$/GB is irrelevant - it's all about $/performance. You pay for performance just like you do for capacity. If you move all your libraries (my pictures, my videos, my music, etc) over to a standard 7200 rpm drive, you shouldn't need a crap-ton of super fast storage. Running a couple $75 HDDs in raid to get good cheap performance makes sense, but avoiding an SSD by running a couple $290 drives in raid is nuts. Sure you will have more storage space, but it will still be much slower, much hotter, and much noisier than an SSD. I don't know where you're pulling this reliability stuff from... but how long are you planning on relying on any of this hardware anyhow? I give it 3 to 4 years before it's all completely outdated anyway!

You make a very good argument and thanks for the extensive post with your suggestions. The reliability stuff comes from reading a lot of testimonials regarding unreliable SSD's requiring formats. Granted, this was a while ago around the time when they were really just starting to get popular. This would be why I'm stuck on the old tech. I'm not a fan of having to reinstall my OS EVER unless absolutely necessary. This is why I started the thread, I want opinions like yours and others to get me to think more outside of my comfortable little box!Thanks.RAM - After reading a bunch of reviews on the 2133 GSKILL memory, many people have had success running these speeds with no tweaking, select XMP in bios and bam. CPU - I plan to OC the hell out of the 2600K. I like hyperthreading and do not want to sacriffice this for $100. I'll be utilizing this feature a lot.MB - I'm definitely not in a big hurry here so I may wait and see about the Z68 MB's.Also, I'm a GSKILL a really excited user bigtime, I've been one of those that has never had a bad stick. Always perform at rated specs every time.

You make a very good argument and thanks for the extensive post with your suggestions. The reliability stuff comes from reading a lot of testimonials regarding unreliable SSD's requiring formats. Granted, this was a while ago around the time when they were really just starting to get popular. This would be why I'm stuck on the old tech. I'm not a fan of having to reinstall my OS EVER unless absolutely necessary. This is why I started the thread, I want opinions like yours and others to get me to think more outside of my comfortable little box!

No problem Jon. Just read some of the OCZ Vertex 3 reviews - I think you will be impressed. I don't know anybody on the forums who has actually tried one of these newer generation SSDs with FSX. I actually didn't realize they were on the market yet until I made the suggestion. Realize that these newer SSDs are capable of 500 to 550 MB/s read/write whereas the previous generation was hitting 300 to 350 MB/s. That's a 50% increase in performance!!! Not only that, but they pretty much already max out a Sata III port. As you already mentioned, I believe the reliability issues are associated with the initial release of SSDs. Perhaps it was because they didn't have trim support yet??? Just don't fill it to the max, never defragment it, and you will have no problems. Also of importance - it also comes with a 3 year warranty.Here's a really good easy to understand review from HexusGood conclusion over at guru3d

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16820233155This is the SSD I was contemplating but as you can see it comes with a hefty price tag. Hopefully by the time I'm ready to purchase the prices will drop on this new SSD tech.*EDIT*http://www.newegg.co...N82E16820227661Wow, found the 240GB OCZ's and dang those are some screamers... (One of these in my laptop would be sick).This could be a real issue for me:

Other Thoughts: I don't think I'd install any SSD now as a boot drive. It turns out that firmware updates are more common for SSDs than HDDs, and firmware can't be updated on a boot drive. At least, OCZ doesn't do that yet. This is a problem for my home pc with a Vertex 2.

Doing some research, this isn't that big of a deal as long as you have a dual boot system. Just can't update firmware on an SSD you boot from.

*EDIT*http://www.newegg.co...N82E16820227661Wow, found the 240GB OCZ's and dang those are some screamers... (One of these in my laptop would be sick).

That's a PCI-E SSD, but come to think of it, I didn't realize it was priced so close to the new Vertex 3... hmm, now I'm confused on what's the best option. Looks like you have a lot of research to do! The Hexus review has several benchmarks with both the Vertex 3 240GB and the RevoDrive 240GB. It's weird how the RevoDrive beats the Vertex 3 on everything except the gaming benchmark.Here is the OCZ Vertex 3 I'm referring to. If you have Amazon Prime, you can get it for $528 with free 2 day shipping. It looks like both retailers are currently out of stock.One final good review on the OCZ Vertex 3.

Revodrives are SSD RAID's in a PCIe RAID controller. TRIM is lost when you RAID SSD's, so it's not a good idea really, unless you want to regularly backup, secure erase and restore all your data there.The most important thing of an SSD is seek time, and RAID's don't improve that anyway. If you want an SSD no matter what, and want the best one, I would go Corey's route:http://www.newegg.co...7-707-_-ProductEDIT: you're post transfer rate is obviously higher than mine Corey :(. I must be misaligned or something

That's a PCI-E SSD, but come to think of it, I didn't realize it was priced so close to the new Vertex 3... hmm, now I'm confused on what's the best option. Looks like you have a lot of research to do!Here is the OCZ Vertex 3 I'm referring to. If you have Amazon Prime, you can get it for $528 with free 2 day shipping. It looks like both retailers are currently out of stock.One final good review on the OCZ Vertex 3.

That is one hell of an SSD.Thanks Corey.

