What is the fastest/most stable PC hardware configuration?

[alegator]

Say you would customize a PC from scratch and had enough money to spend on the best and fastest components, which ones would you choose? The more detailed and specific your description the better.A possible one could be:
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Core (to be released October)
MOBO: Gigabyte 6-Quad http://www.gigabyte-usa.com/FileList/NewTech/2006_motherboard_newtech/tech_20060605_what-6quad.htm
COOLING: Liquid (Which one?)
RAM: fastests RDRAM? Which one?
HARD DRIVE: RAID 0 Raptor X 150Gb?
2nd or 3rd Hard drive: Seagate 750Gb?
BURNER: Blu Ray?
VIDEO CARD: Nvidia 2Gb QuadSLI?
MONITOR: Dell Ultrasharp 30?
PC CASE?
Any other fancy addon or component to add?

[bobkart]

You could come up with an answer today and it would need to be changed next week.

But I'm sure you will get plenty of people responding with what they think is "best". Generally speaking though, what's "best" for one application isn't for another. For example, a simple speed-versus-size tradeoff. You can get faster but smaller hard drives (15KRPM), so depending on which way you decide to trade that design decision off, you get a different answer.

Cost-versus-performance is another big tradeoff. You can't just say "if cost were no object" because then it will be SSDs and Fiber Channels and who knows what other extremely-expensive-but-super-high-performance solutions are out there.

EDIT: I doubt many people would consider RAID0 for their system drive a wise choice.

[edDV]

You didn't tell us what it is for.

If video, much of that is overkill, and if for serious video, it can't handle uncompressed SDI .

This Avid configuration is a good guide for SDI but needs updating to currrent processors.
http://www.avid.com/products/dsnitris/nitris/specs.asp

[alegator]

Yes, I'm aware that PC technology changes by the second, but to make the post answerable I'm limiting to the best technology to date or best upcoming tech in the short term (not more than 2 months, like the Quad Core2 to be released next month).
Yes, faster hard drives mean smaller size, but with 150Gb you get plenty of space for the OS and the applications, and you could add a 2nd or 3rd spacious hard drive for editing, data, etc.
And regarding budget, I'm limiting myself to a "PC" in the 10 to 20K, not a supercomputer with hundred's of CPU's costing millions.

[edDV]

Seems like you want to run games.

[bobkart]

Your post still isn't answerable in any definitive sense. There are just too many ways to skin that cat. You will get plenty of opinions though, which it sounds like you are after anyway.

SSDs and Fiber Channels can be used on PCs. I wasn't considering supercomputers. And when you say "10 to 20K" what units are you implicitly using? US Dollars? Are you actually considering building that expensive of a PC, or is this strictly hypothetical? If you actually build that expensive of a machine, it's a pretty safe bet that you will have a solution looking for a problem.

[alegator]

ed, say this PC will be used for video and image editing, and aplications that need powerful graphics cards (extreme gaming, etc). Then is this fine? Also, what is "uncompressed SDI"?

[alegator]

SSDs and Fiber Channels can be used on PCs. I wasn't considering supercomputers.

What are SSDs and Fiber channels used for?

And when you say "10 to 20K" what units are you implicitly using? US Dollars? Are you actually considering building that expensive of a PC, or is this strictly hypothetical?

I meant US Dollars. I established a 10K to 20K range since top PC builders like Alienware or Falcon have that pricerange for their top of the line PC's. And my post is just theoretical for the fun of it!

If you actually build that expensive of a machine, it's a pretty safe bet that you will have a solution looking for a problem.

What do you mean?

[bobkart]

Meaning that it will be severely underutilized 99% of the time. Add to that the fact that the price-to-performance you will get (when you consider the actual performance you will get out of it based on this underutilization) means you will be paying many times more for that performance than you would for a more reasonably-priced machine. In my opinion at that kind of cost you will be way past the point of diminishing returns. In other words you could build a machine for $2000-$3000 that would meet your needs nearly as well.

