Using SSD for startup and multiple TB drives whilst dual booting

Mathyu · Mar 3, 2015

Hey guys,

I'm embarking on a workhorse machine for coding, gaming and video editing as well as a few other things, so I need to build a computer that is fast, can dualboot (ideally run windows on one monitor and mac on another, but I don't know if thats possible haha) and has 2 different hard drives.

This is my first build (so please go easy on me when it comes to n00b questions!), I'll be looking to order the parts in a week or two once I have all the information I need.

My boss came up to me and said "if you could have any computer you wanted, what would it be?", I told him I'd make a hackintosh and he was like "Okay, send me a list of what you need and we'll order it" hence why pricing isn't too fussy as I won't be paying for it! (Best boss ever).

In my head, this is what I have planned:

Buy an SSD (although not sure what size) which will hold Windows and Mac OS.

Buy two different 1TB drives (mainly so I can save Windows files to one and mac files to the other, OCD type thing).

I'd be buying the following, which is essentially just the CustoMac Pro with some of the expensive options;

[h=1]GIGABYTE Z97X-UD7-TH Intel LGA1150 Z97 Thunderbolt ATX Motherboard (4x DDR3, 8x USB3.0, 6x USB2.0, GBE, LAN, HDMI, DVI-I, DP)
[/h]
[h=1]Intel Core i7 i7-4790K CPU (Quad Core 4GHz, Socket H3 LGA-1150)
[/h]
[h=1]EVGA Nvidia GeForce GTX 760 Superclocked ACX 2GB GDDR5 Graphics Card
[/h]
[h=1]Crucial Ballistix Tactical Low Profile 32GB Kit (8GBx4) DDR3-1600 1.35V UDIMM 240-Pin Memory Modules BLT4C8G3D1608ET3LX0
[/h]
[h=1]Seagate ST31000524AS 3.5 inch 1TB Hard Drive (Serial-ATA, 6Gb/s, 32Mb, 7200RPM)
[/h]Would I be able to buy two of these and make them work with this set up? And would the SSD start-up be viable?

[h=1]Corsair CP-9020054-UK RM Series RM650 80 Plus Gold 650W ATX/EPS Fully Modular Power Supply Unit
[/h]
[h=1]Corsair Carbide 500R microATX Midi PC Tower Black
[/h]
[h=1]TP-LINK TL-WDN4800 450Mbps Wireless N Dual Band PCI Express Adapter[/h]
Hopefully I haven't come across too stupid in what I've said, I've been wanting to build one of these for ages and now I have the chance and don't even have to pay for it, I'm all excited with the possibilities!

I'm hoping that I'll be able to get more involved in the forum from this as well, as I've been lurking for a long time...

Thanks for any help you guys might be able to give me!

rwillett · Mar 3, 2015

1. Buy two SSD's on for Windows and one for Mac OS X. SSD's are cheap, don't penny pinch. makes installation simple, makes management simple.

2. Same for spinning disks, get two. Disks are so cheap now. Also Windows will like NTFS and whilst you can get NTFS for the Mac, why bother. you can put four to six in though the last two go through a crappy marvel SATA interface, so perhaps use that for slow disks or backups.

3. Dump the motherboard for something without Thunderbolt unless you really, really, really, really need it AND have something that plugs into Thunderbolt AND that you know works AND that you know you have the skills to make it all work when it doesn't work. Ask yourself do you NEED Thunderbolt or do you want Thunderbolt? Having it will complicate your build, but you will have a Windows install anyway, but why make things more complicated, keep it simple and things keep on working. So many people say they need Thunderbolt when in fact they don't. Do you have Thunderbolt monitors? Do you have Thunderbolt disks?

USB 3.0 disks are pretty good for 99% of peoples needs. Most Thunderbolt disk drives still work at the speed of the disks inside unless they are setup for speed and reduced reliability because if one disk of the pair fails, the whole disk system fails. The UD7 motherboards are no faster than the UD5 boards. I have the UD5H with a 4790K and its great and is dead easy to install.

4.The graphics card is OK. Do you need something bigger? Should install out of the box. If you are using FCP X, dump nVidia and go AMD as they are massively (2-3x) faster than nVidia.

5. Memory, get the most you can fit. I run 32GB on the board and had zero issues, apart from at install time when you need to use maxmem=8192 or maxmem=4096. All of this is documented. Also get a decent cooler, I use a Noctura and its great. Most of the decent coolers overhang the memory slots, so low profile memory is better (which you have).

