Dalton Randall
New Member
- Joined
- Jan 23, 2016
Hey guys,
New user here, and I could use some assistance with a build. It's not going to be overclocked, but it is more of a specialist system with some required hardware pieces and I'm trying to build around that.
Here is what is already set in stone:
Intel Xeon E5-1630 v3
NVidia Quadro M4000
Blackmagic DeckLink 4K Pro
It needs to be paired with a MicroATX board, and I'm shooting for 32 GB of RAM.
It doesn't seem like there are an awful lot of MicroATX LGA2011-3 boards out there to begin with, but I also need it to be able to handle the correct number of lanes for the video cards or whatever (this is where my knowledge starts to fall apart), and I also want to make sure I am maximizing all related bandwidth and components. Price can't be out of control, but I have about $3K for the entire system, so I can be generous with some things.
I have been told that with the workstation CPU, ECC RAM is greatly preferred... but I can't seem to find any MicroATX boards at all that support this. To that point, I read on another forum that it's the CPU which determines whether or not ECC RAM can be used - which this one can - but I've also read that the board also needs to support it, so I am not sure which is accurate. I would like to get the most reliable/highest performing RAM I can, but that too seems to be limited within these particular confines (DDR4, 2133, ECC, 4x 8GB).
I also keep going back and forth on whether or not to use AIO cooling or air cooling; both sides seem to have pretty strong voices backing them. The board will be horizontally mounted, so stress from a heavy air cooler won't be as much of an issue as it would be for a vertically mounted board, but this system WILL be moved around from location to location quite a bit. I have never gone the AIO route before (though it doesn't look very difficult to set up), but the last thing I want is for liquid to be spilling all over everything. That said, some of the air coolers can get pretty massive and unwieldy too and I don't want to put undue stress on the board due to transit.
This build will likely have one SDD for the OS and system files and two additional SSDs put together in a RAID 0 for the media it will be using. I assume I can do this as a software RAID fairly easily, but if a hardware RAID card is vastly preferred for some reason, that would be helpful to know.
This is the board I am leaning toward at the moment:
http://www.evga.com/articles/00941/EVGA-X99-Micro2-Motherboard/
It seems to have mostly great reviews everywhere I have researched it and it seems to have the right size and number of lanes for the video cards (although I don't know if one might be in the way of another). I can't find any indication that it supports ECC RAM though, so that's the one thing giving me pause. I'm not even sure if ECC is necessary, but I'm getting a workstation CPU so I feel like I want to use all of its benefits if I can.
I could use a recommendation on a decent PSU as well... the CPU itself uses 140W, which seems on the high side, and one of the GPUs uses 120W, so it may need some support. That's another reason I'm going back and forth between the cooling options.
Here's a link to the Blackmagic card for efficiency's sake; I don't see the power requirements listed anywhere:
https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/decklink/techspecs/W-DLK-26
I think that's about it. It will be running Windows 7 64-bit, and more than anything I am just trying to optimize everything so that I take advantage of what the CPU can offer (quad channel memory, high memory bandwidth, high PCIe lanes) and that nothing conflicts with something else (i.e., a card that reduces the overall bandwidth or something). Also, the board can take an M.2 SSD - which I thought about using for the OS drive, but it disables one of the PCIe slots and might reduce overall PCIe bandwidth (obviously I have no idea what I'm talking about). I have plenty of 2.5" drive slots available, so having the boot drive be a regular SSD is not an issue if that's a better choice. I thought the M.2 might have better direct bandwidth though.
Thank you to anyone who can offer advice or help... I have built several PCs in the past, but probably not for a good decade and this particular system has some specific needs so I am trying to get it right.
New user here, and I could use some assistance with a build. It's not going to be overclocked, but it is more of a specialist system with some required hardware pieces and I'm trying to build around that.
Here is what is already set in stone:
Intel Xeon E5-1630 v3
NVidia Quadro M4000
Blackmagic DeckLink 4K Pro
It needs to be paired with a MicroATX board, and I'm shooting for 32 GB of RAM.
It doesn't seem like there are an awful lot of MicroATX LGA2011-3 boards out there to begin with, but I also need it to be able to handle the correct number of lanes for the video cards or whatever (this is where my knowledge starts to fall apart), and I also want to make sure I am maximizing all related bandwidth and components. Price can't be out of control, but I have about $3K for the entire system, so I can be generous with some things.
I have been told that with the workstation CPU, ECC RAM is greatly preferred... but I can't seem to find any MicroATX boards at all that support this. To that point, I read on another forum that it's the CPU which determines whether or not ECC RAM can be used - which this one can - but I've also read that the board also needs to support it, so I am not sure which is accurate. I would like to get the most reliable/highest performing RAM I can, but that too seems to be limited within these particular confines (DDR4, 2133, ECC, 4x 8GB).
I also keep going back and forth on whether or not to use AIO cooling or air cooling; both sides seem to have pretty strong voices backing them. The board will be horizontally mounted, so stress from a heavy air cooler won't be as much of an issue as it would be for a vertically mounted board, but this system WILL be moved around from location to location quite a bit. I have never gone the AIO route before (though it doesn't look very difficult to set up), but the last thing I want is for liquid to be spilling all over everything. That said, some of the air coolers can get pretty massive and unwieldy too and I don't want to put undue stress on the board due to transit.
This build will likely have one SDD for the OS and system files and two additional SSDs put together in a RAID 0 for the media it will be using. I assume I can do this as a software RAID fairly easily, but if a hardware RAID card is vastly preferred for some reason, that would be helpful to know.
This is the board I am leaning toward at the moment:
http://www.evga.com/articles/00941/EVGA-X99-Micro2-Motherboard/
It seems to have mostly great reviews everywhere I have researched it and it seems to have the right size and number of lanes for the video cards (although I don't know if one might be in the way of another). I can't find any indication that it supports ECC RAM though, so that's the one thing giving me pause. I'm not even sure if ECC is necessary, but I'm getting a workstation CPU so I feel like I want to use all of its benefits if I can.
I could use a recommendation on a decent PSU as well... the CPU itself uses 140W, which seems on the high side, and one of the GPUs uses 120W, so it may need some support. That's another reason I'm going back and forth between the cooling options.
Here's a link to the Blackmagic card for efficiency's sake; I don't see the power requirements listed anywhere:
https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/decklink/techspecs/W-DLK-26
I think that's about it. It will be running Windows 7 64-bit, and more than anything I am just trying to optimize everything so that I take advantage of what the CPU can offer (quad channel memory, high memory bandwidth, high PCIe lanes) and that nothing conflicts with something else (i.e., a card that reduces the overall bandwidth or something). Also, the board can take an M.2 SSD - which I thought about using for the OS drive, but it disables one of the PCIe slots and might reduce overall PCIe bandwidth (obviously I have no idea what I'm talking about). I have plenty of 2.5" drive slots available, so having the boot drive be a regular SSD is not an issue if that's a better choice. I thought the M.2 might have better direct bandwidth though.
Thank you to anyone who can offer advice or help... I have built several PCs in the past, but probably not for a good decade and this particular system has some specific needs so I am trying to get it right.
