Best parts for building new encoding computer?

[lordsmurf]

Looking for some advice here...

It's time to build a new system for encoding. (CPU)

Some heavy-yet-infrequent Photoshop CS5 work as well. (RAM)

I'm currently using an AMD Phenom II 940 from 2009. It's been great, but it's now 6 years old. It also runs Windows XP. At 4gb, it's starving for more RAM. It used to be my main ATI capture system, but that task was split to a dedicated system back in 2012.

My goal is not cheap, so "best bang for the buck" is not a factor (and I hate that phrase anyway).
Inversely, bleeding-edge ($$$$!) is not the goal either.

It must have/be:
- 4x eSATA*
- 6x SATA*
- 1x IDE*
- 10x rear USB
- 2x front USB
- 16gb RAM
- 4-5 PCI express slots may be needed, most of them 1x sized*
- ability to use 4tb drives
- no issue with SSD drives; may upgrade C: to 1tb SSD
- Windows 7 Home Premium or Pro
- fanless video card (encoding/photo system is not GPU heavy)
- Realtek onboard audio
- silent power supply (keeping the existing case)
- near-silent heatsink/fan
- system that does not run hot
- should not be a glutton with power -- aka drains UPS, runs hot
- probably Intel CPU, not AMD

Also:
- fw800 is nice bonus, but not required
- at least 2 PCI non-express slots would be safe, but not required
- onboard video will be considered

* There's more than 1 way to get SATA, eSATA, IDE, and USB, mostly using PCI Express cards.
- Example: The current Gigabyte motherboard has 7x SATA. 5 are used internally, and 2 are passed to eSATA externally via a simple bracket.
- 4-5 added USB2 ports per PCIe cards seem common
- 1x IDE via PCIe seems available, probably 2x IDE card exists as well
- 2x SATA via PCIe seem common
- 2x eSATA via PCIe seem common, some even have 2xeSATA+2xSATA

Any advice on ANY parts to get, or ANY parts NOT to get, is appreciated.

I don't expect anyone here to plan out the whole system, though that'd be appreciated as well.

Total budget is about $1000-1250-1500.
- 1000 is great
- 1250 is probably more realistic
- 1500 if I must
- excludes 1tb SSD

The main catalyst is that the Phenom has been rebooting daily by itself for the past week. It's also running hotter than it used to. And it's had a USB connection error for a year now. The front USB is dead, and the rear will sometimes just quit working. Given my heavier use of Avisynth these days, it just makes sense to finally upgrade.

[gonca]

CPU --- i7-4790 or i7-4790k
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117369

MOBO
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157501

RAM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233538

[lordsmurf]

What about the 6700K, the z170 version of that Asrock, and the DDR4 version of that Corsair?

The long-term price difference is not that much, given that the 6700 has lower heat output (less AC needed). Anything I can do to keep down the heat is a good thing. This Phenom II 940 is honestly too hot. According to some of what I've read, the 4970K would be about 5 degrees (C) cooler than my Phenom, while the 6700K is 10. That's huge.

[gonca]

Your choices look good, but the z170 motherboards are still fairly new, (possible bugs). I guess googling the specific models should show any isuues.
One thing you might have to watch, apparently some devices advertise USB 3.1 Gen1, which is USB 3.0.

the 4970K would be about 5 degrees (C) cooler than my Phenom, while the 6700K is 10. That's huge

When you add the extra heat from the power supply, etc, that 10 C could turn into 15 C, plus the noise from the cooling

[pandy]

I believe You are searching for server board (as number of PCIex lanes in current customer solutions may be insufficient from your perspective).
http://tweakers.net/categorie/47/moederborden/producten/#filter:q1bKL0pJLXLLTM1JUbJSKi...9NrACyzJVqa2sB

"Aantal PCI-e x16 slots" slider allow to select how many full size PCIex slots are available...

For example http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/X99%20WS/

Side to this something on socket 2011-3 for example Intel Xeon E5-1630 v3 http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Xeon+E5-1630+v3+%40+3.70GHz

Reduce number SATA/eSATA lines to fit in a budget.

