Camera Labs

Suppose you could post your own "crazy" setup, or ones you've seen on the net.

Here's my 13 hard drive crazy stuff

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Canon EOS 5DmkII + BG-E6 + Canon EOS 40D + BG-E2N + Canon EOS 33
Canon 17-40 F/4L USM + Canon 24-70 F/2.8L USM + Canon 28mm F/1.8 USM + Canon 70-200 F/2.8L USM IS + Canon 85mm F/1.8 USM
Canon Speedlite 580EX II + Canon Speedlite 540EZ + 2 x Nikon SB-80DX
Cactus V2s Wireless Trigger - 5 x Cactus V2s Wireless Reciever

MY FLICKR!

This was meant to be the best system I could have at the time. A dual Xeon watercooled setup.



From memory, specs were:
Dual Xeon 2.4 GHz (Prestonia)
Dunno what GFX card is pictured above, but it was later used with a GF6800 Ultra shown below with waterblock.
4x256MB pictured, later replaced with 2x1GB Corsair ram modules with the LEDs on top
DangerDen waterblocks used throughout. Can't remember the rest of the watercooling.
The pic looks like the original coolermaster stacker case.



The whole system was on the limit of the power supply and cooling. From memory the CPUs could overclock to 3 GHz under ideal conditions, but the PSU wasn't up to it. I didn't get a cheap one either! Also I found the voltage regulators tended to overheat now that the northbridge air spill no longer hit it as it was also watercooled. I had to bodge a fan over that.



Closeup of the motherboard with waterblocks before it was put in the case.

I had no end of trouble with that watercooling setup. I used distilled water with fungicides but I still got growth in the coolant. There was a slow leak leading to fizzing blue puddles of liquid on the back of the gfx card more than once. Not fun as it was £400 alone at the time. The pump wasn't the quietest, and the vibrations made the whole case shake. So even though it was watercooled, it was still hot and noisy. That was my last attempt at watercooling and I went back to air ever since. Below is after I moved to a different main PC. The dual Xeon was relegated to the role of overkill fileserver. Air cooling was ok at stock clock and not that noisy. I didn't like that Lian Li case either. That also vibrated too much from the hard disk vibrations. I couldn't damp it out.

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Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.

That case looks amazing!

Now if only it held hard drives that way at the top AND bottom...Not that i'd have enough sata ports, or hard drives XD

Love it though, I have a soft spot for Xeon's. I love them to bits. They always seem so fast, even if the stuff I have "should" be faster. Maybe its all in my head; probably is LOL

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Canon EOS 5DmkII + BG-E6 + Canon EOS 40D + BG-E2N + Canon EOS 33
Canon 17-40 F/4L USM + Canon 24-70 F/2.8L USM + Canon 28mm F/1.8 USM + Canon 70-200 F/2.8L USM IS + Canon 85mm F/1.8 USM
Canon Speedlite 580EX II + Canon Speedlite 540EZ + 2 x Nikon SB-80DX
Cactus V2s Wireless Trigger - 5 x Cactus V2s Wireless Reciever

MY FLICKR!

That Lian Li case was very nice outside. High quality aluminium. Inside wasn't so great. Note the motherboard goes in upside down, making it hard to reach the SATA ports without long cables. The HD mounts were not damped and the vibration passed straight to the panels, which amplified the vibrations. On the plus size, there are 12 HD bays and room for a 2nd PSU to help power them all. And if you need even more disks than that, you could get adapters and fit them into the 5.25 bays above. Now I'm using an Antec case which does have damped HD holders and deals nicely with the vibration.

Xeons - at the time, the 2.4 GHz was low end, and Asus had bodged a regular desktop chipset to drive a pair of them. This meant it was comparatively cheap to go dual. Being Xeons of the late Northwood era, they also had HT so under a suitable version of Windows you had 4 CPUs showing For perspective, dual core (x86) CPUs didn't exist then. I think this also predated A64 architecture. The system never felt that fast to me though, I suspect I was fsb limited. I also had a dual-AMD box around that time, and that felt even slower.

I've given up on extreme now. All my PCs runs stock and mods are done for noise reduction. Currently I'm using performance ram, but for my next build I'm thinking of going mainstream grade. The fractional % difference just isn't worth it any more...

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Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.