6. PSU is fine for one graphics card. Might be worthing about an 850W if you do double up graphics cards.

7. Case might be a little small for future expansion. I'd look at a little bigger and think about what you are going to fit in. If this is an office environment, noise and space should not be an issue.

8. I hate wifi, why does everybody try to use a slow, unreliable, high latency networking system when you can put 1GB network cable in and get things moving fast. Anyway, thats your call.

9. If you want to run Windows as well, budget for a copy of VMWare Fusion 7 Pro. I use it all the time, its fast, reliable, if you have ESXI servers as well, it should be compulsory as it links into those. I paid for the full license and never regretted a second. I have Windows on a boot disk, but thats just for games, I do all my Windows work in a VMWare session on the Mac. You don't need a second hard disk to use it.

10. Forget over clocking and water cooling, this unit is for work, so its needs to bone stable and not to be tinkered with.

11. Order straight SATA cables as the right angled ones are pain to fit with a large graphics card.

12. get loads of cable ties for cable management. This is where a decent, big case helps.

Installation of the above is easy, I did mine again after a major screw up from myself in around an hour. Took an other hour to restore from backups, I don't use Time Machine. Setting Thunderbolt up will make it more complex, but if you think thats the right thing its your call.

If it helps, here is my minimal multibeast install for the system in my signature. Its as small as I can make it as that makes things simpler, and I'm simple at heart.

Rob

Mathyu · Mar 3, 2015

Hey Rob, thanks for your reply! A word of warning, I'm still learning everything so some really obvious things I might get wrong, please bare with me at these n00b moments =] Also, I'm not well versed with components and what motherboard works with what CPU and stuff, although I am researching and trying to learn more, I'm assuming that if there was a mistake or a compatibility issue with any of the stuff listed here, you'd point it out?

Cheers!

rwillett said:
1. Buy two SSD's on for Windows and one for Mac OS X. SSD's are cheap, don't penny pinch. makes installation simple, makes management simple.

Perfect, I shall do this. Any reccomendations?

rwillett said:
2. Same for spinning disks, get two. Disks are so cheap now. Also Windows will like NTFS and whilst you can get NTFS for the Mac, why bother. you can put four to six in though the last two go through a crappy marvel SATA interface, so perhaps use that for slow disks or backups.

Just to reitterate for myself, this would mean running the computer through the SSDs day to day, and then I could use spinning disks to back them up?

rwillett said:
3. Dump the motherboard for something without Thunderbolt unless you really, really, really, really need it AND have something that plugs into Thunderbolt AND that you know works AND that you know you have the skills to make it all work when it doesn't work. Ask yourself do you NEED Thunderbolt or do you want Thunderbolt? Having it will complicate your build, but you will have a Windows install anyway, but why make things more complicated, keep it simple and things keep on working. So many people say they need Thunderbolt when in fact they don't. Do you have Thunderbolt monitors? Do you have Thunderbolt disks?

I absolutely do not need Thunderbolt!! I was mainly concerned with compatibility with the amount of harddrives versus the functionality of the overall machine, so this card wasn't picked with prior knowledge haha! What motherboard would you suggest?

rwillett said:
USB 3.0 disks are pretty good for 99% of peoples needs. Most Thunderbolt disk drives still work at the speed of the disks inside unless they are setup for speed and reduced reliability because if one disk of the pair fails, the whole disk system fails. The UD7 motherboards are no faster than the UD5 boards. I have the UD5H with a 4790K and its great and is dead easy to install.

So the UD5H would work just the same? I'll change that over then!

rwillett said:
4.The graphics card is OK. Do you need something bigger? Should install out of the box. If you are using FCP X, dump nVidia and go AMD as they are massively (2-3x) faster than nVidia.

I use Premiere Pro from Adobe mainly, I don't think I would need anything biigger than this current card, but perhaps you might know of a better alternative roughly the same price?

rwillett said:
5. Memory, get the most you can fit. I run 32GB on the board and had zero issues, apart from at install time when you need to use maxmem=8192 or maxmem=4096. All of this is documented. Also get a decent cooler, I use a Noctura and its great. Most of the decent coolers overhang the memory slots, so low profile memory is better (which you have).

I'm a little unclear about the cooler, could you eloborate?
EDIT: Here's a n00b question, would I be alright with the memory I have selected? Is there an advantage of having 4x8gb or anything like that?

rwillett said:
6. PSU is fine for one graphics card. Might be worthing about an 850W if you do double up graphics cards.

Noted!

rwillett said:
7. Case might be a little small for future expansion. I'd look at a little bigger and think about what you are going to fit in. If this is an office environment, noise and space should not be an issue.

