Hello, I've been asked to build a core i7 based system used primarily for video editing (Adobe Premier). Instead of going for the more expensive 10,000 or 15,000 rpm scsi disks I thought I would implement Raid3 with 3 1TB disks giving 2TB of storage. I need suggestions for a suitable motherboard that will take at least 6GB of at least ddr2 800mhz ram, have raid onboard and take the core i7. Don't really need more bells and whistles than that although firewire 800 on board would also be an advantage. As always this is also on a budget so the cheaper the better (whilst retaining some degree of decency, it is for professional use after all), and a good overclocking board would be a great advantage too. Any suggestions? Thanks.
With out a budget we cant do much for you. We dont need an exact figure but just a rounded estimate like $800-$900. For what your wanting I would say a budget of atleast $1,000 is in order. Oh and Core i7 processors require DDR3 memorey but only certain i7 chips are designed to work with 6 GB of RAM as 6 GB is designed for triple channel use. The 10K and 15K RPM drives are usually SCSI disks as you said. They can be used in a home environment, but there more an Enterprise class hard drive then a home user drive. Some parts I will throw out as a base: Core i7 920 Gigabyte Mobo Corsair Dominator RAM DDR3 ATI HD5850 Video Card 3x1 TB WD Caviar Blacks.
Do you mean raid5? RAID3 is very problematic and incredibly expensive, while providing performance inferior to RAID5/6. If you do want RAID5, then onboard RAID is not for you. RAID5 is slow as snot without a good hardware RAID card. SCSI is history...used only to repair old servers. SAS has replaced it. SAS hardware RAID cards are about the same cost (and sometimes cheaper) than SATA RAID cards. SAS cards supports SATA drives, but SATA cards do not support SAS drives. Good hardware RAID cards are pricy...over $300 for a basic model. This means that you have to load them up with drives to make the price more reasonable per GB. With this in mind, I would recomend a basic 4 port hardware RAID card with 4 1.5TB drives: RAID Card - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816116042 Hard Drives - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148337 As for the I7, there are two versions: 1156 socket - Nothing but a glorified I5. 1366 socket - The real I7. All 1366 boards are tripple channel (it only needs 3 slots), but not all of them support twin tripple channel (at least 6 slots). There are lots of good 1366 boards with varying features, but here is a good one with 2 firewire ports: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813188049 Here is a nice 6GB ramkit: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145258 This memory should be just as fast as the cas7 stuff I recomend for gaming machines...at least when it comes to video editing.
The 1156 i7 isnt that far behind the i7 920 actually, and the advantage to the 1366 is mainly that you can run triple channel vs dual channel and the ability to run SLI/crossfire which is pointless anyways. So if your not running dual cards why spend the extra money on a mobo and RAM for things your not going to use?
The i7 860 really isn't any different to the 940, but it does have weaker memory bandwidth, which will affect video editing performance quite noticeably. Video editing really requires LGA1366 for best performance.
