I finally got my new computer more or less figured out.
 
It uses a 500 gig SSD (solid state drive) for the boot.
 
I also specified an i7 4770 processor and 16 gigs of memory.
 
I wanted to let everybody know that so far I am very satisfied with the speed.
 
With my last computer (which was not slow). I had to wait a moment for recording to start.  Sometimes I would make a mess of things because I would hit keys in a rapid succession, like w, ctrl z, and r (rewind to beginning, delete last recording, and start a new recording). On the prior machine the moment of pause between commands would cause undesirable result.
 
Now the recording starts just as I hit the R key. Commands are instantaneous.
 
Also, Windows and Sonar both boot quickly. I used to not want to sign off Sonar and sign back on because of the delay. But now its real quick. About 3 seconds to get into Sonar. 10 seconds to load a good sized song with fair amount of plugs and soft synths. Less than one second to load a simple song with only two tracks and a two plugs. Close to instantaneous to close a song or close Sonar.
 
What I didn't realize about SSD until I bought one is that the larger they are, the faster. Each time you double the size, the speed also more or less doubles. So a 512 gig will be twice as fast as a 256. I imagine its because they build the drive like a conventional RAID. Two drives RAIDed together will be twice as fast as the drives separately, and theoretically four drives four times as fast as one. At least it makes sense to me, the information highway is twice as big each time you double the size.
 
Since the speed of the boot drive is so fast, it makes no sense to use a second drive to store the audio data. This I find to be convenient.
 
Having a fast processor and 16 gigs of memory doesn't hurt.
 
The thing is really quiet too. The other hard drives shut down when not being used, and the cooler for the CPU is one of those new liquid coolers. The video is built into the CPU so there is no video card fan. The ASUS board has all kinds of fan management built in to control the fan on the liquid cooler and the power supply.
 
About 10 years ago, I used a separate computer for Sonar, and another for general use. Now, partly because computers have improved, and partly because I am not trying to be an audio pro, I only use one. This new box is fast for other programs also, which is really nice.
 
Its not nirvana here with computers, though.
 
Windows 8 is making me nuts. I have to admit I am struggling with Sonar X3 since I went from 8.5 to X2 to X3 in a couple months time, along with a new operating system and hardware.
 
I am using the video provided by the CPU that is built in. There seems to be no way to make it fit the monitor, so there is about a one inch unused black space all around the usable image. I don't know if I need a new monitor or a video card.
 
For some reason my keyboard will occasionally just quit working and I have to reboot. And no, its not bad batteries in the keyboard. Once I was waiting to the last second to buy something on Ebay. I went to place the bid, but the keyboard was dead and I couldn't type in the amount of the bid. So, using the still functioning mouse, I rebooted, signed onto Ebay, and placed the winning bid. I was able to do this in a very short period, but it should not have been a problem in the first place.
 
From my experience, the SSD is the way to go. They are running US$300 to $500 for a nice 500 gig Samsung model right now.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Sounds awesome! :)
When you say it instantly starts recording when pressing 'R', does this mean you record onto the SSD-drive as well? Or do you have a separate drive for your projects?

Don't know where you get your info on SSD and RAID speeds. Interesting.

Glad you're happy with your new PC.

Loptec:
 
I use drive C:, an SSD, for both boot, and to store audio. It is fast enough to not need a separate drive like the old days. And the quick random access makes it appear instantaneous (at least my theory).
 
Mudgel:
 
I was over-enthusiastic now that I looked closer.
 
Larger SSDs are faster but there are diminishing returns.
 
Here is a quote for the following article
 
While there are exceptions here and there, the overall results couldn't be clearer: SSDs get faster as their capacities rise. Solid-state drives are essentially parallel arrays of NAND memory, so that outcome is to be expected. The more NAND in the array, the more parallelism can be exploited in the controller, the faster the drive. This dynamic is especially true for writes and random I/O, but sequential reads don't see much benefit from higher capacities.
 
http://techreport.com/review/22358/ssd-performance-scaling-across-the-spectrum/13
 
I am afraid I listened to the salesman at Micro Center foo carefully!
 