[alegator]

bobkart, I edited my last reply. Also, there's no way of getting a 2 to 3K machine with all the goodies I described. And they do make a difference for the needs I described above. It's all a matter of what performance (response time, etc) you're demanding. The biggest bottleneck I think are hard drives. No matter how fast they are or what configuration is used (RAID, etc), they can never keep up with the rest of the system.

[edDV]

VIDEO CARD: Nvidia 2Gb QuadSLI? Only for games
HARD DRIVE: RAID 0 Raptor X 150Gb? Only for games

A RAID 0 for the OS drive is silly for any serious work. Loose one drive and there is no recovery path.

A video oriented RAID would use an appropriate PCI RAID controller and needs massive capacity. Unless you are working with uncompressed video, there is no need for RAID at all.

Bottom line, computers should be purpose built to the task. A gaming machine will look very different from an uncompressed video editing machine. CAD and 3D modeling have different opitimiztions.

For most applications used on this site, raw CPU power and large disk capacity (separate from OS drive) dominate the requirements. Hard disk speed is less important.

PS: "SDI is what is used in professional television and is what you need to interface with most digital pro grade video equipment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_Digital_Interface

[bobkart]

Alrighty then. Have fun with your discussion. I'm busy enough solving real problems to have time left over to solve hypothetical ones. No offense intended, I'm sure you'll get plenty of discussion, but it will be just that, discussion. You'll be no closer to an answer than when you started. Problems have to be well-defined to have well-defined answers.

[alegator]

Alrighty then. Have fun with your discussion. I'm busy enough solving real problems to have time left over to solve hypothetical ones.

I do have real problems too, in fact you can read my other posts and most of them relate to issues I confront when capturing/editing video. But sometimes it's nice to relax and discuss a topic not necessarily related to something to solve at hand, eventhough I do need to upgrade my PC since it's underperforming under certain conditions like when editing video,etc . When you watch a documentary on how the F-22 flies it does not mean you're going to pilot one!

[bendixG15]

You are watching that documentary on the F-22 for the first time.
Most of use are sick of looking at it.

And that's the difference between us.

Hey, Good Luck amd enjoy.

[alegator]

You are watching that documentary on the F-22 for the first time.
Most of use are sick of looking at it.

And that's the difference between us.

Hey, Good Luck amd enjoy.

I watched it 100 times and never get bored!

[vico1]

COOLING: Liquid (Which one?)
RAM: fastests RDRAM? Which one?
Any other fancy addon or component to add?

I'd stick a phase change cooler on that cpu. (custom made or Prometeia Mach 2)

RDRAM???...surely you jest......You mean DDR-2, faster the better.

[rallynavvie]

Why only a single quad-core? The old SMP market is still one-upping the consumer market by making dual-socket systems, and even quad-socket systems. I don't know yet if Vista will support more than two sockets unless one of its many flavors will offer that sort of support, otherwise you'd have to look to Linux builds.

Water cooling is silly if you want the best performance. Phase change cooling would be the top (consumer) cooling option if money were no matter.

WD Raptors are like child's toys when compared to the 15k SCSI drives that are still on the market. Again, as money is not the option here I'd put together some ridiculously expensive nested RAID with them. You know maybe a stripe across 3 drives and mirrored four times? This is where you can just keep adding money to the issue forever, just keep adding a drive to the volume (which means you'd be adding four to keep the volume).

And with all the noise that thing will make I'd put it in its own room and run the cabling through a grommet in the wall to a desk. I wouldn't want to try working next to that disk array

[alegator]

Nice guys, to learn something new every day. I didn't know about phase change coolers, and it seems that old is still better than new regarding SCSI drives. From what I read phase change coolers are also loud, so noise of SCSI drives+cooler will be a consideration.Thanks.

[lordsmurf]

RDRAM???...surely you jest......You mean DDR-2, faster the better.

There's nothing wrong with RDRAM. Both the PC800 and PC1066 are great. But finding a board that uses it will not be easy. The DDR stuff is easier for home desktops.

