I am in the process of putting together a new NLE system to process my 7D footage. The system is somewhat based on the Videoguys.com DIY8 build with a few changes and added extras. Please share your thoughts because I am very new to this.

Following are the items that have already been ordered.

OS:
Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit

Base Software:
Adobe CS5.5 Production Suite, Neoscene Cineform, and Windows Office 2010

CPU:
i7 980 hex core 3.33Mhz - Newegg.com - Intel Core i7-980 Nehalem 3.33GHz 6 x 256KB L2 Cache 12MB L3 Cache LGA 1366 130W Six-Core Desktop Processor BX80613I7980 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116402)

CPU Cooling:
CORSAIR CWCH60 Hydro Series H60 High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler - Newegg.com - CORSAIR CWCH60 Hydro Series H60 High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835181015)

GPU:
EVGA GTX 580 - Newegg.com - EVGA 015-P3-1580-AR GeForce GTX 580 (Fermi) 1536MB 384-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130587)

RAM:
CORSAIR Vengeance 4GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) x 6 for a total of 24 gigs - Newegg.com - CORSAIR Vengeance 4GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model CMZ4GX3M1A1600C9 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233141)

MOBO:
ASUS P6X58D-E LGA 1366 Intel X58 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard - Newegg.com - ASUS P6X58D-E LGA 1366 Intel X58 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131641)

System Drive:
Western Digital VelociRaptor WD6000HLHX 600GB 10000 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive - Newegg.com - Western Digital VelociRaptor WD6000HLHX 600GB 10000 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136555)

DVD/Blue Ray Drive/burner:
Pioneer Black 12X BD-R 2X BD-RE 16X DVD+R 8X BD-ROM 4MB Cache SATA Blu-ray Burner BDR-206DBKS - Newegg.com - Pioneer Black 12X BD-R 2X BD-RE 16X DVD+R 8X BD-ROM 4MB Cache SATA Blu-ray Burner BDR-206DBKS (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827129066)

Power Supply:
CORSAIR Enthusiast Series TX850 V2 850W ATX12V v2.31/ EPS12V v2.92 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC High Performance Power Supply - Newegg.com - CORSAIR Enthusiast Series TX850 V2 850W ATX12V v2.31/ EPS12V v2.92 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC High Performance Power Supply (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139022)

Case:
Antec Nine Hundred Two V3 Black Steel ATX Mid Tower - Newegg.com - Antec Nine Hundred Two V3 Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Gaming Case (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129097)

Monitor:
LG E2770V-BF Black 27" 14ms Full HD LED BackLight LCD Monitor w/ ThruMotion 250 cd/m2 DFC 5,000,000:1 - Newegg.com - LG E2770V-BF Black 27" 14ms Full HD LED BackLight LCD Monitor w/ ThruMotion 250 cd/m2 DFC 5,000,000:1 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824005237)

Keyboard and Mouse:
Bella Advantage Series 2.0 Keyboard for Adobe Premiere Pro with HD Mouse - Videoguys.com - Bella Advantage Series 2.0 Keyboard for Adobe Premiere Pro with HD Mouse (PC/Mac Hybrid) (http://www.videoguys.com/Bundle/Bella+Advantage+Series+20+Keyboard+for+Adobe+Premiere+Pro+with+HD+Mouse+%28PC-Mac+Hybrid%29/474.aspx)

Speakers:
Logitech Z623 200 w 2.1 Speaker System, THX-Certified - Newegg.com - Logitech Z623 200 w 2.1 Speaker System, THX-Certified (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16836121048)

External Media Storage:
Glyph ForteRAID Production Quality RAID Array 4TB - Videoguys.com - Glyph ForteRAID Production Quality RAID Array 4TB (http://www.videoguys.com/Item/Glyph+ForteRAID+Production+Quality+RAID+Array+4TB/03030343D244254564.aspx)


Am I missing anything? Any feedback is very much appreciated.

If you want speed for your system drive, exchange it for an SSD.

Also, you might consider adding more RAM (16+ GB). You will see quite noticeable jump in performance in CS5.5.

Blane,

You will also need additional internal SATA hard drives with that setup: That external RAID box relies on a single eSATA connection, which is not fast enough compared to multiple internal SATA connections to begin with. Plus, the included eSATA card is only of the 1.5 Gbps (150 MB/s burst maximum) class (or SATA I). The external RAID boxes are really suitable only for media storage/backups. As it stands right now, you have only a single hard drive for absolutely everything - OS, programs, media, pagefile, projects, renders and media cache. That alone makes that hexa-core i7 system with 24GB of RAM much slower in overall performance in CS5.5 than a properly tuned Core 2 Quad with only 8GB of RAM because (unlike SAS) SATA itself is only half-duplex (which means that data can travel in only one direction at a time), and that Premiere Pro and AME requires simultaneous reads and writes (which a single SATA hard drive or SSD cannot do). Adobe requires a minimum of two fast (7200 RPM or faster) internal hard drives using separate SATA or SAS connections to the motherboard (separate cables) - and additional fast internal hard drives are better, in this case.

