Build Advice Is this ultimate system compatible?

This is going to be my first build..i got this from the "What hardware to buy May 2009". I will be using this computer for corporate commercial/webcast in high definition, web design, 3d graphic design, animation... basically graphic intensive applications. Multitasking is a must, along with power. I will not accept lagging videos, animations etc. My total budget is $3000 max. I do want overkill so this doesn't become obsolete in 4 yrs.

Graphics Card = 2x Nvidia GeForce GTX 260(-216) in SLI
CPU = Intel Core i7 920 (d0)
Motherboard = Asus P6T Deluxe
Memory = 6GB Tri-Channel Kit – PC3 – 12800 C8 ***I want more...12gb?***
Chassis = Cooler Master ATCS 840
PSU = Seasonic M12D 850W
Storage = OCZ Vertex 120GB SSD
Storage = Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB Hard Disk Drive
Optical = LG H2OL Blu-ray, HDDVD DVDRW combo
Cooler = Noctua NH-U12P 1266 Special Edition
Extra = Killer KM1 Network Card
Extra = The AGEIA PhysX accelerator

What I want to know is... will all this fit with the motherboard etc, and I also need as much USB ports as possible with card readers and firewire 4pin & 6 pin (for HDV movie importing). This will be my first complete custom build on my own and i need to make sure im not driving into a brick wall.

As stated above, i also want a lot of ram. Is it possible to fit 12 gb with this setup? I need more to grow also...more storage, faster cpu, etc etc when the time comes.

I have monitors, speakers, mouse, keyboard so i dont need any of that.

Any additions or subtractions..

TYTY!

 

Seems like everything will work, short of random RAM/Motherboard compatibility issues.

If you want to go for future proof, I would heartily discourage going with SLI. Go with a faster single card, a GTX 285 perhaps, and when you start noticing lag with newer games, drop in another.

Also, why the Killer NIC? I know that you want overkill, but $200 for pretty much 0 gain in performance isn't really worth it IMO. Also, don't the new GTX200 cards support PhysX natively? Dunno if there is a need for the card. Instead of these silly extras maybe go with a sound card, maybe a Xonar, or X-FI.

Otherwise it all looks fine.

 

I don't really know to much about SLI compared to.. whatever else there is. I usually just got radeon highest, but then i read SLI is better than crossfire. I prefer radeon.

The killer NIC i just stumbled upon there site and it looked legit.

I have an X-FI sound card in my current comp

 

the nic doesnt really do much, the board has a gigabit controller onboard. you wont really see an increase in performance, because its more to do with the variables in the network.

dont need the physx card, its all on the graphics card (basically the same, same company, just owned by nvidia.)

im sure you will need more storage than 1 tb and an ssd for movie importing. in video editing, you are looking at redundant storage (raid 5), and a lot of it. depending on what you do, you want 1TB minimum in raid config. (and a lot of back ups.)

I wouldnt recommend a multi card set up if you are rendering and stuff, SLI is more for gaming. one powerful card like a 4890 (because you like ATi) or a GTX 285, because of CUDA and its physx.

What about an operating system/s. Make sure you go 64bit, or that RAM you buy will be useless. cant really recommend (i use final cut pro on a mac and Avid), but Windows 7 is sweet on my PC

the board can handle 24GB of RAM so 12 GB will be all good.

 

Crossfire has been doing a bit better than SLI scaling wise, based on what I've been reading. You should probably just go for the fastest single gpu, single card that you can fit in your budget. (4890/GTX285).

 

back to the good old days of CPC is a killer nic review http://www.custompc.co.uk/news/601272/killer-nic--first-look.html

it does seem to make a difference when things get hectic in online games

 

pppfttttt dont bother the the 285 its only 10% faster than the 275 and yet its £100 more, good value i tihnk not.


+1 on the killer N1C its a gimmick mostly, there are far more importnat factors determining your network perofrmance.

6GB is more than enough for anything really although with your 3D modelling etc you may want to consider 12GB IF the program will use it.

everything else is fine but i wouldnt bother with the SSD as your not gunna benefit from it really unless you store all your data for your 3D modelling on it but sapce is an issue then surely.

also are your gaming at all cause the GPU suggests you are. If your not look at the nivida quadro range as even the cheapest quadro will be better than any gaming GPU out.

