Need Advice - What to buy

Hello,

I need advice on what to get.

Currently i have Quad Core (Q9550 , OC to 3.8Ghz)

MB is ASUS P5E (SATA II only)

I was thinking about getting OCZ Vertex gen 3 (2x60GB for RAID0 - MB RAID).
They require SATA III ports and this MB has only SATA II.


I was also thinking about getting WD Raptors 10k, 2x150GB for RAID0.

What do i do? What do you recommend?

I have no money to buy new MB, CPU, RAM etc.

(at this time will be updating HDD and GPU)

Since your SATAII will be the limiting factor the Vertex 2 might be a more responsible choice. If comparing even the Vertex II against two Raptors, I'd guess the Vertex II drives will trounce the raptors.

With so many SSD options out there I'm surprised they still even manufacture Raptors.

The Vertex 3 doesn't require SATAIII ports. You can use them on SATAII, but they will just be limited to SATAII speeds. I don't think RAID SSD is worth it unless you are transferring huge files all the time. Plus, RAID SSD increases boot time because you have to wait for the RAID BIOS to load during booting.

I would recommend a single SSD for OS and most used applications, and a HDD for storage.

What are you planning on putting on the drives?

"They require SATA III ports" << no they do not require Sata 3 ports. They work at gen3 speeds when on Sata 3 ports but they are backwards compatible.

No this I have found looking thru some tests done by a very good friend of mine. What I saw was that a Sata 2 SSD will work faster on a good Sata 3 port and yet the drive is only Sata 2.

Were it mine to have to do and/or decide, I would get a single SSD and forget raid. Save that money along with some more to do a system upgrade in the future if you feel really slow. Oh and yes, I would go for the Sata 3 SSD today even if I only had Sata 2 ports, just to make sure the drive was able to move forward at a later date.

cw823 said:

Since your SATAII will be the limiting factor the Vertex 2 might be a more responsible choice. If comparing even the Vertex II against two Raptors, I'd guess the Vertex II drives will trounce the raptors.

With so many SSD options out there I'm surprised they still even manufacture Raptors.

Click to expand...

Thank you for reply.

I am forgetting Raptors

MattNo5ss said:

The Vertex 3 doesn't require SATAIII ports. You can use them on SATAII, but they will just be limited to SATAII speeds. I don't think RAID SSD is worth it unless you are transferring huge files all the time. Plus, RAID SSD increases boot time because you have to wait for the RAID BIOS to load during booting.

I would recommend a single SSD for OS and most used applications, and a HDD for storage.

What are you planning on putting on the drives?

Click to expand...

Would you recommend getting Vertex 3 instead of Vertex 2 (2 is cheaper, of course) , but i am asking this because in future when i upgrade MB\CPU, etc., i will be getting better performance?

Would it be smart to buy PCI-E card (which one is recommended) to get SATAIII on this MB?

How about OCZ Agaility, is it any good compared to Vertex?

I will be playing some games, and doing regular stuff on pc, browsing, watching movies, music, etc.

I would get a SATAIII SSD, as RGone said, since it would give you a "free" upgrade when you get a mobo with SATAIII capability.

I wouldn't get a SATAIII PCIe card, SATAII speed SSD will be a very noticeable improvement over what you currently have. I would just wait until a mobo upgrade to use SATAIII. But, that's just me. I don't know which SATAIII PCIe cards, if any, are good ones.

Agility and Vertex are both good drives, the Agilty is marginally slower in transfers and IOPS, but not much.

Thank you so much for answers.

Is this good price:
http://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=15_179&item_id=038694

and:
http://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=15_179&item_id=037112

so i can't go wrong if i go with Agility ?

Are there any good tutorials on how to setup new SSD and instal windows 7 on it (tutorial to get the best performance out of it)

Regards

s-f-r-j said:

Would it be smart to buy PCI-E card (which one is recommended) to get SATAIII on this MB?

Click to expand...

Not recommended. You won't notice the difference in overall speed, and you'll have to deal with the same issue you'd have if you ran RAID0 on the native Intel controller; you'll have to wait on a RAID BIOS screen during boot which will negate 1 of the best advantages that SSDs bring to the table.

Tip: Make sure to disable any 3rd party IDE/Sata controllers as well as serial, parallel, floppy, etc in the BIOS (unless you need them) to speed up your boot time.

Thank you all so so so much for helping me out.

I am going to buy SSD today, no raid, no nothing as recommended.

Regards