I need to build a seriously jacked-up PC. Help!

[jmowreader]

My company just got awarded a HUGE fucking contract--huge enough that we've got to buy a whole truckload of printers to start working on it. (Don't look so astonished. It's only six.)

We use Onyx ProductionHouse 7.1 to drive our printers, and will do the same with the new ones. Onyx redefines the term "resource hog." Here's the minimum system needed to run it: Windows XP SP2, dual 2GHz processors, 2GB RAM, 250GB disk.

Here's what I want to build, and I'd have to make two. Does this configuration seem reasonable?

dual intel Core2 Quad, as fast as I can get my hands on
four 500GB SATA drives in RAID 3 configuration
8GB DDR dual-channel memory
dual monitors
three Ethernet cards: Gigabit Ethernet up to the server, two 100base-TX cards for printers. You can service four printers from one copy of Onyx, so two printers per card.
DVD burner for archiving

I would LIKE to have two power supplies if I could find a motherboard that would accept them.

[HamstersFromHell]

1. Never used Onyx...we did have a copy of Postershop...

...but I ran Wasatch SoftRIP where I used to work and drove a 36" HP1050 and a 60" Novajet 850 in 8 color with a "little" Athlon XP 1600 with 1 Gig and a 120 gig drive.

I went and looked at the system requirements for Onyx. I doubt anything more than a single dual core is gonna help. Most software won't support any multithreading, and it reads like they can with one CPU per RIP (but the software says max 2 RIPS at a time?)

What printers are you wanting to drive...what resolution, etc.?

I ran the color department for a large engineering/reproduction firm a few years back, so I have a few ideas about what works and what don't.

If you don't want to bore the rest of the lounge with technobabble, feel free to shoot me a PM.

[jmowreader]

5. They'll be either Mutoh PJ-1946 or Mutoh PJ-3346

Resolution will be 720x360.

Someone told my boss that if you have a grand-format printer Onyx can run two jobs on two different rolls of media, so we might try one PJ-3346 (130-inch carriage) just to see if it would work, but I'm basing my planning on running the 1946 (72-inch carriage) because that "two rolls on one machine" sounds like bullshit to me.

Onyx also offers a "4 RIPs at one time" option, and we'd get that.

[HamstersFromHell]

8. I'd definitely NOT do the two roll media...

one little paper flaw or jam and you've wasted a ton of ink and media since you can't "stop" one of the two jobs...they're combined.

I'd say add all the memory you can to the printers...this helps speed workflow more than almost anything, since it's just a buffer for the printer. You lose time when your server has to "look up" another part of the job and send it...it's not the sending that's the time killer, it's the seeking the info and buffering it, and the more jobs you have that server doing, the harder it has to work if it's having to send smaller "pieces" to the printers.

Are you printing a lot of single copies of a ton of different items, or lots of copies of lots, or a ton of a few?

I doubt you'll need multiple network ports for any of it...if I recall correctly, we figured the Nova 850 in octachrome mode with 60" media (300x300 dpi) was taking about 1 meg. per pass, so even a 10meg. ethernet card wasn't in the least taxed to keep the printer happy.

I ran all my stuff - 1 Photoshop workstation, 1 RIP station, 3 wide format inkjets (Nova 850, HP1050c and an older Nova III 36"), web server, ftp server, File server, 40" 9600dpi Vidar scanner workstation, high speed Ricoh scanner/copier, and 3 OCE 9800 series 36" b&w digital scanner/copiers all off a 16 port 100 mbit switch and never had any traffic congestion. The file server was a dual Pentium 450 with 2 gigs and 4 wd 120gig EIDE drives in Raid 0+1. This file server was tied via a T1 to our "sister" company in another city and we kept around 80 gigs of scanned documents and engineering blueprints on servers in both offices. Anything scanned at either location was mirrored to the other once every 4 hours.

I'd put all the "power" in the RIP stations...that's the most CPU intensive. Ideally, I'd build individual RIP stations instead of multi CPU stations...2 CPUs or any dual core isn't going to perform as well as a entire computer dedicated to the job. If you do go dual core, quads, etc., I think I'd do AMD instead of Intel...the memory bandwidth of the AMD CPU kills Intel on something like this that's so memory intensive.

[jmowreader]

9. We're printing large, individual wraps

I don't know WHY these guys want this stuff wrapped, but they do. And all of them will be different. No two items are alike, and no two wraps will look alike.