 

+1 for killing the Killer, it's a bit of a gimmick, I think. Like the others have said AGEIA were bought out by NVIDIA, and PhysX is now incorporated into NVIDIA's cards, not that anyone has written any games bar Mirror's Edge that actually USE the bloody thing. For RAM, 24GB is currently totally obscene overkill (12GB is still total overkill) so I'd buy 12GB on three sticks if you can, so you can upgrade later if you have to.

I think you should go for more storage and consequentially more power. With all that video editing, you'll need lots and lots of backed-up space; at least one more 1TB drive in RAID 1? RAID 5 may be a better idea. If you're going to run two or more drives, and two or more graphics cards, I think perhaps the Enermax Bit-Tech just reviewed would be a safer bet.

Oh, and; the P6T Deluxe has 1394 ports; I'm not sure which breeds of FireWire you want but there's one port and one header; supplied with it is a slot-filler that turns one USB header and your only FireWire header into external ports.

EDIT: And, this is only our best guess at the next four years; for all we know in 2013 we'll all be running Ubuntu on 100Ghz watch-phones...

 

swap the killer nic and the AGEIA card for a good sound card like the asus xonar D2X

 

you should drop the PhysX card, the Nvidia GPUs will handle it just fine. Might I also suggest Corsair Dominator 1600MHz ram?

 

Uhh... No Killer, no PhysX card, and you could probably step it up to SLi GTX 285. I specced a build with and i7 and SLi GTX 285 for way under $3000 the other day, so it should definitely be doable.

Edit: On Newegg, OCZ Platinum DDR3-1600 CAS7 is cheaper than OCZ Gold DDR3-1600 CAS8.

 

Hmm... Given what you need the computer for, it is specced completely wrong. Bear in mind Bit Tech's buyers guides are aimed squarely at gamers and power computer users. They work great for gaming, but are definately not optimised for graphics horsepower. While the specs you gave will generate a beast of a computer which will perform well-enough for what you need, there are much better ways to reduce your render times and the like. A workstation build rather than a gaming one might do you better.

I would definately advise a Tylersburg build, utilising two i7 Xeons. It gives you twice as many cores to play with and this will in itself cut your rendertimes by almost 2-fold. While you could combine that with a decent Quatro or Fire-Pro card the cost to returns is pretty high, you could go for that,but I am not going to spec it.

Here is a build that I am thinking would work well for $3000. (Pricing is from Newegg)
MOBO: TYAN S7010AGM2NRF $419
CPUs: 2x Intel Xeon L5520 (2.26GHz, 5.58GHz QPI) 2x$540 = $1080
RAM: 2x Kingston 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM ECC Registered DDR3 1066 2x$202 = $404
GPU: ZOTAC GeForce GTX 285 $340
HDD Boot: Intel X25-M 80GB SSD $315
HDD Storage: 2x Spinpoint F1 1TB(Raid 1) $75
PSU: The enermax Revolution reviewed on the front page looks good, but you need 2x 8-pin EPS plugs.

Case and CD/DVD are to taste...

Some of those hardware combinations might not be optimal, but my experience with server hardware is not extensive.

Laz

 

Using dual xeons may be overkill, depending on what software you use. I'm using Premiere CS3 and it doesn't use all four of my cores when exporting - the hard disk is the limiting factor. You should therefore try to get a few Samsung F1 drives in RAID0, then back-up elsewhere.

 

Workstations are a total different ball game.

I first setup my rig as a combined gaming and home workstation for CAD and Design, later on this became my actual work computer in a small design company.

Now i have been making do with a GTX280 up until now, yesturday i purchased a Quadro FX3450 because within solidworks there is a small amount of lag and shadows keep switching off and on.


The main concern about building a workstation is to grab as much memory as possible and to use a HDD as a swap drive or seperate installation location for your applications.

Next is a decent CPU, you'll be surprised at how low the actual clock speed can be, you dont need an uber fast processor for the task. Next depending on the applications you run a Quadro FX (not NVS) would be a good option, forget ATI's FireGL's because alot of programmes dont support them that well, its a complete failure really.

Personnally right now, you could build a system around Intels I7, however i am a little worried about the I7's roadmap, making any future upgrades a little limited i imagin knowing intels money making ways, with I5 on its way.

