Does Cache Really Matter?

[Spiffyman30]

I've been looking at building my own desktop, but I don't know which hard drive I should be getting.  I have an SSD for the OS, but as far as storing games and all other files, I'm not entirely sure what I should be looking for. Should I spend the extra money to get a 64MB cache over a 32MB? 

[Electronics Wizardy]

What drive?

 

cache doesn't really matter.

[Natsoup]

For playing games? No.

[Shoob]

There isn't much of a difference for storage. The only 1TB drive that comes with 32MB of cache is the Toshiba DT01ACA100. You are better off spending a bit extra for a faster hard drive like the new Seagate BarraCuda ST1000DM010 since the Toshiba isn't one of the best performing hard drives in that price range.

[flibberdipper]

If it's a slower drive it will help with small burst writes, but generally I would just go with the 32MB drive.

[glitchmaster0001]

cache size does matter in storage intensive task since it will load the data on the cache first for faster access. 

[vorticalbox]

23 minutes ago, Spiffyman30 said:

I've been looking at building my own desktop, but I don't know which hard drive I should be getting.  I have an SSD for the OS, but as far as storing games and all other files, I'm not entirely sure what I should be looking for. Should I spend the extra money to get a 64MB cache over a 32MB? 

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4337/z68-ssd-caching-with-corsairs-f40-sandforce-ssd/5

[Spiffyman30]

So for most purposes, either will work just fine. What about the SSD startup disk? Any recommendations for what size I should look at for that? 1 TB is plenty for a HHD, but I'm not sure how big the SSD should be if it's main use will be for the OS.

[m0k]

14 minutes ago, Spiffyman30 said:

So for most purposes, either will work just fine. What about the SSD startup disk? Any recommendations for what size I should look at for that? 1 TB is plenty for a HHD, but I'm not sure how big the SSD should be if it's main use will be for the OS.

240-256gb is a good sweet spot for a Boot SSD

[Natsoup]

19 minutes ago, Spiffyman30 said:

So for most purposes, either will work just fine. What about the SSD startup disk? Any recommendations for what size I should look at for that? 1 TB is plenty for a HHD, but I'm not sure how big the SSD should be if it's main use will be for the OS.

Even a 120gb will be fine but SSD is so much better than HDD storage. It's really up to you. You could even grab a 60gb POS for around $40 if you really wanted, lol.

[Spiffyman30]

4 minutes ago, Natsoup said:

Even a 120gb will be fine but SSD is so much better than HDD storage. It's really up to you. You could even grab a 60gb POS for around $40 if you really wanted, lol.

 

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but what's a POS? I just got into PC building this last Saturday, so I've been doing tons of research these past few days trying to learn as much as I can.

[pyrojoe34]

33 minutes ago, vorticalbox said:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4337/z68-ssd-caching-with-corsairs-f40-sandforce-ssd/5

That is a different thing. He's referring the the HDD internal cache (usually 32-128MB) that all HDDs have, not using an independent SSD cache with a HDD or using a hybrid SSD/HDD.

 

29 minutes ago, Spiffyman30 said:

So for most purposes, either will work just fine. What about the SSD startup disk? Any recommendations for what size I should look at for that? 1 TB is plenty for a HHD, but I'm not sure how big the SSD should be if it's main use will be for the OS.

120GB is the minimum I would look at, but 240+ is nicer to have. With the 240GB you can still install most programs (except games) to the SSD for faster load up without having to worry about getting low on space. That being said, one of my computers has a 120GB boot drive and I install all my (non-game) programs to that and have the pagefile on that and still have 40GB free so it's totally do-able either way. I have even pulled off a 32GB SSD as a boot drive but then you really have to put absolutely everything (downloads, all programs, pagefile, etc) on a separate drive and you may still have issues.

 

3 minutes ago, Spiffyman30 said:

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but what's a POS? I just got into PC building this last Saturday, so I've been doing tons of research these past few days trying to learn as much as I can.

POS= Piece Of Sh*t

[Natsoup]

2 minutes ago, Spiffyman30 said:

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but what's a POS? I just got into PC building this last Saturday, so I've been doing tons of research these past few days trying to learn as much as I can.

Piece of shit, haha

[Spiffyman30]

2 minutes ago, Natsoup said:

Piece of shit, haha

I see, lol. Thanks for all the information.

[Natsoup]

In all seriousness, though, I know you mentioned games. You will want a lot of storage for those, and an SSD will easily cut load times in half (or or even smaller). As long as your budget allows it, get a lot of Solid State storage, you won't regret it.

[Spiffyman30]

1 minute ago, Natsoup said:

In all seriousness, though, I know you mentioned games. You will want a lot of storage for those, and an SSD will easily cut load times in half (or or even smaller). As long as your budget allows it, get a lot of Solid State storage, you won't regret it.

 

 

I'd love to get all SSD, but with how expensive it is compared to HDD, I'm not too sure about it. The build I have planned as of now is just under $1000, and I'd rather not go too much higher in case I need to spend some more on troubleshooting or anything, being my first desktop as well. Until now I've used a Macbook Pro 2012, so needless to say any decent desktop will be an upgrade for me. I have an Intel Core i5-7500 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor and an MSI Radeon RX 480 8GB GAMING X Video Card, so I'm not sure if I should be getting extra cooling or what exactly. Still lots of research to be done.

