My Final x79 Build, lots of advice CRUCIAL

[MarkGerazzi]

So what does that mean for me? Bottle necks for sample streaming (big sound files places in to RAM and played simultaneously in music program)?

Compared to what intel controllers? Do you recommend a better 8dimm board for under $400?

 

[Dangman]

So what does that mean for me? Bottle necks for sample streaming (big sound files places in to RAM and played simultaneously in music program)?

You may not be able to combine all four SATA 6.0Gb/s ports in any sort of fakeRAID/hardware assisted RAID. Thats really about it.

Compared to what intel controllers? Do you recommend a better 8dimm board for under $400?

The built-in Intel storage SATA 6.0Gb/s controller found in many motherboards. Can't really recommend any 8 DIMM 2011 mobos right now as they are newly released.

 

[E4g1e]

Do you recommend a better 8dimm board for under $400?

Actually, Danny is not advising you to purchase any of the LGA 2011 CPUs or X79 motherboards right now: The first release versions of anything new will almost always have bugs in them - some of which may adversely affect performance and/or reliability. In fact, I would wait a few weeks to a few months for many of the serious bugs to be fixed before I can recommend anything for this new platform.

 

[MarkGerazzi]

No need to combine all the ports so that'a rlght, and I thought you meant the intel certified mobo was better in some aspects.

Anyways I've decided on a SSD, from back in our conversation:

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Produc...ckTab=true&Keywords=(keywords)#scrollFullInfo

My music samples will be sitting on this drive, not my OS, and I will only be accessing them while making music a couple of hours a day.

1. Does this mean I will be writing or reading files? I have the feeling this is better for the drive since it won't be as intensive as running a OS/Games.

I will probably get a 500gb Sata 3 6gb seagate for my OS, and keep my two other 1tb drives for less intensive music library streaming, and games. Eventually I'll get another SSD.
Now hopefully you see why I'm focusing on these parts vs a GPU for once in a while gaming.

2. I haven't been able to get straight answer anywhere on this, should I put my music libraries on a Sata 3 6gb HD? Or can it be SATA 2 from a few years back. I dn't know if this will help streaming speeds.

 

[MarkGerazzi]

I know, and I should wait, but I'm aching and can't put work off anymore. Any examples of any recent first generation lines having tons of bugs?

 

[Dangman]

I know, and I should wait, but I'm aching and can't put work off anymore. Any examples of any recent first generation lines having tons of bugs?

Earlier this year actually: Intel's P67/H67/H61 chipsets had this SATA 3.0Gb/s bug where the SATA 3.0Gb/s ports would deteriorate over time and just die altogether. Not to mention that a few Asus Intel P67 mobos, specifically the the Asus P8P67 and P8P67 Pro Rev 3.0 mobos, had numerous issues even after they were updated to the B3 revision that fixed the SATA bug in March/April. It wasn't until the release of the 3.1 Revision of the aforementioned Asus P67 mobos around August/September that most of the issues found in the Reve 3.0 mobos were probably resolved.

 

[MarkGerazzi]

Well I really can't wait any longer, it's Asus pro or Gigabyte ud5 before the end of this month.

BTW Danny I have your exact cpu BE, but my mobo is 790 UD4P, I unlocked the 4th core stable and OC to 3.5. Still inadaquate for what I'm doing :S. The 16gig ram limit is the worst.

 

[Dangman]

My music samples will be sitting on this drive, not my OS, and I will only be accessing them while making music a couple of hours a day.

1. Does this mean I will be writing or reading files? I have the feeling this is better for the drive since it won't be as intensive as running a OS/Games.

I will probably get a 500gb Sata 3 6gb seagate for my OS, and keep my two other 1tb drives for less intensive music library streaming, and games. Eventually I'll get another SSD.
Now hopefully you see why I'm focusing on these parts vs a GPU for once in a while gaming.

If you're not actually creating music on the SSD but simply streaming the files from the SSD, that's reading files.

However getting a 500GB drive isn't a smart idea but I will get to that later.

