Custom built PCs are rising.. after CS5

[PatrickW]

Custom built PCs simply gives you the chance to upgrade your system freely

Overclocking for the most part is not "free". Better aftermarket cooling systems, they cost money. Most importantly so does the time it takes to get everything setup, and burnt in (stress tested to insure it won't fail when your taxing the system).

 

[JC Bendock]

Just thought Id throw this out there incase there was someone who didn't know. You can use a program Developed by ZDnet.de | http://tinyurl.com/c8btlw | to overclock your macpros safely with no changes to the hardware.

 

[Ben Manning]

I used to build custom gaming PC's. I would never reccomend overclocking an edit rig, the gains you get are not worth the rig dying during a client session.

Likewise..!!

 

[Mohammed El Sharqawy]

Overclocking for the most part is not "free". Better aftermarket cooling systems, they cost money. Most importantly so does the time it takes to get everything setup, and burnt in (stress tested to insure it won't fail when your taxing the system).

I meant by Freely a better chance to upgrade not meaning for free..

Just thought Id throw this out there incase there was someone who didn't know. You can use a program Developed by ZDnet.de | http://tinyurl.com/c8btlw | to overclock your macpros safely with no changes to the hardware.

does it keep your warranty of the product?
does it allow you to control voltages?

 

[Mike Harrington]

i'll have to submit a point here....

overclocking is 'free' to a point

if you overclock an i7 by 10-15% you will almost certainly get a small performance increase with no lifecycle or stability problems...all on stock cooling

the reason being most of the i7's are the same die....the difference in GHZ is governed by multipliers which are set at different levels for MONETARY reasons

intel designs one chip and puts multipliers on the chip to keep it at a certain speed...to get a faster speed you have to pay for the same chip with a different multiplier, and at the highest price point the multipliers are unlocked.

The real key to a 'free' overclock is not to increase voltages....once you do then temperatures can start rising and other cooling may be needed. But if you really want to push an overclock you may need to fork out some money.

 

[Mohammed El Sharqawy]

if you overclock an i7 by 10-15% you will almost certainly get a small performance increase with no lifecycle or stability problems...all on stock cooling.

no way.. not on stock cooling.. overclocking i7 920 (2.66 GHz) on stock cooler to 2.8 GHz makes it reach 85C.. that's a huge tempreture increase.. that's not even 10%..

but, of course you're totally right on the idea of multiplier..

 

[Rick Burnett]

You guys really make a lot of assumptions about chip design without understanding why the speed differences exist. Given I design chips for a living, let me give you a little insight.

When chips are manufactured, there is a lot of variation that can happen during the fabrication process, called process variation. When chips are designed, the process is first evaluated to determine within 6 sigma what the range of process variation is. Then, they design models for the silicon to simulate the conditions of the worst possible process variations for the majority of dies that are made. However, nothing locks you into this range and for very high speed technologies, manufacturers have to take a risk in terms of how many CPUs will run at full speed, and how many wont. This is called yield. These numbers are VERY closely guarded by manufacturers because they are part of the cost. For speeds that approach the maximum for a technology, if the yield was 20%, then 1 in every 5 dies (processors) would work, and the other 4 would be garbage.

That said, companies employ something called speed bining. This is where you test each part to see how fast it can run reliably, under normal working conditions. In this case, say 1 works at the max speed, 2 works at a slower speed and 2 just fail altogether. In this case, obviously you'd sell the faster one at a premium because if they were the same price, no one would buy the slower one. Also, the number of faster ones is a lot less.

This is why manufacturers have different speeds. Not that there hasn't been dishonest business practices before, because there was, especially in the 286 and 386 processor days, but in general, this is a VERY COMMON practice and something that has happened on EVERY chip I have worked on.

I have overclocked before, back during the Celeron days, and I agree, it was a lot of fun. BUT, just because you cool the processor doesn't mean the timing internally scales linearly with the temperature. Circuits DO NOT scale linearly over temperature because of the differences in the topologies of clock structures and datapath structures in the design. I've seen overclocked machines corrupt zip file decompressions very reproducibly. Even with cooling you might be RIGHT on the edge, and too much processing or a hotter day in the office and timing can start failing in the CPU. There is no protections internally for these failures.

For a game machine, or a hobby, I can see this, but for a production machine, I would highly discourage overclocking. Given the amount of processing you are going to push through your machine, I personally don't feel the risk is worth it. You are operating outside the range of a known good state and ANYTHING can happen in the CPU.

 

[Mike Harrington]

no way.. not on stock cooling.. overclocking i7 920 (2.66 GHz) on stock cooler to 2.8 GHz makes it reach 85C.. that's a huge tempreture increase.. that's not even 10%..

but, of course you're totally right on the idea of multiplier..

maybe on your system.... a lot depends on your case...my temps are no where near that high...i'll do some tests tommorrow and report back

 

[Tom Lowe]

I just had a friend build me a 4.1GHz overclocked 6-core i7 Gulftown PC with 12GB DDR3 1600MHz, a kick-ass 128GB Intel SSD, etc, for like 3 grand. Same system would have cost me over $6,000 at Alienware, and it would have been a slower overclock and slower RAM. A similar Mac would probably be more like $8,000 (if Macs even had Gultown CPUs now).

