Building a new high-performance PC

Hi All,

I have spent quite some time at the end of 2010 to build a brand new PC for myself. The goal was to make Lightroom and CS5 (and also any other image processing programs) run as fast as possible on a reasonably priced high-end PC.

My previous PC was one with an Intel Q6600 quad processor and 8GB main memory and it was showing it's age of 3.5 years. After upgrading Lightroom to version 3.1, it has slowed down terribly. When I clicked on a new raw file from my 5DII, it took LR 8-10 seconds before it was rendered on screen (if the rendered version was not already in the cache). Mind you, my main monitor is 30" so even the previews in LR are rendered at 1:1 size which may explain the long rendition times a bit. As a result, browsing a large shoot of say more than 300 pictures took ages and made culling very cumbersome. Also, LR was very unstable and would crash after every 10th picture rendered or so. Photoshop wasn't very responsive and would take ages when I was processing my GB sized stitched panos. My pano stitching program (PTAssembler) would take ages to stitch and render the end results. Most importantly, my favorite HDR program SNS-HDR would take some 4-6 minutes to process a simple 3x bracket scene. Clearly, it was time for me to do something about it.

Once the decision was taken, I have spent a lot of time to refresh my know-how on processors, memory and storage; the 3 most important aspects for photo editing. I have also studied the behavior of LR with respect to the use of preview and caches. I won't bore you with the details but I have eventually settled down on the following components. If you want any details as to reasons and the processes behind the choices made, please feel free to ask.

Processor: Intel Core i7-i950 quad core hyper threaded processor overclocked to run at 4.1 GHz (rock stable running Linpack Intel Burn tests and Prime95 tests for >24 hours reaching a maximum CPU temp of 78 degrees centigrade, the daily operational temp @ 38 degrees) !

Motherboard: Gigabyte X58A-UD3R rev2, 6xDDR3 slots, 2x USB3, 2xSATA3, 6xSATA2, 2xESATA

Processor cooling: Noctua NH-14 Dual Fan push-pull cooler

Memory: 3x4GB (12GB) Kingston DDR3 @ 9-9-9-24 triple channel (It is a myth that faster latency memory is better. It does not contribute significantly to the performance. More memory is always better than less but faster memory).

OS/Apps HD: OCZ Vertex2 SSD 60 GB MLC, Trim, SandForce controller

PS scratch, LR catalogs and previews, LR Cache: OCZ Vertex2 SSD 120 GB MLC, Trim, SandForce controller

Internal storage: 4x1.5 TB 7200 rpm (Seagate) and 2x2TB 5900 rpm (Samsung) hard disks (JBOD, not configured as a raid array)

Graphics card: MSI R6850 ATi, PCI-e, 1 GB DDR5, DirectX 11, HDMI, 1xDisplayPort, 2x DVI-D

Power supply: Tagan 850W

Case cooling: 3x12cm intake fans and 1x12cm and 3x8cm exhaust fans.

Case: Cooler Master Stacker tower with 11 bays

OS: Windows 7 Ultimate x64

What about the resulting performance? I am now the proud owner of a blazing fast PC which does everything I throw at it without slowing down and is 100% stable (not one single crash so far). LR rendering has gone down from 8-10 sec to 1-2 sec for new pictures! Using adjustment brushes in LR does not crash or freeze the LR. LR itself still crashes once in a fortnight but I am pretty certain that it has got to do with the bugs present in LR 3.3 (more about it later if anyone is interested). PS CS5 starts up in 5-6 seconds and it can process 4GB+ large files while the efficiency still remains at 100%. Once as a test, I have opened some 16 images -which together were more than 25GB in size- to make PS crash or freeze but it was rock stable and fast all the way. I could just keep on working and apply calculation intensive filters and add layers upon layers easily as if nothing special was going on, whilst the history states were set to 1000. I was truly amazed. The SNS-HDR now processes the same bracketed image in just under 1 min instead of the 4-6 min it used to take previously. PTAssembler runs also 3-4 times faster now. Actually, every single program I use runs incredibly fast. I have a feeling of euphoria, which unfortunately is fading now that I have gradually gotten used to having this hellish speed at my disposal, lol.

I hope that this info will be valuable to those who might be considering building a new pc like I did. Again, please feel free to discuss further. Have you done something similar? If so, what were your experiences?


Cheers,

Hi, Cem,

Cem_Usakligil said:

I have spent quite some time at the end of 2010 to build a brand new PC for myself. The goal was to make Lightroom and CS5 (and also any other image processing programs) run as fast as possible on a reasonably priced high-end PC.

Click to expand...

Sounds like a well-done project with a great result. Thanks for the detailed description.

