Mobo and CPU upgrade

e_dawg

Storage Freak
Joined
Jul 19, 2002
Messages
1,903
Location
Toronto-ish, Canada
Looking at upgrading from my Dell Dimension E521. It has been a faithful workhorse for me, but I am doing a lot of photo editing, and I am getting tired of waiting for the A64x2 5000+ to complete photo editing and rendering tasks. I've already upgraded my storage subsystem twice (Raptor as my app/OS drive and soon to be 750 MB Seagate data drive). As you know, the Dells come with a weak PSU, so I can't really add more spindles or swap out the CPU and drop a 125 W A64x2 6400+ in there without upgrading the PSU... might as well buy a new PC then.

So, I am thinking of taking the storage subsystem and building a new system around it. I am thinking Intel is the way to go these days... A C2D E8500 would be the best choice, i think, as a fast dual core is probably more useful than a slower quad core in most cases. Any ideas as to motherboards? Can I re-use the 4 GB of PC5300?

Your thoughts would be much appreciated...
 

ddrueding

Fixture
Joined
Feb 4, 2002
Messages
19,511
Location
Horsens, Denmark
I haven't run across a Q6600 that didn't go to 3Ghz with stock cooling and voltages yet. Really, it is 30 seconds in your BIOS.

Considering it is also $50 less, I see no reason to do anything else.
 

ddrueding

Fixture
Joined
Feb 4, 2002
Messages
19,511
Location
Horsens, Denmark
Hmm... but then wouldn't an E8500 make it to 3.5 GHz without anything but an FSB adjustment just as easily?

Nope. The top-end chips don't have as much wiggle room as the low-end chips. The bin concept typically means that as a process matures, more and more chips are capable of premium speeds (and are therefore sold as lower speed to maintain supply), but it doesn't mean that there is more headroom for the already premium chips to improve.
 

ddrueding

Fixture
Joined
Feb 4, 2002
Messages
19,511
Location
Horsens, Denmark
I'm still a fan of Gigabyte, but I am currently running an XFX board (the only one made with the features I needed). I'm also told that Intel makes very stable (and not overclockable) boards.

I'm not up to speed on motherboards, but this looks like a fine choice.
 

LiamC

Storage Is My Life
Joined
Feb 7, 2002
Messages
2,016
Location
Canberra
In my experience, Gigabytes support/customer service is appalling. I'll post the (rather extended) email to-and-fro one day and you will see how it took Gigabytes customer support 4-to-7 days to reply to an email enquiry, and then to ignore the thread completely and keep asking me to do things that have already been tried or suggested, not once, but multiple times. So apart from hopeless, they seem to lack basic comprehension skills. Gigabyte? No Thanks! I've only had to use it this once, but because of the experience, I've stopped using Gigabyte products in my builds and now use ASUS. The ASUS boards have been far better overclockers than any of the Gigabyte boards I've seen.

As for e_dawg's dilema, photo/video editing software is one of the things that does multithread very well--but it is software dependent. I'd look up/google the exact software you are using and check if it can utilise more than two cores. If it can/does, then a quad will serve you better than a higher clocked dual. Games are the typical softwares that work best on higher clocked dual cores.

Oh, if your going Intel, then stick with an Intel chipset. NVIDIA has been peddling buggy crap for years and it amazes me that they still get away with it. ASUS P5K (P35) or P5Q (P45) should be on your shopping list
 

Fushigi

Storage Is My Life
Joined
Jan 23, 2002
Messages
2,890
Location
Illinois, USA
I'm running five Core2Quads at the moment. Three are running Q6600s on free-with-CPU ECS motherboards. They are fine at stock speeds but don't do well overclocking. I wouldn't recommend them. My main workstation is another Q6600 on a Gigabyte GA-965-PDS3 more or less as outlined in this thread. The original Gigabyte motherboard was DOA but the replacement has been fine in the thirteen months since. I don't really overclock this rig either, although I probably could. I have little patience for downtime for my own workstation, so I don't really mess with the hardware much.