Right now it has a GTX 285, but I will replace it with a Fermi card soon. Red files are smooth as wet ice in Premiere Pro timeline.

 

[Mike Harrington]

rick...
i am not making assumptions....I realize that some chips will not perform as well of others of the same batch and that the better quality peices will get the higher multiplier....
my point is there all the same physical design. And the fact that at the highest price level multipliers are unlocked is striclty monetary, and intended to be exploited by overclockers as a reward for forking out the money.

in the i7 family alone from the 920 to the 960 there are 5 factory clock speeds....some of that is binning and some of that is marketing

but i do agree that the risk reward factor has to be weighed when overclocking....but when I do a week long render and a 15% overclock saves me a day...i'm fine with that, but at the same token I seldom would overclock for daily use(editing ect)

 

[Mike Harrington]

I just had a friend build me a 4.1GHz overclocked 6-core i7 Gulftown PC with 12GB DDR3 1600MHz, a kick-ass 128GB Intel SSD, etc, for like 3 grand. Same system would have cost me over $6,000 at Alienware, and it would have been a slower overclock and slower RAM. A similar Mac would probably be more like $8,000 (if Macs even had Gultown CPUs now).

Right now it has a GTX 285, but I will replace it with a Fermi card soon. Red files are smooth as wet ice in Premiere Pro timeline.

nice...

 

[Uli Plank]

Fermis are not supported (yet?).

 

[Rick Burnett]

rick...
i am not making assumptions....I realize that some chips will not perform as well of others of the same batch and that the better quality peices will get the higher multiplier....
my point is there all the same physical design. And the fact that at the highest price level multipliers are unlocked is striclty monetary, and intended to be exploited by overclockers as a reward for forking out the money.

in the i7 family alone from the 920 to the 960 there are 5 factory clock speeds....some of that is binning and some of that is marketing

but i do agree that the risk reward factor has to be weighed when overclocking....but when I do a week long render and a 15% overclock saves me a day...i'm fine with that, but at the same token I seldom would overclock for daily use(editing ect)

I agree that the inconsistent locking of the multipliers is something that I've not understood, because frankly, the number of people that overclock compared to the number of CPUs they sell is probably a VERY small number. But then again, every little bit of extra cash certainly adds up. I have NO insight into Intel personally. Who knows, you could be right.

From a technical level, there is extra margin in these designs. With cooling, bringing your CPU closer to 25C is what is known as the 'typical' point in chip simulation. I can see getting 10 to 15% extra being very possible. But, as you probably already know, what you bought isn't guaranteed. You don't know if that particular die was speed binned or just multiplier locked. And the worst part, is there is NOTHING to tell you if you will get a problem. The computer seems to be working great until it's been hit hard for awhile and then it starts to fail. The funny part, for the few people I helped with this problem, they were replacing their RAM modules thinking they were faulty. I told them, set the clock back and then try it. Bingo, worked perfect.

That all said, I totally understand. Sometimes the benefit outweighs the risk. I'd just prefer to work within a known working solution so it's one less thing I personally have to worry about. (As if there isn't enough problems with computers these days)

 

[Mike Harrington]

one warning in all this overclocking talk...
the i7 is different from previous procs....do not push the memory voltage past 1.65v...past this and intel strongly suggests you will fry your proc

with the memory controller on the chip things have changed, and lots of people have learned the hard way....

 

[Pietro Impagliazzo]

Really? This can happen to a machine with a 24hour Prime95/OCCT tested overclock? I assume people are stability testing their overclocks before running them full time.

Stability test is highly subjective.

I had my Q6600 at 3.0 ghz stability tested for hours that would reboot the PC during a quick H264 encode on Premiere CS3.

So, also test what you do mostly with the computer.

 

[Rick Burnett]

Yup. Depending on what parts of the CPU you are hitting hard, can cause it to fail. My first simple test was always unzipping a huge file. If it passed that, it generally worked well (again, this was the Celeron days).

But yeah, as Pietro said, be sure to run a hard test with what you want to actually do specifically.

 

[Subhadip Sen]

I could never use anything other than a custom built PC. It is the best way to get what I want, at the right prices. Plus, upgradeability is most important. This is why I never considered Macs.

Overclocking can be an important thing. But of course, you need the right skills to pull it off. For starters, attempting to overclock on stock coolers isn't a good idea at all. Neither on cheap motherboards. You need to know which voltages are safe, etc. I have overclocked at least 5 different CPUs over the years, and none of them have failed in anyway. My favourite overclocker was the Core 2 Quad 2.4 which went all the way to 3.6 with no issues - thats a 50% increase right there. Also, worth considering that the 50% increase leads to a 100+% increase in power. Since applications like video editing scale well; we are looking at an average of 40+% increase in performance / reduction in encoding time.