I've not looked into cases massively, I went with this one base on it's reviews and a lot of other n00bs saying they've used it and everything has gone smoothly with it, as this is my first build, I went with their advice! At this moment, I'm not too bothered about future expansion mainly because I can't get my head around it just yet haha!

rwillett said:
8. I hate wifi, why does everybody try to use a slow, unreliable, high latency networking system when you can put 1GB network cable in and get things moving fast. Anyway, thats your call.

OH MY GOD I FULLY AGREE. We have plenty of network cables here but everyone primarily uses laptops plugged in to external monitors and everything is running on wifi bar maybe one or two computers. I'm hoping that if this build goes well, I shall be building a few more for some of the other staff that need a higher performance workstation and cable-ing everthing up! But just incase I run into any problems, I'm gonna grab this as a back-up.

rwillett said:
9. If you want to run Windows as well, budget for a copy of VMWare Fusion 7 Pro. I use it all the time, its fast, reliable, if you have ESXI servers as well, it should be compulsory as it links into those. I paid for the full license and never regretted a second. I have Windows on a boot disk, but thats just for games, I do all my Windows work in a VMWare session on the Mac. You don't need a second hard disk to use it.

Okay awesome, I'll defo look into that. We do a lot of work using virtual machines based on client's environments, so hopefully this might be a two birds one stone situation.

rwillett said:
10. Forget over clocking and water cooling, this unit is for work, so its needs to bone stable and not to be tinkered with.

Absolutely agree. I like the simple things a lot more than the complicated things, especially when it's not just for personal use. In future if I make a build at home, I'll start getting into all that.

rwillett said:
11. Order straight SATA cables as the right angled ones are pain to fit with a large graphics card.

Done.

rwillett said:
12. get loads of cable ties for cable management. This is where a decent, big case helps.

Done.

rwillett said:
Installation of the above is easy, I did mine again after a major screw up from myself in around an hour. Took an other hour to restore from backups, I don't use Time Machine. Setting Thunderbolt up will make it more complex, but if you think thats the right thing its your call.

If it helps, here is my minimal multibeast install for the system in my signature. Its as small as I can make it as that makes things simpler, and I'm simple at heart.

View attachment 128737

Rob

Thankyou so much for your help Rob, it's very much appreciated!

rwillett · Mar 3, 2015

1. I have Crucial M4's at 512GB, Samsung Evo 240GB and Samsung 850 Pro 512GB and a few others. I like the 850 Pro but they are more expensive. My machine is 99% work so I can justify it. Any of the decent brands are fine and unless you have high IO needs, you won;t notice much (any) difference. I do a lot of database stuff and pull hundreds of GB's around so feel the 5-10% difference is worth it.

2. You can use the disks anyway you wish. I have most of my day to day stuff on SSD's, photo's and media on hard disks and use hard disks for backup. Somethings can sit on hard disks such as music, some stuff such as video editing should be on SSD's. For most documents, HDD's are fine.

3. I have a Gigabyte Z97X UD5H Black and and very happy with it. If you buy this and the 4790K you might need to upgrade the BIOS as it needs the very latest to support the 4790K CPU, the bios upgrade is pretty trivial though.

4. No idea on nVidia cards. I have dual AMD 280X cards as I use FCP X. Never used the nVidia cards but know from colleagues they are very good cards but not for FCP X.

5. Your CPU will come with an Intel cooler. This is small and can be noisy BUT will work. I always dump the standard cooler and put on a larger cooler to keep things quieter. I don't overclock but I want something better than the Intel one. The Noctua coolers are large, heavy, well made and keep things very cool. They have two large fans on and work very well. Theses the sort of thing, though you need to get the right one for the 1150 socket.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B002VKVZ1A/?tag=tonymacx86-21

6. People get really excited about cases. No idea why. Its a metal box to put stuff in. However get a decent case with decent, quiet fans and space. Again people try to cram too much in too small a space. Heat is a killer for disks, so get a bigger case, with bigger, slower fans, that allows the air to circulate and keep things cool. Thats why I have the Noctua fans, they're big , slow and lazy (and quiet). I have a Deep Silence 5 case which is heavy, easy to use and lots of space inside.

7. VMWare is a must for me. Not everything runs on a mac, somethings need Windows, MS Project for one. VMWare works great, kick off a VMWare session with Windows in the morning and leave it there. If it wasn't for games I'd never boot Windows directly.

