Hi Steve,
just a quick reply - I use my machine mainly to make stitch pano's so file are multiples of Gigabytes. I also do retouching for other photogs
Machine is currently only -
Dual Xeon 5650 @ 4.2Ghz
6x8GB Kingston ECC (will be adding another 6x 8GB) 96GB is max i think - and i can't afford 16GB sticks ;-)
All storage is RAID-0
OS: 2x R0 SSD Corsair Sata-II (to be upgraded to 6-8x R0 SATA-3)
TEMP/Scratch: 3x R0 SSD ARAM SATA-II (to be upgraded to 6-8x R0 SATA-3)
Storage: 2x 4x 1TB Black Caviar (to be upgraded to 8x 3TB)
GPU: 460GTX ASUS
the idea behind this is the have the data flow through the system as it is being processed as fast as possible - Storage is the greatest bottleneck as I think we can now all agree on - but my project here is limited by $$$$ available had a quiet year last year.
I will be interested to hear what you have to say about this setup - all in a Lian Li case 2120 (Black) with an Antec 1200 PS
Henrik
Hello Henrik -
An impressive system. If this system saves you even 4-5 hours a week over a lesser system it will certainly pay for itself, assuming you are working professionally. Personally I'm big on saving as much time as possible on the computer so I can use that time for family and other important parts of my life. Waiting on a computer isn't a regret I want to have when the time comes for me to look back over my life..
I have that Lian-li case, it sure has a lot of drive bays.
Looking at your system and considering the work you do, I see a few areas I might do differently.
a. I do over clock on my personal machines when I can feel comfortable, but only when it can be done with 100% reliability. As a rule I don't recommend over clocking to my clients, instead I discourage it. Generally I don't consider it worth the hassle, risk, or expense of water cooling.. and air cooling at your speeds would be riding the edge and the fan noise is something I personally abhor.
b. I didn't see a HBA listed for your RAID's, you are using a motherboard controller? You are probably aware this consumes CPU/RAM resources, just about as much as you're gaining with over clocking.
You can certainly add a quality HBA to improve both the performance of your RAID and machine overall, but have you considered OCZ's Revo drives? They are essentially RAID O arrays on a single PCIe card and their performance is very hard to beat. In addition their accelerators relieve the burden on the CPU for yet more overall system gain. It is a lot cleaner way to go.
You didn't list your motherboard, but if you go with Revo's you're limited by the PCIe slot availability, so if designing a system from scratch an extended MB is the way to go for a full 4-8 PCIe slots.
Check out Intels new 520 series SSD's. They're the fastest 2.5 inch SSD's available, but what's really impressive is the degree of validation Intel did with these drives. These will soon be known as the drives to get for both speed and reliability, two factors which used to be exclusive. I'll post a review in the next 7-10 days once I complete my testing.
c. WD Black drives have a well deserved reputation for speed and reliability, but other drives are catching up.
I recently reviewed a Seagate 3tb that came in an external enclosure and later turned out to be their new halo drive, and it's a real screamer with great reliability. I was impressed with these. I'm still recommending the WD Black's to my clients though because they're proven.
d. Have you considered a different video card setup to offload some of that processing to the GPU(s)? And have you considered dual GPU cards, or multiple cards? I think you could gain some real improvement in this area.
Thanks for the reply. It is good to be see a persons work load along with their specs. It helps keep perspective. Good luck with your future upgrades.
