SPCR

i would appreciate some advice on the following budget build. The components that I already have are: Fractal design R3, antec 550 psu, 128g Crucial M4 ssd, 2 hitachi 1tb 7200rpm drives, and from a really old-cancelled build: 2 Nexus 120mm fans and Ninja 2 revB heatsink.
I will use the sdd for the system drive and want to RAID0 a couple of hitachi 1tb for the render/write drive (because i read that often the drive itself is the bottleneck when rendering). i also want to use a couple of 3tb green drives for storage in a RAID1 setup. I will most likely add 16gb of ram and do a very slight overclock on the cpu perhaps up to 4ghz. the videocard will most likely be passive as i wont be gaming on this machine and want to keep it silent as possible

I'm thinking to base it around the i5-3570K and ASUS P8Z77-V LK (http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.as ... 6813131837) but wanted to clarify some things:

- since the mobo has only 2 6gbSata ports, is it possible/enough to run the ssd and the RAID0 config? i other words, do i need 6gbSata on both the ssd and the RAID0 setup? if yes i will obviously need another board but if 3gbSata ports are enough for the RAID0 hitachis then im ok.

- can I run a 2 drives on RAID0 and at the same time another 2 drives on RAID1 from the stock mobo controller? or do I need to invest in a separate RAID controller?

- can i utilize the the old ninja revB heatsink into the build? Is there a bracket that would let me mount it into the 1155 socket?

cheers

There's no use in buying two HDDs for a Raid0 if a single SSD can be used.

Speed of HDD(Raid0) <<<< Speed of single SSD (nearly any)

And of course, if you want to go maximum speed all devices have to have a SATA 6GB connection. But maybe you could replace the planned Raid1 for storage with some USB3 external drives, should work out about the same, speedwise.

Scythe does sell mounting kits for their older coolers.

octeuron wrote:- can I run a 2 drives on RAID0 and at the same time another 2 drives on RAID1 from the stock mobo controller? or do I need to invest in a separate RAID controller?

You con use RAID 0/1/5 from any SATA port provided by the Z77 chipset, on the ASUS P8Z77-V LK that's all six.
You can create multiple array from drives on these ports. Using the SSD to store render content makes sense, it's much faster than any hard drive, even in RAID0. RAID1 for storage isn't bad, a good backup strategy is better, i.e. one drive internal and one external for backup.

octeuron wrote:- since the mobo has only 2 6gbSata ports, is it possible/enough to run the ssd and the RAID0 config? i other words, do i need 6gbSata on both the ssd and the RAID0 setup? if yes i will obviously need another board but if 3gbSata ports are enough for the RAID0 hitachis then im ok.

You only need SATA 6GB for SSDs, HDDs aren't limited by the speed of SATA 2 ports.

octeuron wrote:- can i utilize the the old ninja revB heatsink into the build? Is there a bracket that would let me mount it into the 1155 socket?

I bought a 1155 bracket from Scythe Europe for 8€, you have to contact customer support for your region.

I'm sceptical about the HDD slowing down rendering, this will almost certainly be limited by the CPU. Using Handbrake, my i7-2700K is not bottlenecked by the single 5400RPM HDD that stores both source and output files. I should stress that I have no experience with high-bitrate or lossless video codecs.

Hyper-Threading makes some difference in video encoding, but the performance advantage of the i7-3770K seems less than the price premium over the i5-3570K.

I would skip RAID 0 and instead place source video files on one disk and output files on the other, perhaps using the SSD for project and proxy files. Or, since you already have the HDDs, you could test both setups before deciding...

Any particular reason not to use the integrated GPU?

Good points by all the other posters. It's just been in the last 2 years (or so) that SSDs bumped up against the 3Gbps barrier of SATA2. So, you only need SATA3 for the SSDs, the HDDs aren't even close.

What s/w are you using for video editing?

Here's an informative article on video transcoding at Tech Report comparing CPU s/w encoding vs Quicksync vs GPU Open CL.

Pappnaas wrote:There's no use in buying two HDDs for a Raid0 if a single SSD can be used.

Speed of HDD(Raid0) <<<< Speed of single SSD (nearly any)

.

perhaps i did not clarify that i want to use both?
its not a question of one or the other.
i want to store original footage in project folder on ssd.
then encode/render onto the raid0 drive/s
so that way there is no back and forth data transfer - only from one source to another

boost wrote: You con use RAID 0/1/5 from any SATA port provided by the Z77 chipset, on the ASUS P8Z77-V LK that's all six.
You can create multiple array from drives on these ports. Using the SSD to store render content makes sense, it's much faster than any hard drive, even in RAID0. RAID1 for storage isn't bad, a good backup strategy is better, i.e. one drive internal and one external for backup.

So i can run 4 drives; 2 on raid0 2 on raid1 at the same time without 3rd party raid controller?

boost wrote: You only need SATA 6GB for SSDs, HDDs aren't limited by the speed of SATA 2 ports.

but is the answer still the same for 2 7200rpm drives in raid0?
edit: i guess so... why would it matter (2 connections so no extra bandwidth onto either one)

Jens Lyn IV wrote:
I would skip RAID 0 and instead place source video files on one disk and output files on the other, perhaps using the SSD for project and proxy files. Or, since you already have the HDDs, you could test both setups before deciding...

Any particular reason not to use the integrated GPU?

that is not a bad idea... maybe i will try that.
regarding integrated gpu; i will most likely start that way but i read that CUDA/nvidia gives advantage in rendering and encoding so perhaps try that route

as far as drive speed not slowing down rendering; i am not %100 sure what the bottleneck would be but i have seen video editing computers with raid0 configurations for renderred output files... must be a reason... perhaps it depends on the project/settings maybe number of sources etc...

CA_Steve wrote:
What s/w are you using for video editing?

.

vegas hd platinum 10

Vegas 10 uses CUDA for rendering/encode. Vegas 11/12 can use CUDA or Open CL. So, if you plan to upgrade the s/w, you can also look at other options for GPU.

octeuron wrote:So i can run 4 drives; 2 on raid0 2 on raid1 at the same time without 3rd party raid controller?

Yes.