i did forgo thunderbolt. I got an Asus deluxe z87 openbox for 210. Asus deluxe dual is the 1 with thunderbolt.

Brand new unopened Samsung 840 pro 512GB for 389.99 with free shipping off ebay. I am scoring the deals left and right folks. Only 1 purchase to go my MSI gaming GTX 780. Can't find any above average deals on it. Anybody got any leads?

It's not really a deal on the price, but Nvidia is bundling 3 games with the 7xx cards: http://www.geforce.com/landing-page/hol ... dle-shield

Got to test out my 512GB Samsung 840 pro in my buddys PC. It's definitely the fastest SSD I have ever used. He has the 750GB samsung 840 EVO in his PC. Both SSD's were connected to a native chipset sata 3 connector not one of the extras provided by a controller as those seem to vary in speed more. Evo on port 1, pro on port 2. We made a 200GB sized .rar file to be copied over to my 840 pro. Transfer begins and a stopwatch begins the timer. 6 minutes and 57 seconds to write 200GB onto the 840 pro. That translates to about 490MB/sec of write speed in a real world environment. I can't be for certain if it was the read speed of the evo or the write speed of the 840 pro that was the bottleneck but regardless that is the fastest I have ever wrote 200GB of data.

At 389 dollars for 512GB there really aren't even many options for an ssd at that capacity for a cheaper price, at least not on newegg. Newegg basically has a couple 480GB SSD for 360 and they are the lowest performing crappiest models you can get. Maybe on ebay where I found mine you could find the more budget friendly models going for less but for 389 there should be no reason anyone goes for anything else, it just doesn't make sense. Search ebay and you can snipe a deal like this for not only one of the fastest ssds but also in the top for lowest power used. You would think with higher performance there must also be higher power usage but somehow samsung manages to get top notch performance while keeping the thing using less power than almost every competitor and the competitors are going slower which should allow them to use less power.

Samsung has a real winner with the 840 pro and I can see why even after 14 months since it's release it does not have a successor on the horizon yet. When you are topping the charts for speed and power consumption with no competition that is able to match up in both categories simultaneously there is no pressure to spend a ton of R and D cash just to top yourself. Have to give it up for samsung on this one.

I know the heat that comes off an SSD is so tiny compared to anything else in the system it hardly matters but for the super ocd people that do lurk around here another plus is that since it's power usage is one of the lowest it will also radiate slightly less heat into the system. For the truly ocd people that want the least possible amount of heat in their system so they can keep the fans as low as possible or a pasively cooled system that needs the least amount of heat generated this is the SSD to get.




In other news I am still waiting on buying the graphics card. Not that I can't afford to buy it now I just don't want to take money from my emergency needs fund. Also feeling the slight temptation to see how the msi gamer or Asus DirectCU gtx 780TI turns out. Basically because even with the GTX 780 there are quite a few games that cannot reach a stable 60 FPS at 2560x1600 with all graphic options maxed out to ultra. Crysis 3 only reaches 30 fps under those setting on a gtx 780. And there are many many games in the 40-50 fps range at those settings. I'm thinking there is a good chance that the gtx 780ti will boost many of the games stuck in the 40-50 fps range up to 60 or almost 60 fps. I know the custom gtx 780ti's will probably be in the 750ish range and that is quite a chunk of change to spend on a graphics card but I actually may require the extra speed.

Well Guys I pulled the trigger on a MSI Gaming GTX 770 for 312.99 on ebay (pretty good deal). I decided to save the extra money towards a NAS and besides next year when we get the 20nm node jump that will be the time to splurge on the top end so why bother spending the extra money now when it will be replaced in less than a year. I'll just have to scarifice some graphics settings till maxwell comes out at 2560x1600 PC will finally get built soon. Sorry it took so long to get everything together!

Well well by later tonight I should have a fully functioning fast quiet pc. Project took a few months but it was worth it. Now the fun begins.