8. Also work out your backup strategy. Time Machine is not a backup strategy, its a program that works sometimes. I know lots of people swear by it but in my opinion its pointless and worthless. One error on your hard disk and you've lost your Time Machine backup. Personally speaking, I'd rather poke my eyes out with a sharp stick than use Time Machine. Use Carbon Cloner to make a backup of your main disk once a week, that gives you a backup you can boot from, and use something like ChronaSync for real backups that are safe and usable and readable from any Mac.

Mathyu · Mar 3, 2015

rwillett said:
1. I have Crucial M4's at 512GB, Samsung Evo 240GB and Samsung 850 Pro 512GB and a few others. I like the 850 Pro but they are more expensive. My machine is 99% work so I can justify it. Any of the decent brands are fine and unless you have high IO needs, you won;t notice much (any) difference. I do a lot of database stuff and pull hundreds of GB's around so feel the 5-10% difference is worth it.

Do you think 2 x Crucial CT250BX100SSD1 BX100 250 GB SATA 2.5-Inch Internal Solid State Drive with Adapter would do the job then?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00RQA6M5Y/?tag=tonymacx86-21

rwillett said:
2. You can use the disks anyway you wish. I have most of my day to day stuff on SSD's, photo's and media on hard disks and use hard disks for backup. Somethings can sit on hard disks such as music, some stuff such as video editing should be on SSD's. For most documents, HDD's are fine.

Perfect, that's exactly what I'm planning.

rwillett said:
3. I have a Gigabyte Z97X UD5H Black and and very happy with it. If you buy this and the 4790K you might need to upgrade the BIOS as it needs the very latest to support the 4790K CPU, the bios upgrade is pretty trivial though.

I'm assuming upgrading the Bios is easy enough? If so, this is what I'm going for!

rwillett said:
4. No idea on nVidia cards. I have dual AMD 280X cards as I use FCP X. Never used the nVidia cards but know from colleagues they are very good cards but not for FCP X.

Humm... I may just have to play this one by ear and give them a whirl then. I'm hoping to run 3 monitors, if that helps you advise me further?

rwillett said:
5. Your CPU will come with an Intel cooler. This is small and can be noisy BUT will work. I always dump the standard cooler and put on a larger cooler to keep things quieter. I don't overclock but I want something better than the Intel one. The Noctua coolers are large, heavy, well made and keep things very cool. They have two large fans on and work very well. Theses the sort of thing, though you need to get the right one for the 1150 socket.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B002VKVZ1A/?tag=tonymacx86-21

Okay one of these will be added to the list! Could you help me out with your last point though? What is the 1150 socket?

rwillett said:
6. People get really excited about cases. No idea why. Its a metal box to put stuff in. However get a decent case with decent, quiet fans and space. Again people try to cram too much in too small a space. Heat is a killer for disks, so get a bigger case, with bigger, slower fans, that allows the air to circulate and keep things cool. Thats why I have the Noctua fans, they're big , slow and lazy (and quiet). I have a Deep Silence 5 case which is heavy, easy to use and lots of space inside.

Just checked that case out, I'm swapping my old one for that one now =]

rwillett said:
7. VMWare is a must for me. Not everything runs on a mac, somethings need Windows, MS Project for one. VMWare works great, kick off a VMWare session with Windows in the morning and leave it there. If it wasn't for games I'd never boot Windows directly.

I hate MS Project, but it's useful I suppose haha... Currently looking into other alternatives but I know what you mean.

rwillett said:
8. Also work out your backup strategy. Time Machine is not a backup strategy, its a program that works sometimes. I know lots of people swear by it but in my opinion its pointless and worthless. One error on your hard disk and you've lost your Time Machine backup. Personally speaking, I'd rather poke my eyes out with a sharp stick than use Time Machine. Use Carbon Cloner to make a backup of your main disk once a week, that gives you a backup you can boot from, and use something like ChronaSync for real backups that are safe and usable and readable from any Mac.

Noted and will look more into it!

Thanks for your advice fella! =D

rwillett · Mar 3, 2015

1. Any of the SSD's will be fine. The difference between them is negligible for real world usage. Only you can say how much space you need though.

2. Upgrading the BIOS is easy. Follow the instructions from Gigabyte.

3. Three monitors may require two graphics cards. No experience of nvidia so can't comment.

4. Socket 1150 is the CPU socket for the Z97X and Z87X boards, The 4790K is a Socket 1150 CPU. The CPU cooler needs certain fixings to make sure it fits. Most come with kits to fit most boards. You nee to check the height of the cooler to see if it will fit in the case and the socket type it fits onto.