2. I haven't been able to get straight answer anywhere on this, should I put my music libraries on a Sata 3 6gb HD? Or can it be SATA 2 from a few years back. I dn't know if this will help streaming speeds.

If you need the fastest reasonable speeds possible, then yes put the music libraries on newer and faster drives. Do note that having the SATA 6.0Gb/s doesn't actually make the hard drive faster. There are a few SATA 3.0Gb/s drives out tehre that will outperform SATA 6.0Gb/s hard drives.

With that said, I highly recommend this Hitachi drive as it's one of the fastest consumer grade drive out now:
$156 - Hitachi Desktar 7K1000.D HDS721010DLE630 1TB SATA 6.0Gb/s Hard Drive

And yes no matter what 500GB drive you get, it will be slower than the above 1TB drive. So for an OS drive or a really fast storage drive, the Hitachi is your best bet.

Well I really can't wait any longer, it's Asus pro or Gigabyte ud5 before the end of this month.

Welp, don't say we didn't warn ya.

BTW Danny I have your exact cpu BE, but my mobo is 790 UD4P, I unlocked the 4th core stable and OC to 3.5.

Yeah too bad my core unlock failed. I gambled bad there.

 

[MarkGerazzi]

How about a 250 ssd? Why not the 512? The 250 is double the speed of the 128 so that's the lowest I'll go.

I don't think SATA 6gb/s is as important for my main OS, as it is for my libraries, since I won't be reading anything, but I definitely wan't a new drive for my OS regardless, and not a SSD for it is not very important for running music software and apps.

Is Hitachi a good brand? I've heard bad things about them and try to stick with seagate and WD.
Here it is on newegg.ca

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Produc...chi Desktar 7K1000.D HDS721010DLE630 1TB SATA

 

[Dangman]

How about a 250 ssd? Why not the 512? The 250 is double the speed of the 128 so that's the lowest I'll go.

Go for the largest SSD you can afford.

Is Hitachi a good brand? I've heard bad things about them and try to stick with seagate and WD.
Here it is on newegg.ca

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Produc...chi Desktar 7K1000.D HDS721010DLE630 1TB SATA

Hitachi is a good brand. Their drives have been fairly solid and right now Hitachi has a couple of advantages over WD and Seagate (i.e the ability to use consumer grade Hitachi drives with true hardware RAID controllers and the sheer speed offered by that Hitachi drive I linked to earlier.). In case you're wondering, the above Hitachi drive outperforms WD Black 1TB SATA 6.0Gb/s drives by about 20%. 25% for Seagate drives IIRC. So yeah. pretty big performance difference at a lower cost.

 

[E4g1e]

Actually, I will have to disagree with high sequential transfer speeds being more important than fast random access speeds in an OS drive:

Sequential transfer speed proved beneficial only with large file transfers, in my experience. For OS usage, however, I found that drives with fast random access speeds but relatively slow sequential transfer speeds far outperform drives with relatively high sequential transfer speeds but relatively slow random access speeds. For example, my 500GB WD Blue with a single 500GB platter took significantly longer to boot into Windows than a 1TB Seagate 7200.12 hard drive despite the two drives' very similar sequential transfer speeds. This is because the Seagate has a random access speed of around 13.6 ms (after formatting) while the WD Blue has a random access speed of greater than 15 ms.

On an unrelated note:

I discovered that my 2TB Seagate GoFlex USB 3.0 external hard drive was not a 667GB-platter, 5900 RPM Barracuda Green drive at all - but a first-generation Barracuda XT (with a 7200 RPM spindle speed and four 500GB platters) instead. (The sequential transfer speed of 140+ MB/s on the outer tracks on that drive proved this, since no legitimate Barracuda Green can sustain transfer speeds greater than 125 MB/s on the outer tracks even with 667GB platters.) However, the seek-quieting technology is enabled permanently on that drive, causing its random access speed to increase to a whopping 19 ms (compared to around 13.5 ms of the average 7200 RPM hard drive).

 

[Dangman]

In that case, what drive would you recommend for an OS drive?