Whats the model names of the 2 cases? I'm looking at getting a new case when I upgrade the GPU. I want something with plenty space for hard drives and 3 x 120mm front fans. My current Thermaltake Armor Full tower has 3 x 120mm fans and a DVD RW and the top power panel. so 11 5 1/4 bays in total.

I can take 12 HDD's in my case max. 9 at the front, 3 at the back. In any case I'm not bothered about noise since i've got 9 fans in this one just now, and 8 Hard Drives going haha. Mainly cooling efficiency and cable management.

Maybe the reason the xeons seemed slow was because the chipset was limiting? I dunno.

Yeah My Core i7 is running stock just now, same with my gpu. I havnt bothered overcocking the GPU in years since it gains ziltch these days. I will OC the i7 to 3.2GHz since its totally stable there. Its sitting at 39 degrees just now even with all those hard drives running in the case and its running lightroom. The cores are all 30-34 degrees.

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Canon EOS 5DmkII + BG-E6 + Canon EOS 40D + BG-E2N + Canon EOS 33
Canon 17-40 F/4L USM + Canon 24-70 F/2.8L USM + Canon 28mm F/1.8 USM + Canon 70-200 F/2.8L USM IS + Canon 85mm F/1.8 USM
Canon Speedlite 580EX II + Canon Speedlite 540EZ + 2 x Nikon SB-80DX
Cactus V2s Wireless Trigger - 5 x Cactus V2s Wireless Reciever

MY FLICKR!

The top case is the original Coolermaster Stacker. That was before they started giving it model numbers as it was the only one. I don't know how the modern versions compare.

The lower case is the Lian Li V2100 in black. Not cheap.

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Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.

Hi Daniel,

OK, I admit it: I'm a Lian-Li fanboy

But all those fans and spaces for 12 hard drives, if that's what you want, might be a problem. But if you like the idea of Lian-Li and find the case of your dreams in everything but HDD space then they also do eSATA enclosures such as the EX-50 - new so possibly hard to find at the moment.

You'll no doubt remember my own recent build, as detailed here. Only dedicated space for six HDD in that one, though the unused 3.5" external bay currently holds my SSD allowing seven in total. If neither of the 5.25" external bays are required for optical drives then you can add a Lian-Li EX-23N HDD cage which will fit three 3.5" HDD in the space occupied by the two 5.25" bays. That gets you to 10 hard disks and the enterprising builder might find a way of mounting the HDD cage (or even another one ) above the PSU. But with 2TB units becoming available having even six HDDs might be overkill.

The sideways external bays and minimal looks of the Lian Li PC-X2000 may not be to everyone's taste but it works for me and the four 140mm fans do a fantastic job, not to mention the additional two 80mm fans cooling the HDD compartment.

Remember, a case is for life and not just for Christmas.

Bob.

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OM-D E-M5 + ED 12-50mm, H-PS14042E, H-F007014E, L-RS014150E, M.ZUIKO DIGITAL 45mm 1:1.8.
Gitzo GT1541T, Arca-Swiss Z1 DP ball-head.
Astrophotography: TEC 140 'scope, FLI ML16803 camera, ASA DDM60 Pro mount.

I think I'll wait for E-SATA2 (6Gb/s) before I go for any multi drive external bays just to make sure its not being held back by bandwidth. Although in saying that once I get all these 160-250GB drives sorted then I could lob them in one providing they arnt to expensive.

The cases are nice but I just want the Optical disk drive at the front, with no door. Having it as the sid will be no good for me

As for the amount of drives being overkil, yeah your right haha. its more for future ideas, assuming storage goes up and up and prices go down and down, I'm sure we'll see good 1TB drives below £40 very soon meaning affordable large raid solutions.

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Canon EOS 5DmkII + BG-E6 + Canon EOS 40D + BG-E2N + Canon EOS 33
Canon 17-40 F/4L USM + Canon 24-70 F/2.8L USM + Canon 28mm F/1.8 USM + Canon 70-200 F/2.8L USM IS + Canon 85mm F/1.8 USM
Canon Speedlite 580EX II + Canon Speedlite 540EZ + 2 x Nikon SB-80DX
Cactus V2s Wireless Trigger - 5 x Cactus V2s Wireless Reciever

MY FLICKR!