Please let me know how this will run Adobe CS5 Production Premium... Let me know if i need anything else!

Also, how should I configure my Hard disks?

Psu- Antec TP-750
MoBo - Asus P6X58D-E
Processor - Intel i7-950 3.06Ghz
GPU - nVidia GTX 470 1280MB
Mem - Corsair 12gb ddr3 1600mhz
Controller Card-Koutech IO-PESI330 PCI Express x1 SATA III (6.0Gb/s) --- MoBo only has 2 Sata 3 ports
OS drive - 640G WD Caviar Black Sata 3 7200rpm 64 mb
Storage drives - 2 ea 1TB WD Caviar Black Sata 3 7200rpm 64 mb
BR Burner - Lite-on IHB112

Kyle,

I would ditch the PCIe SATA III controller card altogether because no current mechanical hard disk could saturate even SATA II, let alone SATA III. In fact, the maximum sequential transfer speed of your "SATA III" Western Digital Blacks barely exceeds the maximum practical bandwidth of even SATA I. Plus, that particular SATA III controller card lacks the RAID 0/1 capability that the Marvell SATA III controller on the Asus motherboard has. That card is a perfect example of spending extra money and getting practically nothing in return, especially since the chipset used on that card is significantly more likely to corrupt data than the motherboard's native SATA II controller.

Second, the Marvell SATA III controller (as built onto the Asus motherboard) does not work well in RAID (more specifically, it performs much slower than expected in RAID 0 mode).

Therefore, my recommendation would be to connect the OS boot drive to the primary SATA III port and set the motherboard's BIOS to boot from that controller. Then, connect the two storage drives to the SATA II ports (the ones associated with the native Intel ICH10R). And set the two storage drives as separate disks. If you want to use the two disks in a RAID 0 array, I'd strongly recommend adding a fourth hard drive as your output drive (this can be of a relatively large capacity and/or a slower spindle speed and/or connected externally via USB 2.0 or 3.0).

As for the 12GB of RAM, are you going to use three 4GB sticks? Or six 2GB sticks? You'll have a better chance of reaching the full rated (advertised) memory speed with three 4GB sticks even if they currently cost slightly more than six 2GB sticks of otherwise identical specs.

Thanks for the input!

I planned to install 6 2 gig sticks on the mem...

Also, you suggested to use the SATA 3 port for the system drive, there are 2 (ea) on board SATA 3 ports... is there a reason I should not use the second port for my AV drive and use one of the Sata 2 ports for the export drive...

Thanks for the input!

I planned to install 6 2 gig sticks on the mem...

Also, you suggested to use the SATA 3 port for the system drive, there are 2 (ea) on board SATA 3 ports... is there a reason I should not use the second port for my AV drive and use one of the Sata 2 ports for the export drive...

I had difficulty in running six 2GB sticks of memory at the memory's full advertised speed. I had to drop the speed down to the next-lower speed class in order to run stably. As such, the memory is running at only DDR3-1240 speed instead of the advertised 1600 speed.

Running six 2GB sticks of memory at Intel's official maximum memory speed of DDR3-1066 is no problem. But running those same six sticks of memory at anything above DDR3-1333 speed is a crapshoot (meaning that it may or may not work). Any memory speed above 1066 is considered overclocked when it comes to the memory controller on lower-end (non-Extreme) LGA 1366 platforms.

As for using the other SATA III port, you could (but I personally wouldn't recommend it, especially since the Intel SATA II controller is of higher quality than any current third-party controller chip).

Did you use the XMP setting in the bios? I read somewhere that it helped...the mem speed

Did you use the XMP setting in the bios? I read somewhere that it helped...the mem speed

I did, and my system did not run stably (in fact, my system went into an endless loop of reboots until the BIOS detected a problem). In fact, both Intel and JEDEC officially limit XMP support to only two ranks of memory per channel (this means with most 2GB modules, only one stick of memory per channel is supported - a total of only three 2GB sticks). All of Corsair's 2GB sticks are double-ranked, meaning that one stick already eats up two ranks.

Second, the Marvell SATA III controller (as built onto the Asus motherboard) does not work well in RAID (more specifically, it performs much slower than expected in RAID 0 mode).