Best regards,

Doug

HI Cem,

Thanks for this info. I'm currently considering an upgrade - still running on a core 2 duo machine with 4Gb. Wasn't so bad with my 20D, but have upgraded to 5D MkII now, and Lightroom does slug a bit.

Out of interest how do you have lightroom and your hard-drives setup - in terms of OS, Image Storage and Lightroom cache? Are they spread over separate drives, or have you found that makes little difference?


Regards,

Hi Cem,

Looks like a nice machine. Anything that makes LR break into a gallop has to be good.

Andy,

It might be worth having a look at PC Specialist. I've always had good service from them.

Regards,

Stuart

Hi Cem!
Congratulations on your new arrival!
You've clearly (IMO) done your homework.
The Gigabyte mobo you selected is rated one of the best.
I built a very similar machine a few month's ago and couldn't be happier.
The i7 chip, max memory and coupled w/ a x64 operating system is blinding fast, eh?
I haven't overclocked mine but your observations will have me tinkering this weekend (so long as it doesn't get in the way of fishing!)
Question about your CPU temperature observations - are you monitoring the temp on a real-time basis (via a desktop gadget) or was this data returned via the testing you performed?
I've found the chip runs very cool regardless of what I throw at it and I'm seldom grabbing more than 20% of any core. Got to love that i7!
Keep me posted on your observations.

Hi Cem

I have a quite similar PC to yours that I have had for over a year now.
• Motherboard: Gigabyte X58a UD7 rev 1
• Processor: Intel Core i7-975 standard @3.33GHz
• Cooler: Cogage True Spirit
• Graphics Cards: Gigabyte GTS250 x2 (allows separate calibration of NEC 2690 and 2090 monitors)
• RAM: 12GB OCZ DDR3 8-8-8-24
• Power supply: Silverstone ST1000P Strider Plus 1000w
• Case: Silverstone ST02
• C Drive: OCZ Vertex 2 SSD 120GB
• 4 x 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black in RAID 5
• Further 1TB WD Caviar Black outside the array
• 2 x Samsung CD Drives
• Drobo-S for backup (currently WD Caviar Green: 1.5TB x3; 1TB x 1; 2TB x 1)
• Win7 – 64

Performance is great but I’ve had lots of problems in the last few months
• C Drive failure (original SSD was Intel 80GB); though I have images backups ended up rebuilding it from scratch
• Had false reports of drive failure from an earlier version of the Intel RAID software then confusing messages on the current (much improved) software when I did have a drive failure that probably lead me to take too long to do anything about it. When I replaced the bad drive, three drives showed up as missing. Currently having difficulty getting the RAID back (with or without data), making some progress but still going through the options. Probably then have to restore data from backup. (Already restored about a third to an external drive.)
• Bootup was very slow. Discovered Windows Image backup interferes with Drobo formatting (though not Acronis image backup). Will have to reformat the Drobo but not till I get the RAID under control (and data restored).
• CD Drives are working for software operations but not for copying burning or ripping. Yet to address this.

Hopefully you won't encounter any such problems and hopefully I'll sort all this out. It's a very frustrating waste of time but at least I am learing somewhat as I go.

Regards,
Murray

Lightroom performance testing setup and results

Hi Andrew,

Andrew Stannard said:

..Out of interest how do you have lightroom and your hard-drives setup - in terms of OS, Image Storage and Lightroom cache? Are they spread over separate drives, or have you found that makes little difference?

Click to expand...

As improving the LR response time was my main goal, I have done a series of tests first to identify the performance bottlenecks. If the bottleneck was in the storage area, upgrading the CPU would not improve much or vice versa.

Perhaps I should take one step back and explain the cache vs preview in LR first. The so-called ACR cache (which is shared with ACR as the name implies) contains a processed copy of the raw file when it is developed. The files which are in this cache are only used when one is using the Develop module of LR. The Library module of LR, on the other hand, uses the LR preview files which are rendered either 1:1 or at smaller sizes such as 1024 or 2048 pixel wide. When one is browsing through a set of files using the library module (to select or reject or to tag, etc), LR is continuously looking for an existing preview in the LR preview directories. If one is not found, a preview is then generated on the fly. If one uses a monitor which is more than 2048 pixels wide, the previews are rendered 1:1 even if the user indicates in LR preferences to have smaller preview sizes.