Revodrives are SSD RAID's in a PCIe RAID controller. TRIM is lost when you RAID SSD's, so it's not a good idea really, unless you want to regularly backup, secure erase and restore all your data there.The most important thing of an SSD is seek time, and RAID's don't improve that anyway. If you want an SSD no matter what, and want the best one, I would go Corey's route:http://www.newegg.co...7-707-_-ProductEDIT: you're post transfer rate is obviously higher than mine Corey :(. I must be misalligned or something :(

That I wasn't aware off, thanks for the information. The OCZ Vertex 3 really does look good. It'll be a great day when SSD's are more affordable. I'm convinced now and will be dropping the Raptors and going SSD for the OS and FSX and a few other Apps I use regularly.Here is the new build list:1 - Intel Core i7-2600K1 - GIGABYTE GA-P67A-UD4-B3 LGA 1155 Intel P67 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX (Still looking into the ASUS P8P67 boards)1 - OCZ Vertex 3 VTX3-25SAT3-240G 2.5" 240GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)1 - Asus VK278Q Black 27" 1920x1080 2ms Full HD HDMI LED BackLight LCD1 - LG Black 10X BD-ROM 4MB1 - EVGA SuperClocked 012-P3-1572-AR GeForce GTX 570 (Fermi) 1280MB 320-bit GDDR51 - G.SKILL Ripjaws X + Turbulence II Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2133 | Designed for Intel P671 - CORSAIR Enthusiast Series CMPSU-850TX 850W ATX12V v2.2 / EPS12V v2.91 SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified1 - Thermaltake VL200L1W2Z NVIDIA Edition Black and Green Lining ATX Full TowerAll this hits roughly $2500 with shipping from Newegg.My current rig is quite outdated but still preforms well enough:Q9550 2.83Ghz / 4GB DDR2 800 / 8800GT OC'ed / 2TB+ Storage / Win 7 Ult 64 Anyone see anything they would change? If so, why?Thanks for reading.

Well, I have to say that this statement of mine saying that RAID's don't improve seek time was not accurate. It doesn't in mechanical HDD's with most real life workloads in any significant way. Not sure now if it still holds true for SSD, but I don't see how it wouldn't. Loosing TRIM is enough of a reason to drop SSD's RAIDS IMO

EDIT: you're post transfer rate is obviously higher than mine Corey :(. I must be misaligned or something

What do you mean?

What do you mean?

just that you beat me to it. Terrible spelling on my part by the way

Wait for the new Z68 Gigabyte MotherBoard. There are rumors Gigabyte is going to stop all P67 production, and focus 100% on the new Z68 chipset, which is like H67+P67, best of both worlds. That´s what I´ll do too

Wait for the new Z68 Gigabyte MotherBoard. There are rumors Gigabyte is going to stop all P67 production, and focus 100% on the new Z68 chipset, which is like H67+P67, best of both worlds. That´s what I´ll do too

Just found out that it is indeed a rumor. Gigabyte is not discontinuing P67. My apologies for spreading the rumor.

The industry reports about GIGABYTE cancelling all P67 projects and moving 100% to next gen Intel 6 series chipset models are misleading and unfounded. GIGABYTE will continue producing P67 chipset motherboards until the end of 2011, and the H67 models are expected to be available well into 2012. However, it is true that GIGABYTE is aggressively preparing a full range of motherboards based on next gen Intel 6 series chipsets for the enthusiast, power user and mainstream market segments. These models will boast all the rich features available from Intel’s latest chipset and CPU offerings together with some exciting new GIGABYTE proprietary technologies. We appreciate the excitement and enthusiasm regarding GIGABYTE’s next generation 6 series chipset motherboards, and look forward to a quick ramp in the weeks and months to come.

My advice still stands, however: wait for Z68 to see what it brings, though probably nothing.

Just found out that it is indeed a rumor. Gigabyte is not discontinuing P67. My apologies for spreading the rumor.My advice still stands, however: wait for Z68 to see what it brings, though probably nothing.

I think the Z68 will bring a lot to the table.. Have you heard about this?Quote from: http://news.softpedi...il-183618.shtml"Furthermore, the Z68 will also add an SSD caching function that allows consumers to use the installed solid state disk as a high-speed cache for the HDD greatly improving the speed of the system."Has anyone tried installing Win7 on a physical disk and moving their pagefile/swapfile over to an SSD?

Firstly nice rig. Now here's meh final advice. Check the requirements for sli 570 so you know you have the PSU to support for future which I'm pree sure you do.Them in SLI are godly for latest games . And don't ever raid ya SSD. P.S SSD probably won't increase FPS, but it will handle high res textures and what not MUCH better.

Good news Jon - Newegg currently has your memory on sale for $149.99 with promo code EMCKFJA32 as part of their 48 hour sale. You will have to subscribe to their e-mails to use the promo code, however. Also, there's a few discount codes here (10% of PSUs for example) which still haven't expired. Too bad the 10% off all SSDs already expired!SSD caching is meant for users who can't afford a large SSD and it doesn't come near the performance of a dedicated SSD. Here's some reading material on it at Tom's Hardware. With a 240GB SSD, you don't want to use SSD caching.Seeing as how you will have your PSU for several years, I would really recommend a modular PSU for a much cleaner install, and preferably 80 PLUS Gold rated. Seasonic X-850 or Corsair AX-850 are hands down the best - but they really are pricey! Right now you can get the Corsair AX-850 for $165 with promo code EMCKFJE34. Add the $20 mail-in-rebate and it's $145, so not too shabby.

If I was in the market for a new system, like others have said, I'd wait for the ngx to be released first, at least, then you will know how well it runs and upgrade knowing you are getting the best parts available at that time.Chris Farrell