[FalvinP]

I finally ordered the parts for my pc update. A new piece of hardware for this update is a large Intel 520 SSD.

I’m not going to do any SSD caching. I’ll put Windows and programs on the ssd and then put data on one or two WD Caviar black spin drives.

I’ve looked at various SSD “tweaking” and “optimizing” guides on the internet and am somewhat confused as to which suggested procedures of each I would need to perform on my system. Some of them deal with retaining usable space on the drive, which I don’t need to worry about, since it’s a large ssd and others deal with performance of the drive itself. I do know that I need to disable auto disk defragmentation in Windows, since ssds don’t need to be defraged. Can someone lead me to a guide that will meet my needs?

I know that I will need to plug the ssd into the first port on the Intel (gray) controller on the motherboard. How do I know which port (top or bottom) is the first port? I’ve looked in the manual and don’t see anything that would tell me which is the first port. I don’t have the motherboard yet (Asus P8-Z77-V Deluxe) so I can’t look on the board itself. I suppose I could look in the bios to see which port it shows up on once it’s plugged in.

The parts should be here tomorrow. I’ve upgraded my Lian Li A70A case to usb 3.0 and have bought the top panel that allows two more fans to be installed, if needed. I also bought a 2.5” hard drive bay adapter that allows the ssd to slide right into the cool drive rails just like the 3.5 drives.

Thanks for your help.

Oh, I almost forgot..... Will my current video card (BFG Geforce 7950 GT OC) be better the the Intel 4000 graphics on the i7 cpu? I realize I can't use the LucidLogix Virtu MVP feature of the motherboard, since it only supports Nvidia GF series 4xx or 5xx (and some AMD) graphics cards.