thinking about building a HTPC - Page 2

The SSD would be faster plus its silent, cool and small. Much better for a small form factor HTPC and well worth the $60 IMO.

You could have saved on the PSU - a Corsair CX 430 v2 is $25 or so after rebates.

Dan, use the drives that you have. If you find problems with it later, then spend the $60 on the SSD at that time. If it works to your satisfaction, then you will have $60 to spend elsewhere.

That being said, I have SSDs in all my systems now, and love them. As others have said they are perfect boot drives for an HTPC - fast, silent, and low power. And depending on which one you choose, more reliable than a mechanical hard drive.

Stan

The OCZ is worse actually. PSUs need to run with at least 40%+ load, otherwise they will suck a lot of power for nothing. You would have saved more on your energy bill with 430w than 600w.

I thought I needed to chime in here. As far as the SSD vs. SCSI debate.there is no debate. Blazing fast isn't blazing fast. Since your talking SCSI and not SAS I'm thinking your talking Ultra-320 SCSI. This is an older standard. This means that most likely any add in card you'd get would be PCI. This limits you to a max of 133 MB's a second, in reality your drive isn't going to approach that. I'd hazard a guess that most modern SATA spinners are going to be faster than an older SCSI drive.

SSD's are in a whole different world than any mechanical drives. It's not just sequential speeds it's random access. Everything just happens so much faster you won't believe it if you haven't tried it. I just built a new HTPC because I got the itch. I used a i3 3225 with a ASRock Z77 motherboard. I went with the Z77 because I got it with a Microcenter combo deal so the chip and board cost about $225 after tax. I put in a cheap OCZ agility 3 SSD I had. This thing boots into windows in about 7 seconds. It's so fast it's insane. I mean this thing is awesome. Now I wouldn't recommend that SSD, I just had from another project that didn't come together. I've been messing around with my kids computers lately and it's like night and day. They are just so much slower it's not even a comparison. I'm thinking about putting SSD's in them just for the few times I work on them. I don't have a whole lot of disposable income, but I'm thinking of spending it just because it makes that big a difference.

If you like the thrill of reusing old hardware then go ahead and use the old drive. You'll be missing out on a lot though. You probably won't see much difference with your new system. You really need an SSD to unleash the potential of your new hardware. As a side note I wouldn't want to use an old drive in my system without a good backup plan. The reason I've been messing with my kids computers is that 2 of them just developed bad sectors on their hard drives. I had to restore one of them from WHS and I'll probably have to do the same thing with the other if I don't just do a clean install. At this point unless you get a lemon SSD's are much more reliable than mechanical hard drives. Just pick a reputable brand. I like Samsungs, but the Crucials and Intels are good to. I'm going to say it one last time. A SSD is really the best thing you can get for your HTPC, it really does make that much difference. Anyway good luck with whatever you decide to go with.

Get an SSD. Full stop, no question. If you are worried about reliability, get an external hard Drive and back it up/image it regularly.

I have 2 Intel x-25M that "average" 2 years old. Never a problem. I also have a new-ish 240 GB Sandisk. No issues, but too new to say long-term. Right now, i would probably go Samsung.

Those PSU minimum's are overestimations as people generally buy crap PSU's. You've bought a decent brand. Except it will run inefficiently and the excess right now will never be used. As for the SSD, my 64GB Samsung 830 boots up faster than my old media streamer. The whole system is *liquid*. Well worth it.

I'll give you the to each his own. I'll also concede that you don't value boot times. There are some points that I and I'm sure everyone that owns a SSD can attest to though. First it really does make the whole experience better. Every time you have interact with the system that SSD will come in to play. It just makes everything so much faster and smoother. If you have to change screens, or browse though menus or lists of files it will make it better. You obviously haven't used one or this wouldn't be a debate. You seem to have a nice setup, and it appears that you appreciate quality. This really does improve the whole experience. That instant response just transforms the whole experience. When your trying to watch something with your wife and everything is lagging and you aren't quite sure if the receiver picked up the last button press on the remote it can get quite irritating. An SSD just makes it seem like a higher class system. You can think to yourself I just built myself a Kaleidoscope system at a tenth of the cost.

Now lets assume that all the above isn't that important to you. I still wouldn't use that old SCSI drive. The operative word in that last sentence was old. Anything with moving parts is going to have a finite life span. Hard drives are certainly no exception. Like I said since it's not Serial Attached SCSI it has to be one of the older standards. This means that it's an older drive. More than likely with quite a few hours on it. If you had said you had a modern SATA drive that you were going to pull out of another system I really wouldn't fight this hard. Over the years I've been pulling out IDE drives and replacing them with SATA drives as they die. Now I'm having to replace those SATA drives as they die. I've got a good backup strategy with WHS backing up my systems every night. I've had to use it quite often to replace failed drives on various systems. Like I said I just replaced the hard drive in my sons computer, and I'm going to have to do it soon with one of my daughter's systems. I'm sure these drives are newer than the ones your talking about. At this point SSD's are just more reliable than mechanical hard drives, and they have much longer life spans. The early one weren't the fast, nor that reliable. There was also a lot of talk about wearing them out. That really isn't a problem anymore. If you get one now I'm sure it will last longer than the computer your putting it in.

As for getting a PCIe card. I don't think you'll find one for $20 dollars. The cheapest I found was still bidding at over a hundred, most were at the $200 to $300 level. Something else I just checked on if you went with the ASRock board it doesn't have a PCI slot so you'd have to go with PCIe. Really it's a loosing proposition at this point. Look I'm cheap. I buy computer hardware at Goodwills and Salvation Army stores. I get a thrill getting things for cheap. I build a couple systems a year and I can't remember the last time I've had to build one from scratch. I'm always reusing parts or something I picked up second hand. There are just some things that you shouldn't cheap out on. I feel very strongly that reusing that old drive isn't the right choice. Like you said though to each their own.

