Re: New Lightwave Workstation

If I may jump in with a few comments & observations having recently built a new system ...

Farmer wrote:

Thanks for all the explanations, I had no idea what raid5 was about but it sounds a good idea. Id imagine it's better to install a PCI Sata raid controller card rather than run off the motherboard for performance reasons. I'll search the web for some more info.

Many of the better motherboards have both SATA and SATA RAID controllers on-board. However, not all RAID set types are supported so you'll need to decide what flavor you'll want to use beforehand. Personally, I've always gone with RAID 0 as I don't need the redundency on drives that are used just for rendering. And as mentioned earlier, I'd put those drives in a housing seperate from the main system.



Also, I'm gulping a little at the amount of kit the PSU will have to cope with, 5 disks, 2 x opterons, 2 x 7800gtx cards, a liquid cooling pump, a soundblaster fatility card, firewire 800 card, sata raid controller, dvd rw and so on.

Any thoughts regards the liquid cooling? I'm hoping it will not only cool the system more efficiently but make it quieter as well. Certainly one benefit I hope it will bring is drastically reducing the amount of dust contamination that plagues my machines.


Initially I did research on liquid cooling but ultimately decided not to go that route for several reasons. This may have changed by now, but choices for system enclosure cases was drastically limited. Internally, they make reaching components claustrophobic & problematic. And, if it develops a leak, you've a MAJOR problem then.

Instead, I spent sometime reseaching cases that used larger, low RPM, high volume throughput fans and a Thermaltake CPU cooler. This system is so quite you literally have to put your head next to the case to hear it running. Temperature wise, the motherboard is rarely more than a couple degrees above ambient and the CPU is always 12-15 deg. below alarm set point.

As far as dust, there's no real way to avoid it. So instead, I've a couple ionic style air cleaners in the room and I get to enjoy cleaner air too. Beyond that, simply elevating the housing 5-6" off the floor will significally reduce what gets kicked into it from simply walking around.


I guess that's it for my 2 cents.

M.


"CWCunningham" <charlesw-at-blackfoot.net> wrote in message news:dr3q4r01bb0@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"Steve Reeves" <steve@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:dr3iul$mc2$1$8302bc10@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
| No, as I understand it a RAID 5 configuration will use all 5 disks to
| stripe the data across with some redundancy. There isn't a dedicated
| disc for anything specific such as a boot - although it may be possible
| - I don't know.
|
| It is faster because when you ask for a file it can load all data chunks
| from several disks at once to make up the file.
|
| It is resilient because on each disk there is some redundant/safety data
| that can be used to rebuild another disc if one fails.
|
It's been a long time since I used to do this stuff, but I think you're talking
about Raid 4.

You take 5 disks of size X and the data for each byte is split across 4 of them
and the fifth gets a 2 bit checksum.
The result is one drive of size 4X. If any one drive fails, it's data can be
calculated from the remaining four. As long as you replace the bad drive before
you lose another, it's data can be rebuilt from the remaining 4.

There's no mirroring, but it's pretty reliable and space efficient since only
1/5 of the space is dedicated to reduncancy.

The more disk controllers you have, the faster it will be. (Note, you'll need 3
minimum and a typical motherboard only contains 2)

--
CWC
============================
It's not that nice guys finish last,
They have a whole different notion
where the finish line is.
============================





.

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