Thats interesting to hear as I just bought that asus motherboard, currently I have one sata6g wd drive installed to sata III thats supposed to be used for video and after installing all asus drivers from the cd I get a message from the marvel controller upon startup where that one sata6g disk shows. I was planning to buy a second identical wd disk for raid 0 set up but when I read you comment I was curious how much the performance is affected if you put the disks in raid on on that marvell controller.

Is there not any increase in speed when you connect 2 disks or would I be better of just installing seperate disks? I use dslr and hdv footage currently but no uncompressed video.

Update...

I have the system up and running and after a bios update, I have the Corsair 12gb ddr3 running at 1600mhz with the XMP setting selected within the bios.

I put the system drive on #1 Sata III port and the video storage drive on the #2.
I have the other drive on one of the Sata II ports as

The Controller Card-Koutech IO-PESI330 PCI Express x1 SATA III (6.0Gb/s) WAS INOP OUT OF THE BOX

Adobe CS5 production premium will be here on the 27th :) $449.00 thanks to an educators discount!

I updated the bios and selected xmp in the bios as well and I"m getting 1600mhz speed on my memory now instead of 1066mhz before.
I have one 6g drive connected to the sata III controller and a second one should arrive today, I will check the drive speed first of one disk and then connect the second one in a raid 0 on the second sata III port with that marvell controller and check speed again to see what I have gained, I"m curious. :) I"ll let you know if there is any change.

Just tested with crystaldiskmark and checked the sequential read and write speeds, the western digital 1tb black drives reach a read and write speed of about 135mb, when I activated the marvel raid controller and link 2 equal WD 1tb black drives to a raid 0 I get 260mb read and 200mb write speed, not bad for a motherboard controller I think :)

Just a bit of advice and a BIG WARNING about using WD drives in Raid - DO NOT USE them in Raid 0, 10, 5, 6, 3... because WD crippled them in order to force consumers to purchase their expensive RE3 & RE4 drives. Using the WD Caviar drives in Raid GREATLY increases the chance of all data being lost on those drives because they will 'time out' causing the Raid controller to think a drive has stopped working, and then the drive is reported as 'dead'. With Raid 0, this means all data is gone.

Furthermore, Randall can add more about his bad experience with WD Black drives and the problems he had while editing video. Plus, I vaguely recall that his PPBM5 scores got better after he switched to another brand of drives. The main problem with WD drives is their firmware and the disks constantly spinning down, which causes delays & issues when trying to scrub video.

Thx for the warning, I noticed yesterday that the drives were spinning down as you said after some time of being inactive and that caused at least 10 second delay before the program I wanted to start opened.

I think I will replace the wd black with another brand and use the black drives in a external usb 3.0 docking station to store backup files.

Just a bit of advice and a BIG WARNING about using WD drives in Raid - DO NOT USE them in Raid 0, 10, 5, 6, 3... because WD crippled them in order to force consumers to purchase their expensive RE3 & RE4 drives. Using the WD Caviar drives in Raid GREATLY increases the chance of all data being lost on those drives because they will 'time out' causing the Raid controller to think a drive has stopped working, and then the drive is reported as 'dead'. With Raid 0, this means all data is gone.

Furthermore, Randall can add more about his bad experience with WD Black drives and the problems he had while editing video. Plus, I vaguely recall that his PPBM5 scores got better after he switched to another brand of drives. The main problem with WD drives is their firmware and the disks constantly spinning down, which causes delays & issues when trying to scrub video.

Actually, the warning applies primarily to the higher, more complex levels of RAID - RAID 3, 5, 6 or any combination RAID involving any of those three levels. Also, some of the 1TB WD Blacks manufactured in late 2009 have a firmware bug that also affects RAID 0 and RAID 1 performance and/or reliability. My particular 1TB Black is one of those drives with the firmware bug.

I investigated further, and discovered that my performance increase came not from the new hard drive, but from updating CS5 to 5.0.2. 5.0.1 consistently performed slower than 5.0.2 in my system, especially in SD MPEG-2 encodes.