So i would be tempted to go AMD Phenom II 940 and the Gigabyte GA-MA790XT-UD4P, that combination for a workstation would be fine for 3-4 years easy!

 

I do agree with you somewhat Burnout, for CAD stuff a Quadro and a small capacity SSD as a swap drive would be wonderful. I however immediately assumed 3ds max work, as that is what I do, where the large number of cores and the HT capacity of the dual Nehalam Xeons would reduce render times by a huge amount.

So, krazykid, what software do you use? Are you just designing on this computer, or do you need to render too? Do you have a huge renderfarm just lying around?

All of this would help a lot.

Laz

 

i'm curious why people keep recommending the gtx 285? the gtx 275 is basically as powerful for significantly less money. thoughts?

 

its a pet hate of mine aswell. bigger number must mean better card! lol!

May i note, 3DS max is now Direct X enabled meaning a humble nvidia 8600 could power its view ports, rendering has nothing to do with the graphics card, i totally agree that a dual I7 rig would be perfect for rendering, but rendering out big images or video's is the last task of the job usually i just leave that work for over night whilst i sleep. I just render out small images as i go as i set up scenes.

Blowing alot of cash on a workstation isn't necessary, most gaming rigs are up to the job.

Solidworks can be a bit memory intensive, but i have never seen it require more than 2.5GB out of the 3Gb addressed to it under XP pro, making my jump to 64-bit a little pointless at the moment, as vista has never seemed that awesome as people make out it to be. Win 7 is another story!

In terms of rendering, i would sooner spend my money on AMD's socket F plateform, 2nd hand opty Quads are stupid cheap, aswell as there dual skt motherboards, 8 cores on the cheap with out the need for ECC memory! 8 core system with 12Gb of ram for less than £300 is definatly possible. I dont need that sort of power just yet, but dosen't mean i am not planning it.. hehe!

 

i love it man. it rocks...so far, just one problem with running ventrilo while playing left 4 dead. the chat volume seems to go waaaaaay down. can't hear them when they talk.

 

Here are the programs i use, short n sweet:

All of Adobe CS4 Master Collection (photoshop, dreamweaver, flash, illustrator etc etc)
Swift 3D
Internet Explorer/Mozilla Firefox (of course)
Movies, Music (entertainment)


I work at home so I listen to A LOT of music, but ill just pop on itunes which can basically run on any computer so im not worried about that. I do also watch a bunch of movies (DVD's) on my PC, so HD cards would be a plus.

But this will mainly be a workstation, but I do intend on gaming on it (MMO - planetside, RTS).

I am getting confused with RAID. What is it, and why is 0 or 5 better for one thing or another. I am completely clueless on this.

I need excellent rendering, encoding, editing power. I have a 4 monitor setup also, so multiple display option is a must.

Its hard to explain everything I need it for but basically I do want a massive power/workhorse that can edit full HD 1080p movies with no lag, encode them quickly...create full sized (FT x FT) graphics without lag....game at max specs...watch movies...listen to music...basically do EVERYTHING as best as a computer can. I don't want to say "i want the best most expensive things in each category"... but that is kind of what im talking about.

I want an extreme rig, with crazy specs, but not because i went out and bought 4 Graphics cards, 2 CPU, 50 tb harddrive etc etc etc etc.......

I also want around 10 USB ports ( mouse, keyboard, mic, web cam, ext. HDD, printer, flash drive etc). And i need iLink for HD importing (6pin firewire), plus every card reader possible.

I get lost in all the options for each part. Ill get the "premium" from the "What to buy" topic, then for what I need the computer to do,parts are different, then there are like 5 that sound exactly the same and it keeps going lol

Also, should i wait for the Windows 7 OS, and the i5 processor? I am not in a complete hurry, but i would like to get most, if not all, by august (3 months). Money is not an issue, i just like to research waaaaaaay to much and doubt myself everyday. And I want to get the most for my money, saving as much as i can.. but not by downgrading parts, but by buying good ones.

I keep remembering stuff--- Multiple hard drives are no problem, so when i said 1 TB drive, i just figured that would be enough, but if i should get 2 or 3.... no problem. Is this when the RAID comes into play? I know that SSD drives will be where i install the programs/games to, then ill have another HDD for my movie imports/exports? another one for other graphical stuff (photoshop, dreamweaver etc)? then another one for regular files such as word, excel etc.? I say etc way to much haha