Who likes building Monster PCs?

[shizzzon 461]

I recently built myself a Q9300 (quad 2.5stock, OCed to quad 3.33 for daily use) with 4gb of RAM(OCed to 1114MHz) with a FSB of 1772MHz for daily.

I built this pc mainly to be able to backup 1080p videos as i have done DVDs on this pc and has been phenomenal! 6-8 minutes on a 2pass encoding up to 3.5hrs worth of video complete.

I also wanted to be able to do High Definition as well but i see that's more complicated. It took me approximately 3hrs 32min to 2pass encode a 2hr movie at 1080p.

Everything will be around this if not higher in a couple yrs and that's when i want to build the next new monster... but what i am about to lay out IS A MONSTER.

So, for those who always keep up with technology, help me make sure i dont choose the wrong processor line-

I want to use a Quad socket motherboard... YES, u read right, a quad SOCKET motherboard with 4 Quad cpus in it.

The encoding software I use works best with processors that have the highest SSE level instruction know-how.

I am assuming this would be Intel Xeon processors, correct?

I see AMD Opteron's are almost a steal but i know nothing of their SSE instructions if they have any and their level.

Basically, i need a 16 core MINIMUM system running around 8-32gb of memory, nothing too high.... And that's another question.

Motherboards that support quad socket only use ECC memory.

How does ECC memory differ from non-ECC memory in terms of video encoding and massive hard drive use of backing up data from customer's computers daily and maybe a pc game here n there?

Even though this sounds massive, from my guesstimation, i'm only assuming a 2pass encoding time of 1080p for a 2hr video to be just a hair under 60 minutes. Faster than that would be awesome but i think that's about right.

[Aaron Clinton 2,372]

Sounds pretty nuts. Mark has a i7 with 12 gig ram and some sick video cards. I am trying to talk the wife into nabbing a year old dual core 64bit machine for very cheap. But she wants a laptop.

[RobClay 20]

If i had the money id love it, but for now i just install the latest stuff from microsoft, like windows 7 n such

[shizzzon 461]

operating system probably wont help as much or at all for speed with stuff like this.

It's purely based on the instructions that the processors support and the software that is capable of using those instructions!

Now, yes, i've heard of this new video encoding technology of using Nvidia video card's GPUs to help massively in the speed of encoding... but there is a major downfall.

I've never had the experience of seeing it for myseld but they due disclose a warning letting people know that using GPUs to encode video WILL alter the quality outcome and High Definition backups should not be altered so that is why i have never been interested in the technology.

[RobClay 20]

Your right, but it is a big step up in performance vs. vista or xp.

Im on a 5 year old gateway, 1 gig of ram, 250gb hard drive, only upgrade is a pny geforce 8600gts and a 500w power supply.

And out of all the os's ive tried windows 7 seems to be the fastest and most stable.

[shizzzon 461]

i currently use winxp 64bit at the moment.

I got VMware, i could run windows 7 in it and see what happens but i gotta have like a whole day to setup all that stuff.

[Aaron Clinton 2,372]

I did not build it, but just snagged a 4gig, dual core mini-tower, and really sweet monitor for uber cheap.

[Jmac 24]

Your right, but it is a big step up in performance vs. vista or xp.

Im on a 5 year old gateway, 1 gig of ram, 250gb hard drive, only upgrade is a pny geforce 8600gts and a 500w power supply.

And out of all the os's ive tried windows 7 seems to be the fastest and most stable.

Vista and 7 run about the same on my Xeon 3.87 GHz Dual Core w/ 8 GB of RAM, Radeon HD 4870 except Vista is more stable.  Both of them smoke XP (which is limited to 3 GB of RAM unless you run the 64-bit version); XP sucks so bad at multitasking.    On an older/lower-end machine or a laptop, 7 is leaps and bounds better than Vista, for sure.

I enjoy building monster PCs.  My budget didn't allow last spring (I had to skimp on a lot of stuff as my GF and I were planning to buy a house, so she wanted me to save as much as possible).  I'll probably build a new one next spring (it's hard to believe it will have been 2 years already) as this one is starting to show its age in some applications (i.e. Grand Theft Auto IV) plus I'll switch to Windows 7.

