means, and hasn't really changed much over the past few years. A typical AAA MMO game is around 15G, F2P tend to be a bit smaller (in at around 5G), and a few are very large (over 20G, generally those with lots of expansions under their belts, or very high resolution textures and voiceover assets).

AoC is still the largest game I have on my computer (at just over 30G), with WoW right behind it (through Cata, no MoP, at 28G). SWTOR with all it's voice acting is around 20G. LOTRO is 15G (I don't have RoR). EQ1 is around 8G (missing the last 2 expansions). RIFT is just under 10G (missing the lastest expansion).

Some newer games: PS2 is just under 10G. The last Firefall beta is 6.5G. TERA was 25G the last time I patched it (shortly after release). GW2 is at 16.5G.

I have used a 120G SSD as my primary drive for the past 3ish years. I find it's big enough for Windows (allow around 40G for this, to include cache files and temporary file space, and the swap file). And then I've usually got room for 3-4ish games on top of that.

Now, what I do use a lot of space for are multimedia - my legitimate (as hard as that may be to believe, it's true) multimedia collection has exploded, particularly once I started getting movies digitally in HD (720 and 1080). I'm just over 3T in multimedia alone -- thank goodness for NAS'es. So while games have been more or less stagnant, not everything has. It really depends on what you do with your computer. I find I can just shuffle all those off onto a network device, and I don't even need to consider them when planning a new computer - since they are on the network they are available to every computer, and my network is fast enough to stream it decently. But if I were to try to play a game over the network from the NAS, it would work, and it would be extremely painful.

I would agree, and all my current systems currently run with, a 120/128GB SSD plus 1TB+ HDD is a good standard for a modern system over $1k.  There are certainly cases where a larger SSD might be worth considering but I've never personally run into them on any of my system which break down into the following:

1. My Main System (Primarily a gaming PC which I only keep my main games running off the SSD)

2. My Wife's CS6 System (doubles as a gaming PC but it was built with Photoshop in mind)

3. Our HTPC (the 128Gb SSD in this is prebably overkill as the only thing that really benefits is Windows 7)

If you in fact enjoy playing many large games (as in storage size) at the same time and don't want to hassle with moving them from HDD to SSD then you could certainly fall into the rare case where a larger SSD might be worth consideration, especially if you are looking at spending $2k or more.

Thanks for all the info :).

Ok so here is what i'm going for so if anyone wants to point out any red flags before i buy if any.

CPU and MB 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.1141015

Case and power

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.1149288

SSD

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148530

Hard drive

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148907

Optical drive

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827151256

Heatsink

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835608024

Ram

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233280

Videocard

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130787

Windows 7

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116986

I don't see any red flags but based on reviews and personal experience I'm going to recommend you swap out your PSU for a Seasonic X 750.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151087&Tpk=seasonic%20x750

In most head to head comparisons is generally wins out in both overall performance/reliability and is very quiet.  Yes it's a bit more expensive and you'll probably lose out on the combo deal so that is why it's just a suggestion.  That said you actually don't need a 750 watt power supply so you could also consider a Seasonic X 650 for the same price as the Corsair.  The only time you would even need to think of getting a 750+ watt psu these days is generally for a multiple GPU setup.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151088&Tpk=seasonic%20x650

A thread talking about the breakdown of the various product lines for Corsair PSU's that might interest you.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2166353

And finally a break down of OEM's for the various PSU's on the market:

http://www.realhardtechx.com/index_archivos/Page541.htm

Originally posted by miguksaram

I don't see any red flags but based on reviews and personal experience I'm going to recommend you swap out your PSU for a Seasonic X 750.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151087&Tpk=seasonic%20x750

In most head to head comparisons is generally wins out in both overall performance/reliability and is very quiet.  Yes it's a bit more expensive and you'll probably lose out on the combo deal so that is why it's just a suggestion.  That said you actually don't need a 750 watt power supply so you could also consider a Seasonic X 650 for the same price as the Corsair.  The only time you would even need to think of getting a 750+ watt psu these days is generally for a multiple GPU setup.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151088&Tpk=seasonic%20x650

A thread talking about the breakdown of the various product lines for Corsair PSU's that might interest you.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2166353

And finally a break down of OEM's for the various PSU's on the market:

http://www.realhardtechx.com/index_archivos/Page541.htm

Haha the PSU i was wanting is out of stock now too >.<. 

Guess last thing i should cover just to be safe is place i build it at. My place is all carpet so would i want a rubber mat to stand on besides the static bracelet and do i only need one or two of them? Oh also it be on a wood table that would be ok right?

Originally posted by DM19

Originally posted by miguksaram

I don't see any red flags but based on reviews and personal experience I'm going to recommend you swap out your PSU for a Seasonic X 750.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151087&Tpk=seasonic%20x750

In most head to head comparisons is generally wins out in both overall performance/reliability and is very quiet.  Yes it's a bit more expensive and you'll probably lose out on the combo deal so that is why it's just a suggestion.  That said you actually don't need a 750 watt power supply so you could also consider a Seasonic X 650 for the same price as the Corsair.  The only time you would even need to think of getting a 750+ watt psu these days is generally for a multiple GPU setup.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151088&Tpk=seasonic%20x650

A thread talking about the breakdown of the various product lines for Corsair PSU's that might interest you.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2166353

And finally a break down of OEM's for the various PSU's on the market:

http://www.realhardtechx.com/index_archivos/Page541.htm

Haha the PSU i was wanting is out of stock now too >.<. 

Guess last thing i should cover just to be safe is place i build it at. My place is all carpet so would i want a rubber mat to stand on besides the static bracelet and do i only need one or two of them? Oh also it be on a wood table that would be ok right?