My final C2Q is a Q9450 on an MSI X48C as outlined in this post. The MSI is expensive but nice. Supports both DDR2 & DDR3. I wanted to match CPU & RAM bus speeds so I went with DDR3. One stick was defective but OCZ replaced it without issue (did the troubleshooting via their forums; made the RMA process easy). It's a recent build but is running fine so far. I'm doing a slight overclock (maybe 10%) so far but plan on seeing how high this one will go. I was considering the Intel X48 board but it lacked PS/2 connectors so I went with the MSI instead. I also plan to upgrade it with dual GPUs at some point for better Folding performance, but I have other things asking for my money at the moment.
 

e_dawg

Storage Freak
Joined
Jul 19, 2002
Messages
1,903
Location
Toronto-ish, Canada
As for e_dawg's dilema, photo/video editing software is one of the things that does multithread very well--but it is software dependent. I'd look up/google the exact software you are using and check if it can utilise more than two cores. If it can/does, then a quad will serve you better than a higher clocked dual. Games are the typical softwares that work best on higher clocked dual cores.

Yes, that is generally true LiamC. But most of my software, unfortunately, is not multi-threaded. Adobe does a good job with Photoshop, but I use a lot of other third party utilities that peg the CPU at 50%... as in, one core maxed out.
 

e_dawg

Storage Freak
Joined
Jul 19, 2002
Messages
1,903
Location
Toronto-ish, Canada
Your PC5300 is a little slow. I would move up to something that runs at 800MHz. http://www.ec.kingston.com/ecom/con...asp?root=&LinkBack=&ktcpartno=KVR800D2N5K2/4G

That's what I suspected, but how much of a benefit would i get from selling all my PC5300 and upgrading to well, I don't even know what you should use ideally with a fast C2D setup. Can I run my PC5300 at a different multiplier and still get the vast majority of the speed benefit in moving from an A64x2 5000+ to say a C2D E8500 or Q6600 OC'd? Spending an extra $100 just on faster memory wasn't part of my budget.
 

e_dawg

Storage Freak
Joined
Jul 19, 2002
Messages
1,903
Location
Toronto-ish, Canada
Also, any suggestions on the PSU? And what has changed in cases and "specification" (e.g, ATX 2.1) since the days of the P3/Athlon? The only spare enclosure I have (unless I repurpose the Dell Dimension E521 enclosure) is the Lian-Li PC60 http://www.dansdata.com/pc60.htm.

Will I be able to fit all the components and fans that a modern system requires these days?
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
Joined
Jan 17, 2002
Messages
21,564
Location
I am omnipresent
Asus, in my experience, has only marginally better service than PC Chips. Actually, I take that back: I RMA'd some boards to PC Chips once and got them back. The Asus customer service web site disappears off the internet for days at a time and in my experience they never respond to RMA requests.

Gigabyte's support generally does suck. I will agree with that, but on the other hand, they're good about issuing RMAs and returning product, which is the only thing I care that they actually do.

Most of my builds these days use Intel motherboards. I do not like Intel's returns process AT ALL since they make me call someone and tell them all the troubleshooting that was done for each returned board, but at least I've only had to return about five boards in the last year.
 

e_dawg

Storage Freak
Joined
Jul 19, 2002
Messages
1,903
Location
Toronto-ish, Canada
After more research this w/e, I am thinking about the following components:

  • C2D E8500 - need the high clock speed over quad core, as half of my apps aren't MT/MP aware... this has one of the highest multipliers available and i've seen a lot higher avg OC speeds than the Q6600
  • GIGABYTE GA-EP45-DS3L - one of the cheaper P45 boards available of decent quality
  • 2 x 2GB of G.Skill PC8000 DDR2-1000 - apparently can handle 500 MHz FSB so I should be fine... Corsair and Mushkin alternatives are about the same price with MIR, but I hate MIRs
  • Silverstone Element ST50EF-PLUS 500W PSU - tested very well and the price is right... Corsair 520HX and PCP&C Silencer 610 are about the same price with MIR, but I hate MIRs

I already have the following components:

  • Lian-Li PC-60 case
  • 150 GB WD Raptor
  • 750 GB Seagate 7200.11
  • nVidia GF 7300LE
  • BenQ FP291W 24" LCD

Need a DVD-ROM and DVD-writer... any recommendations? Also a media card "drive" that I can mount in a 3.5 or 5.25" bay.

