I really dislike the OCZ SSDs. I was all about them for a while but I had multiple exhibit the same behavior where they would sporadically disconnect from the motherboard during normal use.

I've been quite happy with Crucial M4 and Mushkin Chronos Deluxe. The Intels are also great for reliability

Just out of interest - what is a good load time for a 500,000 - 1,000,000 PT3 database? I'm currently waiting minutes just to load one month's worth of data #40k hands.

Don't know offhand, but that sounds really slow. When you free up try running this utility to bench your SSD speed any make sure all is well. Post a screenshot.

http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/...enchmark.shtml

I've been multitabling a very long time so I've done a lot of building of poker computers. The two biggest points I've learned are:

1. Display should be your top priority and should get your first dollar.
2. The pricing of SSDs is flawed.

By the first point, I just mean nothing else should matter if you're not fitting your tables in comfortably. And often, even when you think you're fitting your tables in comfortably, that's just because you don't know what comfortable feels like yet. A 30" monitor (or two) should always be step 1.

The second point is really important. SSD pricing scales up with capacity and little else, but if you're using an SSD, you don't want it for capacity, you want it for speed. And the best way to make an SSD faster is to use 2 of them. Or 4, or 8.

Capacity shouldn't matter to you as much as getting multiples in a RAID configuration, because again, you're going for speed, not capacity. You've got your secondary HDD for capacity.

So if you can get a 256GB SSD for $200 or a 128GB SSD for $100, just get 2 of the 128GB SSDs, put them in RAID, and you'll have the same capacity and twice the speed for the same price.

Figure out how much you want to spend on your SSD, divide that amount by 2 or 4, and buy the best 2 or 4 SSDs you can afford and put them in RAID. You'll often find you get the same or sometimes even more capacity, and there's no diminishing returns in RAID so it's 2-4x as fast.

When friends or relatives come over and use your computer, they'll think you're a witch or something.

don't do RAID0 with any data you can't afford to lose.

There are a couple things I'd add to Shuffling's post. I don't disagree with it but there are some other factors that weigh against raiding SSDs.

First, a single SSD is plenty fast for the applications we're talking about, and will be a night-and-day difference for most users coming from a mechanical drive. It's true that a RAID config will improve drive performance in many areas, and significantly, but...

Drawbacks. The most obvious is the cost, aside from a striping array where you buy two 120s instead of one 240GB, where the cost is about equal. In that configuration (RAID 0) you have two non-redundant drives, each of which is holding different data and each a potential point of failure; losing one drive means rebuilding the entire array from a backup on yet another drive (and we all know everyone backs up regularly). Then there's the issue of lack of Windows TRIM support in RAID, at least last I checked this was the case. TRIM is a program that maintains your SSD, cleaning up the unnecessary written blocks, helping to preserve your drive(s). That concern is a relatively minor concern to me personally, with garbage collection native to the firmware on newer drives working well, but still matters to some people.

RAID 1 is attractive as both drives are clones of each other and provides more reliability, but can reduce speed since things need to be written to each drive every time, and doubles the cost of storage. RAID 10 at least has some the advantages of both, but requires 4 drives.

Strictly speaking, some RAID variants are a great option for an "ultimate" poker PC where money is no object. If you've maxed out on your display, processor, speakers and everything else, and want to go the extra extra mile, it's definitely an option. Still need to weigh some of those drawbacks though. Overall I don't think a person with a single SSD would be at all displeased with their PT3 and HEM performance, or general performance either, provided everything is working correctly.

Don't let me slow anybody down though if you just gotta do it

guys, thanks so much for your help...and for answering more questions I will inevitably have. I'm gonna start buying components soon...pretty nervous tbh!!

I also have some tips for choosing or replacing a display as a poker player.

If you stack or cascade, it doesn't really matter that much. But if you tile, you need to choose the right display, and these are the important things to know:

1. Aspect ratio.

Aspect ratio is just the ratio of horizontal pixels to vertical pixels on a display. The two most prevalent ratios are 16:9 and 16:10. They're both widescreen, but the 16:10 has some extra vertical space (about 11% more).

The 16:10 is more ideal for the consumer, but the 16:9 is more appealing for the manufacturer, because they can advertise a 24" panel and at 16:9 it'll cost them less in materials and shipping (since the inches are measured diagonally).

Poker tables aren't widescreen, they're usually 16:12, so when you're fitting a grid of 16:12 tables on a monitor that's 16:9, you run out of vertical space way before you run out of horizontal space.

The extra 11% vertical space in 16:10 will make every table in your grid appear both wider and taller, because that extra vertical space will allow tables to also make use of the excess horizontal space that previously went unused.