 

[pyrojoe34]

5 minutes ago, Spiffyman30 said:

I'd love to get all SSD, but with how expensive it is compared to HDD, I'm not too sure about it. The build I have planned as of now is just under $1000, and I'd rather not go too much higher in case I need to spend some more on troubleshooting or anything, being my first desktop as well. Until now I've used a Macbook Pro 2012, so needless to say any decent desktop will be an upgrade for me. I have an Intel Core i5-7500 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor and an MSI Radeon RX 480 8GB GAMING X Video Card, so I'm not sure if I should be getting extra cooling or what exactly. Still lots of research to be done.

 

I don't agree with him, it's honestly not worth the cost at the moment, especially for gaming. Most games wont even hit a HDDs full speeds when loading games anyway and the load screen difference times will be small. The difference is probably a 5sec load screen vs a 2 second load screen and there is no performance difference in game.

 

Just go with an OS SSD (like you have) and a HDD for bulk storage and games. However, it might be worth going with a slightly larger HDD (like 2TB instead of 1TB, the cost difference is like $20) since 1TB goes surprisingly quickly with modern games being 50+GB and drives will slow down as they get too full so trying to keep a drive less than 80% full can help keep it performing better.

[Natsoup]

9 minutes ago, Spiffyman30 said:

I'd love to get all SSD, but with how expensive it is compared to HDD, I'm not too sure about it. The build I have planned as of now is just under $1000, and I'd rather not go too much higher in case I need to spend some more on troubleshooting or anything, being my first desktop as well. Until now I've used a Macbook Pro 2012, so needless to say any decent desktop will be an upgrade for me. I have an Intel Core i5-7500 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor and an MSI Radeon RX 480 8GB GAMING X Video Card, so I'm not sure if I should be getting extra cooling or what exactly. Still lots of research to be done.

 

You won't need extra cooling, stock fan with your 7500 will work nicely. But it's great that you're upgrading  Do you have a PC Part Picker list together?

[Natsoup]

1 minute ago, pyrojoe34 said:

I don't agree with him, it's honestly not worth the cost at the moment, especially for gaming. Most games wont even hit a HDDs full speeds when loading games anyway and the load screen difference times will be small. The difference is probably a 5sec load screen vs a 2 second load screen and there is no performance difference in game.

 

Just go with an OS SSD (like you have) and a HDD for bulk storage and games. However, it might be worth going with a slightly larger HDD (like 2TB instead of 1TB, the cost difference is like $20) since 1TB goes surprisingly quickly with modern games being 50+GB and drives will slow down as they get too full so trying to keep a drive less than 80% full can help keep it performing better.

I don't mean all SSD, simply more. Like 480-525GB range, then a 2TB HDD for mass storage. Also, a hard drive will have significantly longer load times.. 2 second vs 5 second might not be much, but 0:40 second vs 1:40 is. Games like Battlefield 1 with extremely long loading times take my SSD less than a minute every time, while other friends take up to 2 or 3 minutes. It's a big difference.

[Spiffyman30]

6 hours ago, Natsoup said:

You won't need extra cooling, stock fan with your 7500 will work nicely. But it's great that you're upgrading  Do you have a PC Part Picker list together?

 

I do. I find that's a great site for picking parts and making sure they are all compatible. Still trying to figure out what would be best though. Two variations of the same build, but does one of them look better than the other, or does my change not really make any difference? And do you have any other recommendations for additions or changes? I appreciate the help from you all.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/pFvLf8

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/89kkzM

[JoostinOnline]

The accepted belief is that it doesn't matter after 8MB.

[Spiffyman30]

6 minutes ago, JoostinOnline said:

The accepted belief is that it doesn't matter after 8MB.

You have 16 total GB too though, just spread out over 2 sets of 8GB. Also, what about the motherboard? I'm not entirely sure if it matters which I go with as long as everything is compatible.

[pyrojoe34]

33 minutes ago, Spiffyman30 said:

You have 16 total GB too though, just spread out over 2 sets of 8GB. Also, what about the motherboard? I'm not entirely sure if it matters which I go with as long as everything is compatible.

That's RAM which is different than drive cache. Modern HDDs usually have 32-128MB of cache.

[Spiffyman30]

12 minutes ago, pyrojoe34 said:

That's RAM which is different than drive cache. Modern HDDs usually have 32-128MB of cache.

Ah, that's what you were referring to.

[Natsoup]

2 hours ago, Spiffyman30 said:

I do. I find that's a great site for picking parts and making sure they are all compatible. Still trying to figure out what would be best though. Two variations of the same build, but does one of them look better than the other, or does my change not really make any difference? And do you have any other recommendations for additions or changes? I appreciate the help from you all.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/pFvLf8

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/89kkzM

Second one looks good, but I'd buy windows off of kinguin.net for about 1/4 of what you're going to pay for on newegg.