Connecting to HDTV?

[liquidniko]

So this is the build I'm planning on getting:

Case
NZXT PHANTOM WHITE GAMING CASE
Overclocked CPU
Overclocked Intel® Core™i5-2500k Quad Core (3.30GHz @ max 4.60GHz)
Motherboard
ASUS® P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3: PCI-E 3.0 READY, SLI, CROSSFIREX***SPECIAL***
Memory (RAM)
8GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz, X.M.P (2 x 4GB KIT)
Graphics Card
2GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 680 - 2 DVI, HDMI, DP - 3D Vision Ready
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
120GB INTEL® 520 SERIES SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s (upto 550MB/sR | 520MB/sW)
2nd Hard Disk
1TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD1002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)
SSD CACHE DRIVE
20GB INTEL® SSD 311 SERIES - SLC CACHE DRIVE FOR SYSTEM / 1st HDD
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Power Supply
CORSAIR 850W ENTHUSIAST SERIES™ TX850 V2-80 PLUS® BRONZE (£99)
Processor Cooling
COOLIT ECO II A.L.C ADVANCED LIQUID COOLER (£59)
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND (£9)
Fan Controller
NZXT Sentry 2 Fan Controller with upto 5 Fitted Case Fans
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Facilities
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT - AS STANDARD ON ALL PCs
USB Options
6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD
Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79)
Office Software
FREE Microsoft® Office Starter 2010 (Limited functionality Word & Excel)
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
DVI-D & HDMI Monitor Cables
1 x 2 METRE GOLD PLATED V1.4 HDMI CABLE (£8)
Keyboard & Mouse
LOGITECH® K200 USB MEDIA KEYBOARD (£10)
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)
Delivery
PCS EXTRA-CARE DIAMOND DELIVERY - MON-FRI, PRE-NOON (£9)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 10 to 12 working days
Quantity
1

Price: £1,679.00 including VAT and delivery.

I was planning to connect this via HDMI to my 32" Samsung HDTV. Is this worth doing or am I better off just buying a monitor? And if so is there a monitor you would recommend?

 

[mantadog]

No problems connecting to your TV, i would rather have a stand alone monitor myself but you wont encounter any problems at all connecting to a TV. If you want the stand alone monitor a 24" iiyama is highly rated.

Just one point on the above spec while i am here, why do you have a SSD and a cache drive? The cache drive is slower than the ssd, so i can't really see much benefit as your OS + main applications will be on your SSD (i presume) you would be far far better getting a bigger SSD with the money saved on the cache drive rather than a SSD + a SSD cache drive.

 

[liquidniko]

Thanks for the reply, I will probably get a monitor at a later date as its not really in my budget at the moment. And regarding the cache drive, I was under the impression that this would just store data for my most commonly used apps in order to load them faster. So will the ssd drive do this anyway?

 

[keynes]

The SSD should be sufficient for that. I have my main applications/programmes on my SSD and they load faster. I'll upgrade the warranty for peace of mind, considering how much you are spending on your build. I found 120 GB for the SSD not quite enough (had like 70 GB left after OS and main programmes without any games installed) got the same series but 240 GB.

 

[vanthus]

An SSD cache drive makes a system HDD faster for frequently accessed data,
It's not for storage & not needed for an existing SSD.

 

[mantadog]

Thanks for the reply, I will probably get a monitor at a later date as its not really in my budget at the moment. And regarding the cache drive, I was under the impression that this would just store data for my most commonly used apps in order to load them faster. So will the ssd drive do this anyway?

Yes thats how it works, but only with a stadard HDD. When you have a proper full blown SSD you get to pick what you want to load fast, where with a cache drive it takes a while to learn and if you throw something at it out fo the blue it has to load from the HDD. If you throw the money saved on the cache drive at the SSD you can probably afford a 240GB 520 series, that way you have plenty of room for you OS + any games and other software you want to load quickly. Whatever you install on your SSD will load quickly, that way your in charge of what you would like to load quickly.