TechInsight Magazine
Nesting: Covering One More Base
Have you ever built a PC that was so quiet, all you could hear was its hard drive spinning? Can you even imagine what it'd be like to not hear the sound of a mechanical disk clicking away—from a powerful gaming machine, no less?
Solid state drives beat down that final obstacle to quiet computing. But they're much more than compact, quiet, storage devices. They're also ridiculously fast. So fast, in fact, that most enthusiasts consider them to be necessary performance adders, right up there with high-end CPUs and graphics cards. Replace a conventional hard drive with an SSD and you'll see Windows boot faster, applications pop right up, and game levels load much more quickly. But not all SSDs are created equal. There are features to keep an eye out for and performance attributes you'll want to bear in mind.
The X25-M is available in two models: 80 and 160 GB. Naturally, they're both dwarfed by the largest 1.5 and 2 TB hard drives. But they're not meant to compete like that. Rather, the most effective way to deploy solid state storage is to load your operating system and applications on the SSD, moving all user data (documents, videos, music files, and so on) to larger, less expensive disks.
In cost-sensitive environments, where the X25-M might not work as well, consider Intel's value-oriented X25-V SSD. The 40 GB drive of course offers limited capacity, but its sub-$100 price tag is an absolute head-turner. You'll want to pursue the same tiered arrangement of solid state and conventional storage, installing the operating system and just a couple of key apps onto the SSD.
Alternatively, explore drive configurations that'll get your customer's blood pumping faster. A pair of X25-Vs, for instance, in a RAID 0 arrangement has the two-fold effect of doubling capacity to 80 GB and also accelerating performance by virtue of striping—reading to and writing from both drives concurrently. Match the X25-Vs up to a large terabyte hard drive and enjoy the best of both worlds. You can do the same thing with X25-Ms too, yielding meaty 160 or 320 GB arrays that boast tremendous storage throughput.
The good news for enthusiasts is that the tools needed to enhance storage performance through teamed configurations come with every new Intel Extreme Series motherboard. The DX58SO, DP55KG, and DP55SB include integrated software RAID. With two or more SSDs attached via SATA, a couple of BIOS-based options are all that you need to enable RAID 0, RAID 1, or RAID 5. Regardless of whether you install one solid state drive or more in a RAID array, the speed-up your customer experiences will be significant.
In the past, it might have been tempting to drop a three-drive RAID 5 array of SATA disks in a small business server, or perhaps a more robust set of SAS drives in a higher-availability machine. But the compute muscle of Intel's newest processors is such that a pair of Xeon 5600s ends up waiting on conventional storage, creating a bottleneck.
Now, you could certainly address that performance limitation with more extravagant disk-based arrays, teaming drives together to improve throughput as much as possible. Those same servers and workstations are much better paired to solid state technology, though. One of Intel's enterprise-class X25-E SSDs is rated for sequential read speeds of up to 250 MB/s and sequential writes as high as 170 MB/s. Accessing the drive happens almost instantaneously, and a maximum power consumption of 2.4 W represents an almost 7x reduction per drive compared to 15,000 RPM enterprise disks.
Intel recently unveiled a trio of premium feature key upgrades compatible with a number of its RAID controllers. One of those keys, SSD Cache, can dramatically improve the performance of hard drive-based storage systems at minimal cost. With the SSD Cache key enabled, frequently-accessed data is copied from spinning media onto installed SSDs, serving up to a 50x speed-up of read data. Use just one SSD to accelerate performance or as many as 32 drives, depending on the amount of information that stands to benefit from caching.
Normally a $240 upgrade, Intel is currently running a promotion whereby a reseller can get the SSD Cache for free with the purchase of an Intel SSD and an Intel RAID controller. This actually turns into a pretty fantastic package, especially for VARs building new servers and workstations on Xeon 5600-series platforms. Adding value means leaning on the latest SAS 6Gb/s controller hardware to maximize the devices per port your servers can support. Intel offers eight qualifying hardware-based RAID cards capable of enabling internal and external SAS connectivity. Moreover, you have the choice between mainstream-class 80 and 160 GB X25-M SSDs or the enterprise-oriented 32 and 64 GB X25-E drives. Either way you go, the SSD Cache bundle promises to unlock massive performance gains in a configuration that might have otherwise been held back by conventional hard drives. For more information, visit Intel's RAID Solutions portal.
Why the excitement over an unlocked multiplier? To an overclocker, that's the key to quick and easy operating frequency increases.
You see, a processor gets its clock rate from the product of two numbers—the multiplier and a reference clock. Intel's Core i7, Core i5, and Core i3 CPUs employ a 133 MHz reference clock. Most models also sport a fixed multiplier. Thus, any attempt to crank the CPU's frequency is a direct result of boosting that reference clock, which also alters the QPI and memory speeds, potentially limiting overclocking headroom.
A processor with an unlocked multiplier circumvents all of that messiness. By simply bumping up the multiplier, frequency rises in corresponding 133 MHz increments. That's much easier than managing a tweaked reference clock. And that's exactly why Intel's K-series processors are so attractive to enthusiasts. Call it "overclocking made easy."
Both K-series SKUs are similar to models with which you're likely already well acquainted. The Core i7-875K is very similar to the Core i7-870, running at 2.93 GHz, armed with four physical cores, and equipped with 8 MB of shared L3 cache. The addition of Hyper-Threading allows the chip to operate on eight threads concurrently. And LGA 1156 interface support represents wide compatibility with a range of affordable P55-, H57-, and H55-based motherboards. We've seen this chip crest 4 GHz on air; just be sure to use a capable aftermarket cooling solution.
The Core i5-655K looks a lot like Intel's popular Core i5-650. It's a dual-core, Hyper-Threading-equipped processor manufactured on the company's 32 nm node, so it's a particularly willing overclocker. In fact, we've seen the chip's stock 3.2 GHz frequency pushed as high as 4.6 GHz with a solid heat sink and fan.
The folks over at Tom's Hardware are currently running a contest for overclockers with K-series CPUs. Qualify using any cooling technology you want—air, water, or even liquid nitrogen. The highest-clocked result, validated through a CPU-Z v.1.55 submission and submitted to the site's editors, will win an Intel Core i7-980X processor, an Intel DX58SO motherboard, and two Intel X25-M SSDs to use in a RAID 0 array. The second- and third-place winners will receive Intel Core i7-980X CPUs and DX58SO motherboards. The next 20 entrants will win a month's supply of Sparkling Ice from the Talking Rain Beverage Company.
Customers who've purchased K-series CPUs are already planning to overclock. Spread the word to them about Tom's Hardware's contest—perhaps one of them will take home a much more powerful platform than they ever expected.