Was thinking about a Buffalo Technology LinkStation as a NAS for backup and remote file access.
 

Stereodude

Not really a
Joined
Jan 22, 2002
Messages
10,865
Location
Michigan
Need a DVD-ROM and DVD-writer... any recommendations? Also a media card "drive" that I can mount in a 3.5 or 5.25" bay.
The Samsung's are supposed to be decent DVD burners. DVD-ROM? Why bother?

I looked at the different internal drive media readers and concluded none of them were spectacular (just varying amount of suckage), so I ended up just putting in this instead.
 

mubs

Storage? I am Storage!
Joined
Nov 22, 2002
Messages
4,908
Location
Somewhere in time.
Did it work for you? I plugged it into my brand new motherboard and it started smoking. I quickly powered off and fortunately it booted up after some work (remove all cards, remove battery, etc.). It's still running. Maybe the Silverstone I got from Newegg was bad.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
Joined
Jan 17, 2002
Messages
21,564
Location
I am omnipresent
I've had two bad Optiarc burners out of five or six hundred that I've bought in the last couple years. None of the units I use in my labs or builds get used all that heavily, though the ones at home sure do.
 

e_dawg

Storage Freak
Joined
Jul 19, 2002
Messages
1,903
Location
Toronto-ish, Canada
The Samsung's are supposed to be decent DVD burners. DVD-ROM? Why bother?

Why DVD-ROM? I like having 2 optical drives for direct DVD to DVD copy and in case I want to listen to a CD while I'm doing something else.

I looked at the different internal drive media readers and concluded none of them were spectacular (just varying amount of suckage), so I ended up just putting in this instead.

I know what you mean. I have a TEAC 13-in-1 internal drive media reader factory installed in my Dell. It was really flaky until I updated the firmware and driver to the latest version, but it still has the occasional moment. I actually wouldn't mind having the same one if it retained its recent performance record and not its early performance.

--------------

As for the Sony NEC Optiarcs, they are unavailable from my usual sources, so I will have to pick something else. LG, Lite-On, Pioneer, Samsung, and some Asus models represent the choices available.

Any opinions on this LightScribe technology? It doesn't seem to add much to the cost of the unit. Might as well. Any negative effects on reliability?
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
Joined
Jan 17, 2002
Messages
21,564
Location
I am omnipresent
Lightscribe is a waste of money under the best circumstances. It's slow, VERY poorly supported by CD Writing apps, requires special discs, and special drives to do something for which a $1 sharpie marker is an improvement.
 

ddrueding

Fixture
Joined
Feb 4, 2002
Messages
19,511
Location
Horsens, Denmark
Why DVD-ROM? I like having 2 optical drives for direct DVD to DVD copy and in case I want to listen to a CD while I'm doing something else.

I don't think that is a reason to have a DVD-ROM. It is a reason to have 2 optical drives, but I would much prefer to have 2 identical burners.
 

Gilbo

Storage is cool
Joined
Aug 19, 2004
Messages
742
Location
Ottawa, ON
I've had good experiences with LG DVD Burners over the years. I must have installed 20-25. I've had one failure but it was on deliver, and it rattled when I picked it up; I blame it on the shipping trip.

Originally I bought them for the DVD-RAM support. DVD-RAM discs were very useful for daily backups of important files. They are very reliable and support several hundred thousand rewrites. Of course, a DVD is so small the I no longer bother with this backup method, but I've stuck with the habit of buying LG drives. There's not much difference between any of the major brands I suppose. Back in the day I did a ton of reading trying to determine who produced the most error-free rips the fastest. I've long since stopped bothering. I don't know if anyone keeps up-to-date on such things, but I suppose such factors might actually be worth considering if you can get solid info without wasting too much of your time.


I would pass on Lightscribe, as others have advised. I know it's only a couple bucks, but money is money, and you'll get more use of it even if it's something as simple as an extra beer at a restaurant sometime.
 