Also, I would strongly recommend a different, roomier case than that Antec Nine Hundred Two: That case is seriously cramped on the inside, especially from rear to front. And if you have any hard drives installed in certain positions, the GTX 580 will not fit inside the case. The likelihood of the GTX 580 not fitting at all inside the Nine Hundred Two becomes virtually certain if you install more than four hard drives inside that case (in fact, I strongly recommend five or more internal hard drives (including the OS drive) in a video editing system). The Nine Hundred Two can barely accommodate a 10.5-inch card like the GTX 580 if no hard drives at all whatsoever are obstructing the PCI-e x16 slot's line of sight. But if any hard drives are installed in that line, the maximum card size gets reduced to less than 9.5 inches - barely enough for a graphics card with even a lower mid-range GPU such as the GTX 550 Ti.

And ignore what Bart stated about the RAM: The i7-9xx/X58 platform is already maxed out (support-wise) at 24GB. The i7-9xx/X58 platform does not currently support 8GB modules at all - and 8GB modules that are unbuffered and non-ECC are extremely rare and extremely expensive right now, with a cost of 10 to 12 times more expensive than 4GB modules (or put it this way, a single 8GB unbuffered non-ECC module costs five to six times more expensive than a dual-channel 8GB kit consisting of two 4GB modules). Support for more than 24GB of RAM currently requires a dual-CPU Xeon platform or an LGA 1155 Sandy Bridge (i7-2600K) platform (the latter requires spending more than $1,000 just for the RAM to get to its 32GB maximum, making that platform much less cost-effective than it should if you install more than 16GB of RAM on that particular system).

And speaking of your RAM choice, you might have made the wrong choice: If you bought six individual modules, there is a good chance that each of them comes from completely different production batches and/or completely different revisions (with completely different IC (Integrated Circuit) chips). This is because Corsair, like most other RAM module manufacturers, have multiple different assembly plants all running simultaneously - and each different plant gets different manufacturers' IC chips and PCBs (Printed Circuit Boards). And the use of mismatched lots and/or revisions increases the probability of the system developing stability issues such as application crashes and lock-ups.

Ah, sorry, I misread the original post. I thought the system had only 4 GBs of RAM.

Very nice Blain.
I envy you.
I have an old 920 on a P6TD-Deluxe, no USB 3 or SATAIII.
Still does well though.

A couple of suggestions:

2 SSD' in RAID 0 as boot drive instead of velos.
Windows, Premiere and all apps boot super fast.
This requires work to shift all user files to a separate disk, in my case 2 Seagate 1Tb's in RAID 0(also is my scratch disk) so the constantly rewritten files don't degrade the SSD's.

Is the Asus triple channel DDR3?
If so, a kit with 3 sticks takes advantage of this.
Check out the mobo manual for memory compatability and configuration.

You will love editing on your sytem with 5.5 and the Mercury playback,
not to mention the 980 and P658D.
Corsair PS is very good.
Corsair cases look interesting.

might want to reconsider raid for system ssd's as I recall you would lose TRIM support which is pretty important maintenance. use one of the ssd's for scratch disk instead, just a thought. Also, 7 ultimate might be overkill with precious storage taken from the system ssd for options you might not really need, IE encryption etc. save some $

jh

here is what I just built, working out a stingy sound static issue which is narrowing down to the EVGA 580

CPU
Intel i7 2600k

MOBO
ASUS P8Z68 V PRO

GRAPHICS CARD
EVGA GeForce GTX 580 1536 MB GDDR5 PCI-Express 2.0 Graphics Card

KVM switch
IOGEAR MiniView Dual Link DVI KVMP GCS1782 – KVM used

SYSTEM DRIVE
OCZ Vertex 3 Series 120 GB

MEMORY
16gb kingston-hyperx-khx1600c

PSRU
PSU SEASONIC| X650 GOLD SS-650KM R

COOLING
NOCTUA D14

INTERNAL DRIVES RAID 0
Seagate SV35 Series ST31000526SV 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB SATA 6.0Gb/s 2x

CASE
Cooler Master SGC-1000-KWN1 Storm Enforcer ATX Mid Tower

OS
Windows 7 pro 64 bit

"might want to reconsider raid for system ssd's as I recall you would lose TRIM support which is pretty important maintenance."

My disks get by without trim.
I rarely write to the SSD as boot because all userfiles are on a separate disk.
It is the constant write/erase that causes performance degredation issues on an SSD.
Eventually I may have to do a secure erase somewhere in the distant future.
In the meantime, I get 500Mb/s+ from my boot drive.
I take it for granted now, but I couldn't go back.
Premiere takes 8 seconds to load.

And you should be able to safely ditch Neoscene Cineform, and Windows Office 2010 and save some bucks.

Given that you are using Adobe CS5.5, there is no need to transfer footage to other codecs. So you probably don't really need Netscene Cineform.

As for Office 2010 ... use OpenOffice (http://www.openoffice.org/) or LibreOffice (http://www.libreoffice.org/) instead. Both so the same job and are open source / free.

Andrew

I haven't checked back to this thread in a couple of days, and WOW! Thank you all for the suggestions.

A few mental notes that I have taken thus far from the above replies/suggestions:
- I need to build a small RAID in the case to handle media that is being edited.
- I need a bigger case.
- RAM issues because I didn't purchase the ram as a matched set? I haven't seemed to find any sets of 4gig RAM sticks. Suggestions?
- I have canceled NeoScene.
- I have canceled Office 2010.


With media files stored on the external RAID, but not using them for active editing, could someone please explain the work flow, or how files are temporarily used on the new internal RAID? In other words, how should I go about using the added internal RAIDEd drives for editing? I suppose that I will add 2 1tb 7200 drives for this purpose.

What are scratch files?

What are pagefile files?

What is media cache?