So here is how I did test it:
1) I have copied a collection of 200 raw images into a new directory, without their associated xml files.
2) I have set up in LR a user development preset which included all sorts adjustments. The main areas of interest being: noise reduction, sharpening (detail set to 100 to do convolution sharpening), automatic lens correction.
3) I have cleaned the ACR cache as well as the previews in the catalog directory.
4) I have imported the new directory with the raw files into LR and I have assigned the user preset during the import dialog and I have also chosen to render 1:1 previews.
5) LR started to import and render 1:1 previews.
6) While the import was busy, I have monitored the 3 performance areas: disk i/o, memory usage and cpu usage. I have also timed how long the import process took.
7) I have then created variations of the user preset eliminating one adjustment in every version. Such as having a development preset without the noise reduction and another one without lens correction and yet another one without any corrections, etc.
8) I have rerun the steps 3-6 for each of these presets and recorded the results.

The results were interesting. Firstly, the load pattern was quite easy to follow using the resource monitor of W7. At the beginning of each new raw file to be imported, there was the peak in the disk i/o to read the file. Then the disk i/o was down while the cpu load went up to churn the data. When the processing of the 1:1 preview was completed, there was another peak in disk i/o to write the preview to the LR database directory and to write the processed raw to the ACR cache. The disk i/o was in total less than 1 second whereas the cpu number crunching cycle took somewhere around 6-7 seconds. This was already an indication of the fact that, even if I could improve the disk subsytem performance by 100%, the contribution of this to the total performance would be at the order of 7%.

Memory usage started at around 1GB and gradually grew to some 4GB during the test. As I had 8GB memory available, there was still some free physical memory left. This was a clear indication that memory did not form any bottlenecks in my case.

So obviously, the cpu was the main performance bottleneck. When I used a preset which included noise reduction (regardless of the presence of any other adjustments), the cpu utilization was always maxed at 100%. When lens correction was involved (without the noise reduction), the cpu was also maxed but just around 97%. When neither lens correction nor noise reduction were applied, the cpu number crunching cylce went from 6-7 seconds down to around 3 seconds and the cpu utilization was around 70%.

Obviously, looking at these results, there was some low hanging fruit to be picked just by making sure that the default settings of LR did not apply any noise reduction or lens correction. I would anyway recommend to setting up a default noise reduction or lens correction but applying them on the individual images which really need them during the pp. Anyway, I have decided to go all the way and upgrade the CPU as well as the storage (from HD to SSD) to reach a platform which could support me for at least three years in the future.

Based on my test results, I knew that the faster the cpu, the better the performance gains would be (almost linearly). That is why I went through all the pain of overclocking to 4.1GHz and making sure that the system was 100% stable and reliable. As a result, the full number crunching cycle is now less than 1 second, even when noise reduction and lens correction are both applied. This is a 600% improvement on speed.

My hard disks (7200rpm/32M) had a throughput of some 90MB/sec. Even then, they have played a small role in the total processing time. By upgrading the disks to the newest and fastest SSD available, I had a throughput of some 270MB/sec. This has made the disk i/o virtually instantaneous and the i/o load never ever really reaches the maximum available. That is also the reason that I did not put in any efforts to create a raid-0 set to have an even higher throughput.

BTW, I have also run all the SiSoft benchmarks and compared the results online with the pool of test results executed by thousands of testers in the world. My new PC came up in all the test in the top 5% group and in a few ones even in the top 1%. The only PCs which were faster were the ones overclocked higher than 4.1GHz using liquid cooling systems. Anyway, this is not a competition for me and there is no reason to push the envelope further. Now I am happy with the PC knowing that it is one of the best out there and my image processing programs are running very, very fast indeed.

Coming back to your original question, I have a 60GB SSD drive as the OS drive. Also, the windows pagefile is located on this drive. Normally, I would move it off to another special fast disk but as the SSD is so fast I don't see the need to do that. Also, having 12GB physical memory means that my swap file rarely gets used.

The LR database (including the previews) and the ACR cache reside on the other SSD (120GB this time) in their own partitions. I had to partition the drive since LR does not allow the user to specify the maximum storage for the previews like it does with the ACR cache. It grows and grows indefinitely, even if I choose the option to delete 1:1 previews after 30 days. And here comes the climax. As I have briefly mentioned in my original post, LR still crashes once every fortnight or so. I have discovered that this happens when the partition of the previews is full and LR cannot write any new previews to the drive. It then crashes, actually it terminates immediately without issuing any warning at all. So I now have an extra maintenance procedure of removing older previews outside of LR periodically, just to make sure that there is always enough free space on the partition for LR to run smoothly.

I hope this may have answered your questions. Otherwise let me know.

Cheers,

Hi Doug,

Doug Kerr said:

...Sounds like a well-done project with a great result. Thanks for the detailed description.

Click to expand...

Thanks. But I realize all too well that it is an art form to explain technical projects in clear writing to a wider audience and no-one does it better than you my friend.


