[Ultimate] All-Purpose Rig

[-silencer-]

it only supports 12 GB RAM and no raid 01

"Only" 12GB of RAM. That was my initial thought a few months ago after owning a DDR2 8GB mobo/ram for awhile, but you have to realize that there's just nothing available right now that's been tested with that much memory in the desktop market. Yes, the x58 *can* support 24GB, but motherboard manufacturers have had trouble just getting 12GB to be stable at decent speeds. Screw going past 12GB right now - it's just not worth sacrificing a quality motherboard like the Asus Rampage 2 Extreme (which I bought) for something that *SAYS* it supports 24GB. I'd bet with BIOS upgrades in the future that the Rampage 2 Extreme will support 24GB - Asus just isn't going to claim something it can't do RIGHT NOW. They all use the same chipset and are most likely capable of handling 24GB in the future..


As for RAID01.. just buy a damn aftermarket RAID controller card - it'll be faster using hardware RAID anyway. Get something like the 3ware 9650SE. You're nitpicking over a Core i7 system without going for what's the best overall product.. the Asus Rampage 2 Extreme.

[-silencer-]

if i want another video card i need a MOBO with 4 PCIe x16

imperfection has made realize i had to prioritize

1. Intel Core i7 965 support

2. Four PCIe x16(all available at x16)

3. DDR3 RAM

4. Max RAM higher than 12GB

5. Raid 5 and 01 support

That "rule" right there (#2) eliminates ALL x58 boards. The chipset simply doesn't have enough channels to handle the bandwidth. I believe Skulltrail is the only option then, which breaks rules #1 and #3. You're making rules that simply aren't available in today's market. Why don't you start by looking at what's actually available, then go from there? I had to make a choice from about 12 different x58 boards I really liked, and I initially had a "list" somewhat similar to yours. I picked the Asus Rampage 2 Extreme after weeks of deliberation, and I'm extremely happy with that choice.

You need to prioritize correctly.

1. Core i7 965 - excellent CPU that nearly all x58 boards support.
2. You're going to have to settle for a couple x8 slots - there are NO true electrical x16/x16/x16/x16 x58 boards, and there won't be in the future because the chipset can't handle it. About the best you can do is a x16/x16/x16/x4 board in the Asus P6T6 WS, but you can't use the other 2 slots if you use the true tri-x16 + x4 config. (There goes RAID controller support.)
3. All x58 are DDR3.
4. 12GB of RAM - *proven* to work at 1333/1600 speed on a few boards, and x58 supports 24GB so I'm sure all quality manufacturers will *eventually* have BIOS updates to handle it, once the memory is more widely available.
5. RAID 01? Buy a controller card that was designed to do it. Don't make this a factor in mobo choice.

You're asking for a product that isn't available. Good luck *hoping* that it comes out anytime in the next 6 months, because it won't.. there's not a chipset on the horizon that can support quad-x16.

[MaltheMM]

yet another prioritizing...

MOBO prioritizing
1. Intel Core i7 965 Support
2. 12GB ram support ( the more the merrier )
3. PCIe x16 ( must have atleast 2 true x16 )

Video prioritizing
1. QUALITY
2. 4x DVI outputs ( only 2 if if the card supports 3840x1080 or 1920x2160 )

Ram prioritizing
1. 240 PIN
2. 4GB per stick

EVERYTHING NEEDS TO FIT TOGETHER

[Sam DeathWalker]

Once again I am in agreement wih Silencer.

Clearly you are not using this soly for WoW multiboxing. I really dont know what the facination with raid is. The simple fact with raid is that when one drive fails your data is GONE. I once try and reconstruct data from failed raid drive and that was the end of raid for me. Get raptor and system ram. You dont need raid.

Any MB you get is going to be X58 based, and thus all will be the same, so you may as well get the best of those the RampageII

The Nvidia nvs 450 is the most resonable 4X solution, as you only heed two.

I'v only found the one company to make 4G ram in a single stick so yur choices are limited (might be more but not all that obvious). In DDR3. I think there are some DDR2 but ...


