My first SSD - will it work on my mobo?

[Hayden202]

Hey everyone,

I have an EVGA 750i FTW mobo from around 2008 (i think is when it came out) and I am hoping to pick up this SSD: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820148357

for my birthday.

I currently have a WD1TB drive as my main operating system/games/music/apps drive and an old 250GB IDE backupdrive.

My plan is to put the OS on the new 64GB-SSD along with some other random small apps liek afterburner, core temp, office suite, etc.

Then I would like to install my steam games to my old 1TB drive so i have enough space for them all.

My questions are:

1. Does my mobo need any special requirements to run a SSD?
2. Will I be able to install games to my backup 1TB drive and run them off of their as I mentioned above?

Thanks in advance.

P.S. I have never owned an SSD before, so I apologize for the newbie questions.

[PhazeDelta1]

yes the ssd will work and yes youll be able to run your games off your other drive.

[Mufflore]

You may not be able to enable TRIM support on your board.
Read this thread for a "how to" and more info.
http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.aspx?m=173121&mpage=1

Lack of TRIM will prevent data from being fully deleted (The OS sees it as deleted but the SSD doesnt).
This is a problem because the internal Garbage Collection on the SSD will shuffle around the undeleted data as well as data that is current, accelerating the SSDs wear and can reduce performance.

[Hayden202]

Originally Posted by Mufflore

You may not be able to enable TRIM support on your board.
Read this thread for a "how to" and more info.
http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.aspx?m=173121&mpage=1

Lack of TRIM will prevent data from being fully deleted (The OS sees it as deleted but the SSD doesnt).
This is a problem because the internal Garbage Collection on the SSD will shuffle around the undeleted data as well as data that is current, accelerating the SSDs wear and can reduce performance.

Hey, thats a great point. I read over the thread. Looks like I MIGHT be able to get Trim to work if I install the stock microsoft controller over the Nvidia one; and TRIm shoudl pass down.

I was planning to have windows 7, office applications, and a few other small apps on my SSD. Is this a bad idea? Should I limit it to just windows? My fear is that all the cache data in the office apps will degrade the drive super fast or something. Again, brand new to SSD's so forgive the dumb questions.

Thanks!
Hayden 202

[Hayden202]

Ok so after a lot of research, I have come to this conclusion:

I can't run an SSD at maximum performance on my current system. My motherboard does not support AHCI; therefore, I will see signifcant performance drops and in order to get TRIM to function under IDE mode I will need to overwrite the nvidia controller with a microsoft one:

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Storage...ebate-Conclude (great article on this topic)

So I was hearing some options of people running a PCIE card with sata III that supports AHCI function. My concerns are the bandwith my mobo may take from my video cards to do this, the price of the PCIE card, and how I can find out if my motherboard would allow me to boot from an SSD connected via PCIE sata card port. Something like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-032-_-Product ?

Really I should just invest in a new mobo, cpu, and ram, but I can't afford all that right now and If i do go with a nice sata III SSD now, i can always transfer it to the new rig.

Thoughts?

[Mufflore]

I ran without TRIM for about 6 months and it wasnt that bad with a Vertex 2E 60GB.
Certainly quicker than a hard drive.

If you are going to upgrade your hardware in say 6 months, I cant see there being any excessive wear if you dont fill it up and make lots of changes to files on the drive.
The more space you leave on the drive, the lower the wear rate.
Move the swap file to a hard drive.
There wont be a problem installing Office etc on the drive, its temp space that should be moved for your browser etc.

A very good way to do this is to use a good sandbox like Sandboxie.
http://www.sandboxie.com/
Any files that are changed on your system are written to the Sandbox which you can place on another drive.
I run my browser and P2P through it on another drive so changes are never made to my OS drive.
You can make many different Sandboxes, say use one for buying online and another for browsing the Web.
This means any browser hack will not be able to steal data about your account or purchases.

There are quite a few PCI-E RAID cards that support AHCI.
You will be able to boot from one without issue.

I reckon you should get the SSD and use it with your current kit until you can afford to replace it.
Observe the precautions mentioned above and it will be fine.

[Hayden202]

Thanks Mufflore, that is a lot of great info, much appreciated!