3D Workstation

[Paul Rogers]

Hi all. I'm new to these boards but am seeing such a wealth of knowledge, I am hoping someone can help me out. If there is another place to post this within these forums please let me know but this seemed like the best place.

I am building a 3D workstation for modeling and rendering. I will be using Maya, Photoshop, Premiere and a few other smaller apps. I have decided on the following for sure:

• 2 Xeon 5410 Quad cores proc's (8 cores total)
• 2gig ECC FB DIMM Ram (I know it should be more but that will come later)
• NVidia Quadro FX 1700
• Seagate 250Gig System drive (probably the 7200.11)
• Seagate 500Gig Storage drive

I am uncertain over the rest and am hoping for some advice.

Cases: The cases I have looked at are the Antec Titan 650 or the Supermicro CSE 743TQ-865B (which is really ugly but I could live with it). Any thoughts on which will be quieter with the stock fans they come with? Should I change fans out? Any thoughts on quality?

PSU: Are the PSU's that come with either of those cases decent quality?

Motherboard: I have two that I am looking at but this is my area of greatest confusion.

First is the Tyan Tempest i5100x and second is the Supermicro MBD-X7DAE+-O 5000X. Will I have compatibility issues with either of these? What differences will the various Intel Chipsets make to me? Why are there so many types of chipsets?

Thanks for any and all help. I appreciate it.

Have a great day,

Paul

[sswilson]

I'm thinking drop one of the drives for now and invest in another two gig of memory.

I know ECC mem is expensive, but I can't imagine trying to run 8 cores on 2 gig of memory, and even without the 8 cores, graphical tasks eat memory for breakfast!!!!!

[Cptn Vortex]

I tend to use the Supermicro X7DAE in many many builds. It is solid, stable, and never has any issues. Also, I use the Titan 650 as well. Same thing: solid, simple, good cooling, and decently quiet. Now, the coolers on those Xeons are going to be loud no matter what. Yes, there is some BIOS speed control, but not much. I recently built a system for a client with some Thermalright Coolers. Please refer to this thread. http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum...t-suckers.html

Oh, ECC is not too expensive. I would definitely go 4GB Minimum, as you usually want at least a gig per core. KINGSTON 2XDDR2 2GB 667 ECC FULLY BUFFERED KVR667D2D4F5K2/4G at FrontierPC.com Canada

[Paul Rogers]

Thanks for the responses folks! You've got me worried about cooling issues now though. If the Xeon's are that hot with the modded fans in pace, what would they be doing with the stock HSF setup?

As for the RAM, a couple of people have told me that, something that is making me rethink my dollar allocation. Any recommendations on which RAM to go with?

Thanks again,

Paul

[Cptn Vortex]

The RAM I linked to you above is 100% certified to work on the X7DAE.

[Paul Rogers]

Wow....I will blame that on lack of sleep (2 kids, one 11 months). I didn't even see that link in your post!

Thanks for the info again.

Ciao,

Paul

[Cptn Vortex]

No problem, now get some sleep