Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Upgrade pieces came together

J

Jaxdialation

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 24, 2010
115
5
I couldn't leave my i7 17" alone. A few tweaks went in today:

8 gigs of ram
WD Black 320g Drive (in the old drive bay)
OWC 200g SSD/ER

This system is officially fast :) Photoshop and Lightroom toss 20 meg images around like lightening.

The upgrades took about 3 hours. The drive bay conversion uses frighteningly small screws :) All the benchmarks howl now for example the retouchartists benchmark was less than 30 seconds.
 

Attachments

  • Pieces.jpg
    Pieces.jpg
    110 KB · Views: 175
Haha nice. :) Would like to see some benchmarks of your OWC SSD.

EDIT: Btw, although not a big deal, you should use your HDD in its default place and the SSD in the Optibay since the caddy doesn't have vibration dampeners for your HDD.
 
Gorilla -- you have to be kidding! As you might suspect, I'm not opening it up again. That was the hairiest work I want to do on the baby ~ once.

Yup its an MCE Optibay http://store.mcetech.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=OBSXGB-UNB&Category_Code=STORHDOPTIBAY

The SSD is SICK. I flip applications on like a switch. I keep my work in process images/files on it. Consequently files handling is very snappy :)

I was going to get the 240 too. But decided to go this route. I didn't want to open my computer more than once....so I took the ER version.

i0s said:
How's the SSD so far?
I'm about to get the 240 gb one.
Click to expand...
 
By popular demand the bench results on the SSD. I wasn't careful about it.

Results 323.76
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.6.3 (10D2094)
Physical RAM 8192 MB
Model MacBookPro6,1
Drive Type OWC Mercury Extreme Pro RE SSD
Disk Test 323.76
Sequential 195.00
Uncached Write 280.07 171.96 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 280.33 158.61 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 94.13 27.55 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 363.38 182.63 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 953.14
Uncached Write 1194.13 126.41 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 501.42 160.52 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 2992.01 21.20 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 970.26 180.04 MB/sec [256K blocks]
 
Interesting. Thanks for posting the OWC Mercury results. I'm actually surprised that they're not that much higher than the Intel X-25M G2. The write speeds are higher, in some cases especially so. However, the read speeds are lower than than the Intel, especially the uncached, sequential read speeds. For comparison, here's those results from my 160GB drive in my i7

Disk Test 316.84
Sequential 206.44
Uncached Write 176.19 108.18 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 167.98 95.04 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 187.67 54.92 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 413.39 207.76 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 681.12
Uncached Write 765.80 81.07 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 320.18 102.50 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 2387.11 16.92 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 975.84 181.07 MB/sec [256K blocks]
 
Congrats, that's a pretty smokin machine.

Your comments helped convince me to buy an ssd from OWC today. My wallet does not thank you. :D
 
Just wondering why would you buy OWC when intel is much cheaper and just as fast? Look around the market. Unless OWC uses SLC NAND, it's SSDs are just not price competitive.
 
SSDs really shine at uncached random reads, at least vs a spinning platter.
That is what gets the fast app loads and file loads.

If the marketing bs is true, the OWC will sustain high transfers as time goes on because of robust firmware and a 28% provisioning. But that is -if- the bs is true :)

diablo2112 said:
Interesting. Thanks for posting the OWC Mercury results. I'm actually surprised that they're not that much higher than the Intel X-25M G2. The write speeds are higher, in some cases especially so. However, the read speeds are lower than than the Intel, especially the uncached, sequential read speeds. For comparison, here's those results from my 160GB drive in my i7

Disk Test 316.84
Sequential 206.44
Uncached Write 176.19 108.18 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 167.98 95.04 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 187.67 54.92 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 413.39 207.76 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 681.12
Uncached Write 765.80 81.07 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 320.18 102.50 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 2387.11 16.92 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 975.84 181.07 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Click to expand...
 
You're better off with the SSD (boot drive) in the default HDD bay to prevent sleep issues. The WD Scorpio Black has it's own dedicated SMS. No worries.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back