Noa,

Your particular 1TB WD Blacks (WD1002FAEX, not to be confused with the WD1001FALS that I had) are perfectly fine for use in RAID 0, RAID 1 or RAID 10 (which is just a combination of RAID 0 and RAID 1). Just don't use them in more complex RAID arrays than simple striping and/or mirroring. (In other words, you'll need to buy all RE-series drives only if you're going to use the drives in RAID 5, 6, 3 or any combination RAID involving one of those three levels; e.g. RAID 30.)

Randall,

Those WD drives still have the spin-down problem, which can cause them to be dropped from even a Raid 0 array, and that is not good.

Randall,

Those WD drives still have the spin-down problem, which can cause them to be dropped from even a Raid 0 array, and that is not good.

Maybe so. But all of the other brands of desktop drives now start to spin down. My Seagates have been dropping out on the average of once per minute. And now they start to drop out of my Intel controller completely even in a non-RAID or single-drive configuration. I RMA'd those drives, and got back two different drives with the exact same problem. I noticed this when I got wildly inconsistent benchmark results from my Seagate 7200.12 hard drives in RAID 0: PPBM5's AVI test came back with an 80-ish second result one time, 267 seconds the next time. That's nearly a threefold difference.

Every single consumer desktop drive from every single manufacturer now spins down constantly (at least recent models). And my initial warning now applies to all consumer-level desktop drives, not just WD.

Which means that if you're going to use even RAID 0, you'll have to buy an astronomically expensive enterprise-grade hard drive from all of the manufacturers.

Your experience seems very odd. Have you checked your BIOS and Windows settings to prevent them from spinning down? Have you replaced your sata cables, tried different power cables, tried different sata ports on the mobo?

I have almost 20 1TB Seagate 7200.12 drives and 4 2TB 5900rpm LP drives between 2 PCs and none of them spin down except for one 2TB in an external case. I also have 4 2TB Hitachi drives that never spin down. And I have a 2-day old 1TB 7200.12 that does not spin down (I am testing it before adding it to the array).

But then again, you are using the Intel onboard Raid, and that could be the culprit. Most of my drives are attached to hardware Raid controllers and only a few are attached to the Intel ICH10R for cache and backups.

Your experience seems very odd. Have you checked your BIOS and Windows settings to prevent them from spinning down? Have you replaced your sata cables, tried different power cables, tried different sata ports on the mobo?

I have almost 20 1TB Seagate 7200.12 drives and 4 2TB 5900rpm LP drives between 2 PCs and none of them spin down except for one 2TB in an external case. I also have 4 2TB Hitachi drives that never spin down. And I have a 2-day old 1TB 7200.12 that does not spin down (I am testing it before adding it to the array).

But then again, you are using the Intel onboard Raid, and that could be the culprit. Most of my drives are attached to hardware Raid controllers and only a few are attached to the Intel ICH10R for cache and backups.

The problem is that I have no hardware RAID controller card at all (and good ones cost at least $500 for an 8-port model). And I have already checked the settings. The problem here is quality control on the part of the manufacturers. It is very unusual that I get five faulty drives - but it does happen.

I had difficulty in running six 2GB sticks of memory at the memory's full advertised speed. I had to drop the speed down to the next-lower speed class in order to run stably. As such, the memory is running at only DDR3-1240 speed instead of the advertised 1600 speed.

Running six 2GB sticks of memory at Intel's official maximum memory speed of DDR3-1066 is no problem. But running those same six sticks of memory at anything above DDR3-1333 speed is a crapshoot (meaning that it may or may not work). Any memory speed above 1066 is considered overclocked when it comes to the memory controller on lower-end (non-Extreme) LGA 1366 platforms.

As for using the other SATA III port, you could (but I personally wouldn't recommend it, especially since the Intel SATA II controller is of higher quality than any current third-party controller chip).

I have no problems OC'ing 6 sticks of Corsair Dominator DDR3-1600 on my Asus board. Are you sure that your experience wasn't limited to your particular hardware?

I have no problems OC'ing 6 sticks of Corsair Dominator DDR3-1600 on my Asus board. Are you sure that your experience wasn't limited to your particular hardware?