[tonyp12]

If you plan to spend $10'000 to $20'000 on a computer.
You will get a very fast computer indead.

Such investment is only a good idea if video editing gone be a fulltime job.
A computer like that should be still OK to use for 2-3yr and at a cost of
$5k a year on a tool that you make $50'000+ a year sounds about right.

Quad-SLI is only good for gaming.

A good budget would be:
CPU $1000
Mem $500
Mobo $300
HDs $600
VGA $200
bluray $500 (wait a month or so)
Case/accs $200

And we are only up to $3300
And that would be a very fast computer.

[alegator]

Quad-SLI is only good for gaming.

True, QuadSLI will be good for extreme gaming, but what about other applications that are graphics intensive like astronomy software, 3D modeling, graphical simulations, etc...won't they also benefit from QuadSLI?

A good budget would be:
CPU $1000
Mem $500
Mobo $300
HDs $600
VGA $200
bluray $500 (wait a month or so)
Case/accs $200

And we are only up to $3300
And that would be a very fast computer.

CPU: Core2 Quad will be $1500 probably
HD: SCSI 300Gb Seagate Cheetah around $500x2 RAID=$1000
COOLING: $800 for a phase cooler
That's around $3300 already and we are not including video card, monitor, memory, mobo, etc....!

[edDV]

Quad-SLI is only good for gaming.

True, QuadSLI will be good for extreme gaming, but what about other applications that are graphics intensive like astronomy software, 3D modeling, graphical simulations, etc...won't they also benefit from QuadSLI?

Most of those apps use OpenGL cards Like the NVidia Quadro or ATI FireGL or FireMV lines. I haven't heard of SLI being a big issue in the Workstation world but I may be out of date.

http://www.nvidia.com/page/quadrofx.html
http://www.ati.com/products/workstation.html

[rallynavvie]

Actually the SLi (and quad-SLi) will work well with workstations once we get some better workstation cards on the market that support these functions. With the decoders present and power of a workstation card you could do wonders with 3D and CAD programs. We're talking unheard of amounts of fills and vertices on screen at once and being able to rotate it almost entirely (if not entirely) without any hesitations. That would bring a tear to the eye of any 3D designer.

Don't use only two SCSI disks in RAID0. If you want the cheapest, and I don't see why if you're going with SCSI, fast setup with SCSI you should look at some older or smaller 15krpm drives like a 36GB and put four of those in RAID 10, then use the 300GB drives mirrored (RAID1) for your storage volume. Do not simply use RAID 0, even on SCSI though they're normally very reliable drives. You're going to spend easily half your budget on your drive array alone.

[vico1]

CPU: Core2 Quad will be $1500 probably

Everthing I've read...Quad (EE) is going to come out at around $1000 (US)
Of course, that's if it's not price gouged.

[Nelson37]

A comfortable, well designed CHAIR may well add more productivity enhancement than anything else mentioned so far.

RDRAM? No. Limited availability and support. Dead technology.

Raid 0 for OS drive? Absolutely Insane.

Case? - Large, with big, slow fans. At least two or three. More if your environment is not air-conditioned.

Liquid cooling - Voids the warranty and is not needed unless you are overclocking. Not good for reliability, which being in South America this assumes greater importance.

Consider 2 seperate machines. Video games and professional production software of any kind do not co-exist well. One PC could be completely seperated from the internet, performance boost from not needing antivirus and anti-spy software could be worth well over $1000.00. KVM switch would allow true multi-tasking. USB memory stick for file transfer.

Your price range has varied dramatically from 10-20,000 down to 2-3,000. Major difference here.

Remember that the last 5-10% of performance boost gets Extremely Expensive. Also that "Fastest" and "Most Stable" are pretty much mutually exclusive.

Do you want it to look good and brag about it, or get work done quickly and reliably?

[Soopafresh]

A comfortable, well designed CHAIR may well add more productivity enhancement than anything else mentioned so far.

LOL! How true.


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