I purchased the RAM all at the same time, same brand, same case, same specs and type. Will I have issues with it because it was not sold or advertised as a "matched set"? I haven't ever seen a matched set of 4 gig RAM sticks. Any suggestions?

Any recommendations for a better, bigger case?

Any recommendations for 7200 internal hard drives for the internal RAID? I read WD drives aren't good for RAID setups.

I agree with Andrew on Open Office. I've had it on the editing system and my other computers for a couple of years now.

I'm not so sure about Neoscene. Do you already have it or are you looking to buy it? If you already have it, I would say keep it. If you are thinking about getting it to work with with AVCHD footage in multi-layered and/or multi-cam projects, NeoScene can help but I've found Neo and its replacement, both with the First Light application, to be much more useful. If you are not doing a lot of AVCHD multi-cam projects, I would be inclined to skip purchasing NeoScene

For a computer case, Randall is right. Swap that Antec 902 for something better suited to an editing workstation. The COOLER MASTER HAF 932 is probably a better choice. Randall is also right about the external storage unit. I also got Gary Bettan's recent e-mailing about the Glyph units and quickly realized that it is little more than storage for parking inactive projects and archiving footage. The notes at the bottom of the product pages on the Videoguys website indicate that you only get high transfer speeds when the Glyph units are run in Raid 0 mode but that they use ForteDrivers which Windows currently limit these devices to partitions of 2 tb. If you want an external unit for a Raid with larger capacities or the safety of RAID 5 or 10 or whatever, you might want to look at Videoguys offerings of the G-Speed "es" units which come with a PCIe raid card. If you were going to add more drives to the system (per Randall's suggestion), then the Glyph unit could give you a decent back-up solution. (If you are working with tapeless recording, you definitely want media back-up.)

To expand a bit on Randall's advice about getting more drives, this means you want fast SATA drives for different functions. As Randall points out, SATA drives are fast but there are difficulties trying to read and write from the same drive at the same time. More drives are better with PPro CS 5.5. To get the advantage of your hardware, you want your source video files stored a different drive than your project and render files and your transcode files. The current set up is not unlike buying a high performance car and locking out all the gears above second gear. Basically, you want the system set up so that it is reading from drives different than then ones it is writing to. For example, you put your video source files on one drive, your projects files on another and render the timeline to a third. You can make a system without the other drives just as you could always drive around in second gear, if your wanted to. But why go to all the time and expense of building a high-powered system if you hobble it with very slow disk throughput? If you go with an internal RAID 0, use that for the video source files. Disks are relatively inexpensive, so get an additional disk for project and render files and another for transcodes.

As for drives, I've had pretty good luck with Hitachi drives from Newegg. For a couple of years, I have been using the 1 tb drives in my G-Speed Raid 10 and for my internal RAID 0. I've had no issues with the individual WD drives in my system. There have been numbers of postings here about WD drives and RAIDS, and my recollection is that some kinds of WD drives had issues and other WD types did not. I do not have the references to immediate hand, so can't help beyond that.

Finally, one question. I've looked to the videoguys recommendations in the past, and my current system is basically the DIY7. I have been thinking about upgrading the RAM and video card. I see that Gary has recommended a GTX470 as a GPU for DIY8, although that seems to be getting hard to find. What factors led you to choose a GTX 580 over less expensive alternatives such as a 570?

Jay, thank you for the response!

"Finally, one question. I've looked to the videoguys recommendations in the past, and my current system is basically the DIY7. I have been thinking about upgrading the RAM and video card. I see that Gary has recommended a GTX470 as a GPU for DIY8, although that seems to be getting hard to find. What factors other than led you to choose a GTX 580 over less expensive alternatives such as a 570?"

I found the 470 offered at NewEgg, but decided on the GTX 580 thinking that it would give me added performance eventhough now I am learning that it probably won't. For those who are wondering, Videoguys recommended the 470 for good performance with CS 5.5.

I need to choose some internal hard drives. What are some good choices?

I am going with the Coolmaster 932 full tower.

Update:

Items added...

New internal drives:
HITACHI Deskstar 7K1000.C 0F10383 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive x 4 - Newegg.com - HITACHI Deskstar 7K1000.C 0F10383 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145304)

New case:
COOLER MASTER HAF 932 Advanced RC-932-KKN5-GP Black Steel ATX Full Tower Compucase Case with USB 3.0 - Newegg.com - COOLER MASTER HAF 932 Advanced RC-932-KKN5-GP Black Steel ATX Full Tower Compucase Case with USB 3.0 and Black Interior (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119160)

- RAM issues because I didn't purchase the ram as a matched set?
I haven't seemed to find any sets of 4gig RAM sticks. Suggestions?

- I have canceled Office 2010.

With media files stored on the external RAID, but not using them for active editing, could someone please explain the work flow, or how files are temporarily used on the new internal RAID? In other words, how should I go about using the added internal RAIDEd drives for editing? I suppose that I will add 2 1tb 7200 drives for this purpose.

What are scratch files?

What are pagefile files?

What is media cache?

I purchased the RAM all at the same time, same brand, same case, same specs and type. Will I have issues with it because it was not sold or advertised as a "matched set"? I haven't ever seen a matched set of 4 gig RAM sticks. Any suggestions?

Any recommendations for a better, bigger case?

Any recommendations for 7200 internal hard drives for the internal RAID? I read WD drives aren't good for RAID setups.