Well, I have only the XMS, not the Dominator.

Second, I have a $200-ish Gigabyte motherboard. I might replace it with an Asus motherboard. I have trouble running 6 sticks at higher than DDR3-1400 speed on my current system.

You're still using the Gigabyte? You may want to preface your comments that seem to generalize the performance of DDR3 (or any other facet of your particular motherboard) with the fact that is your experience with that particular board, not in general. It may mislead some. I personally have built 3 i7 machines with all RAM slots loaded, all on the Asus P6T or x58 boards, and all with the RAM overclocked. All worked fine, the two that weren't my machines ran Corsair XMS.

You're still using the Gigabyte? You may want to preface your comments that seem to generalize the performance of DDR3 (or any other facet of your particular motherboard) with the fact that is your experience with that particular board, not in general. It may mislead some. I personally have built 3 i7 machines with all RAM slots loaded, all on the Asus P6T or x58 boards, and all with the RAM overclocked. All worked fine, the two that weren't my machines ran Corsair XMS.

I meant to say that there are too many variables involved when it comes to running with all six DIMM slots filled at any memory (RAM) speed faster than Intel's official maximum speed (DDR3-1066 in the case of the LGA 1366 i7 CPUs). The motherboard, the CPU, the RAM itself. In my particular case, with my particular setup (and yes, I'm still using the Gigabyte motherboard for now), I could not get my CPU overclock above 3.7GHz without the CPU overheating, even with a good CPU HSF (cooler). I tried setting the CPU core voltage to a lower setting, only to have the system crash at even stock speed. (The default CPU core voltage settings as detected by the Gigabyte motherboard are 1.28125V for the i7-920 and 1.25625V for the i7-950.) My previous Intel-branded X58 (DX58SO) motherboard performed better at lower CPU core voltages, but it has only four DIMM slots.

Just tested with crystaldiskmark and checked the sequential read and write speeds, the western digital 1tb black drives reach a read and write speed of about 135mb, when I activated the marvel raid controller and link 2 equal WD 1tb black drives to a raid 0 I get 260mb read and 200mb write speed, not bad for a motherboard controller I think :)

Noa,

Can you give me the step by step on this as I have never set up a raid 0... I have the same mobo and HD's. Specifically what cable do i need etc.

Right now I have the system dive in the SATA III #1 slot, the video storage in the SATA III #2 slot, and my export drive on a SATA II port....going to order another WD Black 1TB soon, for the RAID 0 video "drive"

Thanks in advance...

Noa,

Can you give me the step by step on this as I have never set up a raid 0... I have the same mobo and HD's. Specifically what cable do i need etc.

Right now I have the system dive in the SATA III #1 slot, the video storage in the SATA III #2 slot, and my export drive on a SATA II port....going to order another WD Black 1TB soon, for the RAID 0 video "drive"

Thanks in advance...

Forget about the WD Blacks in a RAID array (as Steve Kalle stated). These drives (all versions manufactured since late 2009) have the spin-down issue which degrades the performance and reliability of even a RAID 0 configuration. I stated otherwise in one of my previous posts, which is misleading.

If you must get a consumer desktop drive, go with a non-WD hard drive. If you do choose a WD, you will have to get one of the much-more-expensive RE drives in order to even use RAID 0, let alone RAID 5/6/3. Be advised, however, that although the WD RE drives are optimized for RAID, they are relatively ill-suited for single-drive or JBOD setups because they actually perform slower than comparable non-RAID-optimized drives due to the extra overhead.

Well, I have only the XMS, not the Dominator.

Second, I have a $200-ish Gigabyte motherboard. I might replace it with an Asus motherboard. I have trouble running 6 sticks at higher than DDR3-1400 speed on my current system.

An update:

I finally got my system (still with the Gigabyte motherboard) running stably (at least in Prime95) at 3.84GHz with the memory speed at DDR3-1600 (with all six DIMM slots filled). I had failed to re-adjust certain bus speeds and voltages in the BIOS, which is the reason why the system went into a reboot loop or locked up during the loading of Windows.

One potential problem: The CPU temps at this setting just exceeded 90°C (with the thermal cutoff point being 100°C) at 100% load.