Mathyu · Mar 4, 2015

Okay, firstly, thanks for all your guys advice so far, I've taken it on board and as far as my slightly stunted knowledge can comprehend, I think I've put together a suitable list of parts that should fit nicely and work nicely.

Without taking the **** or asking for too much from anyone, if anyone has a spare two minutes to check this over and give me some feedback on any potential errors, I'd fully appreciate it!

Motherboard:
[h=1]Gigabyte Black Edition LGA 1150 Intel Z97 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboards GA-Z97X-UD5H-BK[/h]http://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-Black-Edition-Motherboards-GA-Z97X-UD5H-BK/dp/B00K872JZ4

CPU:

[h=1]Intel Core i7 i7-4790K CPU (Quad Core 4GHz, Socket H3 LGA-1150)[/h]http://www.amazon.co.uk/Intel-Core-i7-4790K-Socket-LGA-1150/dp/B00KPRWAX8

CPU Cooling:

[h=1]Noctua NH-D14 Fan for Intel Processor LGA1366, LGA1156, LGA1155, LGA1150, LGA775, AM2, AM2+, AM3, AM3+, FM1, FM2[/h]http://www.amazon.co.uk/NH-D14-Processor-LGA1366-LGA1156-LGA1155/dp/B002VKVZ1A

Graphics Card:

[h=1]EVGA Nvidia GeForce GTX 760 4GB GDDR5 FTW with ACX Cooling Graphics Card (HDMI, DVI-I, DVI-D, Display Port, 256 Bit, 3D Vision Ready, SLI Ready)[/h]http://www.amazon.co.uk/EVGA-GeForce-Cooling-Graphics-Display/dp/B00E9I99WE#productDetails

Memory:

[h=1]Crucial Ballistix Tactical Low Profile 32GB Kit (8GBx4) DDR3-1600 1.35V UDIMM 240-Pin Memory Modules BLT4C8G3D1608ET3LX0[/h]http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-Ballistix-Tactical-DDR3-1600-BLT4C8G3D1608ET3LX0/dp/B00A14ZT7E

Power Supply:

[h=1]Corsair CP-9020054-UK RM Series RM650 80 Plus Gold 650W ATX/EPS Fully Modular Power Supply Unit[/h]http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00FG9FWF8/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=tonymacx86-21

SSD:

2 x
[h=1]Crucial CT500BX100SSD1 BX100 500 GB SATA 2.5-Inch Internal Solid State Drive with Adapter[/h]http://www.amazon.co.uk/Crucial-CT500BX100SSD1-2-5-Inch-Internal-Adapter/dp/B00RQA6M5Y/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1425387414&sr=8-11&keywords=SSD

HDD:

[h=1]WD - 2TB Desktop SATA Hard Drive - OEM - Green[/h]http://www.amazon.co.uk/WD-Desktop-SATA-Drive-Green/dp/B008YAHW6I/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&qid=1425392694&sr=8-12&keywords=1TB+hdd

Case:

Deep Silence 5

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00DSF98TS/?tag=tonymacx86-21

rwillett · Mar 4, 2015

Your kit looks OK, however I have NOT checked your RAM for compatibility though. I looked at yours on Amazon and they do NOT look the same, this could be merely cosmetic though.

This is the 32GB kit I brought

http://uk.crucial.com/SearchDisplay...showResultsPage=true&searchSource=Q&pageView=

Here's my e-mail so you can check and make sure its the same. I note that the memory is now about £40 cheaper than I paid which is annoying

The part number CT5855855 is not available but the BLXXX is.

So long as it is on Crucials compatibility list you are fine. Note that it says what system its for from Crucial which is nice.

Make sure you hook the drives into the Intel SATA ports rather than the Marvel ones. The book tells you which is which.

I don't use the internal sound card as I have a cheap external USB system, using the Mic, I brought years ago. Just plug and play, well worth it.

The case is heavy, if you have to carry it up stairs get two people :lol:

Best of luck,

Rob

Mathyu · Mar 4, 2015

Humm... I've found this

[h=2]32GB kit (8GBx4) DDR3 PC3-14900 Unbuffered NON-ECC 1.5V 1024Meg x 64[/h]On their website that is compatible with the motherboard, so that should be fine right?

Do I need to worry about the 1.5v?

And don't worry, this case wont be going up any stairs, we're on the ground floor

rwillett · Mar 4, 2015

Don't know to be honest. Mine says 1.5V, why not simply get the same one I have?

My knowledge of memory timings and voltages is rubbish so don't know what to say.

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