[gonca]

lordsmurf
here are some z170 boards to consider

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157631

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157633

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157630

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157672

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157632

[gonca]

Summary so far (prices as per links, shop around as I am in Canada so costs are different)

CPU i7-6700k $370
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117559&cm_re=i7-6700k_process...-559-_-Product

Motherboard $180
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157631

RAM $150 / $230
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233863
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233723

SSD $90 / $130 make sure the M.2 fits
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147431
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147359

[usually_quiet]

Silent power supplies:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151122
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817256108
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151154
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA68V21E0645

Fanless models only go up to 520W. Models with fans have higher-wattage versions, but since this build won't have a giant power-sucking video card, it may not need a higher wattage PSU.

[gonca]

Nice silent power supplies usually_quiet, next time I build I will have to ask for your advice

[usually_quiet]

This fanless video card might be worth looking at: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500366

It might finally be possible to use the CPU's built-in graphics with a Skylake CPU. Unfortunately, I haven't read any good reviews on Skylake's video capabilities. It does include hardware decoding for H.265.

Some problems with previous Intel CPU graphics were corrected with Haswell. http://www.anandtech.com/show/7007/intels-haswell-an-htpc-perspective Supposedly there was still a clipping problem, but I can't find the link about it.

[usually_quiet]

Nice silent power supplies usually_quiet, next time I build I will have to ask for your advice

It was just dumb luck. I have been looking a PSUs for myself to replace the one in my HTPC. I ran across some of these silent models in the process, but they are too long for my case and some are too expensive as well. I will settle on something eventually.

[lordsmurf]

PSU:

A fanless PSU! I never thought such a beast would exist.

I have one of the "modern" cases where the PSU sits on the bottom of the case. Right now, my PSU pushes air down and out. I guess this a fanless CPU, the heat would rise into the case, and then be pushed out be either the rear or top fan? The side has incoming cool air.

This is it: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129066
It's an excellent near-silent case, used for both my encoding system and my capture system.

The PSU is one of the loudest components, and no fan is a huge step. The more noise I can remove, the better. I'd actually consider buying several of those, for other computers.

Are you leaning towards any specific one? What are you looking at getting?

SSD:

For the SSD, I'm looking at this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147374
Anything under 1tb isn't worth it.

I need to test the workflow, but encoding to or from SSD (before moving to another drive) may help with I/O. Anything to encode faster, right?

@pandy: PCIe lanes:

The most I'm going to use PCI express cards for is to add
- eSATA (x4)
- maybe USB (x4) if more are needed
- IDE (x1) for my excellent-at-reading-discs Pioneer DVD burner (or maybe my BTC)

If I get the z170 board, I'll be using onboard graphics. The system is purely for
- encoding video
- doing Photoshop work
- and serving as the 24/7 DLNA server with 4 connected 2tb USB drives (someday, moving those all internal with a 10gb RAID-1 mirror would be nice!).

I often have 3-4 eSATA drives plugged in at once, and 2 reading/writing to each other to move around files. eSATA is actually one area where my Gigabyte board for the Phenom performs flawlessly.

Why won't the z170 boards work for this?

@gonca: Mobo

Lots of links to investigate.

Which are you leaning towards most? Is there any reason you didn't list the fatal1ty version of the z170? (not actually "fatal1ty", but the board specs are the same, just z170/DDR4 instead of Haswell/DDR3).

It looks identical: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157634

SATA express:

This is new to me. Are these just more SATA slots? Meaning I can just use my brackets to convert the SATA to eSATA, and don't need to buy a PCIe eSATA card? That would be perfect.

[sophisticles]

I think you may be looking at this all wrong. If you are looking at building a pc strictly for video encoding, I would skip Windows and choose a nice Linux distro. I have been a devout Windows user for years, from back in the Win 95 days and though I played around with Linux a few times after the release of XP64 I never looked back. I stuck with Windows, upgrading to Vista, then to Win 7, and recently I tried Win 8, 8.1 and 10. I realized that I kind of like Win 8.1, but absolutely hate Win 10. I was also recently running some tests with various viruses (a hobby of mine) and I found some nasty viruses that would bring Win 8.1 to it's, FUBARing it so badly that I had to do a clean install, Win 10 didn't fair any better, Win 7 was surprising the most resilient, but none of them could handle what I through at them despite being hardened as much as reasonably possible, with numerous anti-viruses running, anti-exploit tools, EMET, and so on.

I also read that AVX-512, when it finally appears in cpu's, won't be supported by Win 7 or Win 8/8.1, it will require Win 10, and I have no intention of running Win 10, because as I said I can't stand it and also because of the well publicised security concerns and changes to MS' EULA that grants them access to your data.

