Elliot

William

I just came back from the computer store and got another motherboard. I may change the system to this other motherboard this afternoon.

The Opteron 250's are fast..... They are also very stable. My old Xeon's where always flickering or doing something....

A hundred years while flying with USAF on the T38 I removed my helmet to use my ham radio walkie talkie..... Young and not too smart.... The noise was loud.... loud..... I never realized the noise insulation that those helmets provided. I had a custom helemet with a custom mask that was very quiet. I hope I could find my old helmet, I know it is storage some where. Well, either I kill the motherboard or I start using the computer with my old helmet....

The noise out of this MSI motherboard is incredible....... Simply not acceptable......! There should be a Better Business complain against a company that produces a product that is this noisy. They should loose their license. Now I am switching the whole thing to the Tyan Thunder KW8 motherboard from the MSI K8T Master 2. They say the MSI is better. Some people say the Tyan is better, the eternal SAGA. Amaden say the MSI is better for CAD people... WHo knows.

The SSCI's I have are the Seagate's 15,000 rpm 74gb. I think they are acceptable. I think the Western Raptors are more noisy. My back up's are 2 Western Raptors. My Power Supply is also quiet. I have a few of these Seagates. I had one that became like high pitch noisy and started giving me problems with the raid. Finally, like 12 months later it died. I understand the warranty is 5 years. My first ones are about 3 years old. I called Seagate last week to ask some questions about the raid settings and happened to mention that one of my Seagate died. The tech told me to send it back.... I will call this week to get an RMA. I will let you know. However, be aware of noise and possibly inminent failure.

I like the speed and the stability of this new system.... it behaves good....! If I can not correct the noise problem.... I will have to discard them. I am too old for this noise level..... Believe me they are noisy....

The noise is serious... there is many web sites trying to address the corrections. Here is a link for one of them:
http://www.short-media.com/forum/sho...t=10443&page=1

Thanks
Elliot

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Elliot

Elliot

Hello,

I enabled the quiet fan Bio's on the MSI motherboard. This option will keep the fans at low RPM's until the CPU's get over 55 degrees C. Now my CPU's are running at 57 and 56 vs 46 and 45. However, the fans are not blowing at 6,000 rpm like before, now they are doing like 3,000rpm. The noise must have gone down 3 to 5 db's at the expense of 10 degrees C. Not acceptable on a long range plan.

The difference in Temp between the two CPU's is because this motherboard uses different coolers for each individual CPU. It is something that has to do with space limitations. MSI did a poor job with the motherboard layout. I have used MSI board before and I like them. Their customer service / technical support is very good.

The unit is quiet for the time being.... but, more hot than acceptable even at the high RPMs. This solution is not acceptable either way. Once again, the problem is not the processor but rather the motherboard. Tonight I will probably switch to the new Tyan motherboard. This Tyan Thunder K8W has a larger footprint and it will allow air pipe and fan cooling system. This will let me run at 38 centigrade while going at 2,800 to 3,000 rpms on the 90mm fan vs an 80mm fan. This Tyan motherboard is using a different chipset that is not as good as the MSI. The AGP pipeline is not as clever as in the MSI.

Very soon there will be three new motherboards for the Opteron chip that will have the new chipset developed by Nvidia. This new chipset will use the Quadro based PCI Express video cards at an unprecedented flow capacity.

The interesting fact on all this saga that has not even reach the end. The specifications I had developed for the new workstation could not bet met at an acceptable price by Dell, HP, Allienware, Boxx and some of the small clone assembly shops. I think the cost of the system components we have acquired could probably reach $4,800.00. Similar specifications by the big manufacturers where quoted between $5,800.00 to $8,900.00. This allowed me to have extra money in the budget for two LCD 19" inches by Sony (12 ms response time) and still beat the big guys at the cost of the unit.

It is not technically difficult to put the components together. It is very simple. The most difficult phase is really learning what each new technology will do to your system. Procurement and purchasing of all the components was the second most time consuming phase. I basically purchased from 3 different vendors. However, if you have the time to shop around you can bring the price under $4,400.00.

After a lot of reading I am sure that the reviewing industry has too many experts doing opinions on technical issues. They could be very confusing. The average graphic designer doesn't care if his or her machine is 1 trillions of seconds faster than the other. They just want to have a quick machine that will improve their production throughput. This Opteron is the fastest system I have ever placed together.... but even more than the speed...... So far it looks solid as a rock.... The fastest, more stable, no flickering, crispy clear and glossy graphics out of any of the systems I have put together.

I stopped the technical investigation tonight to work on two simple real life projects for tomorrow, I use them to try out the system. I was able to finish my marketing presentation quicker than before without the visual fatigue of looking at the old 17" or 19" glass monitors.

If anybody has experience with these air pipe cooling systems or the liquid coolers I would appreciate if you post your findings. These new processors require too much cooling. The noise issue remains to be solved.

At the end.... I am super busy, we are a small company and between my partner and I we have to be proactive in trying to meet deadlines at an acceptable cost. My partner is not computer oriented, he thinks we should pay to buy a ready made unit. His 26 year old son who is our IT and I don't agree with him. Although I complain of all the work involved in doing these boxes.... I really enjoy putting them together and knowing that if they go wrong probably I can fix without having to be at the mercy of an expensive tech.

Thanks
Elliot

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Elliot

Elliot

Hello,

I was just engaged in a last minute review of some of the issues that people following this thread have mentioned. Cost and Down time.... was a popular subject. The down time was 48 hours, savings 30 to 40 percent.

On a partime basis I researched for a month, then another week for partime price searching. Last Thursday afternoon I purchased most of the components while some last minute changes forced me go out on Friday and acquire additional parts. It took me very little time to put the box together.... Perhaps 4 hours....

