PCB design wokstation

[craiggoo]

Hi Everyone,

I am building and setting up a video capture edit system and since i'm not familiar with the particulars of doing that I need some advice.

System:
MB: ASUS Z77 Sabettooth w/ intel i7 3770K unlocked CPU. Corsair H70 liquid cooled.
Drives: Raid 5 with 2 256 Gb SSD drives and 1TB 7200 HD-total size 466GB for OS and software install.
Video Drives: 2 3TB Hitachi Deskstar SATA 3 w/ 32MB/Mo cache.
Memory: 32GB Corsair DDR3 Vengence XMP Certified, 4 8MB matched sticks.
OS Windows 8 64Bit pro w/Media Center.
Video Cards: 2 Nvidia CUDA capable EVGA 550Ti cards in SLI config.
Capture card: Colussus 1080i w/ H.264 compression.
Display: ASUS 27" PB278 1080 Display 2560x1440 resolution.
Questions:
What is the best way to set up the video HDs? RAID 1 or software controlled video distribution among the drives?
What cluster size for 1-2 hour videos?
Should I configure some of the memory as video RAM? What is the process for doing the configuration in windows?
I have heard WinTV is not the best software for use with the capture card. What does the community recommend?
What would be the best way to configure the Video cards. ie. SLI and CUDA to get the best video?
Any other advice for the system setup would be much appreciated. I'm sure I overlooked some stuff here.

Thanks and have a fine day,
Craig

PS. I will be using the system as a media center primarily, also as a workstation for circuit board design, the reason for the high res monitor

 

[obsama1]

The Sabertooth is nice, but get an ASRock Extreme 6. Cheaper, with most of the features.

H70 is great, but the the AIO loops do have the potential of springing a leak. Get a Noctua NH-D14 for your cooler.

Stick with Windows 7. There is still program and driver incompatibilities with Windows 8.

You're getting a bad GPU config. Get an Nvidia 660 instead which is is better than 2x 550 Ti's.

I don't think you can configure RAM as VRAM, unless it's the integrated graphics.

 

[craiggoo]

The Sabertooth is nice, but get an ASRock Extreme 6. Cheaper, with most of the features.

H70 is great, but the the AIO loops do have the potential of springing a leak. Get a Noctua NH-D14 for your cooler.

Stick with Windows 7. There is still program and driver incompatibilities with Windows 8.

You're getting a bad GPU config. Get an Nvidia 660 instead which is is better than 2x 550 Ti's.

I don't think you can configure RAM as VRAM, unless it's the integrated graphics.

I already have all of the equipment, but I can probably exchange for the 660. Win 8 already installed-haven't

had any driver probs. except the Colossus card. After I installed their latest drivers, which went in fine after I

figured how to do it correctly, all appears well, but I will have to actually record to see if it works right. The MB

does seem to support the memory config. for video processing throughput.

 

[craiggoo]

The Sabertooth is nice, but get an ASRock Extreme 6. Cheaper, with most of the features.

H70 is great, but the the AIO loops do have the potential of springing a leak. Get a Noctua NH-D14 for your cooler.

Stick with Windows 7. There is still program and driver incompatibilities with Windows 8.

You're getting a bad GPU config. Get an Nvidia 660 instead which is is better than 2x 550 Ti's.

I don't think you can configure RAM as VRAM, unless it's the integrated graphics.

I would have to exchange for an EVGA card. Is this 660 also made by EVGA?

 

[obsama1]

The 660 is made by EVGA. And don't mind me for asking, but why would you ask for advice when you already built the computer already?

 

[craiggoo]

The 660 is made by EVGA. And don't mind me for asking, but why would you ask for advice when you already built the computer already?

Hi,

I was asking more for setup advice, but I also have 30 days to exchange hardware. I should have come here initially. Thanks for the advice on the graphics card. I will exchange it for the 660. Everything else I will probably keep. I would still like advice on configuration though.

 

[obsama1]

Good build. Personally, I would have gone with a cheaper motherboard and 16GB of RAM and put that money into the GPU. But, again, there's nothing wrong with this and it's an awesome rig.

 

[craiggoo]

Thanks, I appreciate the advice. Like I said, I'll see about exchanging for the 660. should be no problem, but I'll see when I contact EVGA. I repair lab electronics for a University, but computers are somewhat out of my area of expertise.