Depending on how often you switch between OSX and Windows, your faster option may be just to put the computer in sleep/suspend mode instead of shutting it down at the end of the day. This draws minimal power and allows you to resume pretty much right away. This will also retain app data in system RAM, if I recall, so re-opening closed apps will also stay quick.
There’s also the question of whether or not the 7970 is worth $100 more. I’m personally not convinced of that, since the 7950 already beats the GTX 580 in most benchmarks and costs substantially less (though 580 prices have been magically dropping here and there since the 7000 series launched). A 580-class video card can already drive 1080p with 4xAA, 16xAF, ambient occlusion, tessellation, and all those other buzzwords. In the 7970, you might be buying performance that you never end up using.
The Apple monitor probably has a high-grade IPS panel.
Most desktop-sized displays use TN panels instead; cheap, easy to manufacture, but not the best image quality.
It’s not quite true to say SSDs have zero impact on gaming. They can help with level loads & saved game loads. Think of entering a house in an RPG or a battle map in a Total War, say. I can think of various games where people have complained about these things where I’ve had no issue at all. Conversely, they can make it impossible to read loading screen tips :|
In theory they might help with asset streaming in the odd case too, though obviously most engines are supposed to stream ok from HDDs.
Any reason to avoid this as a my only drive (other than it is currently overpriced):
Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
Edit - It appears these drives are much cheaper at Amazon, almost $40 cheaper. The 1.5 TB version of this drive is actually $1 cheaper than the 1 TB drive for some strange reason ($160 vs. $159)
Edit 2 - I decided to go with an SSD boot drive and purchase a regular HDD. This combo is actually cheaper than the 240 GB SSD option. I updated my list above.
Not sure you can watch Blu-ray movies with that drive without purchasing additional software.
Re drives: all drives fail eventually, so maybe give thought to how/what you want to back up? Something like Dropbox will give you off site backup for anything key for free.
The Blacks are high-performance and come with a 5-year warranty, but they have a reputation for being relatively loud. The Hitachi 7K1000.D is a good alternative, as is the Samsung Spinpoint F3. Even a Seagate Barracuda will do in a pinch. Cache size doesn’t matter much, and mechanical drives are physically limited to about 150 MB/s peak transfer rates, so SATA 3.0Gb/s is more than plenty.
Hmm, the Samsung 1 TB costs about $10 less than the WD 1.5 and the Hitachi is only $20 cheaper than the WD 1.5. I think I will see if I can live with the noise.
I was originally looking at a WD Green, but there were a staggering number of reports of DOA drives at NewEgg and I ended up going with a Seagate instead. Looks like the Black series isn’t as bad, but I would definitely get it from somewhere with a good return policy.
As an update, I finally put this computer together and it works very nicely. When I first put this build together the Radeon 7870 had not been released. Based on a quick review of the price/performance ratios, the 7870 seemed a better choice than the 7950 so I purchased a Sapphire OC 7870. I went with a Corsair 128 GB SSD as my Windows drive based on my experience with dual 128 GB in my HP Spectre ultrabook. HD prices are starting to come down, so I purchased a WD 2.0 TB 64MD cache SATA III green drive that is working without a hitch. I like the Seasonic power supply because you only need to connect the number of power cords you really need because of the modular design.
The Cooler Master HAF 912 is easily the best tower I have purchased - very easy to maneuver, fan placement is nice, and there are many HAF 912 YouTube videos that help. The entire system is extremely quiet and it has a nifty quick release drive installation system that is very easy to use. The ASUS motherboard is small, but as long as you don’t need a bunch of expansion slots, it works nicely.
If I had to do it all over again I think I would have purchased the HAF 912 version with the USB 3.0 port on the front. That is about the only inconvenience (the USB 3.0 ports are all on the back of the machine).
