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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Finally switched from Mac to PC: And this is what it looks like!!

Update:

RED Rocket and BMD Decklink has stopped being recognised, any suggestions guys.

What are those red lights on the ROCKET for??? Cos they are on!! Should I be worrying???

:Drogar-Smoke(DBG):
 
Michael Ou said:
Just picked up the GTX690 today and am waiting for the Xeon(s) to arrive. I'm going to start assembly with the MOBO and PSU today. Seems like you are making great progress Asif! You've met many obstacles and were able to overcome them. I'm still at the "wonder if the components work" stage." I look forward to the "making everything work together stage".

Did you get the X9DAi with the chassis installed or did you get them separately? I may have a couple of silly "plug goes where?" questions for you.
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The agents here fixed it themselves. I never had the chance to play with the setup.

Yeah you are at that weird stage of getting things one by one. But when they are all there and it won't "just work" is much more bad. Trust me.
 
interesting tidbit, 10 SATA ports (2 SATA3 and 8 SATA2) are similarly tagged. With that I mean irrespective which port you put the SATA3 SSD, its going to detect it as SATA3 or IF you put 10 SATA3 SSD it will only detect 2 to SATA3 no way to control which one according to SuperMicro tech. Let see.
 
Michael Ou said:
That would be a nicer, more elegant solution to what I had in mind, I was actually thinking about cutting a large hole through the chassis to make the card shroud fit through, but I probably shouldn't. Once I make sure all the parts work, then I'll figure out the optimal arrangement, that's the fun part.
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waiting to see whats your solution... :-)
 
Asif Limbada said:
waiting to see whats your solution... :-)
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I wish I was a little more creative, but after a long 10 hour research session, I caved in and bought this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811815011

It was on sale yesterday for only $140 without a power supply. I know, I already have the other case, that's why I'm going to build two, one for the studio, and a mobile cart based unit. Plus the double parts will go a long way to help me troubleshoot components easier, with less guessing. My original though was to configure the Super Micro case with rails for rack mounting, so I could theoretically cut away at the case to clear room for the GPU, but the thought of metal shards everywhere and making a mess did not appeal to me at the moment, but I have not ruled that out for a possible future "super mobile unit" build.

During my troubleshooting, I discovered I also had a bad motherboard, so back it will go.

Hope you are making good headway!
 
discovered I also had a bad motherboard

You guys are selling a lot of Macs with this thread. I used to build PC's for Linux and some for Windows and got tired of this crap. And I am an IT Consultant. If you MUST go to Windows, buy from Dell, HP, or ProMax.

Otherwise, offline edit or use reduced rez playback on a Mac.

Post a link to a 5k test file and I will try it. I have Symphony 6, FCP7/X, and CS6 Production Premium, so pic your poison.

Y'all be cool,
Robert:-)
 
This is not much different than those Hackintosh threads, building a comp is not for everyone, and what we are building is clearly not the run-of the-mill editing workstation. These machines will hopefully be ready for 6K in the near future and perhaps a little beyond. But the learning curve is steep, time consuming and definitely not for the non-technically minded. In fact, if my editing and directing friends ever ask me if they should build one, I would advise them against it, but if they are like me, curious, like to understand the inner workings and nuts and bolts of their computers, then those guys will actually enjoy the process.
 
I agree with Michael, the reason for this thread is to make sure the people if they want to go the "other" route would not have to go through the same mistakes.

The reason for me building this machine was for RAW editing without compromise. Even with wrong choices on the way we still dont spend as much you would on the current gen Mac or HP. Until RED & HP actually release a modular system for a post production machine, I think we are going to build these kind of machines.
 
Robert A. Ober said:
You guys are selling a lot of Macs with this thread.
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No.

Asif Limbada said:
Until RED & HP actually release a modular system for a post production machine, I think we are going to build these kind of machines.
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Now there's an idea. This is the kind of innovation we need on the hardware side. Hope RED and HP are listening.
 
Asif Limbada said:
Btw, Micheal, I am looking at Cooler Master Cosmos 2 rather than the Xigmatek. Its better built. What say, why didn't you get that one. Curios...
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Sweet! I did not come across that one, it's certainly large enough for the mobo, GPU arrangement, and then some. I was a little pressed for time with components coming in daily (kinda like when all the RED goodies were coming in a few months ago) I only had one full day to cram as much about cases as I could mentally absorb, and being a sucker for a sale, I could not resist. Plus, once I'm done with it, it'll pretty much be "personally unique".

You gotta love what the gaming industry has done to give these cases a seriously hard push in terms of extra features and dare I say, "sex appeal", well as far as computer towers go. lol That Cooler Master Cosmos 2 looks like a cross between a stealth fighter and a Lamborgini, very nice.
 
Robert A. Ober said:
You guys are selling a lot of Macs with this thread.
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I'm laughing only because it's true and painful at the same time, from both points of view. The pain of waiting for a Mac tower upgrade that is worthy of purchasing and the agony of the PC trying to build a system that works. It's like a Heathkit all over again. (for you younger guys, look it up)
 
Although in all fairness, you have to admit that thinking this is "selling a lot of Macs" is like saying the Hackintosh thread sold a lot of Windows PCs. I mean, obviously, since they had problems building Hackintoshes that worked as well as an Apple PC, Apple PCs must be crap.

Most people shouldn't build their own personal computer. Want a Windows workstation that works out of the box? Buy a HP Z820. Want a OS X workstation that works out of the box? Buy a Mac Pro from Apple.

