Photography editing rig

[Kilmer02]

DISCLAIMER *****

YES THIS IS STUPIDLY MASSIVE OVERKILL BUT THE PERSON WHO CONTACTED THE PERSON WHO I'M WORKING WITH SAID I WANT TO SPEND A MASSIVE AMOUNT OF MONEY OH THIS RIG.

With that out of my system heres the parts list tell me what you guys think.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aq6tNLu9jaKpdFNfYnkzMms1N2tqLXMzRVpiclhNZ2c#gid=0

Please critique the choices, but don't critique the gpu and cpu overkill. We're aware its overkill. The lady who will own this will be working with adobe photoshop and other adobe software. And other possible video projects in the future. The hdd's will be in raid 10

[Kilmer02]

Sorry didn't realize the link was missing after moving it

[Puppet]

You're not leaving much else to critique but the price, but I'm sure her company is purchasing it for her or something like that. No doubt it will be a beast of a machine, If I were to start critiquing it, I would only be suggesting to spend more money.

NEC monitors are worth looking into, I personally haven't worked with them too much but something else to consider, I know a few people who have opted for them over Dell's. Nvidia are releasing the k6000 soon, but its like 3x the price of the Titan and doubt its going to be anywhere near 3x as good.

Everything else is just superficial, like H60's? (assuming its a space issue) I would probably have opted for a custom loop, but I'm guessing if your client can't put it together herself maintenance is already going to be an issue.

Apart from that I would be very happy with that setup if money wasn't an option. Sounds like she works mostly on the dedicated editing side of things so doesn't have to worry about buying equipment like cameras, glass or lighting so could very well be a sound investment.

[razersum]

that is one heck of a build, just certain things i would change

gpu, rather than getting a titan, spend it on a workstation dedicated gpu, like the nvidia quadro series. titan is meant and optimized for gaming purposes, where as the quadro series are purely meant for production[photo/video/3d] purposes.

i would sway the h60's with the h80i's because the radiator is thicker, hence better cooling performance.

lastly, i would ditch the sound card, i mean, why get one? and that also a consumer grade sound card?

[christoi]

Couple of suggestions:

• Switch the Xeons for E5 2650's instead, better performer for the same price.
  
• Get 4 kits of this memory instead, slightly cheaper and slightly faster.
  
• As said, a quadro will be a better choice, I'd personally recommend a K5000.
  
• Power supply is waaay overkill for a rig like that, a quality 850w should easily suffice.
  
• Xeons are locked so there's no point getting a high-end cooler, dual 212 evo's would be more than enough.
  
• Get a handful of 1.5krpm Seagate Cheetah's for storing files you are working with and just stick with ~4 3/4TB HDD's.
  
• For this kind of a rig, there are really better cases IMO. I'd recommend something like the PC-A75, high airflow and lots of expansion possibilities.
  

[Guest]

Kilmer - I wouldn't go with the AX1200i. I've been reading lately that it's actually somewhat dangerous to go with a high wattage single rail PSU due to high loads causing shorting which then fries everything. Worth looking further into I guess.

[anton_ma_99]

why not h80iÅ›

[Guest]

why not h80iÅ›

Trying to fit them is the issue. From memory the H60's are a lot thinner whereas the H80i's are a thick rad.

[Kilmer02]

for those who pointed out the fact that I did not include quadro in this build, I personally weighed out quadro vs consumer, and for the programs that she will be running, quadro wouldn't be as good for her because the quadro's drivers, which is what make it such a good card for things like CAD and engineering, do not benefit photography. And with these huge ballin' monitors, the titan's 6GB Gddr5 just outweighs the quadro.

As for the coolers, yes they are overkill since they won't be overclocked. But these xeons are going to be babied and water cooling is the way to go for that. Custom loop is ruled out because she does not know how to work with those.

PSU i'll look into changing to a lower wattage but this will be expanded into the future and will include more drives.

As for the 2650's 16 cores would be too overkill, we want one that will be a strong 8 core at higher clock speeds.

Sound card is because we can.

15k rpm drives are not optimal because she's got a ton or things she needs to store and we need balls to the wall amounts of space. this 9TB raid 10 will barely fit for her.

For the RAM it isnt really much of a difference if we switch to the one you stated and we like the 8x8 ones we picked out.

As for a different case, the case MUST fit SSI EEB boards and the one you pointed out does not do that,

H60's were chosen for the space saving design.

I'll look into NEC monitors.

