morph166955
28th March 2007, 01:28
as some know I'm ordering out a new system to do high speed x264 encoding that is going to utilize 2x Intel E5345 2.33GHz Quad-Core Xeon's and 4GB of ram. I've ordered the case, motherboard and drives however I'm having a hard time making a decision on two things.
First, the ram. I have 12 DDR2 667 FB-DIMM slots (its an asus DSBF-D12 motherboard) that I can use. The motherboard is capable of four channel access to the ram. The question is do i go with 4x 1GB sticks of ram or 8x 512MB sticks? price wise its $2 more to go with the 512 so thats not much of an incentive there. Will having the 8 sticks work faster/more efficiently or will it cause a speed problem on the bus in some way because there are so many sticks?
Secondly, processor cooling. I have the option of either a 1U active or 2U passive for the processor (same chip, different fan/heatsync i guess). How hot are these things going to run if their pegged doing an encode on both? The case is a 2U rackmount from antec however its not going to be in an actual rack for a while, it will eventually but lets not put that into consideration at this point cause its a while away. Any cooling system I get has to fit the 2U profile and I have found only a few that meet this criteria. There are several large fans in the case blowing air directly over the cpu's so would two passive coolers do the trick for me?
I have to order this stuff in the next 24 hours that way its on site when i go to build it next week so I'm looking for any insights into either of these category's from anyone who has similar components and/or knows more about their operation then I do. Thanks!
First, the ram. I have 12 DDR2 667 FB-DIMM slots (its an asus DSBF-D12 motherboard) that I can use. The motherboard is capable of four channel access to the ram. The question is do i go with 4x 1GB sticks of ram or 8x 512MB sticks? price wise its $2 more to go with the 512 so thats not much of an incentive there. Will having the 8 sticks work faster/more efficiently or will it cause a speed problem on the bus in some way because there are so many sticks?
Secondly, processor cooling. I have the option of either a 1U active or 2U passive for the processor (same chip, different fan/heatsync i guess). How hot are these things going to run if their pegged doing an encode on both? The case is a 2U rackmount from antec however its not going to be in an actual rack for a while, it will eventually but lets not put that into consideration at this point cause its a while away. Any cooling system I get has to fit the 2U profile and I have found only a few that meet this criteria. There are several large fans in the case blowing air directly over the cpu's so would two passive coolers do the trick for me?
I have to order this stuff in the next 24 hours that way its on site when i go to build it next week so I'm looking for any insights into either of these category's from anyone who has similar components and/or knows more about their operation then I do. Thanks!