So I switched to Zorin 10, a Ubuntu based distro. Here's the thing, I use a cheap FX8320 with 8gigs of DDR3 1600 and a run of the mill microcenter branded 128gb SSD, along with a number of internal and external hard drives for storage. I noticed that Linux seemed to make much better use of my hardware, the whole system "felt" faster, so I ran a bunch of tests, mostly encoding.

I downloaded a nightly build of Handbrake that supports x265 encoding on Linux (the regular build doesn't) and to my surprise x265 encoding under Linux is way, way faster than on Windows. On Win 7, reading from the SSD and writing to a fast HDD with 64mb of cache, encoding x265 SD content with the ultra fast preset would barely hit the real time encoding speed range, with 1080p content, 8 mb/s, it would hit about 10fps, and DivX HEVC would hit 20fps.

With Zorin OS, encoding from a 1tb external hard drive to an external 1tb hard drive, both connected to USB3 ports, x265 hit 90fps for SD sources, with deinterlacing enabled, though it would settle into the 60fps range as the encode progressed (the deinterlacing was clearly bottlenecking the process). With the same 1080p source, going from external hard drive to external hard drive x265 with the ultra fast preset encodes at 30fps for a 25fps source, meaning better than real time. I have run these tests with numerous sources and there's no getting around it, Linux makes much better use of this hardware than any Windows variant I ever tried.

So what's my point? this processor doesn't support AVX2, the x265 developers have stated that AVX2 gives about a 30% speed improvement and they have also said that they expect AVX-512 to bring similar speed improvements. MS has no plans to support AVX-512 in anything other than Win 10, which means that when processors that support that instruction set hit the market you either have to upgrade to Win 10 to see the benefits or you have to switch to Linux, or possibly a Unix.

If you're building a pure encoding system, go as frugally as possible, wait until the Skylake based Xeons hit the market that will support most of the AVX-512 instruction set, and use a distro that features a kernel build with support for that instruction set. Alternatively build a cheap system based on an FX processor (you can pick up a FX8320 + supporting MB for $125 from microcenter) and wait until the Zen based cpu's hit the market.

You may be hesitant to switch to a *NIX, I was, as many of the apps that you are accustomed to, such as Sony's offerings and Adobe's, have no Linux ports, and Avisynth has no Linux port either, but you may find that you are able to do what you want with the tools that are available.

Maybe not the feedback you were expecting or wanted but I just wanted to share my experiences with you guys, for pure encoding speed with x265, you want to use Linux. I haven't tested x264 encoding all that much, but I know I'm saving up my pennies to pick up a Skylake based Xeon and see what that can do with this OS.

[usually_quiet]

PSU:

A fanless PSU! I never thought such a beast would exist.

I have one of the "modern" cases where the PSU sits on the bottom of the case. Right now, my PSU pushes air down and out. I guess this a fanless CPU, the heat would rise into the case, and then be pushed out be either the rear or top fan? The side has incoming cool air.

This is it: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129066
It's an excellent near-silent case, used for both my encoding system and my capture system.

The PSU is one of the loudest components, and no fan is a huge step. The more noise I can remove, the better. I'd actually consider buying several of those, for other computers.

Are you leaning towards any specific one? What are you looking at getting?

I can't install any of the ones I recommended for you because I'm limited to a length of 140mm or less by the Lian Li PC-C50B I'm using. Silverstone makes a few PSUs (not silent) that would work, but the warranty on some is rather short. I found this one from Cooler Master today, which I still need to examine more closely: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817171092

Higher efficiency helps a lot with noise by itself. I installed this in my main PC and it is pretty quiet.

[lordsmurf]

@sophisticles:

Linux isn't an option. Linux and Mac are both poor choices for video workflows. Something as simple as Avisynth is not really possible (yes, there's a Linux port, but it's not 100% the same). Video is a Windows world. I have a lot of professional software, and that's the platform they all use. Understand I'm not at all against Linux desktops, and find Xubuntu to be quite nice. But in this case, it's the wrong tool for the task.

@usually_quiet:

A Cooler Master is what I have in my near-silent capture rig. Once 2tb SSD gets down to under $200, I can remove the 3 drives, as those are the noisiest part of the system.