Hi Stuart,

StuartRae said:

...Looks like a nice machine. Anything that makes LR break into a gallop has to be good.

Click to expand...

Yes indeed. It was quite an investigation to find out what LR really wanted.


Hi John,

John Angulat said:

...I built a very similar machine a few month's ago and couldn't be happier.
The i7 chip, max memory and coupled w/ a x64 operating system is blinding fast, eh?
I haven't overclocked mine but your observations will have me tinkering this weekend (so long as it doesn't get in the way of fishing!)
Question about your CPU temperature observations - are you monitoring the temp on a real-time basis (via a desktop gadget) or was this data returned via the testing you performed?
I've found the chip runs very cool regardless of what I throw at it and I'm seldom grabbing more than 20% of any core. Got to love that i7!
Keep me posted on your observations.

Click to expand...

I am monitoring the temperature using the realtemp program. This program gives realistic results in real-time (one can also keep track of max and min temperatures and create graphs), and the reported temperatures are nominally 10-15 degrees higher than the temperatures reported by the more common utility programs such as SiSoft of your motherboards own utilities (such as the ET6 of Gigabyte). So when I mentioned the 78 degrees in my original post, this was the figure reported by the realtemp. The other utilities reported some 62 degrees instead. In any case, both temperatures are achieved only when all 4 cores are running at 100% over an extended period. For day-to-day tasks, my peak temp does not go above 60 degrees and the average is around 38 degrees.

Cheers,

Hi Murray,

Nice to hear from you again, I hope all is well down-under?

Murray Foote said:

...I have a quite similar PC to yours that I have had for over a year now.
• Motherboard: Gigabyte X58a UD7 rev 1
• Processor: Intel Core i7-975 standard @3.33GHz
• Cooler: Cogage True Spirit
• Graphics Cards: Gigabyte GTS250 x2 (allows separate calibration of NEC 2690 and 2090 monitors)
• RAM: 12GB OCZ DDR3 8-8-8-24
• Power supply: Silverstone ST1000P Strider Plus 1000w
• Case: Silverstone ST02
• C Drive: OCZ Vertex 2 SSD 120GB
• 4 x 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black in RAID 5
• Further 1TB WD Caviar Black outside the array
• 2 x Samsung CD Drives
• Drobo-S for backup (currently WD Caviar Green: 1.5TB x3; 1TB x 1; 2TB x 1)
• Win7 – 64

Performance is great but I’ve had lots of problems in the last few months
• C Drive failure (original SSD was Intel 80GB); though I have images backups ended up rebuilding it from scratch
• Had false reports of drive failure from an earlier version of the Intel RAID software then confusing messages on the current (much improved) software when I did have a drive failure that probably lead me to take too long to do anything about it. When I replaced the bad drive, three drives showed up as missing. Currently having difficulty getting the RAID back (with or without data), making some progress but still going through the options. Probably then have to restore data from backup. (Already restored about a third to an external drive.)
• Bootup was very slow. Discovered Windows Image backup interferes with Drobo formatting (though not Acronis image backup). Will have to reformat the Drobo but not till I get the RAID under control (and data restored).
• CD Drives are working for software operations but not for copying burning or ripping. Yet to address this.

Hopefully you won't encounter any such problems and hopefully I'll sort all this out. It's a very frustrating waste of time but at least I am learing somewhat as I go.

Regards,
Murray

Click to expand...

Sorry to hear about the problems you've had. I have had my fair share of them as well. Mainly, I have spent 3 frigging weeks trying to stabilize the system after installing W7 (even when no overclocking was applied). Windows would crash randomly with or without showing a BSOD. I have been able to systematically eliminate all factors. I have replaced graphics cards, I have replaced the motherboard, I have used pci-e sata controllers instead of the on-board ones, etc. Nothing has helped. In the end, all clues pointed towards the memory. I have then replaced the 6x2GB OCZ Platinum 8-8-8-24 memory with 6x2GB Kingston 8-8-8-24 memory. But still, crashes continued. I have run Memtest 86+ perhaps a million times but there were no memory errors. So then I did exchange the memory a third time. But this time I bought 3x4GB sticks instead of 6 sticks which were occupying all the memory slots. I have suspected that it might be the reason and it actually was! After the third exchange, the machine has been running rock stable. But I have lost 3 weeks to find out and ended up spending lots of extra money to buy new cards, mobo, etc.

Another problem I have had was with the DVD-ROM/RW drive. I have tried 3 different units but in all cases W7 became unstable and would slow down mysteriously at times. So now I don't use an internal DVD-ROM unit but an external USB one; sigh....