[shizzzon 461]

i know this is a little old but u use Xeon for daily processing, games, etc?

I always wondered how and what differed from servers cpus vs mainstreamed cpus such as core 2 duo\quad and i7s

[bread0710 0]

theres prob no difference in performance is the ECC and non ECC ram is the same speed. servers mostly use ECC due to the error correcting codes it has.

[shizzzon 461]

that's another point u brought up...

Can ECC memory be overclocked.. and by OC i mean just 1 MHz? How tolerant is ECC memory when overclocking?

Do popular companies that make OC chips such as Corsair do ECC memory like this too?

[Jmac 24]

  Well, the Xeon I have can use ECC or non-ECC memory (motherboard dependent) ...  It's mainly just a higher-binned Core 2 Duo that operates on a lower default voltage.  You should be able to OC ECC memory ...  Whether or not a server motherboard will give you that option in the BIOS is another story, however ...   Intel had the Skulltrail platform a little bit ago that used ECC DDR2 FBDIMMs that could be overclocked ... 

[inkfx 3]

I doubt ECC memory will clock well at all. ECC modules are for maximum stability. They aren't going to be as fast as non-ECC due to the error checking. That memory is meant for a server environment, where you can't afford to have any mistakes.

What kind of budget are you working with? I think a nice Core i7, some tri-channel memory and a nice harddrive array is what you want.

You may also want to consider picking up a Mac. OSX is going to be much better when it comes to your video encoding. I usually don't recommend Macs because the hardware comes at a premium but they will churn through your encoding much better than a Windows based system. Unix > Windows.

[shizzzon 461]

whereas you may be right because i've never owned or used a mac, after doing enough research, i found the solution-

CUDA technology + Toshiba's SpurEngine + my current quad core OC system.

Installing an nVidia video card with CUDA support and a pci card with Spur'sEngine capability, encoding times increase by over 400-550%.

It allows the video card, the pci decoding chip and the quad core processor to all tackle a video at once!

[Hayabusa 0]

I got a quad core yorkfield 2.5 ghz chip, 8 GB of OCZ Gold DDR2 Ram, Raedon 4830 GPU, and am running this via Ubuntu 64 bit 9.04. Fun stuff so far been running my setup all year. I love the speed. I don't have anything OC'd though. Everything runs cool to around 20-25C. My Case has 3 really big fans in it not sure if I have enough cooling the OC though. I have a 22" LCD Monitor and wireless logitech keyboard and mouse by the way to add a little more flash to the setup. Only thing I don't like is these darn blue lights in the Antec Case that I have hehe. I need to try to figure out how to turn them off. Any ideas on what would be best for dusting the inside of my computer out? My fans have some dust on them and I want to safely remove the dust.

[aznboi3644 2]

I wish I had the money to build a huge computer...college lol

Last week just bought me an Asus U81 notebook though...not bad for 700 notebook. 64 bit OS, 4G ram, dual 2.1GHz processors, and my favorite is the facial recognition. All I do is press power and look at the camera and it logs me on.

I'm not much of a computer nerd nor do I know a lot about all the different processors and what not. But I just have certain performance standards. Comparing this notebook to any other Dells or HPs it owns them. Same price for performance for the Dells or HPs was around 1200 for the same performance.

[SuBXeRo 1]

Unless the software you use supports up to 16 core for a quad chip quad core, it is pointles to have because the programs wouldn't use them. That is a limitation of most programs now a days, they arent written to gie and acept commands from an unspecified amount of cores. They will either use 2 or 3 or 4 cores, but more than that has to be specified unless u design new code that allows that to be open ended. The xeons are for servers as well as the opterons, but what you are doing is heavily cpu based so in a sense those chips would be good for that even though it would be for home use as well. ECC is for more stability as stated but is slower if i remember correctly. i read up on it a long time ago. ECC mem is also way more expensive than non-ecc memory. In the quantities you are talking, you are going to drop serious dough on the memory alone, several thousand at a 32 gig capacity.

