Building A PC |
January 2011
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After using my current off-the-shelf PC for about 3 years, it has started to slow down, all the crap that I installed on it over time has taken it’s toll. I could, of course, have simply backed it up and rebuilt from scratch but during the last 3 years a lot of changes have happened in the home PC market and I thought i’d like to try out some of these new things.
I set myself a limit of £800 for the finished PC.
I had been reading about Solid State Drives and how they greatly improve read/write times so I decided that was a must have item. Prices for SSDs are still very high so to stay within my budget I would have to use a lower capacity drive. This meant I would only be able to store the operating system and important applications on this drive and would have a second, standard and larger drive to store any remaining applications and all my data.
Motherboards are a matter of preference and I have used ASUS mobos in the past and have found them very reliable.
I set myself a limit of £800 for the finished PC.
I had been reading about Solid State Drives and how they greatly improve read/write times so I decided that was a must have item. Prices for SSDs are still very high so to stay within my budget I would have to use a lower capacity drive. This meant I would only be able to store the operating system and important applications on this drive and would have a second, standard and larger drive to store any remaining applications and all my data.
Motherboards are a matter of preference and I have used ASUS mobos in the past and have found them very reliable.
When it came to the processor, I have used many different ones over the years and my current PC uses an AMD Phenom Quad Core 64-bit processor which has been pretty faultless but the talk at the moment is around the Intel i processors. After some light reading on the subject and to keep within my budget I decided to go for the i5 760 2.8Ghz processor.
The Parts List
Tips & Tricks
The best way to install a new SSD drive
- Install the drive physically (if you have a MOBO that has 6 Gb/s functionality and an Intel controller, you will want to install the drive on first SATA/AHCI port – at least with Asus mobo, as this port will support 6GB/s).
- Enter BIOS and enable AHCI mode (if you have it, depends on how good your mobo is).
- Install Windows 7 – allowing Windows 7 to format the drive itself, it will do this automatically once you have selected the unformatted SSD.
- Once booted, run Windows 7 experience which will setup TRIM and other settings for you.
- Download SSD tweaker – a utility which changes Windows 7 SDD settings with a single click.
- You may wish update your HD/SSD controller drivers.
- Make sure Windows 7 Disk defrag schedule is switched off – SSDs do not need to be defragmented. Doing so may shorten the lifespan of the drive (you may not need to do this if Windows 7 recognised the drive as an SSD during installation, in which case it won’t appear in the defrag schedule drive list).
Clean Install Windows 7 with Upgrade Media
If, like me, you purchased an Upgrade version of Windows 7 (when upgrading my store bought PC from Vista), you may be a little upset when you want to move it to a new PC and you discover it won’t activate.
This article by Paul Thurrott may get you out of a hole!
If, like me, you purchased an Upgrade version of Windows 7 (when upgrading my store bought PC from Vista), you may be a little upset when you want to move it to a new PC and you discover it won’t activate.
This article by Paul Thurrott may get you out of a hole!
How To Boot And Install Windows 7 From USB Flash Drive
Another way to speed up the installation process is to transfer your Windows 7 DVD to a USB flash drive.
This article by Damien explains the procedure perfectly!
Another way to speed up the installation process is to transfer your Windows 7 DVD to a USB flash drive.
This article by Damien explains the procedure perfectly!
Move the Users Directory in Windows 7
An issue you will encounter when using comparitively small SSD drives is the way Windows 7 forces you to store your user profiles and Windows 7 libraries (Documents, Pictures, Videos etc) on your boot drive, this can take up a lot of precious space.
This article by Roobs on LifeHacker explains how to, very simply with no registry hacks, move them to another drive. It’s utterly flawless, and makes use of symlinks. It’s simple, and you can just forget about it after it’s done. Everything takes care of itself. The only quirk is that accessing the Users folder from the C: drive (for example) appears as “C:” when it’s actually on “D:”. But this appears to be the intentional behaviour of symlinks.
An issue you will encounter when using comparitively small SSD drives is the way Windows 7 forces you to store your user profiles and Windows 7 libraries (Documents, Pictures, Videos etc) on your boot drive, this can take up a lot of precious space.
This article by Roobs on LifeHacker explains how to, very simply with no registry hacks, move them to another drive. It’s utterly flawless, and makes use of symlinks. It’s simple, and you can just forget about it after it’s done. Everything takes care of itself. The only quirk is that accessing the Users folder from the C: drive (for example) appears as “C:” when it’s actually on “D:”. But this appears to be the intentional behaviour of symlinks.
Speed Up your boot process
Soluto tracks all the applications in your system boot process, and tells you exactly which ones are slowing you down.
Once you’ve installed the software and rebooted your PC, Soluto springs into action, tracking every single process that runs during the boot process, and then allows you to easily drill down into the list of processes to see exact times for each one. To make it easier for the layman to understand what processes can be removed, the applications are grouped into “No-brainer” or “Potentially removable” groups.
Soluto is a free download for Windows only, and definitely worth a look if you’d like to troubleshoot your system boot speed issues.
Soluto tracks all the applications in your system boot process, and tells you exactly which ones are slowing you down.
Once you’ve installed the software and rebooted your PC, Soluto springs into action, tracking every single process that runs during the boot process, and then allows you to easily drill down into the list of processes to see exact times for each one. To make it easier for the layman to understand what processes can be removed, the applications are grouped into “No-brainer” or “Potentially removable” groups.
Soluto is a free download for Windows only, and definitely worth a look if you’d like to troubleshoot your system boot speed issues.