I found another one, the EVGA 220 last night: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817438017
I don't really care about the 750W as much as I do the silence. It seems the fan only comes on what needed. So far, I'm liking it and the "Be Quiet" that you linked me to. I'm somewhat scared of the Seasonic fanless, as the report of whine are worse than fan noise (at least to me).

[sophisticles]

@sophisticles:
Linux isn't an option. Linux and Mac are both poor choices for video workflows. Something as simple as Avisynth is not really possible (yes, there's a Linux port, but it's not 100% the same). Video is a Windows world. I have a lot of professional software, and that's the platform they all use. Understand I'm not at all against Linux desktops, and find Xubuntu to be quite nice. But in this case, it's the wrong tool for the task.

In that case I suggest you still wait for Xeons that support AVX-512 and use Win 10, just blacklist via the HOSTS file access to MS IP addresses, after you have installed any relevant updates of course. Also look into Classic Shell to give Win 10 a more Win 7 look and feel.

It sucks that AVX-512 and DX12 won't be available for any non-Win10 MS OS, but that's what MS has decided to do to force end users to upgrade to their latest and greatest and based on what the x265 developers have said a 30% increase in performance for just switching Oses is pretty compelling.

Obviously security concerns may make you apprehension but with a good third part firewall and the aforementioned HOSTS file hack you should be ok.

In case you don't know, most consumer grade motherboards will support a Xeon, as current Xeons use the same socket as their desktop counter parts, you just have to check that the motherboard supports the processor and of course you will be giving up some PCI-E lanes (the number of lanes you desire requires a workstation class motherboard). Also using a Xeon on a consumer class board will prevent you from using ECC ram, don't know if that's an issue for you.

Also check you see if the apps you use support GPU acceleration of effects and encoding and if they do is it only CUDA support or OCL as well? If they support OCL, pick up a AMD 265x which offers really good OCL performance for the money and it's relatively low power.

[SameSelf]

If you are going with an ASRock z170 board, then you should, without question, go with a pcie ssd, not sata. Otherwise, I am revoking your PC manhood badge and relegating you to the legion of Dell users. This bad boy is supposed to be available sometime this month, if not already. Check out the comments by Les on why they use ASRock. p.s. ur welcome

[usually_quiet]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817438017[/url]
I don't really care about the 750W as much as I do the silence. It seems the fan only comes on what needed. So far, I'm liking it and the "Be Quiet" that you linked me to. I'm somewhat scared of the Seasonic fanless, as the report of whine are worse than fan noise (at least to me).

Yes, I saw the reviews from some owners complaining about the whine. Still, some people are apparently willing to take a chance on those, hoping to get a good one and I didn't want to limit your options. The Silverstone fanless PSU is supposed to be made by Seasonic too.

[lordsmurf]

@sophisticles:

Windows 10, or even Windows 8, are not options either. The Win10 non-privacy is a no-go.

BTW: I'm not encoding H.265. I solely encode for disc, or basic H.264 streaming, with the heaviest task being restoration.

I still don't understand what you mean by the lanes. I know lanes are, but I don't see why you're saying the boards I'm looking at are inadequate.

I agree that Xeons are nice, but I'm not sure that desktop applications will necessarily benefit. Those are tweaked for server use. The 1231v3 is probably the best right now, but it's not faster than the 6700K for encoding or using PS (according to benchmarks).

Most anti-6700K comments I see are due solely to cost, but is something I don't have an issue with. A few more bucks now for lower heat output results in lower AC costs later. So it's a wash.

@SameSelf:

Size matters most, coupled with price. No doubt, in time, I'll upgrade drives to SSDs -- probably the better PCIe SSD. But at the moment, the PCIe are $1k, while the SATA are less than half that, for 1tb (my minimum to even bother with SSD). Given that I'm currently using a spinning disc for C:, anything SSD will be better for program loading (not just something silly like boot time, but NLEs and Photoshop operations). Again, the goal is not budget, nor bleeding edge (expensive). The PCIe SSD is still next-gen tech, in its earliest of phases. I'll have to pass ... for now.

Next time.

@usually_quiet:

What do you think about the EVGA and the Be Quiet, specifically?

I've not given up on the Seasonic, but I'll have to research it quite a bit. I find whine more disconcerting than a gentle hum of a fan.

I appreciate all your links and opinions here.