Anyway, thanks a lot for chiming in and sharing your experiences.


Cheers,

Hi, Cem,

Cem_Usakligil said:

Hi Doug,

Thanks. But I realize all too well that it is an art form to explain technical projects in clear writing to a wider audience and no-one does it better than you my friend.

Click to expand...

Aw, shucks!

Best regards,

Doug

And for those of us who can't explain it very well, there remains the opportunity to buy a Mac. That way Apple does it for us. That's the route I take. I still have to make some technical decisions, but they are far more minor.

Alain Briot said:

And for those of us who can't explain it very well, there remains the opportunity to buy a Mac. That way Apple does it for us. That's the route I take. I still have to make some technical decisions, but they are far more minor.

Click to expand...

After 25 years of extensive PC usage.... since more than 3 years on Mac.... only question remains.... why did I not change earlier! Superior operating system, easy of use, security, reliability, higher capital cost, lower TCO (if you factor in the wasted time I had spent on fixing Microsoft BS!)

I am never bothered with 'as fast as possible' I am bothered with overall performance and reliability. On my 8 core with 32 Gig Ram and ever growing HD space, I am still good for several years to come.

Alain, Georg,

Let's try to stay on topic, in the "Windows on a PC" forum, and not start a silly PC vs Mac flame war. There are other forums, or even websites, better suited for that.

BTW, there's no problem if you want to start your own thread comparing the two platforms.

Cheers,
Bart (in his role as moderator)

Bart_van_der_Wolf said:

Alain, Georg,

Let's try to stay on topic, in the "Windows on a PC" forum, and not start a silly PC vs Mac flame war. There are other forums, or even websites, better suited for that.

BTW, there's no problem if you want to start your own thread comparing the two platforms.

Cheers,
Bart (in his role as moderator)

Click to expand...

Wasn't meant as such, but sure... know what you mean!

Congrats Cem! Sounds like a true powerhouse. My personal preference would have been WD enterprise R4 drives for HD's, but that's only me.

My post certainly wasn't meant as such. You're reading way more into this than there is. I was just stating my approach. I'm sure there's many other Mac users on this forum that can't describe the 'innards' of their computers in fine details and who prefer to buy one off the shelf, ready made.

In fact, hey, there's also PCs sold ready made, right off the shelf! So my post isn't specific to Macs. I just happen to use one. Instead, it's really about choosing to buy a machine off the shelf instead of building one yourself. Sort of like buying a sport car off the showroom floor instead of building a 'hot rod' in your garage!

Don't try to stop a war before it begins. Otherwise you run the chance of pissing off the other party and getting them to think of war! Diplomacy starts at home.

Bart_van_der_Wolf said:

Alain, Georg,

Let's try to stay on topic, in the "Windows on a PC" forum, and not start a silly PC vs Mac flame war. There are other forums, or even websites, better suited for that.

BTW, there's no problem if you want to start your own thread comparing the two platforms.

Cheers,
Bart (in his role as moderator)

Click to expand...

Hi Bart,

I agree,

So excluding the operating system, the issues are keeping the system cool and having enough power.

After we're dealing with the same issues. Today, a lot of common solutions which are straightforward upgrades:

Graphics card: CS5, Autopano giga and other programs, likely Lightroom too take advantage of all the power that's there.

Fast Drives: Obvious for both the OS, and the graphics programs and data drive

I have a dual 2.66 GHZ Intel Processor with a total of 4 cores and 16 GB RAM.

I have just added 1 OWC 120 GB SSD for OS and software. It's sufficient for most work but for my 280 image architectural stitches I have 3 Hitachi 3 TB drives and one external ITB external RAID.

So far I've put in the SSD with transfer of all my software without a glitch on one click and upgraded to the latest OS. Also have put in one of the 3 TB drives. Still have to remove 2 more internal drives to make them 3 TB each. Then I will Soft-RAID the three of them for holding DATA files.

Lastly, I have a new fast graphics card and will dare to put this in once I have delivered my current project on monday.

Already, a 26 hour stitch of a building 360 degree pano is reduced to 4-5 hours, (I fell asleep so am not sure when rendering finished, but it was perfect).

At first there were no crashes of CS4, now they are increasing, but perhaps it's the one large file with many layers I'm working on. New files don't crash. Onyx doesn't stop the crashes.

So really I see these computers, Mac and PC as having common problems and common solutions. We just have become more ambitious in what we tackle and so we need hardware less prone to even rare errors and more capacity and speed.

Of course, more backup too.

The next thing is to upgrade the "box" from Apple to get the latest chips, graphics cards and data bus freeways. That I will do in the coming month.