Stereodude

Not really a
Joined
Jan 22, 2002
Messages
10,865
Location
Michigan
Why DVD-ROM? I like having 2 optical drives for direct DVD to DVD copy and in case I want to listen to a CD while I'm doing something else.
Who listens to CD's by putting the actual disc in their optical drive and playing it? :confused:
 

e_dawg

Storage Freak
Joined
Jul 19, 2002
Messages
1,903
Location
Toronto-ish, Canada
I would pass on Lightscribe, as others have advised. I know it's only a couple bucks, but money is money, and you'll get more use of it even if it's something as simple as an extra beer at a restaurant sometime.

;) Well that's why (to answer dd's question) I wouldn't get 2 DVD writers, but instead have one just as a DVD-ROM to save $10 or so.
 

e_dawg

Storage Freak
Joined
Jul 19, 2002
Messages
1,903
Location
Toronto-ish, Canada
Who listens to CD's by putting the actual disc in their optical drive and playing it? :confused:

Some people do. Sometimes I can't be bothered to rip CDs before playing the odd song or two that I wanted to listen to at that moment. My nice CD player is downstairs hooked up to my "audiophile" system, and I didn't want to get a POS CD player just to take up more space on my crowded desk for something I do once in a while. A $20 DVD-ROM does the job just fine in addition to its other duties as a source drive.
 

e_dawg

Storage Freak
Joined
Jul 19, 2002
Messages
1,903
Location
Toronto-ish, Canada
Held off on the upgrade until now. Just ordered the following components:

  • C2Q Q9550
  • Asus P5Q E
  • G.Skill F2-8000Cl5D-4GBPQ x2
  • PCP&C S61EPS
  • Samsung SH-S203N Blk SATA DVD RW
  • OCZ 64 GB SSD
  • Vista 64 HP
Will use it with my existing parts:

  • Lian-Li PC-6070 case
  • 150 GB WD Raptor
  • 750 GB Seagate 7200.11
  • nVidia GF 7300LE
  • BenQ FP291W 24" LCD

I was planning to RAID 0 two 64 GB SSDs as my OS/apps drive, but it looks like a lot of people have problems with them and the write performance is pretty poor. I thought of getting a 3Ware RAID controller with 256 MB cache and battery to use the write-back cache to compensate for the slow writes, but decided that it wasn't worth it to deal with all the potential early adoption issues.

So I'll use a single 64 GB SSD and try putting my User profile / temp folder and Lightroom catalog / preview cache folder on it to see how much of an improvement I get.

The 8 GB of RAM should improve Photoshop's performance and the Q9550 should improve Lightroom's performance -- basically the two main reasons for the upgrade. Hoping the quad cores will help with general multitasking enough and be utilized in LR2 enough to offset the lower multiplier and slower single threaded performance.
 

mubs

Storage? I am Storage!
Joined
Nov 22, 2002
Messages
4,908
Location
Somewhere in time.
Let us know how it goes, e_d. I bought Vista 64 HP a year ago with similar ideas, but my hardware has stayed the same, so I haven't yet opened the Vista package.

Some day I'll upgrade my hw and follow the route you have taken.
 

e_dawg

Storage Freak
Joined
Jul 19, 2002
Messages
1,903
Location
Toronto-ish, Canada
You haven't even opened the box yet? I thought I was bad with getting around to things ;)

I remain shocked at how much of a CPU hog Lightroom 2 is. And from what I see, it barely uses 2 cores properly, let alone 4. Hoping that LR 2.1 fixes some of these problems. I'm not even expecting Adobe to fix all of the speed or local adjustment issues, as they have a lot of other priorities to work on judging by the Adobe LR support forums. I just hope they fix the critical bugs that cause LR to slow to a crawl, let alone optimizing or refining things.

Even Photoshop is blazingly quick compared to LR2. If Tannin thinks Photoshop is slow and pox-ridden (I find it to be just fine), I think he would convulse in utter disgust at LR2 ;)
 

ddrueding

Fixture
Joined
Feb 4, 2002
Messages
19,511
Location
Horsens, Denmark
I decided to take a look at Lightroom 2. I pointed it at my photo collection, and after taking 30 minutes to look at them (not move, just look), it now takes several GB of RAM just sitting there. What does this program do again?
 

ddrueding

Fixture
Joined
Feb 4, 2002
Messages
19,511
Location
Horsens, Denmark
I'm glad I could amuse ;) But seriously, for batch processing a bunch of happy-snaps, I use Canon's Digital Photo Professional. For complex jobs with detail work I use PS CS3, for HDR screwing about I use Photomatix, and for massive stitching jobs I use PTGui. Is Lightroom better at any of these tasks then what I'm using already? Is there some other task that it does that I'm not doing?
 

e_dawg

Storage Freak
Joined
Jul 19, 2002
Messages
1,903
Location
Toronto-ish, Canada
No, it wasn't designed to do any advanced or specific task that you mentioned there. It was designed as an all-in-one / home base general photo management and processing solution.