 

[MarkGerazzi]

I have a noob question:

SSD will be in my SATA 3 port, now is SATA strictly SSD? Or can HD's be used in SATA ports?

Let's say all 4 SATA 3 ports are being occupied by SSDs, now Im left with the other SATA 2 ports, will using a 1tb SATA 6gb just be bottlenecked while trying to transfer/stream the samples to my DAW? Since SATA 2 is 3gb.




The only thing left to do is decide between the Asus Pro mobo, and this. The only thing is that the ASUS has smart SSD caching, which can be great for what I'm doing.
But this GA UD5 has that awesome OC'ing button for when I'm using my pc regularly. Plus, that sexy 3D bios

http://i4memory.com/f90/gigabyte-x79-ud5-sandy-bridge-e-lga2011-photos-33253/

 

[Dangman]

I have a noob question:

SSD will be in my SATA 3 port, now is SATA strictly SSD? Or can HD's be used in SATA ports?

The SATA interface is used by SSDs, hard drives, and DVD drives.

Let's say all 4 SATA 3 ports are being occupied by SSDs, now Im left with the other SATA 2 ports, will using a 1tb SATA 6gb just be bottlenecked while trying to transfer/stream the samples to my DAW? Since SATA 2 is 3gb.

I mentioned this earlier: "The SATA 6GB/s interface itself does not matter when it comes to hard drives." No bottleneck as current mechanical hard drives have not yet exceeded or even approaced the limits of the SATA 3.0Gb/s interface. So regardless of the hard drive's interface, whether it's SATA 6.0Gb/s or SATA 3.0Gb/s, there will be no performance limitation when using hard drives on the SATA 3.0Gb/s ports.

However is a bottleneck if you use a SATA 6.0Gb/s SSD on a SATA 3.0Gb/s port.

The only thing left to do is decide between the Asus Pro mobo, and this. The only thing is that the ASUS has smart SSD caching, which can be great for what I'm doing.
But this GA UD5 has that awesome OC'ing button for when I'm using my pc regularly. Plus, that sexy 3D bios

http://i4memory.com/f90/gigabyte-x79-ud5-sandy-bridge-e-lga2011-photos-33253/

Read up as much as possible on the SSD caching that Intel uses and see if Asus' similar feature is really right for you.

 

[pewter77]

My budget is $2200, going to get windows 7 Ultimate and I'll be OC'ing to at least 4.2gz

I'm really not interested in watercooling right now, what's wrong with the Lian li PC6 then, 140mm and 120mm fans are not big enough even if after socket?
Also this sound insulation is VERY good.

As for the PSU I may replace it if it shows signs of lagging.

The H100 scares me, if I did watercooling it would be a real loop, not a cheap pump that many have said are loud and unreliable.

As for cases, my budget is around $100, if I were to go all out with a tower I'd get the silverstone FT02


Ugh how to find out if the noctua will fit these new x79 boards!

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/products/compare?T1=tab15 windows 7 ultimate, really just not worth it unless you need the features at the bottom, i would save your money and get pro or home premium.

Actually, Danny is not advising you to purchase any of the LGA 2011 CPUs or X79 motherboards right now: The first release versions of anything new will almost always have bugs in them - some of which may adversely affect performance and/or reliability. In fact, I would wait a few weeks to a few months for many of the serious bugs to be fixed before I can recommend anything for this new platform.

I have a quick question about this, how long would it take to get out the next revision or stepping for the X79 mobos and CPUs respectively? I don't know if i can wait 3-4 months. 2-3 months I could probably wait, but i don't want to wait those 3 months and then be disappointed by no revisions/upgrades when i could have had the computer in my hands within the next few weeks. (not worried too much at the moment because I can't seem to find the UD5 anywhere for sale in the US at the moment and I've basically decided on that board out of the first boards to come out, would have gone asrock but their 1 year warranty has made me say no thanks to the extreme9).

I'm just looking for guesstimates based on past Intel business practices etc. Only reason i'm thinking about waiting a bit extra is because of the lack of sata 6 ports and hoping for the extra reliability as well, couldn't care less if theres no native usb 3 support.

 

[MarkGerazzi]

pewter,

why even wait, for a performance boost you won't even notice? It's like waiting for Ivy, who cares, unless you wan't to save power and possibly have 8 core consumer cpus.
I doubt there will be any bugs, I'm taking the chance anyways, I'm done procrastinating.
Also UD5 can be found on , which is US/CAN.


Danny,

My concern is sending/receiving from SATA HD ports. Sending from a 6gb sata hd to a 3gb sata hd I always thought would be a bottleneck, sending from a 6gb to a 6gb sounds more ideal. Always having the receiver (HD my music software is on) as a 6gb SATA to give it headroom for future 6gb SATAs.
Maybe you are underestimating the files I work with, their capacity, film scoring on a computer is a lot more demanding than any video editing/rendering. When I load one string sample, thats 2gb of me memory loaded into RAM just for that one sample. Please don't get this mixed up with general audio production. Then again I may be wrong about bottle necks since I don't know the way things work exactly.

If you'd like a better idea of what Im trying to figure out please visit this thread:
http://www.soundsonline-forums.com/showthread.php?t=39173

 

[Dangman]

Danny,

My concern is sending/receiving from SATA HD ports. Sending from a 6gb sata hd to a 3gb sata hd I always thought would be a bottleneck, sending from a 6gb to a 6gb sounds more ideal. Always having the receiver (HD my music software is on) as a 6gb SATA to give it headroom for future 6gb SATAs.
Maybe you are underestimating the files I work with, their capacity, film scoring on a computer is a lot more demanding than any video editing/rendering. When I load one string sample, thats 2gb of me memory loaded into RAM just for that one sample. Please don't get this mixed up with general audio production. Then again I may be wrong about bottle necks since I don't know the way things work exactly.

If you'd like a better idea of what Im trying to figure out please visit this thread:
http://www.soundsonline-forums.com/showthread.php?t=39173

Again, doesn't change a thing. Gonna repeat myself here: Current SATA hard drives will not take advantage whatsoever of the SATA 6.0Gb/s considering that they don't take full advantage of the regular SATA 3.0Gb/s ports. It will be years before that happens and by then SSDs will probably be cheaper or more cost-effective. However, current SSDs can and will take advantage of the SATA 6.0Gb/s interface as they already surpass the limitations of the SATA 3.0Gb/s. So the only bottleneck you will see is if you stick a SSD on the SATA 3.0Gb/s ports.

I honestly don't know how to make that clearer.

 

[E4g1e]

Danny,

My concern is sending/receiving from SATA HD ports. Sending from a 6gb sata hd to a 3gb sata hd I always thought would be a bottleneck, sending from a 6gb to a 6gb sounds more ideal. Always having the receiver (HD my music software is on) as a 6gb SATA to give it headroom for future 6gb SATAs.
Maybe you are underestimating the files I work with, their capacity, film scoring on a computer is a lot more demanding than any video editing/rendering. When I load one string sample, thats 2gb of me memory loaded into RAM just for that one sample. Please don't get this mixed up with general audio production. Then again I may be wrong about bottle necks since I don't know the way things work exactly.

If you'd like a better idea of what Im trying to figure out please visit this thread:
http://www.soundsonline-forums.com/showthread.php?t=39173

Put it this way, Mark:

Currently, the fastest-performing hard drives are slower (physical transfer speed, or media-to-buffer throughput, wise) than even the 3gb SATA interface, let alone the 6gb SATA interface. In fact, the physical transfer speed of the fastest mechanical hard drives barely surpasses a 1.5gb SATA interface. The interface speed is the buffer-to-controller throughput, not the media-to-buffer throughput. Go run HD Tune, and the physical transfer speed of your non-SSD hard drive is far slower than the interface. The transfer speed should be read in MB/s (which, for storage devices, is ten times lower than the Gbps figure indicates).

 

[MarkGerazzi]

Thanks guys I get it now, solid.
I've learned a lot from you all an am about to post something in the intel cpu section!