Tweaking took half of Saturday and it is still not totally finished. For those close to my age group, it was similar to like in the old days putting a Heathkit together.... In reality more simple than putting together a shortwave ham radio transceiver of the early 70's. In those days you had to wire and solder every component on top of a single layer pcb and point to point wiring between sub-assemblies.

Intimidated by the fact of not having kept myself with the progress of computer technology during the last two or three years, until last Thursday I was decided to go with a ready made Intel based unit. Then last minute, after some very frustrating conversations with some Intel dealers, packagers or assembler, I switched to AMD based on a non-technical issue. The bottom line for me, no Intel dealer is going to hold our small business hostage to their price fixing strategies. I have had it....! I talked with many of these dealers and basically they think they have a handle on a hot new processor (Xeon 3.6ghz) and they are speculating to increase profits. Further more, most of their sales people don't even understand what people doing 3D need on their systems.

Now curiosity is getting to me and tomorrow we will start researching to build a a Xeon based box. However, I am almost sure of the outcome.... There is not enough difference in speed to justify the 30% to 40% more money these dealers or computer packagers want for their boxes. Our average guy is clever enough to put these machines together. Assembling one of these units it is more simple than learning Viz or Lightscape. If our guys have the patience to read and follow the instructions in any of these 3D graphic software packages, they can too read and follow the instructions to put a machine together.

My 20 year old daughter is working with us on a partime basis, she and my 6.5 year old son have witnessed how we put the whole thing together. Today I got a kick, we visited Frys Electronic to look into all these heat dissipation systems, my little son who has been following us for 4 days was very clear in stating his opinions about heat disipation. By the way he thinks we just should change the motherboard to a Tyan board in order to have the additional space needed to fit the pipe coolers.

Many years ago when I was about 8 years old I saw an old ham radio operator neighbor of ours putting one of the early single side band trasmitters together. I was just so impresed with the whole 3 months saga that I becamed a licensed ham radio operator when I was 10 years old. Both my daughter and my son play with the computers...... My daughter has been doing 3D's for quite a while she is good. She is an artist since an early age and in college she is doing a degree in fine arts. She can do 3D on the computer but she can also do them on the canvas with oleo paints... She is not highly technical, However I think that both my little son and my daughter can probably put the next box together... Will see....! Hi Hi

Like all the people on my age bracket, I was a true believer of Intel. This has been a very interesting learning experience. There is a million different opinions. This machine is fast, fast, fast fast and for less, less, less, less money than a ready made box by any of the big guys.

The end of 3 day saga.....!!!!
Thanks...... Roger and Out....

Elliot

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Elliot

bigcahunak

Elliot
Raid 0 strips your data to two drives that looks like one. So, with 2x74GB HDDs set @ raid 0 you get what looks like a single 148GB single drive. What sets it apart from a single drive is the fact that instead of reading/writing every 1mb of data from a single location it does half of it from two different places on a different channel (cable) and that saves time. Its like paying $50 for a guy to wash both your cars, while he splits it with another friend who helps him, and they finish it twice as fast. To sum it up - on raid 0 you dont lose any potential storage place, you gain speed, have no mirroring for backup, but you take a risk of losing everuthing if any of the HDDs fail.
Temperatures, see if your motherboard supported by "motherboard monitor" http://mbm.livewiredev.com (click on motherboard list in the navbar). If it does - get it. Most times its a much better util than the one motherboard manufacturers provide.
Good luck.

*edit*
Elliot, as I mentioned before... both SCSI and raid (any raid) will add performance for your machine but you wont be able to tell untill you use it. And, the only way you would is by non compressed video editing. I dont do any editing, so I got rid of my raid configuration (was a fun ride) saved space, money and the risk.

Elliot

Itzik,

Thanks again for the response. I definitely have something wrong here. I put the LSI Ultra 320 Controller card and it doesn't want to recgonize my drives. Then I put an Adaptec that was working in one of the computers. However, when I put on the new box is shows two drives as being connected.

I checked earlier on the Motherboard Monitor. Everytime I bring it up it shuts down my machine. It looks like the program is set for a lower temp and will turn the box off. It just happens so quickly that I can't get the menu to investigate. The MSI motherboard has utility to read temperature out of sensor diode located in the board.

I will check the SSCI issues later on today..... It is 2:35 am here in Atlanta and I am going down.

If I can fix the problem.... and if this machine gets any faster it may blow up....Hi Hi.

Thanks
Elliot

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Elliot

bully712

Hi Guys,
I posted this question in the Viz Forum and wasn't getting any luck on responses, so I thought that maybe you guys can help me out. I just upgraded to 1.5gb from 512mb of RAM on my personal computer, and I’m trying to get the most out of it. I did a few test renderings and it's only using around 400mb. Is there a setting somewhere which allows me to specify how much memory is used by VIZ?

Thanks,
Marc

Elliot

Marc,

If there is one I am not aware of it.....

Thanks
Elliot

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Elliot

bully712

Hmmm... I thought It would be easier then I thought. I'm just wondering if I wasted my money buying an extra gig of RAM if it's not being used. Let me know if you happen to come across anything on the matter.

Thanks,
Marc

bigcahunak

bully
Gently put.. you did... but if in the future you'll have a VIZ scene with more texture, or just bigger or multi tasking, then you'll see windows using more memory.

Elliot

Itzik,

I am re-doing the entire workstation...... The Tyan motherboard looks better made than the MSI. This time I got a big extended ATX cabinet with silencers. The big fans with low RPM's.

Hope it works
Elliot

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Elliot