Thanks for your responses and keep them coming

[Wats]

Might I recommend not getting a sound blaster? Kind of a gaming oriented sound card. It's meant to make sniper fire sound awesome, not for calming editing music :P

I think a Xonar DX or something along those lines would sound much better. Unless you are going for sweet looks, but that is almost never cheap.

[Kilmer02]

I'll look into that, thanks.

[christoi]

for those who pointed out the fact that I did not include quadro in this build' date=' I personally weighed out quadro vs consumer, and for the programs that she will be running, quadro wouldn't be as good for her because the quadro's drivers, which is what make it such a good card for things like CAD and engineering, do not benefit photography. And with these huge ballin' monitors, the titan's 6GB Gddr5 just outweighs the quadro.[/quote']

What specific programs will you be running?

While the 6GB memory of the Titan is nice, the card is simply overpriced for what it is, performance-wise. This is especially as kepler has always been poor in terms of GPGPU performance and the Titan doesn't really address the issue. If you are going with a consumer level card, a Fermi-based card like a GTX580 may even be a better choice in some cases, I doubt the lower vram will make much of a difference either.

Also, I somehow missed the part where you said that she'll be using adobe software. In that case, Photoshop sees little performance gains from GPU acceleration, the only program you'll really see a benefit would be premiere, which I presume she won't be using. In that case, there's really not much point spending much on the graphics card, it'll be better spent elsewhere.

As for the coolers' date=' yes they are overkill since they won't be overclocked. But these xeons are going to be babied and water cooling is the way to go for that.[/quote']

To be honest, I'm really not sure about having AIO coolers in a workstation rig. From what I've seen, they do tend to be less reliable in comparison to a traditional air cooler, so I'd personally opt for a small heatsink.

PSU i'll look into changing to a lower wattage but this will be expanded into the future and will include more drives.

Drives actually don't consumer much power, probably around 15w per at most. Since power consumption is tending to go down anyways, I don't think it'll be worth spending more on a higher-wattage unit, if it's not going to be utilized.

As for the 2650's 16 cores would be too overkill' date=' we want one that will be a strong 8 core at higher clock speeds. [/quote']

In the case of photoshop, I'd agree. Sorry for not properly reading the OP.

In that case though, a heavily overclocking 3930k may also be worth considering, since there are a lot of things that are still single-threaded with PS. With a ~4.5ghz overclock, it'll perform very similarly to dual E5's anyways.

As for a different case' date=' the case MUST fit SSI EEB boards and the one you pointed out does not do that,[/quote']

The PC-A75? The case actually does, given it supports up to HPTX.

[anton_ma_99]

why not h80iÅ›

yes but get a 800d and you pritey much can go thich and push pull

[Kilmer02]

Christoi, yes dual Xeons would preform similar to 3930k but she doesn't want anything overclocked, and she WANTS to spend 8k in the components alone not including the monitors, If I didn't go with 2 Xeons it would have seriously made a big budget gap with tons left over which I couldn't justify even less. I though HTPX is slightly smaller then SSI EEB? She wanted the best of the best so we got her a titan.

[anton_ma_99]

Christoi, yes dual Xeons would preform similar to 3930k but she doesn't want anything overclocked, and she WANTS to spend 8k in the components alone not including the monitors, If I didn't go with 2 Xeons it would have seriously made a big budget gap with tons left over which I couldn't justify even less. I though HTPX is slightly smaller then SSI EEB? She wanted the best of the best so we got her a titan.

why not 4

[Glenwing]

Christoi, yes dual Xeons would preform similar to 3930k but she doesn't want anything overclocked, and she WANTS to spend 8k in the components alone not including the monitors, If I didn't go with 2 Xeons it would have seriously made a big budget gap with tons left over which I couldn't justify even less. I though HTPX is slightly smaller then SSI EEB? She wanted the best of the best so we got her a titan.

There are no 4x Socket 2011 motherboards. @Kilmer, SSI EEB is 12" Tall by 13" Wide, HPTX is 13.6" Tall x 15" Wide.

[Glenwing]

My take on the project:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AuhIlc4MsjEkdGhDSEpmVThGaGd2N1FvNGFaaEN6THc&usp=sharing

[Blade of Grass]

If you want dual xenon, why not do a custom loop? So you could have a dual Xenon + Titan loop.

[Glenwing]

Why did you just bump a month old thread that has already been built? To answer your question, this build is for a client. Custom loops require maintenance and there is no point unless you're overclocking.