- Sep 15, 2011
- 2
- 0
- 18,510
Hello Everyone! My name is Matt Freeman and I'm from Sweetwater, Texas. This is my first post here, allthough I've lurked the boards for many years now.
This workstation is the 8th computer I've built, all have run stable and kept good uptime w/ a small (maybe 5%) hardware failure rate. What I've done is researched and come up with a list of components that I think will make a good stable Digital Audio Workstation system. But now that I've got the hardware, it turns out I might not have researched enough lol (hey it happens). I'm no tech guru but I do have a networking degree and am decently computer savvy but I have very limited overclocking experience. So In other words try to spell things out for me if possible because a lot of the time I don't assume things that most techies would.
What I'm looking to do is maximize performance while maintaining 100% stability.
1. One thing I am very unfamilier with is timing ram. I've always run stock speeds or let the motherboard clock it after I set the cpu speed/multiplier. The timings never seem to end up with the timings I see listed on the description of the memory on the website, and I am looking to make this system have low latency and tighten up memory timings to try and increase my benchmarks with memory because a lot of audio effects are reliant on RAM.
1.5 The motherboard and ram claim to support ECC, but I'm not sure if windows 7 home premium does. I have updated the bios on the motherboard and it gives me the option of ECC Memory, it is either Auto, or Disabled. I have it on auto. Is there a way I can find out if it is activated?
2. I have heard about increasing voltages on my bridges and ram and processor and such to make them operate faster. With this processor which is not overclockable they say (I don't believe it needs to be for my application) is there anything I can do to make it more speed efficient?
3. The intel graphics have a boost feature to speed up open gl performance as a workstation specific option, since I'm really not rendering 3d graphics (only the occasional Adobe Premiere Video) Is this eating in to my data processing performance.
4. My firewire chipset isn't the Texas Instruments chip, but my audio Interface claims to work fine with the chipset this motherboard comes with, so no worries here.
Intel Xeon E3-1235 Sandy Bridge 3.2GHz LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core Server Processor BX80623E31235
Antec EarthWatts EA-500D Green 500W ATX12V v2.3 / EPS12V 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Supply
OCZ Agility 2 OCZSSD2-2AGTE60G 2.5" 60GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
ASUS P8B WS LGA 1155 Intel C206 ATX Intel Xeon E3 Server/Workstation Motherboard
ASUS DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS Black SATA 24X DVD Burner - Bulk - OEM
ZALMAN CNPS7000C-AlCu 2 Ball CPU Cooler
2x (16gigs total) Kingston 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) ECC Unbuffered Server Memory Model KVR1333D3E9SK2/8G
2x (Raid-0) Seagate Barracuda ST31000524AS 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
The reason for the sata 3 hard disks is because this will the the audio drive and needs to be fairly stable and as fast as possible at the same time (it is backed up on gigabit lan to a home network server). Then I got the SSD sata2 hard drive because I only had 2 sata 6.0 ports on the motherboard but I still needed something fast and responsive to run the OS and apps.
That will get me going for now. I have a bunch of info on making my SSD more efficient and faster using TRIM, and being that AHCP is a subset of raid, which my controller is set to to raid the Seagate Barracuda's it should be ready for me to bring up to optimal performance. ( if you have any tips off the top of your head feel free to post them though
Another thing is I feel that I'm getting good response and speed from my raid, but will research more on this as well. Thank you very much and I'm sorry for the long post!
This workstation is the 8th computer I've built, all have run stable and kept good uptime w/ a small (maybe 5%) hardware failure rate. What I've done is researched and come up with a list of components that I think will make a good stable Digital Audio Workstation system. But now that I've got the hardware, it turns out I might not have researched enough lol (hey it happens). I'm no tech guru but I do have a networking degree and am decently computer savvy but I have very limited overclocking experience. So In other words try to spell things out for me if possible because a lot of the time I don't assume things that most techies would.
What I'm looking to do is maximize performance while maintaining 100% stability.
1. One thing I am very unfamilier with is timing ram. I've always run stock speeds or let the motherboard clock it after I set the cpu speed/multiplier. The timings never seem to end up with the timings I see listed on the description of the memory on the website, and I am looking to make this system have low latency and tighten up memory timings to try and increase my benchmarks with memory because a lot of audio effects are reliant on RAM.
1.5 The motherboard and ram claim to support ECC, but I'm not sure if windows 7 home premium does. I have updated the bios on the motherboard and it gives me the option of ECC Memory, it is either Auto, or Disabled. I have it on auto. Is there a way I can find out if it is activated?
2. I have heard about increasing voltages on my bridges and ram and processor and such to make them operate faster. With this processor which is not overclockable they say (I don't believe it needs to be for my application) is there anything I can do to make it more speed efficient?
3. The intel graphics have a boost feature to speed up open gl performance as a workstation specific option, since I'm really not rendering 3d graphics (only the occasional Adobe Premiere Video) Is this eating in to my data processing performance.
4. My firewire chipset isn't the Texas Instruments chip, but my audio Interface claims to work fine with the chipset this motherboard comes with, so no worries here.
Intel Xeon E3-1235 Sandy Bridge 3.2GHz LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core Server Processor BX80623E31235
Antec EarthWatts EA-500D Green 500W ATX12V v2.3 / EPS12V 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Supply
OCZ Agility 2 OCZSSD2-2AGTE60G 2.5" 60GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
ASUS P8B WS LGA 1155 Intel C206 ATX Intel Xeon E3 Server/Workstation Motherboard
ASUS DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS Black SATA 24X DVD Burner - Bulk - OEM
ZALMAN CNPS7000C-AlCu 2 Ball CPU Cooler
2x (16gigs total) Kingston 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) ECC Unbuffered Server Memory Model KVR1333D3E9SK2/8G
2x (Raid-0) Seagate Barracuda ST31000524AS 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
The reason for the sata 3 hard disks is because this will the the audio drive and needs to be fairly stable and as fast as possible at the same time (it is backed up on gigabit lan to a home network server). Then I got the SSD sata2 hard drive because I only had 2 sata 6.0 ports on the motherboard but I still needed something fast and responsive to run the OS and apps.
That will get me going for now. I have a bunch of info on making my SSD more efficient and faster using TRIM, and being that AHCP is a subset of raid, which my controller is set to to raid the Seagate Barracuda's it should be ready for me to bring up to optimal performance. ( if you have any tips off the top of your head feel free to post them though
Another thing is I feel that I'm getting good response and speed from my raid, but will research more on this as well. Thank you very much and I'm sorry for the long post!
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