Mutoh doesn't use RAM as a buffer for their printers--each one comes with a 40GB hard drive. They call this an "option," but every Mutoh comes with one. And man-o-man...earlier this week we pulled the HD out of one of our printers and replaced it with an 80GB drive. It prints MUCH faster now.

I thought about running one printer per RIP. For about two seconds. The problem is Onyx: it's on the wrong side of $3000. There's no damn way I could convince ANYONE we needed to spend over $90,000 on software when we can do the same thing for $22,500. Good tip on the AMD.

I really want the dual-networking setup because the traffic on my current network really loads it down, and I'm about ready to dump at least two orders of magnitude more traffic on it.

[HamstersFromHell]

11. Hmmm...

One of my friends dropped by work today. He's also been in the graphics business for ages and currently does vehicle wraps (mostly for NHRA teams). We tossed a few ideas about.

Forget the Mutoh running dual jobs. He agrees it's way too much hassle if something goes amiss, not to mention most likely extra expensive just because it can do 2 jobs at once.

Go with AMD 64 CPUs, (X2 of course), but maybe pop the few extra $$ for the 1 meg L2 cache instead of the "normal" 512k. He just built a new RIP for his truck (wraps while you wait at the track) and he went with AMD 5000 X2, 2 gig, 500 gig sata drive. With it he can RIP far faster than he can print.

I'd say to stay on the "smart" side of the price vs. performance curve (where going faster requires a ton of money for little performance increase) you'd end up somewhere in the 6000 X2 range. Remembering above all that memory bandwidth is gonna be your true bottleneck, I wouldn't go to a 4 CPU and try to do 4 RIPS...even with the Hypertransport on AMD chips, it'd be way slower than building 2 dual machines and running that way.

Also, try talking to Onyx...perhaps they'll come off the list if you're committing to buying multiple licenses at one time.

Last but not least: Instead of dual networks, if you can do all of your networking with TCP/IP, maybe just subnetting off your "new" stuff so rest of the network doesn't see the new stuff, and put all the new stuff on it's own dedicated switch. Or dual card one machine and have it act as the gateway between the nets.

[jmowreader]

13. What kind of printer is he running in his truck?

I'm asking because I may have a similar application coming up in the very near future. (Breathe easy, Hamster's friend, it has nothing to do with race cars.) The boss told me it might be a good idea if I were to get a passport...

[Ptah]

2. 440, four barrel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9Xz7u9gdm0

[Madrone]

3. what OS?

Because if you're going to use anything that's 32bit you may as well save your money on the RAM. Everything else sounds sweet.

[jmowreader]

6. 64-bit XP

[quakerboy]

4. I say

double it all.

[jmowreader]

7. I would, except...

I gotta eventually build seven of these--six to drive printers, one as a central server.

Oh, and by the way...anyone know where I can get a 150,000-sf air conditioned building cheap?

[Deja Q]

10. Dual quad-core?!?!

:wow:

BTW: Vista 64-bit is far better than XP64... IMHO, of course. :)

As for RAM, with your config, get something that supports DDR3 at a low latency. Or at least DDR2 running at 4-4-4-12 (or 3-3-3-8)

[jmowreader]

12. Onyx has "issues" with Vista

I've talked to people who tried running Onyx under Vista. They got weird color shifts, and moved back to XP.

[SKKY]

14. Why Raid 3???

From a performance standpoint, wouldn't raid 5 be a better option considering you're taking away the parity drive bottleneck?

[jmowreader]

17. No tape drive. Gotta have that parity drive.

A tape drive that's big and fast enough to back all this shit up is going to cost about $9000. Assuming we don't lose the whole box--and we've got a big-ass UPS on site to make sure THAT doesn't happen--a RAID 3 gives you crash protection that's about equal to backing up the drive. My first inclination is to run the shit as RAID 1, but then I look at all the gig-plus files I deal with on a regular basis (the current holder of the "biggest fucking file on the face of the planet" award is the side of a 50-foot Hatteras...3.9GB per side, plus another 950MB for the tower).

[DS1]

15. If money were no objects, I'd just buy an 8 core powerMac

Or, have Alienware or Falcon Northwest build them.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

16. uhm...

this is the sexiest thread on the board today :blush:

this talk, while I do not understand a word of it, seriously turns me on :loveya: