Ok Whatcha think of this for a Design Station

[3dsignco]

COOLER MASTER Stacker 830 Evolution RC-830-KKR3-GP Black Aluminum ATX Full Tower Computer Case Real Power Pro 1000W Power Supply - Retail
$579.99 -$200.00 Instant $379.99

TYAN S5396A2NRF Dual LGA 771 Intel 5400 SSI / Extended ATX Server Motherboard - Retail $389.99

2x EVGA 256-P2-N751-TR GeForce 8600 GT 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 SLI Supported Video Card - Retail $79.99 $159.98

2x Intel Xeon E5405 Harpertown 2.0GHz LGA 771 80W Quad-Core Processor Model BX80574E5405A - Retail $229.99 $459.98

8x Kingston 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 FB-DIMM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) ECC Fully Buffered Server Memory Model KVR667D2D8F5/1G - Retail
$69.99 -$22.00 Instant $383.92

3x Western Digital Raptor X WD1500AHFD 150GB 10000 RPM SATA 1.5Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM
$174.99 -$5.00 Instant $509.97

PHILIPS 20X DVD±R DVD Burner 2-Tone SATA Model SPD2513BD - Retail $28.99


Total $2,312.82

XP64
Signlab and Photoshop CS3
The reason I am running 2 Video Cards is I run a Dual monitors and a Cintiq Drawing Tablet.
One drive would be the OS and Programs and then the other 2 would be a Striped RAID.
I already Have a server so I am not too concerned about redundancy Strictly a Powerhouse.

[GraphixCALC]

How do you plan to accomplish the RAID? I don't see a RAID controller, so assume you'll use software raid off the M/B. While I am still learning about RAID, seems like hardware RAID is very much better than relying on software RAID.

[jiarby]

You may want a beefier video card. Maybe 512's?

I also would prefer the Q6600 vs the E5405 proc... I don't think you need Xeon's for a work station..plus the 6600's Are 2.2ghz.

Use a separate hardware RAID controller...

[choucove]

For standard 2D design work like in the sign business, there really isn't hardly any stress for a high-powered video card, most of the work is done in the actual processor. For this reason, I'd tend to steer away from SLI. Two reasons. 1) Purchasing two video cards in SLI does not actually provide twice the performance of just the one card, most likely it's closer to about 25% increased performance. Hardly worth two whole video cards. 2) Again this kind of design work does not require a heavy graphics engine.

I tend to go with the nVidia PNY Quadro FX video cards as they are specifically designed for design work. I've had EXCELENT results with the FX570, and is a pretty decently priced card. Even an FX370 Quadro card is more than enough power to do most all your designing needs, but I chose the 570 to have plenty of power for in the future. The Quadro FX570 card is also the same card that is used by the School of Engineering here at KU for all their workstations which can even handle doing your AutoCAD design work very well.

Everything else looks very nice. I designed a similar system for a RIP computer but using the AMD quad-core Opteron processors for around this same price. As stated above, I don't know if you'd need two quad-core processors for a designing workstation. The majority of your software can only multithread and utilize about four cores, so half of your whole computer would almost literally be sitting idle in most circumstances. You can still build an impressive design station around the latest Intel or AMD quad-core processors to give you plenty of performance. The real benefit of the quad-core over the dual-core is just better capable of multi-tasking, not really the speed.

[Ken]

Another 1000 watt system...there goes the planet...
Ken

[choucove]

Another 1000 watt system...there goes the planet...
Ken


If you really plan things out, you won't end up using near this amount of power even on a system like this. The computer we just built was again based off two AMD Opteron quad-core processors, a Quadro FX570 video card, ASUS L1N64-SLI WS/B workstation motherboard, two 10,000 rpm Western Digital Raptors hard drives, and Cooler Master Cosmos 1000 case. Even with all of this, the estimated power usage that I found was less than 500 Watts total power, even under full load. I still put in a 750 Watt PSU just for future upgrades.

Power efficiency is becoming a huge topic anymore. Amazingly enough, in the future we will continue to see components become more and more powerful but use less and less power.

[hammered]

I prefer the Cosmos S case
Ultra X3 1000watt ATX
Asus M3a32-MVP withAMD X4 Phenom 9850 (AMD are true Quad cores unlike Intels)
The rest rocks. I dont know if youll need the Raptors though. Id go for size over speed in a design center. Maybe 1 for a boot disk and then 2 to 3 of the Caviars for the raid size.

