I don't often win sh!t, if ever, but Friday was my lucky day.  I had entered a raffle at a local store a couple of weeks ago and the winning ticket, mine, was drawn on Friday.  I had a choice of a Creative Soundblaster Fatality Pro sound card, a Nvidia GTX560 graphics card, which I already have, or a brand new, state of the art 3rd generation Corsair Force Series Sata3 SSD.  Naturally I took the SSD... and ran laughing all the way home.

Orright, so I didn't run... but I was laughing... er, was as happy as a pig in muck.  Anyhow, I spent most of yesterday cloning my OS drive over to it and setting things up as I want, having picked up a couple of 2 Tb WD Caviar Green SATA3's storage drives to replace 2x 1Tb regular drives I had already [that'll serve me right, being the goto guy for family video conversions and backups when they delete or lose shit]... and what a bargain at $65.00 each.

To begin with I wasn't quite decided what to do with my OCZ SSD, whether to install it in a spare rig or keep it in my main box and use it as a program files and games installation folder.  I chose the latter!  1: because I couldn't be bothered pulling the spare rig apart [done enough of that in recent times]  2: I figured the proggies and games would benefit/run better from a SSD. 3: It reduces clutter/bloating on my OS drive without sacrificing too much performance-wise.

I'm currently installing some games and proggies to the 2nd SSD... then it's the big task of moving tons of storage [home vids, music, etc] from my old 1Tb's to the new 2Tb's, which I notice are a bit faster than the SATA2's, though not exceedingly so... possibly around 4 - 5 mbs when moving/copying files, perhaps.  However, I think the SATA3 protocol was more intended to take advantage of the SSD technology than platter drives, which due to their physical nature can only deliver data as fast as their physical RPM's allow.

Oh, and my WEI went from 7.1 to 7.3.  The OCZ gave me a score of 7.1, but this 3rd gen Corsair gives me 7.7 [my CPU @ 7.3 prevents a base score of 7.6]

Anyhow, back to the hard grind....

good for you.....  

Yeah, my luck is so bad [usually] that if it were raining money I'd get washed down the gutter with an 'effing banker.

Anyhow, a little update.....

Well I've finally completed the installation of programs and games to the old SSD, moved my music and video files over to the new storage drives and backed it all up over again with Acronis, so everything is back to how I want it.... for now. LOL.

A good friend here suggested that I do a firmware update to the Corsair SSD to avert possible issues some users experienced with early releases [thanks MadDeez], and now everything is running like greased lightning buttered on both sides.  Not that I had experienced any issues with the new drive, but the update seems to have improved overall stability and performance a little.

BUMP!  (Hey, it's my thread.)

Okay.  I have been experimenting with system fans, voltages, and splitters for a while now.  Through a network of fan splitters and molex connectors (my rig's a MESS inside, I only have a mid-tower case), I am now able to "supercharge" (run 12 volts instead of 5) 3 of my fans, (the CPU cooler, the rear case, and a side fan i'm holding in place with duct tape (where my HDD used to be).  And this is all without a fan controller.

There are a few problems i've run into.  First, the molex connector for my 4-count, 3-pin fan splitter is sloppy.  The pins are not lined up straight, so it can't plug into a female molex properly.  Second, the slightest touch of the cable will power-off the fans it's plugged into (again, blame the sloppy connector).  Third, the POST (I think) states a "System ERROR:  Case Fan not detected and will now shut down" even though i'm using (an apparently passive) a 3-pin fan connector to my Motherboard.   

I'm just deciding to leave the rear fan unplugged (and leave the CPU Cooler and Side fan running at a full 12 volts) as an experiment.  According to Speedfan, my CPU's operating at <30 degrees C.  So is my rear case fan really necessary anymore? (it's noisy)  Plus I have a PCI exhaust fan which can emit some heat out the back.

The sucky thing about not having a fan controller is if I want to change voltages for my fans, I have to fiddle with cables, which isn't always fun.  Would buying a fan controller be simpler and more effective to fiddle with?

And on another topic, I unscrewed the PCI metal bracket for my SATA 3/6.0Gbps PCIe card, so I can plug it in right next to my External Molex PCI bracket.  So I have two different devices plugged along the same horizontal plane.  (External Molex bracket displayed on the outside, SATA controller on the inside.

Has anybody ever attempted to plug two PCI/PCIe objects along the same horizontal plane?  One being a bracket, and the other being a plateless connector?  I have.   Using PCI brackets via. Molex power is a great way to add additional devices to a system without sacrificing a PCIe connection.  That's how I managed to add two full-length PCI brackets where two connector-less (for who knows why) Mini PCIe slots were supposed to go (and held in place via duct tape inside).

This is probably very confusing to some people.  I don't think I can explain it any better.

Does anybody out there have a Vertex 3 SSD?

First the Good News:

I bought one through a Cyber Monday sale and got just days ago.  I installed it, and programs load SO FAST!  Most apps load in under one second (some up to two) and the Desktop loads in about 5 seconds after bootup.  The bootup screen takes about the same time as my Vertex 2 unfortunately, but afterwords it's much faster.

Now the Bad News:

Using CrystalDiskMark, I tested out the speeds of the new drive and it doesn't get anywhere near the advertised speeds.  My drive's plugged through a PCI-e SATA III adapter since my mobo doesn't have native SATA III.  The seq. Read/Write speeds are 331MB/s & 168MB/s respectively.  I know that i'm getting SATA III speeds since most SATA II drives cap out at around 250MB/s read.  The Vertex 3's Max. read/write speeds are 550 & 500 MB/s, so i'm not getting anywhere near advertised speeds.

I wonder if it's normal for drives to not reach anywhere near their advertised speeds.

But other than that, the Vertex 3 is the fastest drive i've ever owned and i'm not gonna return it unless if it stops working.  I should be content having north of 300MB/s seq. read speeds.  My Vertex 2's seq. Read speed topped out at 183MB/s, for comparison reasons.

SATA III adapter cards aren't always that good an option unfortunately. I'd considered buying one when I first got my Crucial C300 drive, as like you, my board doesn't natively support SATA III. I read some reviews and tech forums about them and concluded that, as with so many things, if you weren't prepared to shell out the big money, you may not get great results. Even if you did spend big, you may not get results as good as native SATA III.

You could maybe check for a driver update for the SATA III card you have, and make sure the firmware for your SSD is up to date. But beyond that, you may just have to break out your Google-fu and see if anyone else is having similar issues with the adapter card and/or the combination of card and SSD you have.

Hope that helps.

I installed the driver for my PCI-e card, and redid the benchmark.  The 4k QD32 tests increased SIGNIFICATNTLY.  Read speeds went from 26 to 112!   Write was even better for 4k QD32.  It went up from 22.58 to 153.9!  4k Read speeds went from 13.89 to 27.03.  The 512k Read speeds increased too (from 293 to 348), but the write was about the same.  And the Seq Read actually went down a bit. It went from 331 to 298.  Not too bad. 

So the driver did help for the most part.  But I still think native SATA III would be better.  But hey, I got the Vertex 3 120GB for $170, so i'm not complaining.

Yes, because the pathways are direct whereas a SATE III adapter plugged in via PCIE is not.

Glad it worked

I just ordered 16GB of RAM (4x4GB) from Amazon for only $80!  Since I found out about using System RAM as storage, I finally found a valid reason to upgrade to more RAM.  I truthfully need only about 4GB for my system, but with this upgrade I can create a RAM Drive of about 10-12GB, so I can install larger programs such as MS Office & Photoshop Elements.  So i'm maxing out my system with 16GB of RAM.  Before knowing about the RAM Disk software, there wasn't a valid reason to upgrade. 

Again, thank you MaximumPC.  My subscription was not in vain.  I can finally have the fastest PC on the block without spending a fortune.  (Actually, I have already with the Vertex 3 but whatever).

I got my RAM today, and installed it successfully.  Now I have 16GB.  But for some reason, I can't make a RAM drive over 4GB.  (And I bought the license for it to unlock capacities over 4GB)  4 gigs is the free version's limit.  But the program states that I can go 15780MB.

What brand RAM is it ?