New System Build - Reality Check

[Jim Cockfield]

Doublehelix wrote:

1. I switched to Windows 8 at the last minute. I know... I know...!!! I have been playing around with it as I have been laptop shopping, and I think it is fairly decent actually, especially with a Win7 type of shell. Soon, Win 8.1 will be out that contains the shell natively, so I decided to just go for it. I have always been leery about doing a major OS upgrade (i.e. from Win 7 to Win 8), so I decided to just bite the bullet now.

Not exactly. Windows 8.1 will have a start menu icon again. It does have a lot of the features you expect from the start menu (shutdown, direct access to many utilities, etc.)

But, it will still take you to the new style (formerly known as Metro) tile based menu system to find and launch programs. You'll see lots of reviews of it online now that show the new start menu. Here's one of them.

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews/windows/3456551/windows-81-review/

Hopefully, the update to 8.1 won't break compatibility with products like the free Classic Shell (but, if so, they'll probably update Classic Shell to work with Win 8.1).

 

[Doublehelix]

Thanks Ron, great link for Lightroom. I will read it fully later today.

I actually do have a graphics card from my last system that I will be using, a Nvidia GTX560Ti Video Card, which is not top-spec'ed, but should work for now. That might be an area for an upgrade at some point.

Thanks again.

 

[Doublehelix]

Jim:

Interesting... I am not totally sold on Win 8, and do worry a bit about it.

If it was your system, what would you install? (I have not opened the Win 8 package yet.)

 

[Ho72]

Doublehelix wrote:

Jim:

Interesting... I am not totally sold on Win 8, and do worry a bit about it.

If it was your system, what would you install? (I have not opened the Win 8 package yet.)

--
James

My vote is for 8, not that you asked me specifically. It's more secure, handles large file copy operations much better and has better dual monitor support. It's easy to navigate using the Modern interface, especially after you populate it with your own groups and apps and relegate all the Metro stuff you decide to keep to the end where you never have to look at it unless you want to.

I used Win7 for about 5 months and then took advantage of the cheap upgrade offer to try Win8. Win7 is very good, Win8 is better.

 

[Jim Cockfield]

Doublehelix wrote:

Thanks to everyone's advice around here and over at Tom's Hardware, I have purchased the following components at a cost of about $2,700. I decided to build an entirely NEW box rather than upgrade the old case/PS/DVD burner, and will give the old system to my son to record music on, so the price went up a bit from my initial estimates:

• Intel i7 3930K
• Asus P9X79 PRO LGA2011 Mobo
• 32 GB DDR3 1866 RAM (Quad Channel)
• Samsung 840 Pro 256 GB (OS and Programs)
• Samsung 840 Pro 128 GB (swap and temp, LR catalog and previews)
• TWO Western Digital Black 4TB HDD (SATA 3) (Data) - Run in a RAID1 mirrored array
• Asus 24X DVD burner
• Antec 750w PS
• Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO cooler
• Thermaltake Soprano EO900 case (very nice! I have used Antec for years, but this is sweet.)
• Win 8 Pro (Yes! Win 8!)

You could get one already assembled with the same components for roughly the same price, and also get a 3 year parts and labor warranty with it. Just use this configurator at AVA Direct (and they have a pretty good reputation).

http://www.avadirect.com/desktop-pc-configurator.asp?PRID=22659

I plugged in these components (and I also included a GTX 650, which you could downgrade for a deduct if your old card is good enough, then use a downgraded card for graphics in your old system if you wanted to swap them). It came to 2727.02 (including the GTX 650 video card, Win 8 Pro, etc.).