The other resonable option is to simply wait. Im not buying any of this stuff untill its 1/2 the current price. Why be a beta tester for all these companies? 6 months from now you will probably have 6 companies makeing the 4G ram and the motherboards will have more stable bios updates, and 450 vidoe cards will be lower in price.

[MaltheMM]

my fascination with raid is that i on my current PC filled it's 500GB HD in 2 months
and by using Raid 01 on 4 1TB drives i get 2TB storagew AND AUTOMATIC BACKUP

when any of this stuff is ½ of it's current price there will be new stuff thats even better at handling 5 wows and heavy duty film editing


which ASUS MOBO is the best

when using 8 screens which is best DVI-D, HDMI or VGA
'cause this nvs 450 has 4 HDMI instead of DVI outputs

[-silencer-]

ASUS MOBO[/url] is the best

when using 8 screens which is best DVI-D, HDMI or VGA
'cause this nvs 450 has 4 HDMI instead of DVI outputs

Why use 4 drives in RAID01 for 2TB total space when you can use 3 drives in RAID 5 for 2TB total space? A slight performance difference, but that can be mitigated with an external RAID controller (which you'd likely need for RAID01 anyway).
8 screens = 4 videocards unless you're using TripleHead2Go (which is limited to 1280x1024 max resolution on each monitor).. which means your only Asus option is the previously-mentioned P6T6 WS.. at x16/x16/x8/x8 (or is the slot slot still only x4?.. it's not clear in the specs).
Again.. there's very little documentation on 4GB per stick of RAM and motherboard compatibility.. get 6x2GB for sure-fire 12GB system with no crashes.. or wait. It took mobo manufacturers long enough to get 12GB stable on *some* boards, and many still aren't stable at 12GB of 2GB sticks. It's only more difficult when you increase the memory density by going with 4GB sticks.

[MaltheMM]

if i use Quadro NVS 450

i only need 2 cards

[Sam DeathWalker]

http://forum.ecoustics.com/bbs/messa...79/122868.html

I think you can convert hdmi to div and visa versa np.

RampageII is the best.

I dont see a problem with gettinng 4 1.5T drives, wouldn't "automatice backup" slow everything down a lot? I just dont like raid. What I do is I have a 80G drive for my operating system and 1.5T drives for movies and all that. Every week I copy the 80G to another 80G with arconis 11 (makes a bit for bit full drive copy). I have the TT shark cases which let me slap in drives in under 2 mintues and take them out (drive pull out to the side). I dont run norton or any anti vires. If my system goes down, I go get aback up drive toss it in and 4 mintues later I am up and runnning ....

I dont think that there is a need to back up music and movies files its not liek you can't get them again ... plus you can recover most non raid failures if you didnt overwrite you stuffs, raid failuers and its all over, thats why I dont like raid you can't recover (well maybe with the back up raid you are talking about).

Look into Cuda and if you plan to do heavy duty blu-ray film editing, forget it, I been trying to do that for a year now all all products are just crap. Now maybe with this system you can directly edit blue ray, but on mine its a joke. Tmpg Express 4 and Badaboom are Cuda enabled as is powerdirector but they are all lmited in some form or other. Other editing programs are so slow with blu ray its out of hand, even vegas. Although this computer you are talking about might have the horses to do the job right. if you can fire up vegas on this and edit blue ray, without conversion to another format, in real time I might get one also lol .....

You know lol if you get 24G ram you can put the whole bluray movie into ram (the main part) ... lol wow heh...

I dont know anything about the reliabilty problems of 24G and Silencer could well be right that its a pipe dream right now, again I would wait, I just dont see it my job to beta test everyones new stuffs.

[alcattle]

There are 2 video cards at Newegg with 4 DVI outputs. Both are 4850 x2, difference is memory.

[MaltheMM]

and the Sapphire one was my first choice but then i got otherones recommended



Also would i be better off with a Skulltrail and 2 of the best Core Extremes