Off the original topic, but something I want to throw out there. Since you've got the big screen and obviously value picture quality, why don't you do a little research into MadVR. Just to give you something else to occupy your time.

You realize your system is probably going to use less that 40 watts at the wall right. Which means that the computer itself is probably using less than 30. So if my late night math is right that's about 5 percent. Not trying to pile on. I really don't have a problem with the PSU. It's next to impossible to get a good quality ATX power supply that will run in it's efficient range with the systems we're building now a days. It's just that you were basically proving the previous poster's point.

Also I'd like to amend my previous post. I lost track of which board you ordered. You might have PCI slots, I don't know at this point.

I installed an HD 6450 video card & the manufacturer states to use a 400 Watt PSU as minimum. I read a lot of reviews, articles & postings & it seems most manufacturers overstate the power requirements because they presume if you are using a video card then you must be using some kind of power house PC, at least that's my take on it. Plus the review data never comes close to what the manufacturer suggests.

I have the video card & 2 dual tuner HD OTA cards. I used a Kill A Watt meter and when recording 4 programs & playing a 5th at the same time the meter indicated only 56 watts. I have a 430 watt 80+ rated PSU & obviously I'm below 20% capacity. I bought it because it had good reviews & was only $15 on sale, otherwise I would have got something a bit smaller.

That being said, a lot of comments say it's difficult to find a low power yet high quality PSU. 380 watts seems to be at the low end of the range for quality PSUs.

Certain brands of SSDs seem to be more reliable than others. Check the Newegg ratings. My personal experience:

Crucial M4 and Samsung 830 rock solid, fast and reliable.
Intel: Reliable
OCZ: You may as well buy two of them, because you will need the 2nd one when the first one fails. (Vertex 4 drives "might" be better - the earlier ones were poor)

As others have stated, you won't be disappointed with an SSD purchase. Choose a good model, preferably 128GB (generally much faster than the 64GB models), the 128GB are also only a little more expensive than the others. The last 128GB that I bought was something like $69 or $79.

Lots of boards are cheap because they are basic, not because they are flaky.

My mom's OCZ SSD just died after about 9 months of use, very disappointing. SSD's should far outlast their spinning cousins.

I did order 8GB of RAM, though, a) because it's hardly any more expensive than 4GB and b) in case I have to fall back to Windows.

Win7 runs great on 4 gigs of ram, it even runs pretty well on my 2 gig zacate system.

I have the crucial m4 drive in my gaming rig and its been rock solid so far.

Sorry missed that you were running linux.

Oksy I'm going to get some things out of the way first. When your trying to research things on the net your going to find a lot of information. Honestly most of it isn't good. The thing is that computers have changed a lot in the last few years. Things that used to be taken for granted just don't apply anymore. Since your new to this, or least haven't built in awhile, your not really able to tell what is good information, and what isn't. You might find things from reputable sites that are just outdated now. It might even be a recent article that is just written by someone that is repeating outdated information. So I think your doing the smart thing by bringing your questions here. This site is populated by people who specialize in HTPC's. They're just a different beast. I see articles from reputable sources about building HTPC's (computer mags, home theater mags). The things they're recommending are just wrong. The most basic Celeron or Pentium can handle HD playback. You don't need an overclocked i7. Also the cheapest video cards work for most playback. You don't need some 300 watt monster that needs two additional power supply connections. So keep asking questions because that's the way to learn.

As far as the actually quoted part. That significant surge is one of those holdovers from an earlier age, or least a different application. That surge usually come from hard drives spinning up. If you've got a lot of spinners in your system you get a big surge when they all spin up at once. This takes a lot more power than normal usage when it's already running. That's why you see nicer RAID and HBA cards with staggered spin-up, to reduce that initial hit. On my 20 drive server this is a concern, in your case I wouldn't worry about it.

For the memory. Older memory, and definitely certain types of memory, uses a lot more power. Especially something like FB-Dimm's. These are for older servers so don't worry about it. Todays ram uses so little power you really don't have to worry about it. This is one of these older notions that is just going to have to change one of these days. I was reading a power supply review on Amazon. The poster said they used a power supply calculator that said they're build was going to need over 200 watts. I know for a fact that it's a lot closer to 50. Their build was a Sandy Bridge generation Mini-ITX build. My more powerful Sandy build uses less than 50. These calculators are either pushed by power supply makers, or just haven't been updated to account for modern systems. So don't worry about a more powerful PSU to run more ram.

If you've got a fairly modern 24 pin PSU you could use it. Since that new PSU is so far out of it's efficiency range you probably won't loose any efficiency with an older PSU. The one you've got will work, it's just not optimal. Short of a Pico-PSU there aren't really any that are in the optimal range. Just be careful that your PSU isn't to old. Just like old hard drives, old PSU's aren't where you want to cheap out. Older PSU's were designed when different voltages were more important. 3.3V used to be important now it's all about the 12V. So if it's got a 24 pin connection and SATA power cables it's probably okay to use. Older than that I wouldn't take the chance. So if you've got an acceptable PSU and you'd rather use the new PSU in a different system go ahead. You don't have to though. The one you bought will work fine, just don't except optimal efficiency.

Actually, this would be dead on efficiency:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151086

You do need a power cord, its OEM. Excellent quality too.