• THERMALTAKE Soprano Black Mid-Tower Case, ATX, No PSU, Steel
• ANTEC High Current Gamer M HCG-750M 750W Power Supply w/ Modular Cables, 80 PLUS® Bronze, 24-pin ATX12V 2x EPS12V, 4x 8/6-pin PCIe, Retail
• ASUS P9X79 PRO, LGA2011, Intel® X79, DDR3-2400 (O.C.) 64GB /8, PCIe x16 SLI CF /2+2*, SATA 6Gb/s /4, 3Gb/s /4, USB 3.0 /6, HDA, BT, GbLAN, ATX, Retail
• INTEL Core i7-3930K Six-Core, 3.2 - 3.8GHz TB, LGA2011, 12MB L3 Cache, HT EM64T EIST VT XD, 32nm, 130W, Retail w/o Fan
• COOLER MASTER Hyper 212 EVO CPU Cooler, Socket 2011/1155/1156/1366/775/FM1/AM3/AM2, 159mm Height, Copper/Aluminum
• CORSAIR 32GB (4 x 8GB) Vengeance™ Red PC3-15000 DDR3 1866MHz CL10 (10-11-10-30) 1.5V SDRAM DIMM, Non-ECC
• EVGA GeForce® GTX 650 1058MHz, 1GB GDDR5 5000MHz, PCIe x16, mini-HDMI + 2 x DVI, Retail
• SAMSUNG 256GB 840 Pro Series SSD, MLC Samsung MDX, 540/520 MB/s, 2.5-Inch, 7mm, SATA 6 Gb/s, Retail
• SAMSUNG 128GB 840 Pro Series SSD, MLC Samsung MDX, 530/390 MB/s, 2.5-Inch, 7mm, SATA 6 Gb/s, Retail
• WESTERN DIGITAL 4TB WD Caviar® Black™ (WD4001FAEX), SATA 6 Gb/s, 7200 RPM, 64MB Cache
• WESTERN DIGITAL 4TB WD Caviar® Black™ (WD4001FAEX), SATA 6 Gb/s, 7200 RPM, 64MB Cache
• RAID RAID 1 (mirroring), min 2 hard drives required
• ASUS DRW-24B1ST Black 24x DVD±R/RW Dual-Layer Burner, SATA, OEM
• MICROSOFT Windows 8 Professional 64-bit Edition, OEM w/ Media
• WARRANTY Silver Warranty Package (3 Year Limited Parts, 3 Year Labor Warranty)

You may be able to find a coupon code for a discount online somewhere, too (I'd search using google for ava direct and coupons and see what you can find).

I'd also get them to send you a quote (which you can do after you customize a system and it to your cart) to see if they'd give you a better price than their online configurator gives you. But, from what I can tell, you could probably the same system you priced out for $2700 for around the same price (since the config I just put together at $2827 includes a GTX 650 card that you could downgrade for a deduct)

Click on this link to see a screen capture I grabbed of that config in a cart there.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4536228/ava_direct1.jpeg

 

[SushiEater]

There is nothing to engineer because I selected of the shelf components that I can put this system together in less than an hour. Even with custom liquid cooling I could do it in 3 hours with smoke breaks. And that is adapting to my old case. They have cases now that are already adapted for liquid cooling so it would take less than 2 hours.

Interesting, yesterday I have selected 3930K and Asus X79 Sabertooth and today Sabertooth X79 is not available. I guess they ran out.

As far as warranty, when I was building computers my prices were per part just like they are doing it.

As you noticed warranty is only one year for parts even though many parts have 3 to 5 years.
I was also offering lifetime labor warranty just like that do. But they overcharge per part. For example 3930K at one point showed up as $771 yesterday. Tigerdirect price is $559, I paid $459 last year. Their profit is over $200.

If I had a job inserting CPUs for $200 per CPU I would quit my current job

 

[SushiEater]

No, Belkin 1500 is the UPS I bought in 2008 and it is still going strong.

Loading…

www.belkin.com

 

[SushiEater]

Going with TWO data drives in a RAID1 array. This gives me a mirrored backup and improves read time significantly. I will be still be backing up to an external drive as well as to the cloud (I am paranoid about losing my data).

Where exactly did you read that RAID 1 improves read time significantly? With RAID 1 your read times will remain the same, your write times might be slower because everything needs to be written twice.

You need RAID 5 (and one extra HD to improve read performance.

 

[Jim Cockfield]

Doublehelix wrote:

Jim:

Interesting... I am not totally sold on Win 8, and do worry a bit about it.

