New pre build component (don't kill me) query.

[st4rburst]

I have a friend in the states who is terrified by the idea of building their own PC, so pre-build is the recourse (Just so people put away the pitchforks)

Operating within a budget $1060-1070, I feel I have found a fair contender,
The basics are it has a i5-8400 and 16gb of ddr4 3000mhz adata xpg z1's with a 6gb GTX1060, asus prime z370-p a 240gb wdgreen boot SSD. It is made using a cyberpower configurator.

It has a special offer running currently for a free 16gb optane upgrade to it's storage hard drive 1tb wd blue.

My options are, we can buy the two drives(SSD and dataHDD) as a combo (base price) or for an extra 6 dollars, we can buy the SSD as a boot drive, the wdblue as a secondary drive with a 16gb optane upgrade.



All I found were people talking about optane as a boost for an BootHDD and something about installing the optane partition at the end of the drive?

If we intend to use the SSD as a boot drive, is optane even still functional if paired with the data drive? Is it worth the 6 bucks to gain it? And is it going to be easy to set up for my dearly petrified friend?

I've paid next to no attention to optane as it rolled out due to me deciding its price to performance was outside my budget, and now I am trying to make an informed decision by the end of today....



Also If anyone is horrified by my choice of cyberpower for a system builder, I'm UK based trying to shop in the USA here, so if you have better pre-builds elswhere feel free to sling them over to me

Thanks in advance.

 

[USAFRet]

1. "Optane" is not a partition. it is a separate SSD module, that is a cache for the primary drive. An HDD that you'd have as the C drive.
In this system, the SSD would be the C drive, and the Optane is pretty useless combined with the HDD.

Leave Optane out of it completely.

2. Anywhere but CyberPower. Never ever from there.
OK...include iBuyPower in that "never ever".

 

[st4rburst]

Oh aye, I'm aware it's a standalone drive, just that all the material I could find was telling me it would move OS files to the optane drive to cache them on a near permanent basis and that it had to install a small optane utilities partition on it's paired drive.

Hence why I was asking, if it's not paired with the boot drive, would it have any effect
Other articles seemed to imply it would speed up game load times on frequently played games, but all evidence was anecdotal.
I should also probably elaborate this will be a gaming machine.



Thinking on the anywhere but cyberpower however, I don't know of many alternatives, amazon offerings sucked. NZXT's builder wants another 500 dollars before they can even offer me a build Couple of builders over here (uk) have respecatable offerings but after their export charges, its not worthwhile....

I came across an intriguing small business, centaurus computers, found through amazon.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TE3Y65E/sr=8-6/qid=1525875105/ref=olp_product_details?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=1525875105&sr=8-6
Sacrificing the 16gb ram though, which I feel will come back to bite.
They only have 34 reviews 0 negative in the last 3 years or so... and their website https://www.centauruscomputers.com/ looks like it's from the 90's....
If anyone can throw any light on them? legit or not?


And still, well open for alternatives



Further food for thought, is it even worth just paying the 6 bucks for the optane, uninstalling it and selling it on craigslist

 

[USAFRet]

Oh aye, I'm aware it's a standalone drive, just that all the material I could find was telling me it would move OS files to the optane drive to cache them on a near permanent basis and that it had to install a small optane utilities partition on it's paired drive.

It holds the most use blocks from its paired drive. If that drive is not the boot drive...those data blocks are not the OS.

Originally, the Optane worked only with the boot drive. Pairing it with an SSD is useless.
I *think* it will now work with the non-boot drive.
But...you're sucking up a whole m.2 port for minimal gain.

 

[st4rburst]

yea.... friend received a last minute budget increase so we are managing to squeeze a 500gb wdblue ssd in with a 1tb hd instead.

close toss up on the sata ssd vs a 250gb black nvme but the capacity is winning out over the speed increase as they aren't likely to notice it when just gaming.

You don't happen to have an alternative builder suggestion? xD

 

[USAFRet]

yea.... friend received a last minute budget increase so we are managing to squeeze a 500gb wdblue ssd in with a 1tb hd instead.

close toss up on the sata ssd vs a 250gb black nvme but the capacity is winning out over the speed increase as they aren't likely to notice it when just gaming.

You don't happen to have an alternative builder suggestion? xD

Yes, for a game system, 500 SATA beats 250NVMe.

And sorry, I don't have any other suggestions for a builder...

 

[ritvarsdavis]

What about Origin PC?

P.S. And how can a person be "terrified" by the idea of building him/herself? There are gazillion tutorials online to help you with. Building PC's is like Legos for adults, pretty much.

 

[USAFRet]

P.S. And how can a person be "terrified" by the idea of building him/herself? There are gazillion tutorials online to help you with. Building PC's is like Legos for adults, pretty much.

That would be a LOT of people.
My wife would have no clue where to start. Nor would she have any interest in doing so.
My eldest grandson did it at age 11.

How comfortable are you at cooking a whole christmas dinner? Building a deck? Swapping the engine in a car? Giving a speech for 500 strangers?

People are different.

 

[st4rburst]

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-3718691/cyberpowerpc-related-tomfoolery-lolz.html

the results for anyone that stumbles over this.