Building a PC for Xpress

[Alex Alexzander]

First of all let me say that when you buy a machine that is on Avid approved hardware list, and you later need their support, you will get it. Building a machine of your own design negates that option for you. No matter what, it’s a good amount of effort to do it yourself, but if you’re anything like me, and won’t take no for answer, I’ll tell you how I did it and what my results are.

One of things I pay a lot of attention to, is what Avid has on the approved list. I also spend a lot of time in the Avid forums, and I trade information there about this very topic with several others that already did what I was about to do when I wanted to build my own Avid with Mojo.

Supermicro makes a motherboard that everyone building their own machine agreed was almost exactly the same board HP uses in their HP xw8200 workstation. Of special note is that this motherboard supports twin XEON processors, and as all such motherboards, it has multiple bus segments. You’ll need this if you ever want to add a Mojo, and use any kind of external Raid array. Before you say you won’t need to do that, keep in mind a 40 tape shoot in DV resolution will consume close to 600 Gbs of storage just to ingest the footage. Personally, I think everyone needs RAID. Not just for storage, but for speed as well. 1:1 resolution requires it. And a Mojo is also needed to do 1:1. So I consider this to be the minimum Avid system unless you are going to be in a pure DV environment with not too many tapes per project.

The Supermicro motherboard I chose is the X6DAE-G2. This sells for $419 at Newegg at the time I purchased it. It offers several slots, and I’ll describe how to populate them and so forth.

First the CPUs. I use twin XEON Nocona 2.8 Ghz Processors. Both of these cost less then a single 3.6 Ghz XEON. They are a good buy, and offer a lot of performance. The Supermicro board is picky about XEONs, so get the Nocona Active Cooling CPUs. These are about $249 each.

Now the Supermicro motherboard CPUs require special cases. They can’t fit into any ol case you buy for $40. I went straight to Supermicro and bought their own case rated for their own motherboard. I found this an easy way to remove all the guess work, and ensure cooling is perfect. The case I purchased is model CHASSIS S-MICRO|CSE-733i-450B BLK R. Truthfully, it comes with a 450 watt power supply, which is the minimum for a twin XEON. You should get a 550. The chassis will cost you about $175 to $224 depending on where you buy it.

Next is memory. Again, these higher end systems don’t take just any ol memory. And especially not this board. Best thing to do is go to Crucial and use their ram picking application. You tell it what motherboard you have, and they tell you what memory is approved for that specific board. Supermicro also publishes a small list of recommended memory. Believe me. Follow it, or you will be staring a machine that wont even boot.. I purchased kit # 2GB kit (1GBx2), 240-pin DIMM Upgrade for a Supermicro SUPER X6DAE-G2 System. This kit costs about $369 is will provide 2 Gbs of 240 pin Registered ECC memory, which is a requirement.

A good mid-range Avid approved video card is the PNY nVidia Quadro FX 1300. These sell for just $349. Get that card, and ONLY USE the Avid supplied video driver. Do not just go grab the latest and greatest driver from either the install CD or the web. Us Avid’s driver 67.22. You’ll find it is in the Avid folder in program files.
The Supermicro’s built in AC’97 audio has been problematic for many users. The collective group I am with agree the best card is the Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS. Disable the AC’97 and use the Augidy 2 ZS only. The Audigy 2 ZS is $99.

The Supermicro has a built-in RAID controller which is limited to 2 SATA1 hard drives. In my experience, it’s a buggy, worthless controller. I use the Highpoint Rocket RAID 2224 8-Port SATAII controller. It sells for about $254.

You can buy lose SATA II drives with 16 MB cache from Newegg for $130 each. I use a single 160 GB ATA100 EIDE drive for the OS Boot, and the SATA II drives are off the Rocket as my Media drive. Avid recomends you partition your RAID drive into multiple volumes no larger than 200 Gbs each for maximum performance if you use OMFI. As I understand it, if you use MXF this is not an issue.

If you are going to attach a Mojo, you must use the Avid approved FireWire card, which uses a Universal Ti Chip set. The specific card approved by Avid is VIDEODEV ADS|PYRO PCI 64 API-311 RT. It sells for about $29.

Now in order to keep the system running well, you have to pay particular attention to the way you configure the cards. This is so your computer can handle the extreme bandwidth demands going from Mojo to your external array.

Here is my slot configuration:

Slot 6: PCIe

[Lisafer]

You are amazing!! Thank you so much! You answered all my questions and more.