The quiet beast: dual Xeon and Quadro 4000 workstation
Posted: Wed Jan 27, 2010 2:37 pm
***UPDATED***
Case CM Stacker STC-T01 steel, DIY modified with original side window
CPU dual Intel Xeon E5520 processor, Nehalem-EP, total 8 cores (16 logical), 2.27 GHz, TDP 80W, 35W idle, Turbo Boost to 2.4 GHz (all cores loaded, 95W TDP)
CPUs cooling Prolimatech Samuel-17 (adapted to Xeon mount, basically treads removed and bolts reversed)
Motherboard Tyan S7025AGM2NR (no onboard SAS), dual Intel 5520 northbridges, ICH10R southbridge connected to NB#2
System memory 16384 MB, 8x2048 MB Corsair DDR3-1333 ECC registered
Graphics card Nvidia Quadro 4000 on X16 slot no.1
Onboard audio card Realtek ALC262, 2 channels plus coax SPDIF header
LAN dual Gigabit Intel 82574L controllers
Firewire card Combo Firewire800-USB2 Pci-Express, X16 slot no.2 (X1 mode)
Storage controller 1 Promise EX8650 8-port SAS controller on X16 slot no.4 (X8 mode)
Storage controller 2 Integrated AHCI 6-port ICH10 controller (for 6 optical drives)
Storage controller 3 Asus U3S6 combo USB3.0 (D720200) and SATA3 (Marvell 88SE9123) on X8 slot (X4 mode, PLX bridge)
ODD0 MATSHITA DVD-RAM SW-9576S (internal, SATA300 converter)
ODD1 NEC ND-4551A (internal, SATA300 converter)
ODD2 HL-DT-ST BD-RE BH10LS30 (external eSATA-SFF8088)
ODD3 HL-DT-ST BD-RE GGW-H20L (external eSATA-SFF8088)
ODD4 Optiarc BD-RW BD-5740H (external eSATA-SFF8088)
ODD5 Optiarc BD-RW BD-5730S (external eSATA-SFF8088)
SSD card OCZ RevodriveX2 (100 GB) on X16 slot no.3 (X4 mode), main OS
SSD drive OCZ Vertex2-E 60 GB (die size: 32Gb), virtual OS
HDD0-3 WDC WD10EADS
HDD4-7 WDC WD5003ABYX
Power supply Enermax Revolution85+ 850W (24P+8P+8P)
Storage controller fan Papst 612 (Noctua ULNA)
HDD fans Papst 8412-N2GLE x2
CPU and exhaust fans Scythe Slipstream SY1225SL12LM-P PWM x3
Chipset fan Titan TFD-7010M2B ball (Noctua ULNA)
Main OS Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
Virtual OS Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005
A/V Software Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 v5.0.3 x64 (Mercury playback engine, GPU acceleration enabled)
Main monitor Samsung Syncmaster 245B (DVI-D), adapted VESA-100x100 to VESA-200x100 for main desktop
Secondary monitor Eizo Flexscan S2243W (Displayport) VESA-100x100 for VM desktop and full-screen HD realtime video preview
Monitor placing Ergotron LX-SBS dual arm, modified
Main printer HP Business Inkjet 1100dtn, networked
Photos and CD-DVD printer Canon Pixma IP4300
Card reader generic Transcend/Hama reader modified and enclosed into light controller
Backup system DINIC Taurus Mini LCM external drive, USB 2.0, 2x WDC WD5000BEVT, RAID 1
Image acquisition Canon CanoScan LIDE 700F
HDD quick-docking station Icy Box IB-110StU3 PC-powered USB 3.0
Desktop speakers Creative I-Trigue 3000 side-mounted on main monitor
Aux speakers integrated Eizo monitor speakers, Displayport audio, for VM sound
Power conditioning APC Smart-UPS 1500, networked, fan grille removed
Assets volume for music, footage, pictures: 1300.01 GB RAID10
Finished products volume for finished videos ready to burn or store in HTPC: 640.00 GB RAID0
Temporary volume for BD rips, HD intermediate uncompressed video: 1858.00 GB RAID0
I built this workstation mainly for HD/bluray video editing and producing, upgrading from a single Q6600 Core2... For HD video some large storage space is required, that's why I configured the four 500GB drives as a 2.0TB RAID0 volume with 400MBps sustained speed. I replaced the original Stacker front panel with a DIY modified Silverstone USB 3.0 front panel adding power-reset buttons and a SSD behind .
The Tyan S7025 motherboard is Tyan's top of the line product for dual Xeon 5500 series platforms, specifically targetted to workstations rather than servers, with its two northbridges and four full X16 PCI-E 2.0 slots, equally spaced that can accomodate four dual-slot cards. The top two X16 slots along with the X4 slot (connected to NB#1 to which also the ICH10R is connected) are dedicated to graphic cards and I/O funcionality, since the DMI connection to the ICH makes it hard to get SATA controllers to work (not enough chipset memory to allocate BIOS). The bottom two slots and the X8 (X4 link) slot are ideal for some serious storage works, not having other onboard components connected to: with the right slot placing I was able to get to work a good old Promise EX8650 SAS controller together with the SSD card (SiI3124) and the Asus U3S6 card which has the Marvell 88SE9123 BIOS, all the three BIOSes are loaded and work in addition to the ICH10R AHCI BIOS
SSD card (X4 1.1) and SAS controller (X8 1.1) can work at their max bandwidth, as can the U3S6 card (2.0 X4), I still have to verify if the X4 PLX PCI-E bridge Asus used grants a performance improvement in USB 3.0 throughput when compared to a normal X1 card directly connected, given the massive bandwidth this board has to offer on its PCI-E slots
Bye everyone!
***UPDATED*** removed the very first pics, go to page 3 for the latest config
Average H264-to-X264 encoding speed: 72 fps (ffmpeg-mt, limited by CPU power)
Average VC1-to-X264 encoding speed: 28 fps (due to single-thread VC1 decoder)
Average MPEG2-to-X264 or RGB-to-X264 encoding speed: 70 fps (yet to test it)