It's that simple, no need to over think it.
 
I never ever got viruses on my PC, I never even had an antivirus, but then again, I wasn't downloading porn, illegal music or hacked software.



Michael Dalton said:
I must say, I don't miss how PC's bog down after a while, and get filled with viruses. My older Mac Pro is need of an upgrade but I'll wait till the new machines come out next year rather then crossing back.
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Mark Britton said:
Most people shouldn't build their own personal computer. Want a Windows workstation that works out of the box? Buy a HP Z820. Want a OS X workstation that works out of the box? Buy a Mac Pro from Apple.

It's that simple, no need to over think it.
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I've been singing this tune for years in the "my PC is better than your XBOX is better than your rotary dial phone" arguments. Buy what works for you and don't reinvent the wheel.

As an aside in the "what do we do with our Mac Pros while we wait" discussion, I upgraded my 4,1 units with 32GB, a 512GB OCZ Vertex 4 SSD, and a 1.75GB Nvidia Quadro 4800 from yoyomarv on Ebay. It's a whole new world with both FCP X and Premiere Pro.

However, I've been a user of Sonic Foundry's (ne Sony) ACID Pro and Vegas for years and the fact that you can get so much done with so little hardware has always been a wonder to me. I had a chance to run both Vegas Pro and Premiere Pro on that HP Z820 and was floored by the performance. And HP's DreamColor LP2480zx made other display "pale" by comparison (pun intended). The only issue was that the Z820 / DreamColor combination that I got to use costs as much as 2 Mac Pro systems

Having said that, I've now taken delivery of my 16GB Retina MBP and all I can say is WOW! Thunderbolt to the Sonnet Echo Express Pro with SmallTree 10GbE Ethernet, ATTO ExpressSAS R680 and our new TGCubeStoreSSD with 2.5TB RAID 5 SSD storage and LTO-5 has set a new bar to measure everything else against.

Tim
 
I have built multiple PC's from the mobo up, and have never experienced these type of issues. In fact I just built a pretty rockin PC with a 12TB raid. Built on the Classified SR-X mobo, with a PCI SSD in slot 1 that the OS boots from. I put 2 E5 Xeon 2687W's, and an Nvidia 690 It runs a full timeline of 5k with color correction at half res with no red rocket. There's nothing wrong with PC guys, it all depends on if you can figure it out, just like MAC.
 
Jon Jones said:
I have built multiple PC's from the mobo up, and have never experienced these type of issues. In fact I just built a pretty rockin PC with a 12TB raid. Built on the Classified SR-X mobo, with a PCI SSD in slot 1 that the OS boots from. I put 2 E5 Xeon 2687W's, and an Nvidia 690 It runs a full timeline of 5k with color correction at half res with no red rocket. There's nothing wrong with PC guys, it all depends on if you can figure it out, just like MAC.
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It's more than "if you can figure it out". I most certainly can figure it out. The real issue is I simply don't want to fool with it. Much like I don't want to build a car, piece by piece just so I can drive it. And like the car, I'm fine with maintenance of a computer. But building a computer piece by piece either a Mac or a PC is just a never ending rabbit hole of the latest gizmos and whizbangs.
 
With all due respect, let's give the "Mac vs PC" and "Build vs Buy" arguments a rest, its been going on for 30+ years and I don't think this thread is the place to argue these points. Let's please keep on topic and offer empirical data for those of us that wish to take on this endeavor, not discourage them because it's too difficult, too much work, not worth the effort, or because its on a PC platform. If you REALLY want to talk about difficulty, how about consistently making successful films for the rest of your career? I think assembling a computer from off the shelf parts is far easier compared to consistently great film making. The reality is the overwhelming majority of us who decide to build a computer for the right reasons will absolutely succeed, but the vast majority of us who venture to make a good film, will not. Will this perceived difficulty stop us from tirelessly attempting either endeavor? Negative. Heck, some folks even went so far as to build their own cameras, and for that we are all thankful :)
 
Michael Ou said:
With all due respect, let's give the "Mac vs PC" and "Build vs Buy" arguments a rest, its been going on for 30+ years and I don't think this thread is the place to argue these points. Let's please keep on topic and offer empirical data for those of us that wish to take on this endeavor, not discourage them because it's too difficult, too much work, not worth the effort, or because its on a PC platform. If you REALLY want to talk about difficulty, how about consistently making successful films for the rest of your career? I think assembling a computer from off the shelf parts is far easier compared to consistently great film making. The reality is the overwhelming majority of us who decide to build a computer for the right reasons will absolutely succeed, but the vast majority of us who venture to make a good film, will not. Will this perceived difficulty stop us from tirelessly attempting either endeavor? Negative. Heck, some folks even went so far as to build their own cameras, and for that we are all thankful :)
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Couldn't have said it better.

However, it's my QLOGIC FIBRE CHANNEL HBA, that's been messing with the bios. Apparently according to QLOGIC, Windows 7 is not enterprise level OS but Vista is :-)

Words of advice guys. Anything Fibre channel, use ATTO, even though their hardware is made by enterprise service provider BROCADE (most of them), these guys keep this hardware up to date for Media and Post Production needs.

Qlogic are plain useless for us.

And yeah Micheal, COOL MASTER COSMOS II is so awesome to look, it does resemble Lamborghini Avantedor. But unfortunately can't find it here in UAE. :-(
 
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