It turns out for the Samsung drives read speed is only slightly increased with capacity, but write speed goes up with size.
 
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6338/
 
For me the question was to buy two 250 meg drives, one for boot, and one for audio, or to buy one 500 meg. My belief that the 500 was twice as fast as the 250 caused me to buy the 500 gig drive instead of two 250s.
 
Now looking back, it seems two 250s might have been smarter, since they were each about half the cost of the 500.
 
But overall I am very happy with the whole deal. Soon I will buy another big SSD for backup.
 
I hope this helps. I am not a technical guy, but I try.

I didn't want to be a jerk and say you didn't have a clue what you were saying or something like that. I hoped my comment would make you take another look at your info and you did. Either way you've got an awesome piece of kit and you know more than you did before. That's the best all of us can get. I'm no expert either. Enjoy.

mudgel
I didn't want to be a jerk and say you didn't have a clue what you were saying or something like that. I hoped my comment would make you take another look at your info and you did. Either way you've got an awesome piece of kit and you know more than you did before. That's the best all of us can get. I'm no expert either. Enjoy.

Thanks for being cool.
 
 

This is a 2 year follow up.
 
I no longer use SSD drives.
 
I didn't realize how few times you can write to them.
 
My operating system, windows 8.1 got more and more unstable and had to re-build itself several times and finally just became unusable.
 
I changed all of my file structure to not write to the SSD (ie downloads, audio files, etc). But the machine just was not stable.
 
I got way too many blue screens with various Windows error messages.
 
I tried cloning and replacing the SSD twice. Samsung Magician, the SSD management software, always reported that the drives were good, but I replaced it anyway.
 
I really am not sure if the culprit was the SSD or some other thing like a bad MOBO, but at this point in the game I have decided to eliminate what appears to be an extra un-needed complexity. The speed enhancements are not worth potential instability.  I was under the belief that the SSD would be more reliable than a whirling platter, but now I believe the opposite.
 
So I am having a new computer built with a regular, conventional hard drive for the boot.
 
So that is my follow up.
 
 

That really stinks, sorry to hear about this. SSD is so superior when it's doing its thing correctly that I hate to contemplate going back to platters. I've had a 256GB drive working incredibly well for several years now, but I'm growing more paranoid of failures with every story I read about the issues people have with them. I image backup daily to external HDD to mitigate that paranoia somewhat.  My Sonar projects are on an internal 2TB HDD so maybe that's why the SSD has been so reliable for me.
 
 
I've also read that reliability improvements have been made to SSD technology so hopefully this kind of experience will become more rare as time goes on. Good luck with your new build.

Thanks for reporting back, pharoh. So often posters make an announcement and never return. And we don't get that many long-term reports from SSD users.
 
It's true that SSDs have a short lifespan compared to conventional drives, because you can only write to them so many times before they become unreliable. Even before they start misbehaving they start losing storage capacity as unusable sectors are gradually mapped out. The newer ones delay this by spreading the writes out over the whole matrix so that the cells age uniformly. But if you were using one for your C: drive and the virtual memory swap device was located there (as it is by default), then you were unknowingly writing to that SSD far more often than you realized. It's not surprising that it would "wear out" quickly in that role.
 
I do not currently use SSDs, but probably will in the near future. However, they will be treated as write-once devices and be used solely for sample libraries, and will be mirrored to a conventional hard drive. 

Interesting. I would expect chkdsk errors and inability to write in the event viewer if they are on the way out. I think it's pretty important the firmware is kept up to date on these drives as well. Certainly year by year they must be getting more reliable as the warranty periods are increasing. I've only just stepped into SSD because I too was concerned about reliability, I'm hoping I've entered at the right time. I think any SSD card over 500GB is too expensive right now IMHO.