If it was your system, what would you install? (I have not opened the Win 8 package yet.)

If it were me, I'd stick with Win 7.

 

[theswede #100093]

SushiEater wrote:

Going with TWO data drives in a RAID1 array. This gives me a mirrored backup and improves read time significantly. I will be still be backing up to an external drive as well as to the cloud (I am paranoid about losing my data).

Where exactly did you read that RAID 1 improves read time significantly?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels#Performance_2

With RAID 1 your read times will remain the same, your write times might be slower because everything needs to be written twice.

RAID 1 properly implemented doubles read speed and keep the same write times.

You need RAID 5 (and one extra HD to improve read performance.

There is no need for any extra HD's beyond the RAID 5 array to improve performance. RAID 5 performs very well as is.

Jesper

 

[SushiEater]

theswede wrote:

SushiEater wrote:

Going with TWO data drives in a RAID1 array. This gives me a mirrored backup and improves read time significantly. I will be still be backing up to an external drive as well as to the cloud (I am paranoid about losing my data).

Where exactly did you read that RAID 1 improves read time significantly?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels#Performance_2

With RAID 1 your read times will remain the same, your write times might be slower because everything needs to be written twice.

RAID 1 properly implemented doubles read speed and keep the same write times.

And where did you find that? RAID 1 is nothing more than a mirror.

You need RAID 5 (and one extra HD to improve read performance.

There is no need for any extra HD's beyond the RAID 5 array to improve performance. RAID 5 performs very well as is.

Nope, Raid 5 read performance is better because of the striping but the writes will be slow.

For both read and write performance and redundancy you need RAID 10.

Jesper

 

[kelpdiver]

Ron, why do you, and just about everyone else that keeps posting that link, miss read the final paragraph?

"So, having established that the use of an SSD offers only marginal improvements to Library preview rendering and photo load times in Develop module where can we realistically see an SSD helping a Lightroom user? Well, Lightroom isn’t just about rendering Library previews or loading photos into the the Develop module editing window. At Lightroom’s heart is a SQLite database, and the very fast access times associated with SSDs means that reading metadata from the catalog, searching the catalog, etc will be noticeably faster than on a conventional disk drive. Likewise, Library module thumbnail and preview scrolling (sometimes referred to as louping) will be noticeably faster and smoother. Other areas where the the use of an SSD will help include application launch times and computer boot time. Overall, installing Lightroom (includes catalog, previews and Camera Raw cache) on an SSD will result in the application feeling more responsive than is the case with a conventional disk drive. However, as the various tests have demonstrated, SSDs are not the magic bullet that some would have you believe."

The performance gain is least significant for those who batch process. It's most significant for those who interactively use LR - which tend to be the non professionals (ie, most of us).

 

[malch]

kelpdiver wrote:

Ron, why do you, and just about everyone else that keeps posting that link, miss read the final paragraph?

This drives me nuts. I think the problem is with the presentation of the article. The facts and logic seem fairly sound but folks consistently come away with the wrong message.

 

[Jim Cockfield]

SushiEater wrote:

And where did you find that? RAID 1 is nothing more than a mirror.

Because the same data is on both drives with a RAID 1 configuration, the OS can split read requests between the two drives.

IOW, it can service one read request from one drive, at the same time it's servicing a different read request from the other drive in a mirrored configuration.

How much speed is increased depends on the exact configuration and operating system. For example, you can see a *huge* increase in speed with some operating systems for read requests using a RAID 1 config, even if it's strictly software mirroring. That's because the OS can service multiple [different] read requests at the same time from two different drives, stacking the requests so that it's getting less lag time from head movement and platter rotation.

Novell Netware used to be great for that purpose (and I've written many benchmarks to figure out how different drive configs worked in the past, and mirrored drives offered huge advantages in speed).

Also, because you will almost always have far more read requests compared to write requests, overall speed is usually increased significantly with a RAID 1 config (even though writes are slower).

The speed increase using mirrored drives with Windows may not be as great as some operating systems. IOW. benchmarks are very mixed on how much RAID 1 increases read speed with Windows.