I never used the static braclet but I've also built all my computers on hardwood tables along with hardwood floors so it really wasn't ever an issue.  I would suggest if you can help it do not build it while near carpet but if you can't just be sure to have something metal nearby to "discharge" the build up static on before you touch the electronic parts of the build.

NO SSD drive(s)????

you can put 200GIG of ram in it but your harddisk will still be your bottleneck when loading. (i recommend the revo 3 pci-e card as a harddrive to load your games from)

16GB of RAM will do just fine....32 is overkill.

Originally posted by miguksaram

I never used the static braclet but I've also built all my computers on hardwood tables along with hardwood floors so it really wasn't ever an issue.  I would suggest if you can help it do not build it while near carpet but if you can't just be sure to have something metal nearby to "discharge" the build up static on before you touch the electronic parts of the build.

Chanses are pretty low that something happens but not zero (I trashed a network card once, saw he spark). And yeah, I used a hardwood table as well. I think 'I built 20 or so computers without the bracelet, twice that number with.

ESD bracelets are a few bucks each, getting one is worth it even if chanses you get a spark is small if you are careful. Turning a new GFX card into a doorstop is not a good idea to save 5 bucks. And you might be able to borrow one from a friend for free.

Originally posted by miguksaram

Originally posted by DM19

Originally posted by miguksaram

I don't see any red flags but based on reviews and personal experience I'm going to recommend you swap out your PSU for a Seasonic X 750.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151087&Tpk=seasonic%20x750

In most head to head comparisons is generally wins out in both overall performance/reliability and is very quiet.  Yes it's a bit more expensive and you'll probably lose out on the combo deal so that is why it's just a suggestion.  That said you actually don't need a 750 watt power supply so you could also consider a Seasonic X 650 for the same price as the Corsair.  The only time you would even need to think of getting a 750+ watt psu these days is generally for a multiple GPU setup.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151088&Tpk=seasonic%20x650

A thread talking about the breakdown of the various product lines for Corsair PSU's that might interest you.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2166353

And finally a break down of OEM's for the various PSU's on the market:

http://www.realhardtechx.com/index_archivos/Page541.htm

Haha the PSU i was wanting is out of stock now too >.<. 

Guess last thing i should cover just to be safe is place i build it at. My place is all carpet so would i want a rubber mat to stand on besides the static bracelet and do i only need one or two of them? Oh also it be on a wood table that would be ok right?

I never used the static braclet but I've also built all my computers on hardwood tables along with hardwood floors so it really wasn't ever an issue.  I would suggest if you can help it do not build it while near carpet but if you can't just be sure to have something metal nearby to "discharge" the build up static on before you touch the electronic parts of the build.

Thanks for all the help :) Now just to get the parts and see if it ends up a bomb somehow lol

Why such a top-notch CPU paired with such an average graphics card?

Spend a little extra and get the GTX 670 instead. ;)

Originally posted by DancingQueen

Why such a top-notch CPU paired with such an average graphics card?

Spend a little extra and get the GTX 670 instead. ;)

The new build is on page 3 and thats what i got :)

Originally posted by DM19

Originally posted by DancingQueen

Why such a top-notch CPU paired with such an average graphics card?

Spend a little extra and get the GTX 670 instead. ;)

The new build is on page 3 and thats what i got :)

There are only 2 pages.

Originally posted by miguksaram

Originally posted by DM19

Originally posted by miguksaram

I don't see any red flags but based on reviews and personal experience I'm going to recommend you swap out your PSU for a Seasonic X 750.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151087&Tpk=seasonic%20x750

In most head to head comparisons is generally wins out in both overall performance/reliability and is very quiet.  Yes it's a bit more expensive and you'll probably lose out on the combo deal so that is why it's just a suggestion.  That said you actually don't need a 750 watt power supply so you could also consider a Seasonic X 650 for the same price as the Corsair.  The only time you would even need to think of getting a 750+ watt psu these days is generally for a multiple GPU setup.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151088&Tpk=seasonic%20x650

A thread talking about the breakdown of the various product lines for Corsair PSU's that might interest you.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2166353

And finally a break down of OEM's for the various PSU's on the market:

http://www.realhardtechx.com/index_archivos/Page541.htm

Haha the PSU i was wanting is out of stock now too >.<. 

Guess last thing i should cover just to be safe is place i build it at. My place is all carpet so would i want a rubber mat to stand on besides the static bracelet and do i only need one or two of them? Oh also it be on a wood table that would be ok right?

I never used the static braclet but I've also built all my computers on hardwood tables along with hardwood floors so it really wasn't ever an issue.  I would suggest if you can help it do not build it while near carpet but if you can't just be sure to have something metal nearby to "discharge" the build up static on before you touch the electronic parts of the build.

Tuoching the copper pipe on a radiator before you handle each part is almost as good as a bracelet if you know you're not going to build it up quickly. The only time i've ever used the bracelets was on one of my first jobs, minimum wage soldering circuit boards in a factory :)

Originally posted by DancingQueen

Originally posted by DM19

Originally posted by DancingQueen

Why such a top-notch CPU paired with such an average graphics card?

Spend a little extra and get the GTX 670 instead. ;)

The new build is on page 3 and thats what i got :)

There are only 2 pages.

Hmm odd your reply is on page 4 now :) Are you using a phone?

Originally posted by DM19

Originally posted by DancingQueen

Originally posted by DM19

Originally posted by DancingQueen

Why such a top-notch CPU paired with such an average graphics card?

Spend a little extra and get the GTX 670 instead. ;)

The new build is on page 3 and thats what i got :)

There are only 2 pages.

Hmm odd your reply is on page 4 now :) Are you using a phone?

I only see one page of discussion. Look in your profile settings. Experiment.