Corsair Core i7 Triple Channel Memory Kits ? Corsair DDR3 Intel Memory Solutions and computer memory upgrades for desktop PCs (http://www.corsair.com/memory/intel-memory-solutions/intel-triple-channel-kits.html)

Scratch disks are where media is stored by Premiere / Photoshop.
Usually on a different disk to system.
By the way, using an SSD as a scratch disk is a waste.
They probably won't even outlast a 'raptor.

pagefiles are Windows system files that act as virtual memory.
They can be moved to another disk to speed up performance of C:\ drive, especially SSD's.

RAID HDD
I am using 2 x 1Tb SATAIII Seagates in RAID 0.
Cheap as chips and I play back Uncompressed Full HD from a Hyperdeck Shuttle on them and mixing with effects, no problems(with CS5.5 Mercury PB, GTX470 and the rest of the system)
They are backward compatible with my SATAII mobo, but you have SATAIII with your mobo.

For external storage I use a 2 Tb Seagate through eSATA and have an HDD dock in case I need to expand.
No need for speed here.
Also cheap as chips.

Case:
Coolermaster are very good.
I have a Coolermaster CM Storm, but I would buy a HAF if I was upgrading.

Workflow:
Using solid state media, copy to internal RAID, edit, output any way you like from Pr.

I purchased the RAM all at the same time, same brand, same case, same specs and type. Will I have issues with it because it was not sold or advertised as a "matched set"? I haven't ever seen a matched set of 4 gig RAM sticks. Any suggestions?

Read my statement about buying separate sticks of RAM below:

And speaking of your RAM choice, you might have made the wrong choice: If you bought six individual modules, there is a good chance that each of them comes from completely different production batches and/or completely different revisions (with completely different IC (Integrated Circuit) chips). This is because Corsair, like most other RAM module manufacturers, have multiple different assembly plants all running simultaneously - and each different plant gets different manufacturers' IC chips and PCBs (Printed Circuit Boards). And the use of mismatched lots and/or revisions increases the probability of the system developing stability issues such as application crashes and lock-ups.

That statement is especially true if you order the RAM online, sight unseen. In fact, most resellers do not separate the different batches or revisions of the RAM to begin with - and they tend to just pull out the six packages that are the most easily accessible from the rack and ship them. And every different IC has characteristics that are different enough, however slight, to not play nicely or at all with one another. That intermixture could result in your system developing serious stability issues or even fail to POST at all.

Let me clarify:

Scratch disks are where Premiere stores its RENDERED files. Media files are another matter entirely, and these are not in any way decided by Premiere, but by the user. Media always remain where the user did put it. It is said that you should separate the two for best performance, but frankly I have not seen any problem keeping both on a single RAID.

Note that scratch files can be set to be stored alongside the project folder, which can be a good idea for easy cleanup after archiving, but it depends on your workflow entirely.

Media cache is a place where Premiere stores cache of waveform files, indexes for mpeg files, and sometimes conform files for all compressed audio formats like mp3. It's good to move it from a system drive where it originally is located to another location, but top performance drive is not necessary, the only issue might be space considerations.

Guys, an external RAID device using eSata will do a great job for compressed HD video editing. We've got so any customers running G-RAIDs, G SPEEDQ, ForteRAID and Glyph RAIDS every day. They edit ProRes, AVCHD, XD Cam, P2, HDV, Cineform, DNxHD. Long format and pretty complex timelines using FCp, Avid, Premiere Pro, Edius, Vegas you name it.

Some folks need faster throughput. For those we have the G-Speed eS and eS Pro. You pay a premium for a dedicated RAID card, but you get much higher throughput.

Gary

Those external eSata raid boxes are designed for Mac Pros because they are limited on the number of internal drives.

I would ditch any Hitachi for Seagate 7200.12 or Barracuda XT or WD Caviar Black because they are 10-15% faster.

I would also ditch the Velociraptor for a SSD for many reasons, one of which is speed. A single Intel X25 80GB SSD makes 4 of those V-Raptors in Raid 0 look slow (from personal experience). In addition, the reliability of WD's 10k rpm drives is poor. I have had 4 Raptors die within 3 years of use and 3 V-Raptors die within 2 years of use. There is a HUGE thread over on storagereview.com about reliability issues. Many of those guys over there with problems have used them in large server arrays so its not just a couple computer geeks with one or two drives in their PCs. I used to love these 10k drives and now have 4 Raptors sitting on the shelf and 2 V-Raptors as media cache drives - nothing important will ever reside on them again.

Also, Intel's SSDs have proven to be the most reliable with the largest web servers now using them for a couple years with a much lower rate of failure than the best 15k drives.

I have a total of 5 PCs with an Intel X25 80GB in them (2 are work and one is my mom's laptop). How would you like Premiere and AE and Photoshop and Windows Explorer all opening in under 10 seconds (about 4 seconds for Premiere by itself, <3 seconds for PS by itself, ~4 seconds for AE).

It looks like you have a large budget so I would seriously consider a Lian-Li case - some of them can hold 12 drives. The extra $100 or so spent on the case will be saved by not having to buy an external drive case. Also, Lian-Li's higher end cases have great airflow AND are very quiet. I have one of their older models (a $350 case 5 yrs ago) with 10 drives inside and cannot hear any drives including an 8 drive Raid 5 array (1TB 7200.12s). If you want a case that is loud, look for the ones with large fans on the side. For quiet cases, look for insulation on the sides.