Randall, you're going to fry that system at those temps. What CPU cooler do you have? I can stress test my i7 920 @ 4.2GHZ and not go over 72 degrees c. I didn't want to push it much further than that. The system runs stable at those settings too. Using a Noctua D14 cooler, and the Noctua paste that came with it. Something is wrong if you are pushing over 90c at that speed. I would back it off immediately.

Randall, you're going to fry that system at those temps. What CPU cooler do you have? I can stress test my i7 920 @ 4.2GHZ and not go over 72 degrees c. I didn't want to push it much further than that. The system runs stable at those settings too. Using a Noctua D14 cooler, and the Noctua paste that came with it. Something is wrong if you are pushing over 90c at that speed. I would back it off immediately.

I have a different Noctua cooler - an NH-U12P SE2.

One more problem: I spoke too soon. I have backed off the overclock, and also backed off the memory speed. At that aforementioned overclock, Prime95 ran stably, but Adobe Media Encoder crashes.

I also did a new test, and stress tests at the CPU's stock speed (yes, I now have an i7-950 which was priced low enough not to pass up) still allowed the CPU temperature to reach 70°C at even stock speed.

Now, I'm undecided as to what to do next. I never got the opportunity to replace anything yet. I originally wanted to replace either the motherboard and/or the CPU cooler. But I could also replace the memory.

And for the record, the Gigabyte motherboard actually "overvolts" the CPU at default settings. With my current i7-950, the CPU core voltage is set to a marked 1.25625V by default (1.232V after Vdroop). I tried lowering the CPU voltage, only to not run stably at higher than stock speed.

So much for this lower-end Gigabyte X58 motherboard. My previous Intel DX58SO was actually more stable than the GA-X58A-UD3R even though it has only four DIMM slots (primarily because it lacks both SATA 6 Gbps and USB 3.0 onboard).

UPDATE: I lowered the voltage setting to a labeled 1.23125V (actual: 1.2V to 1.22V) at 155x24. The CPU temps still reached 80°C at this setting after running Prime95 for six hours.

And as it turned out, I could not get either of my i7 CPUs stable above 3.5 to 3.6 GHz without raising the voltage above a marked 1.2V.

Intel has recently replaced its DX58SO motherboard with a newer DX58SO2, which now has the six DIMM slots that most other X58 boards have. It now also has an onboard SATA 6 Gbps controller with two SATA 6 Gbps ports. Still no onboard USB 3.0 capability yet. But since that motherboard costs as much money as an Asus P6X58D-E, I'd pick the Asus in that price range.

On the Sandy Bridge front, the initial Sandy Bridge platform - the mainstream LGA 1155 - promises to be even faster than current i7 platforms clock for clock. Unfortunately, it will continue to be saddled by an insufficient number of full-bandwidth PCIe 2.0 lanes, especially since some of the theoretical maximum of 24 PCIe 2.0 full-bandwidth lanes (16 on the CPU, plus up to eight on the P67 PCH) will be eaten up on most such motherboards by a PCIe-to-PCI bridge controller, an onboard USB 3.0 controller and an onboard Realtek or Marvell NIC that also steals one PCIe lane for itself. Therefore, the current LGA 1366 platform will continue to be the choice for a serious video editing system until the release of LGA 2011 and/or LGA 1356 later in 2011.

Something is wrong if you are pushing over 90c at that speed.

I think I found the problem: It's not my CPU cooler or motherboard per se, but I might have had the CPU cooler orientation wrong. In general, tower CPU coolers work best when oriented perpendicularly to the direction of the CPU retention mechanism. I had the cooler mounted parallel to the retention mechanism. And the Gigabyte motherboard, like many other "good" motherboards, has the CPU retention mechanism oriented vertically (when the motherboard is installed in a tower case). My old Intel motherboard, on the other hand, has the CPU retention mechanism oriented horizontally when that board is installed in a tower case. This might explain why my Intel board was more stable than my current Gigabyte board ever has been.

As a result, I will try reorienting my system's CPU cooler.

I will report back with the results.