Cem, I'm envious of where you have reached in stability. That with speed is what I need for Photoshop. But for stitching huge projects, my upgraded system has made ambitious image stitching ~ 4 to 6 times as fast.

Asher

Hi Cem,

Thanks for your detailed reply - much appreciated. Looks like CPU performance is the way to go to get Lightroom running at a zippy pace.

Out of interest does Lightroom make use of the multiple cores during normal use? Perhaps if you export whilst also developing images?

Anyway, some great information for when I get around to my new PC - who knows I might even go Mac

Thanks,

Hi Andrew,

Andrew Stannard said:

...Thanks for your detailed reply - much appreciated. Looks like CPU performance is the way to go to get Lightroom running at a zippy pace.

Out of interest does Lightroom make use of the multiple cores during normal use? Perhaps if you export whilst also developing images?

Click to expand...

My CPU has 4 physical cores and hyper threading enabled so that Windows sees 8 cores. All 8 of them are used by LR during various adjustments even when the load is less than 100%. So the more cores and the more cpu speed, the merrier.

Cheers,

Cem said:

Hi Murray,

Nice to hear from you again, I hope all is well down-under?

Murray said:

Originally Posted by Murray Foote View Post
...I have a quite similar PC to yours that I have had for over a year now.
• ...

Performance is great but I’ve had lots of problems in the last few months
• C Drive failure (original SSD was Intel 80GB); though I have images backups ended up rebuilding it from scratch
• Had false reports of drive failure from an earlier version of the Intel RAID software then confusing messages on the current (much improved) software when I did have a drive failure that probably lead me to take too long to do anything about it. When I replaced the bad drive, three drives showed up as missing. Currently having difficulty getting the RAID back (with or without data), making some progress but still going through the options. Probably then have to restore data from backup. (Already restored about a third to an external drive.)
• Bootup was very slow. Discovered Windows Image backup interferes with Drobo formatting (though not Acronis image backup). Will have to reformat the Drobo but not till I get the RAID under control (and data restored).
• CD Drives are working for software operations but not for copying burning or ripping. Yet to address this.

Hopefully you won't encounter any such problems and hopefully I'll sort all this out. It's a very frustrating waste of time but at least I am learing somewhat as I go.

Click to expand...

Sorry to hear about the problems you've had. I have had my fair share of them as well. Mainly, I have spent 3 frigging weeks trying to stabilize the system after installing W7 (even when no overclocking was applied). Windows would crash randomly with or without showing a BSOD. I have been able to systematically eliminate all factors. I have replaced graphics cards, I have replaced the motherboard, I have used pci-e sata controllers instead of the on-board ones, etc. Nothing has helped. In the end, all clues pointed towards the memory. I have then replaced the 6x2GB OCZ Platinum 8-8-8-24 memory with 6x2GB Kingston 8-8-8-24 memory. But still, crashes continued. I have run Memtest 86+ perhaps a million times but there were no memory errors. So then I did exchange the memory a third time. But this time I bought 3x4GB sticks instead of 6 sticks which were occupying all the memory slots. I have suspected that it might be the reason and it actually was! After the third exchange, the machine has been running rock stable. But I have lost 3 weeks to find out and ended up spending lots of extra money to buy new cards, mobo, etc.

Another problem I have had was with the DVD-ROM/RW drive. I have tried 3 different units but in all cases W7 became unstable and would slow down mysteriously at times. So now I don't use an internal DVD-ROM unit but an external USB one; sigh....

Anyway, thanks a lot for chiming in and sharing your experiences.

Click to expand...

Hi Cem

I'm gradually learning more dealing with these problems and becoming more efficient dealing with them. The main one currently is the RAID dropping out. After going through various combinations of ways to set it up, I can now see it as a drive though it is the wrong size (missing 1TB). This appears to be because the upgraded hard disk with a 64MB cache instead of 32MB does not work in the array (though advance advice was that this should be OK). I have an older model of the drive on order and will try that when it turns up. If necessary I will switch to JBOD though if so I’ll make sure I’ve got all my data back first.

All is well down here. I retired six months ago and in a few weeks am heading off for Patagonia, Antarctica and Easter Island for two months.

Regards,
Murray

Murray Foote said:

Hi Cem

I'm gradually learning more dealing with these problems and becoming more efficient dealing with them. The main one currently is the RAID dropping out. After going through various combinations of ways to set it up, I can now see it as a drive though it is the wrong size (missing 1TB). This appears to be because the upgraded hard disk with a 64MB cache instead of 32MB does not work in the array (though advance advice was that this should be OK). I have an older model of the drive on order and will try that when it turns up. If necessary I will switch to JBOD though if so I’ll make sure I’ve got all my data back first.