My last recommendation: if you rely on this PC to make a living and you have deadlines and possibly client sessions, then I wouldn't use anything but a hardware Raid controller from 3ware. Intel's software raid like what is built into the motherboard is not as reliable as a hardware raid controller and it cannot notify you if a drive is having problems with alarms and email. I have an Areca 1680ix in one PC and a 3ware 9750 in another (and a 3ware 9690 in a server). Only 3ware's software is able to send me emails with notification of problems (the Areca requires an email server on the computer it is installed in). I recently had a drive starting to die and the 3ware software notified me and I had a new drive by the time it died; thus, I had zero downtime and very little chance of losing data.

Another reason for hardware raid controllers is their ability to fix read and write errors which happen from a computer glitch or a hard drive error like a bad sector.

The last reason is redundancy which you get from Raid 1, 5, 6 and 10. Most likely, you would use Raid 5 as it gives you great read speed and allows a drive to die without losing any data and having any downtime. However, many like to use Raid 0 but you get NO redundancy and if one drive dies, you lose ALL data. 99% of people don't have a rigid backup schedule in place so imagine working on a project all day, and then BAM, a drive malfunctions or dies and all that work is gone. Or imagine being on a tight deadline and without redundancy, you will waste time reloading data and editing. Or if a client is in the room and they are being charged $75+ per hour - they won't like having to wait for you to fix it.

What about external backup drives? I prefer to use Vantec and Antec cases with fans so I can put in new drives as they fill up. I prefer Seagate 5900rpm drives in the retail box because they are the cheapest 2TB with 5 year warranty and are faster than the other green drives. Also, stay away from WD green drives because they spin down all of the time after just 7 seconds of inactivity. Personally, it is soo annoying having to wait several seconds for the drive to spin back up. I have 3 2TB Hitachi's full but one is in the mail to be replaced after just 6 months of use, and I have 4 2TB Seagate LP's on the shelf with 2 more on the way (they are called Seagate Green now).

Just a quick thought on saving money: if you do NOT use After Effects a fair amount, then going with the newer i7-2600k can save you some money, which I would spend on a 3ware 9750-8i and 4 2TB Seagate Barracuda XT, an Intel 510 series 120GB, and a 1TB drive to hold: Page File, Media Cache (from PPro & AE) and encoded video. Something to be aware of with WD drives, they are not designed to work in Raid 1, 3, 5, 6 or 10 and they can randomly disappear and cause data loss. For single drives and Raid 0, they work fine.

Newegg.com - Intel 510 Series (Elm Crest) SSDSC2MH120A2K5 2.5" 120GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167042)

Hi Steve,

Why would AE usage make a difference with the i7-2600k? It's still an i7 CPU running at 3.4GHz, isn't it?

Am I missing out on something here?

Andrew

OK. So if I ditched the external RAID system, and just went with my system drive, plus the 4 x 7200 1 tb drives for scratch, system files, etc, then add 4 more 1 tb drives for long term storage and backup, what would be the best way to interface all these drives with the mobo? I am using this motherboard: Newegg.com - ASUS P6X58D-E LGA 1366 Intel X58 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131641)

- Would I use a hardware RAID controller or can the motherboard handle the task quickly?
- Is this a PCI device?
- How do the drives connect to the RAID controller?
- Can anyone recommend a hardware RAID controller?

I have my eye on a Lian Li PC-P80N. With this case, I could include my archive/backup drives in the case.

- Would the 850W PSU still be usuable?

I should have created this thread before I went out a bought a bunch of stuff. : /

Thank you all for sharing your vast knowledge! It is helping me build the best possible system for sure.

Blane,

If you are going to have all those hard drives inside your case, then there will be corresponding heat issues. Best to use an external enclosure. The SOHORAID SR4 Enclosure with Hardware RAID 0,5 from VideoGuys (http://www.videoguys.com/Item/SOHORAID+SR4+Enclosure+with+Hardware+RAID+0%2c5/23352475D23543D2432535.aspx) is the one that I am getting for my system.

This unit has its own circuitry that does the RAID5 parity calculations and the only bottleneck on the system will be the speed of the hard drives. Just hook it in to a RAID "lane controller" card in your computer ... this is one that I have noticed lately (http://www.dv.com/article/108174) and (subject to double-checking) should do the job. It also comes empty so you can fill it with the hard drives of your choice.

I can't remember the reasoning, but people seem to be not so relaxed with motherboard-based RAID. But you really should have those drives in an external casing outside the computer.

Andrew

Blane,

If you are going to have all those hard drives inside your case, then there will be corresponding heat issues. Best to use an external enclosure. The SOHORAID SR4 Enclosure with Hardware RAID 0,5 from VideoGuys (http://www.videoguys.com/Item/SOHORAID+SR4+Enclosure+with+Hardware+RAID+0%2c5/23352475D23543D2432535.aspx) is the one that I am getting for my system.

This unit has its own circuitry that does the RAID5 parity calculations and the only bottleneck on the system will be the speed of the hard drives. Just hook it in to a RAID "lane controller" card in your computer ... this is one that I have noticed lately (http://www.dv.com/article/108174) and (subject to double-checking) should do the job. It also comes empty so you can fill it with the hard drives of your choice.

I can't remember the reasoning, but people seem to be not so relaxed with motherboard-based RAID. But you really should have those drives in an external casing outside the computer.

Andrew

Thank you, Andrew!

