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View Full Version : Gigabyte builds mobo with SSD built in



PauL
05-29-2011, 10:10 PM
Want to build a fast-booting system without buying and installing a solid state drive? Gigabyte is giving you another option by launching a new motherboard that has a 20GB SSD baked right in.

The Z68XP-UD3-iSSD is based on the new Z68 Express chipset for Intel’s Sandy Bridge processors, and comes with a new m-SATA Intel Solid-State Drive 311 Series unit. The Z68 introduces Intel’s Smart Response Technology to improve system performance through app caching, and 20GB gives you enough space to park your OS and some frequently used programs to take advantage of it. Intel claims that the technology provides a 60-percent speed boost over a pure hard drive-based system, and a fourfold performance improvement over hybrid SSD-hard drive setups.

The mobo also comes with LucidLogix Virtu switchable graphics technology, allowing you to switch between Intel’s integrated graphics and a discrete graphic card — or cards — depending on the application. You also get two PCI Express x16 slots, support for both CrossFireX and SLI multi-graphics card technologies, a handful of SATA 6Gbps and USB 3.0 connectors, and Gigabyte’s Touch BIOS for easier BIOS tweaking.

Gigabyte hasn’t announced a price for the Z68XP-UD3-iSSD, which will tell you a lot about whether it’s worth having a motherboard with a built-in SSD or getting a different mobo and a separate SSD. It does plan to make it available in early June, so we won’t have to wait long to find out how much it would set you back.


Article (http://www.zdnet.com/blog/computers/gigabyte-builds-a-20gb-intel-ssd-into-new-sandy-bridge-motherboard/5961)

As the article says the price hasn't been announced but this sounds awesome, especially if it's decently priced. If technology proves successful maybe we will start seeing more mobos with SSD ultimately giving people (if you own a smaller sized SSD) more room for personal data.

slaveofconvention
05-30-2011, 06:41 AM
The point of the SSD's on these motherboards is to act as a huge Cache - they're not meant to be system or storage drives - they're generally meant to speed up the whole system but yeah, the idea definitely has some promise :)

farlo
05-30-2011, 09:10 AM
http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/forum/showthread.php?t=26577 :D

crenn
05-30-2011, 09:26 AM
I thought I had seen this someone on the forum.

Twigsoffury
05-30-2011, 04:04 PM
I still like the PCI-E add on cards you just add a bunch of ram sticks into.

http://www.itechnews.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/ddrdrive-x1-ram-based-pci-e-ssd.jpg

TMS RAMSAN can hold 900GB as a SSD.

http://www.itechnews.net/2011/05/23/tms-ramsan-70-pci-express-ssd-with-900gb-capacity/

xr4man
06-28-2011, 08:59 AM
ummm, 20GB???? isn't win7's minimum requirement 40GB? what's the point if you have to put win xp on it?

i know it is there for hard drive caching, but they claim you can put your os on it, but it's not big enough for win 7.

OvRiDe
06-28-2011, 10:25 AM
Windows 7 minimum requirement is 16GB for 32-bit and 20GB for 64-bit.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/products/system-requirements

xr4man
06-28-2011, 11:29 AM
hmm, i'd have bet a car that it was 40G. oh well.

Konrad
06-29-2011, 09:28 PM
I still like the PCI-E add on cards you just add a bunch of ram sticks into.

http://www.itechnews.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/ddrdrive-x1-ram-based-pci-e-ssd.jpg
TMS RAMSAN can hold 900GB as a SSD.

I'm very much into this idea as well. Alas, my "KRAMDrive" only addresses 8GB of DDR/PC3200, and it's further bottlenecked by old ATA6/100 interface being run through USB2 bandwidth, and it has a tendency to run alarmingly warm when heavily used. That's the difference between homebrew and enterprise gear haha.

I especially like being able to configure all the swap, cache, and temp-files to write on this drive. Significantly faster (compared to mechanical SATA HDD, anyhow, alas only faster than the oldest and slowest SSD products), keeps some useless clutter off my fixed drives, and as an incidental bonus it's also theoretically more secure since all these data sit in volatile memory so they're essentially erased forever once powered down.

It's about bloody time somebody started making mobos capable of parking the OS on nonvolatile flash. I'm already imagining a PC with "instant on" capabilities similar to PDAs and such devices. Great for laptops and notebooks ... but still pretty cool for desktops filled with ever-changing hardware swaps. I hope this flash storage is user-accessible, though also not too easily accessed by all users, preferably capable of encryption and password locks, hopefully immune to malware, and hopefully also not prepopulated with "value added" bundled junkware.

Who cares what minimum Windows specs are? Tux follows a fundamentally better path.

Twigsoffury
07-01-2011, 09:22 PM
I'm very much into this idea as well. Alas, my "KRAMDrive" only addresses 8GB of DDR/PC3200, and it's further bottlenecked by old ATA6/100 interface being run through USB2 bandwidth, and it has a tendency to run alarmingly warm when heavily used. That's the difference between homebrew and enterprise gear haha.

I especially like being able to configure all the swap, cache, and temp-files to write on this drive. Significantly faster (compared to mechanical SATA HDD, anyhow, alas only faster than the oldest and slowest SSD products), keeps some useless clutter off my fixed drives, and as an incidental bonus it's also theoretically more secure since all these data sit in volatile memory so they're essentially erased forever once powered down.

It's about bloody time somebody started making mobos capable of parking the OS on nonvolatile flash. I'm already imagining a PC with "instant on" capabilities similar to PDAs and such devices. Great for laptops and notebooks ... but still pretty cool for desktops filled with ever-changing hardware swaps. I hope this flash storage is user-accessible, though also not too easily accessed by all users, preferably capable of encryption and password locks, hopefully immune to malware, and hopefully also not prepopulated with "value added" bundled junkware.

Who cares what minimum Windows specs are? Tux follows a fundamentally better path.

Hell i'm suprised they don't have addtional RAM slots on the mainboard that function as a small SSD.

Konrad
07-06-2011, 11:09 AM
Modern PCs are not at all the pinnacle of technology, only the pinnacle of moderately economical mass-produced engineering. Compatibility is the foremost requirement, standards and specifications always follow. Revolutionary developments, like this one, are uncommon ... but once they catch on evolutionary progress is rapid.

People have been using plug-in RAM/ROM cards forever, and running bootable OS from them. Embedded systems like smartphones, PDAs, UMPCs, and submininotebooks (by whatever name) have had this feature forever.

I hope this doesn't end up being kludged together with the new BIOS GUI technologies ... it'd be a shame if corrupt data or hardware failure simultaneously killed your computer on all different levels.