All is well down here. I retired six months ago and in a few weeks am heading off for Patagonia, Antarctica and Easter Island for two months.

Regards,
Murray

Click to expand...

Murray congratulations with the retirement. I am rather jealous to hear about your trip to those dream locations ;-). I hope you will have a safe journey and come back with many precious memories; some in the form of photographs.

Re. the RAID, I have used various raid configs many times in the past and they have always ended up causing more trouble than they were worth eventually. I have done raid sets using the mobo controller or even dedicated raid controllers. I have created software raid sets using window's dynamic discs. I did not use raid to prevent data loss due to a drive failure; for that I have backups and multiple synchronized copies on my nas and external drives. The only reason was to achieve greater speed and raid-0 is ideal for that. So every now and then I would be lured into trying it out for a while. As I said, I also lost many of those raid sets to system upgrades or other radical activities which have gone slightly wrong. Eventually, I am now in the middle of one of my raid-free periods, until curiosity or boredom of stability strikes again ;-).


Cheers,

It's very much a photographic journey so hopefully in a few months time I will return safe & well with all my travelling photographic & computer equipment and many thousands of images to contemplate processing.

I'm well aware that any kind of RAID can be precarious but haven't quite given up on it yet. Still, RAID5 is primarily for data security and perhaps it's overkill since I have the Drobo.

Murray Foote said:

I'm well aware that any kind of RAID can be precarious but haven't quite given up on it yet. Still, RAID5 is primarily for data security and perhaps it's overkill since I have the Drobo.

Click to expand...

I think a Drobo or NAS RAID make good sense for hardware redundant storage of data.

IMHO there is another factor involved, when deciding to choose for RAID redundancy as part of the main computer. How much downtime can one afford when a drive fails? What is more efficient, restoring a single drive, or a RAID? A mirrored RAID will allow operations to continue (at a somewhat slower rate during rebuild), but swapping a single drive and writing a mirror copy of the boot partition back to it is also not that time consuming.

As Cem has shown, the real bottleneck may not even be the transfer speed of the drive. While a striped RAID of course can help with faster access, it also lowers system reliability. So one is required to have some sort of mirror option if down time needs to be minimized. But then some systems require identical drives in order to rebuild a striped RAID, and those identical drives may not be around anymore when needed. RAIDs add complexity, and when a RAID controller fails, everything is probably lost.

I think Cem's approach makes sense, because a single boot drive is easy to duplicate and to replace. It's so easy and affordable, that one can make multiple copies of the partition and store them at different locations. The same goes for data. It's even easier to make copies of a data drive/partition, and it can be a background process so we can't forget.

Cheers,
Bart

I agree with a single boot drive, which is the way I have gone also, with a similar SSD to Cem. I think having a bootable RAID would be asking for trouble. I also use Acronis and with the Plus pack, you can restore a saved image backup onto dissimilar hardware (eg Hard Drive to SSD and different sizes). I have performed this successfully on an earlier Win7 PC.

The way I look at it, replacing a failed drive in a RAID should in theory be faster and safer than replacing a failed JBOD drive. My RAID5 used to require rebuilding in BIOS which would take over the whole PC for 36 hours, not so good. The current version, though, rebuilds in background from software and though there is presumably a performance penalty I can't say I have noticed it in practice. This has the advantage of not requiring a restore from backup. I have sometimes had a problem in my backups that I was not aware of for a while.

This is not my current situation, though. I lost the whole RAID and it took me a while to work out how to get back even the storage space. From the Intel forum, though, I don't think this is a common problem with the current version of the software and one I probably largely created myself by letting it go for too long. In future I would pull out a drive and test it at the first error message. If I do decide to persist with the RAID, I will get a couple of spare drives while they are still available from a few vendors.

It may be of interest to someone how I was intending to recover my data from the apparently wiped RAID array (rather than from backup which is probably what I will just do). The disks had gone "missing" which means that all the data was still there but the partition information was lost. An Intel Forum thread pointed me to a donationware utility called Test Disk (instructions). As well as Test Disk there is a utility called PhotoRec 6.11 that may be able to recover lost images.

I don't claim any particular expertise in this area and I'm not arguing against any aspects of Cem's approach. These are just my current attitudes and what I have recently discovered.