I have already ordered the Glyph ForteRAID external system from Video Guys: Videoguys.com - Glyph ForteRAID Production Quality RAID Array 4TB (http://www.videoguys.com/Item/Glyph+ForteRAID+Production+Quality+RAID+Array+4TB/03030343D244254564.aspx)
Using the Glyph external storage unit has been part of my original plan from the planning stages of this system, but others had recommended against using it for reasons stated in previous posts in this thread .

I think that I'll give it a shot and see how it works.

BTW, the Glyph comes with drives already installed, but can they be replaced with any standard format drive? Thanks!

Sorry, but that single 4-bay case is not ideal for real everyday work. I would never rely on a no-name company for something as critical as my working data. Also, this case is limited by the eSata connection AND the cheap IOP chip processing raid 5. In addition, with Raid 5, the quality of the raid controller is even more important due to how complex calculating the parity is. When a drive dies or just malfunctions causing it to be dropped from the array, you put in a new drive to begin rebuilding. With quality raid controllers, this will take a few hours per TB but with cheap raid, this rebuilding process can take days. In the meanwhile, a simple read error from a drive will cause ALL data to be lost. With consumer drives, there is a read error rate of once every 10TB - with a 4TB raid 5 array, far more than 4TB will be read during the rebuild process due to the way parity is calculated.

Saying that having many drives in a case will cause heat issues is completely untrue. Five years ago, maybe, but with today's 2 platter 1TB drives, there is no problem whatsoever.

Another reason why I like drives inside one case is due to all the extra parts in an external case: backplane, cables, Power Supply (always of the cheap kind), cheap fans, cables going from the drive backplane to the outside connectors (eSata, SAS, etc). I have purchased several external cases and have had everything from the fans to the drive backplane to the outside SAS connectors die on me. Aside from the irritating sound from bad fans, the other bad parts cause raid arrays to DEGRADE and even FAIL. Unless you have tons of spare parts like me, troubleshooting the exact problem is a nightmare.

About the i7-2600k and AE: AE likes more cores so the i7-970/980/990x with 6 cores is much faster than the 4 core 2600k.

Last thing I will say about storage is ALWAYS have your backup drives in external cases separate from the PC. Also, ALWAYS use a quality UPS to prevent damage to your computer from brownouts, surges, dropouts, etc. Several years ago, I made many mistakes due to thinking that none of these problems would happen to me. Then a brownout occurs and with no backup, I spent roughly 30 hours fixing my 1TB Raid 5 array and getting back 90% of the data. I ended up having to create a Virtual Machine and use a recovery program within the VM - at that time, this was a very difficult task due to how young the VM software was.

The catch-22 about high efficiency PSUs is that they need a very expensive UPS to run them which uses 'Pure Sine Wave'. At work, I have almost $2k in Pure Sine Wave UPS's for the computers. At home, I found out that my dual-battery APC is not PSW because it caused my LCD TV to make a horrible whizzing sound when I lost power for a few hours a while back. Also, HP issued a notice to customers a few years ago that most of their computers with high efficiency PSUs require a PSW UPS otherwise the PC would shut off during a power loss.

OK. So if I ditched the external RAID system, and just went with my system drive, plus the 4 x 7200 1 tb drives for scratch, system files, etc, then add 4 more 1 tb drives for long term storage and backup, what would be the best way to interface all these drives with the mobo? I am using this motherboard: Newegg.com - ASUS P6X58D-E LGA 1366 Intel X58 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131641)

- Would I use a hardware RAID controller or can the motherboard handle the task quickly?
- Is this a PCI device?
- How do the drives connect to the RAID controller?
- Can anyone recommend a hardware RAID controller?

I have my eye on a Lian Li PC-P80N. With this case, I could include my archive/backup drives in the case.

- Would the 850W PSU still be usuable?

I should have created this thread before I went out a bought a bunch of stuff. : /

Thank you all for sharing your vast knowledge! It is helping me build the best possible system for sure.

This is what I would get and from this place due to their excellent tech support and service. I get all raid equipment from them now for those reasons. I had purchased an external 4-bay Sata case and had problems with the backplanea year later. They let me return it for the more expensive SAS case and only pay the difference. They said that they almost stopped selling ALL sata backplanes due to poor reliability. Ever since then, I have pirchased only high quality SAS backplanes and have had zero issues.

3ware 9750-8i "+getMessage("iPrintVerKit")+" (http://www.pc-pitstop.com/sas_controllers/9750-8i.asp)

and this for cables from the raid controller to the drives "+getMessage("iPrintVerKit")+" (http://www.pc-pitstop.com/sas_cables_adapters/F87H7D-1M.asp)

IIRC, that Lian-Li case has rubber contacts for the hard drives or some way of isolating or absorbing drive vibrations, which is a great feature.

Watch this video to see why I like that feature.
Shouting in the Datacenter - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDacjrSCeq4)
a guy yells at a 16 drive array and then shows you how much those drives slowed down due to the vibration of his yelling. He talks in geek, but the conclusion is vibration hurts the performance of drives (and hurts the reliability as well).

I have a 750w PC P&C running 10 drives, GTX260, P6T, i7 920, 3ware raid controller and a few other things. In my HP Z800, a 850w PSU runs 2 6-core CPUs, 24GB ECC ram (draws more power than regular ram), 4 internal drives & 1 SSD, FX3800, raid controller, BM Decklink Extreme 3D and a few other things.

So, yes 850w is enough.

(Sigh.) There's no end to the detail involved in building a decent edit computer.