[gonca]

@gonca: Mobo

Lots of links to investigate.

Which are you leaning towards most? Is there any reason you didn't list the fatal1ty version of the z170? (not actually "fatal1ty", but the board specs are the same, just z170/DDR4 instead of Haswell/DDR3).

The difference is USB 3.1 support.

Here is the link to the motherboard on Asrock
http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z170%20Extreme6/

Here is the manual

[usually_quiet]

@usually_quiet:

What do you think about the EVGA and the Be Quiet, specifically?

I've not given up on the Seasonic, but I'll have to research it quite a bit. I find whine more disconcerting than a gentle hum of a fan.

I appreciate all your links and opinions here.

be quiet! is a new brand here, but they are based in Germany and have been in business since 2006. I found a review: http://www.kitguru.net/components/power-supplies/zardon/be-quiet-straight-power-10-cm-600w-review/

I suggested a Straight Power 10 600W on account of the large fan and other features that reduce noise, as well as the good value at the current sale price. The Straight Power 10 600W is a Fortron-built PSU with Taiwanese caps. Although this is not one of be quiet!'s premium models, which are built by Seasonic and have Japanese capacitors, it is still well made.

The EVGA 220 seems like a very high-quality product (probably better than any of my suggestions), and it is very quiet at 20% load or less.

[lordsmurf]

The Be Quiet fan was tested at a minimum 28db (seems high), while the EVGA is 25db max. I think I'll just take a chance on the EVGA for now. I may get the 650W, not the 550W, as the load is a %, and 50% of the difference is 50W. That can come in handy (~325W total, vs 275W). Supposedly 650W and 550W have the same internals. I'm still looking into it.

It seems that a SATA Express is two SATA ports, and usable as such. So,if it has two SATA-E (SATAe?), I can make those my 4 eSATA ports. That means 1-2 less PCI-E cards are needed.

I can probably just use board headers for more USB. So only an IDE PCIe card will be needed.

I'm still looking at boards. Narrowing it down. Thanks, gonca.

[usually_quiet]

Did you find a sufficiently quiet CPU cooler? I just started looking at those, but if you have already found one, I won't bother looking further.

[pandy]

[
@pandy: PCIe lanes:

The most I'm going to use PCI express cards for is to add
- eSATA (x4)
- maybe USB (x4) if more are needed
- IDE (x1) for my excellent-at-reading-discs Pioneer DVD burner (or maybe my BTC)

If I get the z170 board, I'll be using onboard graphics. The system is purely for
- encoding video
- doing Photoshop work
- and serving as the 24/7 DLNA server with 4 connected 2tb USB drives (someday, moving those all internal with a 10gb RAID-1 mirror would be nice!).

I often have 3-4 eSATA drives plugged in at once, and 2 reading/writing to each other to move around files. eSATA is actually one area where my Gigabyte board for the Phenom performs flawlessly.

Why won't the z170 boards work for this?

Fast lanes are supported by CPU - z170 can expand number of lanes but bandwidth will be somehow lower than those for CPU lanes. So efficiently your system will be limited by CPU used not by MOBO controller in terms of throughput (and as i understand your request - you need plenty very fast storage I/O's to feed CPU with data - for HDD's it may work but for fast SSD - i mean those really fast this may be to low).

On board graphics stealing bandwidth from CPU bus (RAM bandwidth must be shared between CPU and video - unless video mem is embedded with GPU). I would go for cheapest possible card but with own, local mem.
For PATA probably anyway you will be forced to use PATA<>SATA converter.

And i'm not saying that Z170 will not work - it may work but be careful with all I/O's - check with Intel specs - for z170 and for planned CPU.
Btw DDR3 are not supported by Skylake - http://www.kitguru.net/components/motherboard/anton-shilov/intel-prolonged-usage-of-dd...amage-skylake/ and DDR4 are somehow limited to DDR4-4133MHz http://www.tomshardware.com/news/skylake-memory-support,30185.html

[gonca]

Did you find a sufficiently quiet CPU cooler? I just started looking at those, but if you have already found one, I won't bother looking further.

Consider an H60 if not overclocking (or an H55 or H50)

Fan dBA 30.2 dBA

Just make sure it can be used with the socket you go with

[gonca]

@pandy
I can see how ram running at 4133Mhz is kinda slow and obsolete

[ndjamena]

How critical is an IDE port?