When i was first getting into this stuff, i was like you and loved to spend time processing pics and doing all kinds of advanced stuff. But at some point, you start to realize that streamlining workflow, organizing, culling, and prioritizing / minimizing what to process and time spent on processing and publishing is important. And that's where Lightroom comes in.

Photo Importing and Management: The big thing with Lightroom is that it is a database driven photo cataloging and management system. You can automate all kinds of things on import from the application of keywords and other metadata to creating DNG backups and organize everything into catalogs. Can also scroll through your "day's catch", for example, an rate each image as you go along by simply typing 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 (as in number of stars). With a couple mouse clicks, you can gather all your 4 and 5 rated images for example and process only those. Basically, you can do anything with your images that you can do with whatever you normally put in a database. The organizing and querying capabilities are easy to use and delightful.

Editing and Processing: Since it has a RAW conversion engine built-in, you can work with RAW images directly without having to convert them first. And since its editing philosophy is to collect edits in a metadata file and not edit the file directly unless you specifically save the changes to the original file, it's nondestructive to your original file, and you don't have to make multiple copies (or restore points) of your files at various stages to preserve various versions of edits. You have an action / edit log for each image file and can go back / forth to any point in time -- all with the original file. You can also do this on a JPEG as well with no loss in quality, which as you know would be otherwise impossible without the transactional metadata editing log if you were saving different versions as you went along because of lossy compression.

It also has convenient "on the fly" batch editing features as well, where you can sync edits across any number of files. For example, if you like how you've adjusted the brightness, WB, sharpness, or NR in a particular pic, you can quickly select a bunch of other pics to apply it to, click sync, and it's done instantly -- all from a file browser type interface.

Publishing / Printing: With Lightroom, you can easily use templates to batch add of borders, watermarks, or text strings and batch upload selected images or catalogs (for example, "processed 5 star images" only) to flickr, picasa, FTP servers, etc. in whatever resolution and sharpness you want, and can output the same to your printer as well using whatever print/paper profile, resolution, and sharpness as well.

It's all about streamlining and automating your workflow, easily and quickly organizing and culling your pics, editing and publishing as quickly and efficiently as possible in bulk all from one program. It also works with export actions and Photoshop Droplets so you can apply complicated actions or a series of filters / plug-ins in Photoshop, so you can apply the power of Photoshop editing in batch form to extend the editing power of Lightroom.

For example, I have a set of standard Photoshop actions that include running Noiseware Professional (for NR), Portraiture (to smooth skin complexion), Shine (reduces shine / glare from skin due to flash and cosmetics / oil on skin), contrast masking / equalization to restore shadow detail, multi-pass sharpening and downsampling techniques, etc. that I can apply in batch to every image in a particular catalog / collection from within LR in a matter of mouse clicks.
 

ddrueding

Fixture
Joined
Feb 4, 2002
Messages
19,511
Location
Horsens, Denmark
Gotcha, thanks e_dawg. I suspected as much, but I still haven't found any one-size-fits-all processing. If I were doing a shoot where I actually wanted lots of images as a result, I can see it being useful. As it stands, I mostly just pick the best example and work on it.

If it could run the "Merge to HDR" on a whole bunch of images and then "Photomerge" them, saving the result as an .hdr, that would be very worthwhile...
 

e_dawg

Storage Freak
Joined
Jul 19, 2002
Messages
1,903
Location
Toronto-ish, Canada
I can't believe you used "fix" and "Adobe" in the same sentence...

:O

LOL... would you prefer I discuss stability and QuickTime, iTunes, or RealPlayer in the same paragraph? ;)

Haven't seen you on the boards in a while Liam (not that I have been active here either except for the camera threads)... how are you doing?
 
Top