Andrew

Yep. Even though I don't like spending extra money on something I can easily build, I prefer buying customized PCs and servers from reputable companies like HP and their Z line of workstations. When I am on a deadline and/or have a client in the edit bay and something goes wrong, I absolutely must have someone to call to help me fix the problem. Because of this, I am willing to pay extra for better support and HP has been excellent.

This same reasoning explains why a business pays $12k for an Autodesk 12-drive raid system when they can get almost the exact same thing for half the price, but it doesn't come with the support of Autodesk (which is one of the best).

Another reason I like a PC builder is I have only 1 person to call if I have a problem whereas you must call every single manufacturer whether its the mobo, GPU, ram, raid controller if you build your own PC. And then you have so much fun listening to these manufacturers blame other parts for the problem - like I did when ASUS blamed PNY and the GPU and then PNY blamed the PSU. Thus, none of them would fix anything. With HP, I call or go online for support and the next morning, I have someone there or something in the mail. I thought that I replaced something properly in my Z800 but I screwed it up so the mobo had to be replaced. They even let me diagnose the problem so I didn't have to sit there for hours with them telling me to make sure the power is on.

What it all comes down to is when you are making a living from editing, your perspective should change.

Needless to say, my head has just about spun off due to all of these replies. All of them have been great perspectives btw!
As of last weekend my build is complete(OP build) and all is working well with PP5.5. I have the 4 1tb drives working as 2 RAID 0's through Windows which I know is not the best way to do it, (the mobo wouldn't do two separate RAID configurations). And the Glyph external RAID is running in a RAID 5.

I am very happy with the system so far, but I know that I can do better in the hard drive department.

Should I be using a PCIe hardware RAID controller for the internal hdds? I think yes.
What else can I do with the external

Should I configure the external drives some other way for better reliability?

I have tried to follow all the advice that I could regarding this system so I figured a way to add an UPS to the budget. Now learning that it should be a PSW UPS, I'm pretty sure that the one that I chose doesn't fit into those guidelines.
I bought this one from Costco: http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=11623562&search=apc+ups&Mo=1&cm_re=1_en-_-Top_Left_Nav-_-Top_search&lang=en-US&Nr=P_CatalogName:BC&Sp=S&N=5000043&whse=BC&Dx=mode+matchallpartial&Ntk=Text_Search&Dr=P_CatalogName:BC&Ne=4000000&D=apc+ups&Ntt=apc+ups&No=1&Ntx=mode+matchallpartial&Nty=1&topnav=&s=1
Will this work OK for me if I'm not trying to run the PC for prolonged times off of the batery?

You guys are great!

Needless to say, my head has just about spun off ...

Ah ha....that was my GOAL!

What size drives do you have in the external box? If 2TB, then I would go with Raid 10 which eliminates parity calculation AND gives you protection from 2 drives going bad without losing data (technically, due to the way Raid 10 works, which is taking 2 pairs of drives as Raid 1 and striping data between the 2 pairs, if you lose both drives as part of pair 1, then all data is lost. But if one drive from pair A dies and another from pair B, then you are fine. This happened to me a couple years ago with 10k rpm Raptors and I didn't lose any data). Also, if a drive dies with R10, the rebuild process is much faster because there is no parity calculation occurring - its simply copying data from one drive to the new one.

Also, R10's random access speed is much faster than R5. In addition, R10 is even faster when there are more than one read and write at the same time. With R5, a single write requires a read, then a write and then another read. With R10, a single write requires only one write to the disks.

Another reason I like hardware raid controllers and even Intel's software raid with Raid 1 and Raid 10 is because they are able to increase read speeds and lower random access. This works by reading data from all drives simultaneously rather than just one drive.

I find it very odd that you could not create multiple Raid 0 arrays. Did you use the Control + I during bootup to go into the Intel Matrix Storage manager and did you set the drives to raid within the BIOS? I have the almost exact same (P6T) mobo and have setup multiple arrays. Nothing has changed between my mobo and yours because they use the exact same ICH10R chipset. Also, did you plug all 4 drives into the correct Sata ports? I believe that 2 are Sata 6 which is controlled by a separate chipset (Marvell maybe?) and 6 are controlled by the Intel ICH10R.

I would definitely redo your 4 drives and create their Raid 0 arrays with the Intel Raid. You can download Intel's Matrix Raid manager and it will show you which drives and other devices are plugged into the Intel ICH10R Sata ports, but it won't show anything for Sata ports controlled by other chipsets (ie Marvell).

As I understand it, you have your video and project files on the external box. What are you using for the OS and how are you using the 2 Raid 0 arrays?

For me, there are two areas which are very important: the drives holding work data and the OS drive. With work data, I don't want to work on a project all day or across a couple days, forget to backup everything and then have a drive die or malfunction; thus, losing all that time. So, I always use redundancy which is why I use Raid 5 or Raid 10 on all of my PCs. My home workstation has 8 1TB drives in R5 - Seagate 7200.12 connected to a 3ware 9750; our broadcast server has Seagate Constellation in R5 with a 3ware 9690 controller - both are setup to verify data every week and email me with all status updates, warnings and errors. I was able to buy and replace a failing drive by the time it died because the 3ware raid controller emailed me about some sectors that went bad.

Finally, the OS drive is important because without a working OS drive, you cant WORK. I had always used either Raid 1 or Raid 10 for the OS drive, and then came along the Intel X25 SSD. This SSD makes my prior Raid 10 with 4 10k rpm Raptors feel utterly slow. Plus, SSDs tend to be more reliable than hard disks and Intel is at the top of SSD reliability.