Regards,
Murray

Update on OCZ Vertex2 SSD drives

Hi folks,

As I have explained at the beginning, I have 2 SSD drives by OCZ (Vertex2 60GB and 120GB) in this PC and I am very satisfied with them. It came to my attention today that OCZ have recently "upgraded" these SSD drives from 34nm memory chips to 25nm memory chips. Apparently, this has resulted in less available memory (5GB less) and slower write speeds (up to 35-40%) compared to the old models. See this OCZ forum thread for details. The OCZ community is quite angry and demand from OZC that they replace the 25nm models with the older 34nm ones free of charge. OCZ are willing to grant an RMA in the US but the client has to pay for a not yet known price difference. To make matters worse, they replace the 25nm SSD with another 25nm SSD which does not have less memory, but still has problems with the write speeds.

In other words, please do not go out to buy these drives just because I have recommended them from my personal experience. Of course this applies to any of the recommendations I have made. Always investigate first and decide for yourself pls.


Cheers,

Hi Murray,

Murray Foote said:

....I don't claim any particular expertise in this area and I'm not arguing against any aspects of Cem's approach. These are just my current attitudes and what I have recently discovered.

Click to expand...

I don't claim to have the absolute answers either. I am glad to read about others' look at things and there certainly are many roads which lead to Rome (IDIC). Besides, even if you'd argue against my approach, I would still welcome it. .


Cheers,

Hi Cem

I'm making progress here. I've got the RAID back and have all my data back. My approach was very inefficient but I should know exactly what to do if it happens again. I didn't have disk incompatibility, I just made a wrong choice in setup so I now have a spare drive for the RAID which is not a bad thing. I reformatted the Drobo and it is now booting up at normal speed. I'm just copying the backups back on to it. Next thing will be to borrow a CD/DVD drive to see if I need to replace them.

Regards,
Murray

Bart_van_der_Wolf said:

I think a Drobo or NAS RAID make good sense for hardware redundant storage of data.

IMHO there is another factor involved, when deciding to choose for RAID redundancy as part of the main computer. How much downtime can one afford when a drive fails?

Click to expand...

Bart,

I take a "hybrid" approach. For current projects I back up to a Drobo. For long term archival work it's on duplicate hard drives. (Now I still have to gmove one copy of everything off site!)

One word on Drobo. It's very reliable and looks after itself. However, restoring a failed drive can take 10 hours or more! Yes, it's simple to simply replace the failed drive with a new one of that size or larger simply by sliding the old one out and sliding the new one in. but then the data has to get redistributed to that drive. So although one never loses data, that could mean downtime if those are the only copies one has.

Asher

Asher Kelman said:

Bart,

I take a "hybrid" approach. For current projects I back up to a Drobo. For long term archival work it's on duplicate hard drives. (Now I still have to gmove one copy of everything off site!)

One word on Drobo. It's very reliable and looks after itself. However, restoring a failed drive can take 10 hours or more! Yes, it's simple to simply replace the failed drive with a new one of that size or larger simply by sliding the old one out and sliding the new one in. but then the data has to get redistributed to that drive. So although one never loses data, that could mean downtime if those are the only copies one has.

Click to expand...

Hi Asher,

Are the files not accessible during the rebuild, albeit at a slower tranfer speed? I use a 4 drive NAS from Netgear, and that allows to still access the data during the rebuild. The rebuild itself can take something like 8 hours, or more, depending on the amount of data. The Netgear proprietary X-raid mode also allows to mix drives of different sizes, although full capacity is determined by the smallest drive.

In my workstation I don't use Raid, just 4 partitioned drives, and mirror copies of the boot partition/drive.

Cheers,
Bart

Bart_van_der_Wolf said:

Hi Asher,

Are the files not accessible during the rebuild, albeit at a slower tranfer speed?

Click to expand...

Yes, you're correct, files are indeed accessable. I copy them to another drive and then leave the Drobo to itself. I just try my best not to access a Drobo a lot while its rebuilding although one can if one needs to.

Bart_van_der_Wolf said:

I use a 4 drive NAS from Netgear, and that allows to still access the data during the rebuild. The rebuild itself can take something like 8 hours, or more, depending on the amount of data. The Netgear proprietary X-raid mode also allows to mix drives of different sizes, although full capacity is determined by the smallest drive.

Click to expand...

With the Drobo, the capacity is not limited that much by the smallest drive, although that's the one next to swop out. The other three drives have the redundancy spread across them instead.

In my workstation I don't use Raid, just 4 partitioned drives, and mirror copies of the boot partition/drive.


I'm trying one external (two drive) hardware raid for a scratch disc for Photoshop versus using my OWC SSD start up drive.

Asher

Sorry to say, but if a quad-core runs sluggish, there is probably something wrong with your setup or your PC-maintenance. I run CS5, AutoCAD, 3D Studio and some other programs on a quadcore, and it still goes like the lightning.

You've got a nice PC now, but try to keep it lean and clean. Elseway you will be in the same situation 3 years from now.