UPDATE: Just this simple reorientation of the CPU cooler resulted in a roughly 9-degree drop in the CPU temperature. Whereas the old orientation that I used delivered an 81°C maximum result at 3.72 GHz, the new orientation (with the fan blowing upwards towards the case's top fan) delivered (so far) a 72°C maximum at these same speeds and voltages.

Are you using thermal paste? If so, what brand? I tested between Arctic Silver 5 and the Noctua branded one that was included with my cooler and the Noctua branded one seemed to be significantly better. Make sure you are following the instructions on the paste and orienting the paste in a way that it lines up with the chips inside the CPU properly. Your temps are still way too high, even at 9 degrees cooler.

Are you using thermal paste? If so, what brand? I tested between Arctic Silver 5 and the Noctua branded one that was included with my cooler and the Noctua branded one seemed to be significantly better. Make sure you are following the instructions on the paste and orienting the paste in a way that it lines up with the chips inside the CPU properly. Your temps are still way too high, even at 9 degrees cooler.

I took the heatsink off, and discovered that the thermal paste did not spread evenly. The center of the CPU got much less paste than the edges despite me using a single line down the center (vertically). This led me to believe that the heatsink was not sitting perfectly flat on the CPU no matter what I tried: The parts that got more thermal paste actually have poor contact with the heatsink.

And yes, I was forced to use Arctic Silver V because I ran out of the Noctua paste, and I could not find it in the stores that I frequently shop at. AS5 requires as much as a 200-hour curing time (this means that the system must be powered on and off during this period, in increments of several hours).

By the way, Craig, what program did you use for temperature readings? I use RealTemp, which supposedly reads the temperatures on each individual core. And RealTemp usually reads higher than many other temperature monitoring programs.

thats odd; i have been running perfectly stable speeds and temps with my (mATX) home rig...

mATX case with side removed
Asus Rampage III Gene mobo
Corsair XMS3 running at 1600Mhz or higher
i7 950 at 3.78 or 3.88 Ghz
Corsair H50 water/air cooler
80mm fans blowing onto the northbridge and southbridge
80mm fans blowing across a 4 2.5" RAID0 array

58C on the southbridge is my highest temp running prime95 for 5 hours.

I took the heatsink off, and discovered that the thermal paste did not spread evenly. The center of the CPU got much less paste than the edges despite me using a single line down the center (vertically). This led me to believe that the heatsink was not sitting perfectly flat on the CPU no matter what I tried: The parts that got more thermal paste actually have poor contact with the heatsink.

And yes, I was forced to use Arctic Silver V because I ran out of the Noctua paste, and I could not find it in the stores that I frequently shop at. AS5 requires as much as a 200-hour curing time (this means that the system must be powered on and off during this period, in increments of several hours).

By the way, Craig, what program did you use for temperature readings? I use RealTemp, which supposedly reads the temperatures on each individual core. And RealTemp usually reads higher than many other temperature monitoring programs.

I will be placing an order for the Noctua paste next week. I tested another i7 build (my old i7-920 with an Intel-brand board) - and this time using a new Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus heatsink. It turned out that the Arctic Silver 5 that I was using didn't work well enough with many of the newer tower heatsinks. The i7-950 with the Noctua NH-U12P SE2 heatsink and Arctic Silver 5 allowed the CPU to reach the upper 60s C even at stock - nearly as high as the same CPU achieved with the stock boxed Intel CPU cooler with its originally applied compound. The Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus with its supplied thermal compound only allowed the CPU to reach the mid-50s C at stock, and barely touched 60°C even overclocked to 3.5GHz. I will be testing further at higher overclocks with my auxiliary rig.

The Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus with its supplied thermal compound only allowed the CPU to reach the mid-50s C at stock, and barely touched 60°C even overclocked to 3.5GHz. I will be testing further at higher overclocks with my auxiliary rig.

I spoke a tad soon there. I had to set the CPU fan to always spin at full speed in order to achieve this level of performance. With the CPU fan speed set in the motherboard BIOS to the default AUTO, the CPU temperature increased by nearly 10°C - to nearly 70°C. The small amount of silence I gained (since the motherboard's northbridge fan emits a constant high-pitched whine) could not make up for the significant increase in CPU temperature.