On my main workstation (HP Z800), I have:
A) 7 2TB drives (enterprise class Seagate Constellation) in Raid 5 connected to an Areca 1680ix controller plus BBU (battery backup) with all documents, video, audio, stock images/audio/video, PPro project files, AE project files, Cinema 4D projects & renders, etc...
B) 4 1TB drives in Raid 10 via onboard Intel Raid for encoded files and Media Cache
C) an 80GB Intel X25 SSD for OS/Programs

FYI, another cool raid tidbit I like about the Intel Matrix raid is the ability to take 2 drives and create 2 DIFFERENT raid arrays on them. After 2 of my Raptors died, I changed the OS drives to Raid 1 and then created a Raid 0 array with the same drives for media cache. So, with 2 150GB drives, I had 80GB from each for Raid 1 & the OS and used the remaining ~160GB for a Raid 0 array. You can do the same thing with 4 drives and use Raid 10 for the OS and Raid 0 for the media cache & page file which is what I had before my Raptors began failing.

With your external raid box holding important data, I don't see a need for a hardware raid controller inside your PC because the onboard Intel raid works good enough.

Just one last suggestion from me: for backups, I buy only Seagate's 2TB 5900rpm drives now called "Green" (formerly "LP"), BUT you must make sure to get the Retail version in a box because it comes with a 5yr warranty whereas everyone else includes only a 2 or 3yr warranty. I just got 2 more today for $59.99 from Microcenter Micro Center - Seagate Barracuda LP 2TB 5,900 RPM SATA 3Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive ST320005N4A1AS-RK ST320005N4A1AS- (http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0334239)

Steve - that was a wonderful reply! Thank you!

Now, to answer some of your questions and give you a little more info.

The external box contains 4 x 1tb Seagate 7200.12 drives. These are configured in a R5 through the Glyph manager software. They are connected to the computer through a PCIe card via an eSATA cable.
(An interesting tidbit: When the Glyph box is connected via USB, the Glyph Manager software reads vital info from the drives. When connected via eSATA this info is not available. I hope that this still means that all alarms and the R5 system will still work.)
I think that I'll configure these 4 drives as a R10 as you suggested.

Inside the tower I have the one 600G VRaptor for the system and apps that is hooked to one of the 6gb/s SATA ports.
The other 4 drives are Hitachi 7200 1tb drives connected to 4 of the 6 regular 3gb/s ports.
These are the drives: Newegg.com - HITACHI Deskstar 7K1000.C 0F10383 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145304)

I tried to configure two internal raid 0 volumes via the Intel Matrix Manager, but I was only able to create 1 of the volumes. The options to create another were grayed out. Also, before I did this, I did set these 4 drives to RAID in the bios.
I ended up using a (workaround) through the MS disc manager where I selected drives 0 and 1 and striped them, and then did the same thing with drives 2 and 3.
I would really like to set them up properly through the Matrix Manager though, so any help with this would be appreciated. I'll also google this again and maybe go back into Matrix Manager a poke around a bit more.

"As I understand it, you have your video and project files on the external box. What are you using for the OS and how are you using the 2 Raid 0 arrays?"

The OS and other apps are on the 600g Raptor. I would love to RAID the system drive for redundancy, but that's not going to happen right now. The same goes for SSD's. They are awesome and fast, but I have already spent just about 5 grand on this system so far including software, so those upgrades will have to wait a bit.
Also, the tidbit about Matrix being able to creating a raid on one drive is very interesting. How could I take advantage of this feature?

I don't have any real media on any of the other internal or external drives yet, but following is how I planed to use them:
External drives: Long term storage for media files, saves and completed projects. I don't plan to actively pull or write data from these drives while I am editing.
Internal R0s: Used for scratch files, page files, storing temp media while I edit it. In all honesty, I don't really know the best way to use these two RAID 0's, so any advice would be great!

I also don't really know how to manage backup of files besides the auto save feature in PPro, so any advice on this would be useful as well.

Thank you again for the help. I look forward to your next answer/installment.

Needless to say, my head has just about spun off ...

Kinda makes you feel welcome to the community, eh? :-P

Andrew

Kinda makes you feel welcome to the community, eh? :-P

Andrew


Haha! :) Actually, yes it does. Some folks that have replied to this thread have left some lengthy answers full of great content, and I appreciate that very much. Thank you all for the help thus far!

Update:

Yesterday afternoon I got back into the Intel RAID utility and managed to configure the 1tb hdds in the tower to two R0's. The confusing part for me last time was that when I tried to configure that second RAID volume, the program wasn't letting me choose what disks to include in the raid. Let me explain this a little better: when I created the first volume, I selected drives 0, and 1. Then I selected the other parameters followed by the creation of the volume. When I began creating the next volume, the option to choose what drives to include in the second volume were unavailable. I suppose it was at this point that I gave up on the Intel raid for the time being.
After looking at it again yesterday, I came to the understanding that the reason the Intel Matrix program wasn't allowing me to choose what drives to use to create the second volume was because there were only two drives left to use, and the software is smart, so it already knew that.

So now the 4 1tb drives in the tower are in a proper RAID0 x 2, and the external 4 x 1tb Glyph box is in a R10.

I could still use some information on how best to use these two R0s with Windows 7 and the Adobe Production Premium software.