This also means that ideally, your Windows taskbar should be positioned either on the left or right side of your screen, that way it's occupying horizontal space instead of precious vertical space. It's ideal, not just for poker but for content creation and even for general web browsing. You're pretty much always wanting more vertical space, so get that taskbar out of the way.

2. Maximum resolution.

Horizontal pixels x vertical pixels, not the ratio but the exact amount. I'll just comment on the most common maximum resolutions today and what I was able to do with them:

1920x1080 (16:9): You can do 9 tables with no overlap in a 3x3 grid but it's cramped because you lack vertical space.

1920x1200 (16:10): 9 tables in 3x3 very comfortably.

2560x1440 (16:9): I've never tried this one. It's only available on big expensive monitors, and if you're going big and expensive, I don't know why you wouldn't go for 16:10.

2560x1600 (16:10): 16 tables 4x4 comfortably with no overlap, this is kind of the gold standard for tiling mass-multitablers. One of these for 16 tables, two of them for 24 - 32.

3. Physical screen space (in inches).

This is just how physically large your panel is.

You can hold any monitor closer or further from your face, and make it occupy any amount of your field of view you want. So what a large monitor can do that a smaller one can't, is let you comfortably see everything on the screen without having your face so close to the screen.

This choice is all about accommodating your physical position, and allowing your head and body a wider range of motion while still being able to clearly see what's on-screen.

So while it's the primary selling point for every panel manufacturer, it's not actually that important at all. If you focus on choosing the right resolution and aspect ratio, the size will usually just take care of itself. Just don't get anything below 22", and if you're paying for something 24" or bigger, you're getting charged a premium so don't settle for 16:9.

4. TN vs IPS.

TN stands for Twisted Nematic, and IPS stands for In-Plane Switching. I think they're just different ways of arranging and activating liquid crystals in an LCD, but I'm honestly not sure. I do know what they mean for a multitabler, though.

A common problem with LCDs is you have that limited viewing angle, where if you move your head too far left, right, up, or down, you start seeing different colors and different brightness on-screen. This problem is most pronounced on the older/cheaper TN technology, and the more recent IPS technology aims to fix that.

If you're multitabling, and you want a large resolution, the screen is going to be physically large, so the angle you're getting on those corners is even deeper, so the distortion becomes even more obvious. If you're using a dual-monitor setup, you've got two monitors, so your angles are potentially even deeper, and the angles are different on each half of your setup as you move your head around. So unless you're keeping your head fixed perfectly in just the right location, each side is then asymmetrically distorted. This can get very annoying.

IPS fixes that problem. There's also some other competing fixes to this problem (google Vertical Alignment or Plane to Line Switching), but I don't have any experience with those and they're less common right now.

If you're going with a single monitor below 24", you won't notice much benefit from IPS and you might as well save the money and go with TN. But if you're going 24" or larger, or dual-monitor at all, ideally you want IPS monitors. Especially if your display gets much bigger than 24", IPS just becomes a requirement.

5. Contrast.

This isn't really relevant to poker, but I've already come this far so I might as well throw it in.

Contrast ratios don't mean anything, because there's no universal standardized way of measuring them, and it isn't regulated at all. The result is $1000 monitors advertising 1000:1 contrast ratios, and $100 monitors advertising 5,000,000:1 contrast ratios. It doesn't really mean anything.

If you really want nice contrast, go for an LED monitor.

Most LCDs are backlit by CCFLs (fluorescent tubes, like tiny versions of what you see hanging from the ceiling at Walmart), and because there's just 10 or 12 horizontal tubes in there, they can't be selectively dimmed or shut off for parts of the display that are showing darker colors. When your screen is showing black, that black is still backlit, so it's never really true black.

That's why if you go into MSPaint, and use the bucket tool to make the whole thing black, then hold a black object up to the screen and compare the two colors, the on-screen black is significantly brighter. It's because the liquid crystal is doing an imperfect job of concealing the backlight.

With an LED monitor, which is backlit by a grid of LEDs, the monitor knows which parts of the screen are showing black and it selectively shuts off their backlight, giving you truer blacks for brighter brights.

Wow, this is fantastic information. Thanks so much for sharing.

Does the resolution Just have to do with the monitor specs or does it also have a part to play in the computer specs too?

Your GPU will also have a max resolution, so for example to display 2560x1600 both your display and GPU need to have a max resolution 2560x1600 or higher.

Almost all GPUs today support at least 2560x1600, even GPUs in the $30 range.

Could OP post the final specs of the computer he bought?

Would love to mate but still haven't bought it! Will hopefully do this month but have been unable to as I've been redecorating/designing my home office.

Hoping to finally get building this month. How do I know if the onboard graphics for the motherboard will support dual monitors? Specifically these two (and why such a big price difference?)


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