Intel is comming out with a new chip 4th quarter this year. Its a tri core or quad core, it has built in graphics and mem controller, so quad core i believe and 2 cores for multitasking. This chip will be for laptops and help bridge gaps between the vid card and performance as well as onboard mem controlling. This chip will come out first and next year, intel is planning to come out with a desktop version of this, higher power and capacity. Nvidia is also doing similar things with their ION platforms which uses an intel atom coupled with a nvidia grpahics chip, look that they will combine them soon. All chips will be going this way in the future because the speed gained is massive in comparison to offboard chips. It sux in a way, but its rather impressive as well. I wonder what it will do to competition in the long run. Tough times are ahead for ATI and AMD unless they can compete.

Personally, i am planning to upgrade my rig. I have a core 2 duo 2.66ghz and an intel board with a 6600gt vid card and 2 gigs of ram with win xp pro 32 bit. I am planning to get an Asus P5Q deluxe mobo, oc the chip from 2.66 to 3.66 which is a cake walk, dumb 8 gig of crucal ballistix ram in with 4-4-4-4-12 lat. I am going to get win 7 pro 64 bit so that the ram is all seen and usable and i want to buy 2 new western digital black 500 gig hdd and raid them. The mobo has 2 sata raid ports that i can use that no software is installed, its called drive xpert and has the controller onboard already. The hdd's are nice, they have 32 meg cache, woot. I am planning to get an nvidia card, i want the dual gpu cards, waiting for prices to crash somewhat before buying, they are still high since they are brand new. The CUDA you all were talking about coupled with PHYSX are nice things to have. I dont see why future games wouldnt take advantage of them so it makes sense to get the technology. I was torn between ATI and Nvidia and those 2 technologies couples with their overall ability to perform better than ATI at this point was my second reason to go for it. I dont have anything agaisnt ATI, i just wish they made better cards.

[shizzzon 461]

I wouldnt really spend the money on dual cards... Performance increase is not that great in terms of FPS.

I also disabled drive expert on mine, it got on my nerves, hehe.

When it comes time for me to start doing massive HD encoding, i'm just gonna use the pc i got now and purchase a CUDA based card with a spurs-engine card and be set.

All the software i use to encode video uses an unlimited amount of cores as long as you have them so i have no hardware restrictions. A couple other programs only support quadcore or lower but when a new tech comes out, they are immediately upgraded anyway.

[SuBXeRo 1]

SLI is beneficial only in games that really support the technology. I had gotten SLI when it first went mainstream or so in 2005 and it sucked, the software for it was terrible. I was able to see some increase in image quality as well as FPS if i didnt change settings to higher res. In encoding like you're doing, i dont know how beneficial it would be. Personally, i dont think i'll be doing it anytime soon again, kind of lost faith in it right now. It sux that the board i want only supports xfire since i want an nvidia card, but then again, im not gonna pay more for a sli board and probably not use it.

[shizzzon 461]

well, video encoding would take control of the video card's capability of mathematical calculations. Another company is also using this technology to crack passwords quicker.. minutes rather than days!

The technology used today for such encoding methods speed up encoding if using a quadcore processor to over 400% easy when using both a CUDA based card AND a spurs-engine card.

Few hundred dollars worth of card but well worth it.

Processors out now are just not capable of 1080p encoding at high rate speeds due to the differences between a cpu and a gpu.

[SuBXeRo 1]

disconnecting the leds may be an issue, it seems everything is integrated, i have a fan with red LEDs and i never noticed a way to shut them off. Cleaning your case, use canned air or an air compressor, just make sure if you use an aircompressor you try distances further out to make sure u dont ruin anything. Lastly, you can use a vacuum cleaner that is set to blow instead of suck.

[shizzzon 461]

what? lol. Did you mean to post that? it doesnt fit with the conversation...

[SuBXeRo 1]

wow, maybe i read it somewhere else and answered a post here wow, disregard lol

[Aaron Clinton 2,372]

There are guys on the SETI.USA team with me, that are running two or more CUDA cards for their GPU's.

[shizzzon 461]

when i mention using dual cards previously, it was pointing towards gaming. benchmarks i've seen are not impressive increases for the FPS. video encoding .. i am unsure of... maybe nvidia would know?