Of course, it is risky, and if you get it wrong, there's a good chance you will reduce the life of your CPU or motherboard. But overclocking isn't the only reason to go for a custom build. It is simple - you get to choose exactly what you want, rather than what Apple or HP think you want. It is far more cost effective, and of course, most importantly, upgradeable. You don't want to have to change the entire PC for just upgrading RAM! (Granted, you could do that on branded PCs, but it is likely you will be compromising on warranty somehow) On the other hand, branded PCs give you that peace of mind. It is the safe option. Not the best or the fastest or the best value for money, but it will work.

Fermis are not supported (yet?).

I am sure they are supported. They are just hardly available yet. Supplies are next to nothing and prices are laughable. For CUDA, I would hold onto a GTX 285 till Adobe support OpenCL or an open standard so GPU acceleration run on the otherwise superior ATI cards.

 

[Rick Burnett]

It is simple - you get to choose exactly what you want, rather than what Apple or HP think you want. It is far more cost effective, and of course, most importantly, upgradeable. You don't want to have to change the entire PC for just upgrading RAM! (Granted, you could do that on branded PCs, but it is likely you will be compromising on warranty somehow) On the other hand, branded PCs give you that peace of mind. It is the safe option. Not the best or the fastest or the best value for money, but it will work.

I think many of those things are subjective to what people consider important, so I don't think it is always so simple a solution.

(1) Building your own system requires quite a bit of research if you've not built one or it has been awhile since you have. Figuring out which of the MULTITUDE of parts are going to work together that are available. This can take time. There is always like 10+ different manufacturers of the same card from Nvidia for example. I've had many pieces over the last 20 years that just didn't work together. If you have problems, the troubleshooting can take forever.

(2) Building your own computer means that having any problems you've got to deal with a multitude of companies, not only the ones you purchased from, but the manufacturer's as well. You've got to manage different warranties and dealing with incompatible components and poorly written drivers if you were unlucky. Try getting in touch with ASUS or ABIT about a motherboard problem. I have many times, it was VERY painful. Using Maya on a PC, the hardware acceleration had a HUGE bug in it that could not be fixed with a firmware of driver update (many years ago), and I had to switch to a whole new card.

(3) You can upgrade both OSX machines and off the shelf PC machines. The level of upgradability is different dependent on the source, but not all upgrades affect your warranty. I've upgraded the memory, processor, drives, video card and even a SCSI controller in a Mac. The available solutions are greater on the PC custom built world, but so is the variety of quality. I've NEVER had to take any of my Pro machines in for a repair ever in the last 7 years. (I did have a drive die in a mac mini, but I hardly consider that machine pro).

(4) On machines like OSX, the software has been developed specifically to work on the hardware you purchased. The chances of it running smoother are going to be higher in many cases. This is 20+ years of experience with windows talking here.

That said, there are always exceptions, and by no means am I discounting your thoughts at all, just saying there are pros and cons to both approaches. My MacBook Pro and Mac Tower required little setup, no maintenance, and work hard for me. NEVER a problem on either of them. For me, time is money and the lack of headache on my OSX machine has been wonderful. Some people don't mind the risks with building your own machine, and that is perfectly okay, but I also think quality and support are a HUGE value for when you are running a business and don't want any down time.

By the way, first machine I built was an 8088 XT machine that used the Z80 processor. The motherboard had a built in floppy controller and the only available SuperIO cards I could find all had a floppy controller on them as well. Neither the superIO card nor the motherboard had a way to disable the floppy so I took an exacto knife and cut the traces to the power of the floppy controller chip. The whole system then worked. (This was before IDE and you needed an IO card to run your MFM or RLL hard drives).

THAT is custom building

 

[Subhadip Sen]

Fair enough, Rick. I suppose if you want to use Final Cut, you don't have an option at all.

And yes, assembled PCs are definitely more of a headache than off the shelf PCs. Like I said, it isn't for everyone. There isn't a single simple solution for anything, after all! So, I am just sharing my point of view. But personally, I have always been building my own PCs, and there hasn't been a problem so far. After all, what is inside the machines is pretty much the same, irrespective of whether you have a custom built PC or a Mac Pro. Obviously what matters is how all of it is put together - so you need to be experienced with computer hardware. Of course, if you are not, go for the Mac Pro by all means.

 

[Mohammed El Sharqawy]

maybe on your system.... a lot depends on your case...my temps are no where near that high...i'll do some tests tommorrow and report back

BTW, I got the early C0 stepping not the D0.. I got it back in march 2009, I read that D0 chips runs much cooler than C0.. maybe this is the difference..