[Neil]

Signlab doesn't multithread. I read this on their forum from one of their techs.
I use Signlab and usually one or 2 other apps simultaneously and am going for a new core 2 duo system soon (Intel 2.66).
Unless someone can convince me I need quad core...

[511graphix]

Signlab doesn't multithread. I read this on their forum from one of their techs.
I use Signlab and usually one or 2 other apps simultaneously and am going for a new core 2 duo system soon (Intel 2.66).
Unless someone can convince me I need quad core...

quad core is great. I've had mine now for 5 months. sweeeeeeeeet with 4 gigs ram. I did have 8 gigs of ram in. but XP made me take it out. but the thing flys.
I have two hard drives ones a 300 gig 7200rpm and the other is a 150 gig 10000rpm. use the 10000 for programs and the 300 for storage..

[choucove]

It's always difficult trying to plan out your most efficient computer for today that will still be most efficient in the future. Right now, software developers are only just beginning to really take advantage of multithreading abilities and utilize those multiple core processors. For instance, Flexi (just the main design application) does not multithread either. However, it will utilize multiple threads when doing work such as printing a RIP. One thread is used for Flexi, one thread is used to output to Production Manager from Flexi, one thread is used to run Production Manager, and one more thread can be used to output to the printer/plotter from Production Manager. This means that right now the most efficient that you could use with Flexi is a single quad-core processor (per printer per job?)

The real strength of multi-core processors is not necessarily their speed (generally slower clock speeds than single core processors available) but is instead in their ability to multitask and utilize these multithreaded applications by sharing the work. And while software developers are still just beginning to design applications which can be multithreaded, you can bet that they will begin making more and more to support this very soon in the future. Multi-core processing and multithreaded applications are the future, and they will be capable of utilizing more and more efficient threading to more and more processors. While today you may be running two programs at the same time EVER on your computer, both not capable of multithreading, it may be more efficient for you to purchase and run a dual-core processor in your system (so each runs on a single core of a dual-core processor.) However, when you begin looking three years down the line, there will be many more applications capable of multithreading, so having a quad-core for future-proofing may not be a bad idea! Granted, the real power of using those four cores may not come along for a little while, but your system will be better prepared for it when it does, and thus you may have added a year or two onto the expected lifetime of using that computer system.

[Billct2]

I get a headache just reading this...man it was lot simpler deciding between a grey or a brown quill. I have to leave this stuff to the outside tech guy I use.

[shrmndlit]

Hey Bill just let the young ladies in your pic read it and explain it to us all I guarantee they know more than we can ever hope to.

[3dsignco]

ASUS P5K3 DELUXE LGA 775 Intel P35 Dual RAID MB

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450 Yorkfield 2.66GHz LGA 775 95W Quad-Core Processor

Patriot Extreme Performance 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333

Western Digital Raptor X WD1500AHFD 150GB 10000 RPM SATA 1.5Gb/s Hard Dr. 1 for Base programs 2 for RAID Design only no storage on this machine already have a terabit Server.

Here is the System I decide to go with. Dumped the Xeons for faster Memory. Been reading that the DDR3 just screams and after a bunch of reading 2 quads wasn't really going to be utilized that much until CS4 but that is a year or so out and who still knows how efficient it will be and this system is a $1000 less as I already have cases and power supplies to fit ATX format.
Still need to add 2 Video Cards. For the Monitors and Cintiq Tablet.

I may just build this machine in a Fridge for cooling.

[choucove]

Sounds like a pretty good system setup, and yes going with a standard ATX motherboard and single processors system can save you plenty of money as well (especially by avoiding the cost of overly expensive ECC memory!)

I wonder if anyone now has tried out the newer Western Digital VelociRaptor drive in place of the older Raptors for a design or RIP system. These new hard drives really are supposed to be incredible, with greater hard drive density for bigger capacities, yet a smaller size to use less energy. That and some tests show it outperforming SSD anymore and getting very close to 2.5" 10,000rpm SAS drives.

[SignBurst PCs]

We are already playing with them in our systems. The outlook is good. Cooler, faster, and quieter are all good things.

The only problem is that we are only seeing 300GB VelociRaptors. They are a bit more expensive than the 150GB Raptors that we were using before. They will only be upgrade options for the time being. When (if) the price drops, we will put them in as standard hardware.