Disappointed in sub-optimal DS configuration

I just received my new DS computer and started setting it up last night.  There are a lot of things I already love about it, but I must say that I am a little disappointed in some of how it was configured. 

I spent a fair amount of money on the expensive Intel SSD because I really wanted to enjoy all of its performance benefits.  I assumed that, being a high-end custom builder, DS would properly configure my system to get the most out of the hardware purchased.  Unfortunately, my system arrived with the SATA ports set in the BIOS to IDE mode instead of AHCI.  From what I have seen, The performance advantage for an SSD running in AHCI mode is well documented and always preferred over IDE.
When I tried to change the BIOS SATA mode to AHCI the computer wouldn't boot.  I little Googling led me to the answer.  My Blu-ray and DVD drives won't behave connected in AHCI mode.  The solution was to disconnect the DVD drives for SATA ports 5 and 6 on my EVGA classified MOBO and connect them to ports 7 & 8 which could be separately set to run in IDE mode in the Bios.
Now the computer would boot, but Windows 7 couldn't start.
Some more Googling led me to another answer.  Since the OS was installed in IDE mode, the Widnows AHCI driver was not set to load a startup.
I set the BIOS back to IDE mode, loaded Windows, ran Regedit and navigated to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\msahci and in the right pane set the value of the key 'start' to 0 (=zero).  Rebooting again and changing the BIOS back to AHCI --> SUCCESS!
My Intel SSD is now running at peak performance in AHCI mode.

I thought I would share this information and solution with anyone else who has an SSD in their system and would like to achieve its maximum potential.

I hope that DS will look into this more so they can offer more optimally configured systems to their customers who are paying the extra money for SSDs.

What that word again?

@sirfracas,

Originally posted by jchasen I just received my new DS computer and started setting it up last night.  There are a lot of things I already love about it, but I must say that I am a little disappointed in some of how it was configured.  I spent a fair amount of money on the expensive Intel SSD because I really wanted to enjoy all of its performance benefits.  I assumed that, being a high-end custom builder, DS would properly configure my system to get the most out of the hardware purchased.  Unfortunately, my system arrived with the SATA ports set in the BIOS to IDE mode instead of AHCI.  From what I have seen, The performance advantage for an SSD running in AHCI mode is well documented and always preferred over IDE. When I tried to change the BIOS SATA mode to AHCI the computer wouldn't boot.  I little Googling led me to the answer.  My Blu-ray and DVD drives won't behave connected in AHCI mode.  The solution was to disconnect the DVD drives for SATA ports 5 and 6 on my EVGA classified MOBO and connect them to ports 7 & 8 which could be separately set to run in IDE mode in the Bios. Now the computer would boot, but Windows 7 couldn't start. Some more Googling led me to another answer.  Since the OS was installed in IDE mode, the Widnows AHCI driver was not set to load a startup. I set the BIOS back to IDE mode, loaded Windows, ran Regedit and navigated to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\msahci and in the right pane set the value of the key 'start' to 0 (=zero).  Rebooting again and changing the BIOS back to AHCI --> SUCCESS! My Intel SSD is now running at peak performance in AHCI mode. I thought I would share this information and solution with anyone else who has an SSD in their system and would like to achieve its maximum potential. I hope that DS will look into this more so they can offer more optimally configured systems to their customers who are paying the extra money for SSDs.

I would be interested to see a HD Tune benchmark in both IDE and AHCI.

ya can somebody run a test in both modes so we can see the difference, I'm interested to see exactly how much difference we are talking about.

if anybody could do that, we would be very greatfull.

thx looks like a good difference in read