It's not hard to find SATA to IDE adaptors or even USB to IDE... Or an external enclosure might be sufficient depending on what you need it for.

You might find a better use for a free PCIE slot eventually.

[lordsmurf]

@usually_quiet, gonca:

I'm strongly considering the Zalman CNPS14X CPU cooler at the moment. Zalman has always been quiet for me, and I like that it uses a 140mm fan.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835118133

I'm still not quite sure how water cooling works. I see the H60, but my primary concern is noise -- especially during encoding. Will this be better? Why? My main concern is the water cooled fan. What is the dB for it? Is the water cooler temp measured, so the fan will spin down when not needed?

@usually_quiet:

I'm actually considering the V550 or V650 from Cooler Master. I have good experience with them having near-silent PSUs. That's what in my capture rig right now.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817171093

I think EVGA's dB measurements were BS, as independent rated the the GS 650 almost the same as the Be Quiet Staight 10 600W. The Cooler Master V550 actually came in slightly less than both of them, though at a slight power decrease. I'm somewhat worried about EVGA making noise from an fan on/off, rather than a steady whir (if any) that can be ignored. An on/off is more disconcerting.

The Cooler Master claims to be "Skylake ready", while the others don't. I'm not sure if this is marketing or not.

SATA

I see now that SATA-E or SATA is an either/or situation.

motherboard:

The ASRock Z170 Extreme7+ is my leading contender right now:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157627
10 SATA, 2x USB2, 4x USB3, 2x USB3.1
The few bad reviews I see are from pre-1.2 firmware, which seems to be the stock shipped fw now.

RAM:

Concerning RAM speed, sharing with onboard GPU -- I plan to throw 16gb at it. So will those even be concerns? If the motherboard has 4 slots, and supports it, would 32gb be needed? (It seems like a lot already.).

@pandy:

I'm looking to have a single SATA 1tb SSD for C:
I will look to get a new 4tb+ SATA around Christmas,
The new system will get 3x internal 7200 rpm SATA HDD, 2x internal SATA optical (Blu-ray burners), and the 1x IDE DVD burner.
All external drives are 5400 rpm eSATA.

@ndjamena:

IDE is required. It's used for quality testing/reading drives for DVD/CD. Pioneer, BTC, BenQ, etc. An optical drive doesn't work on a simple SATA/IDE converter. It needs an actual proper slot. I see several PCIe 1x cards for this, so it shouldn't be an issue. Am I wrong?

[ndjamena]

@ndjamena:

IDE is required. It's used for quality testing/reading drives for DVD/CD. Pioneer, BTC, BenQ, etc. An optical drive doesn't work on a simple SATA/IDE converter. It needs an actual proper slot. I see several PCIe 1x cards for this, so it shouldn't be an issue. Am I wrong?

Do they still make IDE optical drives, or will you be testing old ones?

If you're testing old ones that's a +1 for an external enclosure.

Sata should have the full command set of IDE and with the right adaptor USB should be able to emulate it perfectly, and the adaptors specifically say they can be used with a DVD drive. DVD isn't all that complicated anyway.

The only problem I can see is the possibility of a slight delay in the issuing of commands, rather than PCIE->IDE controller->DVD it will be PCIE->SATA controller->IDE Controller->DVD. The data should be the same though.

I don't know if it's worth the risk or not but IDE is obsolete and the more time progresses the more likely it is you'll have problems with it no matter what you do and you might want several tuner cards at some point or something.

You might consider a decent USB hub rather than worrying about adding a PCIE card for it. Unless you plan on running multiple high bandwidth peripherals simultaneously a single USB port for each device is overkill.

That said, there are 7 port USB 3.0 PCIE cards on the market, if you're really obsessed with individual PCIE ports for everything you might consider one of those.


-edit-

http://www.legitreviews.com/vantec-sata-ide-to-usb-3-adapter-review_131412

http://www.satechi.net/index.php/satechi-pci-e-7-port-usb-3-0-express-card

http://www.newegg.com/global/au/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827993013
http://www.newegg.com/global/au/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812232004&cm_re=sata_t...-004-_-Product

[lordsmurf]

You can't test media in an enclosure. It must be internal, and the best testing drives are IDE.
A SATA/IDE crossover does not work with optical drives.

The method is hardware-locked to the era (2000s).