But, most benchmarks I've seen using reasonable fast boxes (where the CPU is not the bottleneck), show that mirrored drives do give you a big increase in read speed with Win 7.

See this post for some tests someone performed with Win 7 a while back. Note that read speed was close to twice as fast using RAID 1.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/250390-32-does-raid-increase-read-speed#5994583

--

JimC
------

 

[Ron AKA]

I read that paragraph. No change in my opinion. 1 SSD will provide some marginal performance gain. 2 will provide nothing extra over 1 SSD, other than another piece of hardware getting old.

 

[kelpdiver]

Ron AKA wrote:

kelpdiver wrote:

One can get 95% of their result at 60% of the cost.

I would suggest with the same components (everything they appear to sell as a desktop is just off the shelf), you should get 100% of the performance.

Note I said result, not performance. Though even that latter word is a bit vague in what in means.

Result = the combination of performance as measured by standard cpu,io,gfx metrics, of reliability, of noise levels, and then more subjective measures of prettiness and flexibility in the future.

Building quiet computers is particularly difficult to get the last few decibels. (If you're using liquid cooling, you may not care about this aspect) They are doing more than just taking an off the shelf case - they are attaching sound insulation while also managing air flow. These aren't impossible things for DIY, but they're get to iterate and learn over hundreds or thousands of units while I do at most 1-2/year. And there's your 5%.

I thought my phrasing was pretty clear - it's a hard sell to DIYers. You guys can zip up your pants already. Also, think how much money you could make selling your designs!

 

[Doublehelix]

I just picked up the 3930K for $569 yesterday. Also, I switched from the Asus Sabertooth to the Asus P9X79 Pro. Very nice.

 

[kelpdiver]

Jim Cockfield wrote:

SushiEater wrote:

And where did you find that? RAID 1 is nothing more than a mirror.

Because the same data is on both drives with a RAID 1 configuration, the OS can split read requests between the two drives.

IOW, it can service one read request from one drive, at the same time it's servicing a different read request from the other drive in a mirrored configuration.

As noted by you and by the wiki article, some implementations do not benefit at all from the availability of two spindles. And others benefit tremendously.

If one is building R1 for performance rather than resiliency, they should probably benchmark the single disk and then the established mirror and see what the data shows for their actual install.

 

[Doublehelix]

Dang Jim! I wish I would have read that message earlier. I have already bought all the components and have already started the build... (mobo, memory, PSU, CPU, DVD burner already installed). Should finish the rest tonight.

 

[kelpdiver]

Doublehelix wrote:

• Samsung 840 Pro 256 GB (OS and Programs)
• Samsung 840 Pro 128 GB (swap and temp, LR catalog and previews)

see below. But also consider flipping these around - use the 128 for the OS + programs that don't let you pick the install patch, use the somewhat faster 240 for the more read/write intensive activity. The performance delta is nearly zero for reads, which is what the OS disk is 95% after install.

• Win 8 Pro (Yes! Win 8!)

Your funeral! ( just kidding )

1. I decided to stick with a second small SSD drive as the swap drive over some advice I received around here. Over at Tom's, I received some information (which I have since researched) that indicates that the SSD drives don't like to be written to a lot, so rather than have my main OS/Program drive written to all the time, I use this smaller, less expensive SSD, and if it dies, I am only out US$130, and won't be losing my program data.

I'd miss the catalog more than the program data, esp if it's LR. But more to the point, Tom's people are totally wrong here, particularly for the 840 Pro. People have been worried about this from the beginning, and even though each new and higher density SSD should make it worse, no one is running into the problem (outside of enterprise work - usually databases). You will retire this system long, or install a larger SSD, long before the SSD hits write exhaustion. However, if we presumed that the threat were real, you're again better off using the 240 SSD for the write heavy activity as it has twice the write endurance (as measured in gigabytes written, not p/e cycles).

Also note - the software that Samsung provides with the 840 pro will allow you to increase the percentage of blocks reserved. This lowers the total space available, but will improve performance as well as any longeavity concerns you may have. So consider upping it another 5 or 10%.