Roadworthy rackmount PC cases

[klaukholm]

I need to get a new rock solid rackmount PC case.
As I just burned up the PSU in my pyramix daw today, I would like to go for a high quality, high power psu (nice if it is quiet too)

What are you guys using?

[paulmcglashan]

I'm using one of these Procase NZ LTD -- CASES AND STORAGE PROFESSIONAL but with replacement (quiet fans) and PSU. This case is available around the place - google EYE-4800. I've also housed the disks in acoustic enclosures. This let's me run the DAW in a rack next to my mix position. Very quiet but quite heavy since made of mild steel not aluminium. That said the Pyramix cases are nicely engineered - why do you want to change?

[mpdonahue]

We're using the Seasonic M12D 850W powersupply for all our production systems. Very quiet, Modular power connectors and lots of capacity for power hungry motherboards, video and lots of hard drives.

As for cases, we've been using the iStar DD400 series 4u barebone cases and installing out own fans. Funny enough, I've gotten away from building rack mount computers for road work. I've found that a good mid tower typically has better designed cooling, travels better in a pelican with good cut foam inserts, is far more serviceable and weighs MUCH less than a similar rackmount PC. Plus you don't need a fancy shock mounted case with slider rails so you can put the system back together after shipping. Just my $0.02

For fans we like the Silenex and Pabst quiet fans. I never use the temperature controlled fans. I use the motherboard to adjust the fan speeds to optimize the noise to cooling ratio. Ideally there should be a fan directly in front of the drives, because forced air cooling makes for the most reliable drives. You should look carefully at the position and orientation of fans in the case to optimize the removal of heat.
The only thing I'll say about CPU fans is that I only use the stock Intel fan that comes with the processor. We don't overclock here (well, not radically....) and the Intel fans are the most dependable we've found. They travel well (We don't find them bouncing around inside the case when we take it out after shipping) and the noise when using temperature managed speed control is far less than the spinning hard drives.

That's the long answer to your short question.

All the best,
-mark

[klaukholm]

Mark, I was hoping to hear from you.
we just burned out the PSU on our pyramix machine and had I not seen it it could have been very bad, so the next psu will be a
1200W one with a 98a 12v rail.

I am looking at a 3 RU antec case, as a lot of the good cases are not available here in euroland.

[rumleymusic]

For my money, Corsair power supplies are the best that can be found. Mine has outlived 4 other newer computers with other brand name PSUs, and I still have never been able to hear it operate. The fan is absolutely silent.

[klaukholm]

As I had to replace the PSU asap,
I got the Coolermaster Silent Pro Gold 1200W,
seasonic seems unavailable in sweden.
A lot of stores used to carry them, but none can get it for me now.

I will wait a few weeks before I get the new system, so keep the suggestions coming.

FWIW, the computer is for a dual madi, masscore system.
probably with an
ASUS P7H57D-V and a i5 (760) quad.

[mpdonahue]

The antec cases are great, but they have very limited peripheral space on the front of the box (2 5.25" bays and a floppy).
We get the Istar boxes from the internet and the cost is 1/4th of the Antec case. They are built virtually identical and have 8 spaces on the front panel+firewire , audio and USB.
For my money I would look at an I7 930 and Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R and save a couple of bucks. But that's just me....

All the best,
-mark
P.S. I hope you're not buying new hardware for this computer.... Horus is coming soon and seems to be very reasonably priced.....

[klaukholm]

great advice mark,
I will look into shipping cost from the US for the istar, but it is probably minimum $200, which defeats the purpose..

As for the motherboard, I need two PCI for my myk cards.

Is there any benefit to the i7 930 over the i5 760 for masscore?

[mpdonahue]

Also, Is this for PCM only?
If so, I'd take a long hard look at a PMX Native with the unlimited track count option. We just did an opera in Milwaukee with 64 tracks at 96k on a native running on an SSL MadiExtreme in an I7 dell midtower....
Total system cost including software was less than $4000.

-mark

[klaukholm]

PCM 96 only

[mpdonahue]

Originally Posted by klaukholm

great advice mark,
I will look into shipping cost from the US for the istar, but it is probably minimum $200, which defeats the purpose..

As for the motherboard, I need two PCI for my myk cards.

Is there any benefit to the i7 930 over the i5 760 for masscore?

The I5 is really designed to be a mid line processor.
The big differences are:
Turbo mode
Tri Channel Ram (The i7 chips have the ram controller on the Chip die itself rather than externally on the Northbridge, which greatly increases ram access speeds)
Hyper threading
X58 high end chipset
LGA1366- This is the high performance workstation socket that also supports the current 6 core and future 8 core processors.

For marginally the same price you should see a significant boost in performance, especially when PMX breaks the 3GB ram limit and goes to V8/64bit in a half a year or so.
WRT the 2 PCI socket, there are a bunch of X58 Mobo's that have 2xPCI, but I would also look for dual Gigabit Ethernet, USB3 and SATA 6 GB/s.
Also, WRT the new massocre implementation, you will see a significant improvement in processing ability with more cores.

All the best,
-mark