Proposed ProTools HD Sandy Bridge Hack

[Gordo74]

Nvidia 520 with passive heatsink

Thanks Gordo -- is there a specific product? I don't see any 520s listed in the database (or are you suggesting I can get something that is not in the database yet?)

A noob link to newegg or amazon would be appreciated.
Thx
J

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814125407

Put this in, boot up with it, run Multibeast and select the Nvidia drivers, reboot, you're done.

 

[carpeperdiem]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814125407

Ah, thanks Gordo, BUT - I had to rule out the "fat" heatsinks since I need to put a card in the adjacent x4 PCIe slot. Unless others have advised me in error, and an eSATA card such as:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6816129087

can also live in the 2nd PCIe (x4) slot? I will also have a Firewire card in the x1 slot -- so there is not much wiggle room.

Thanks for your input.
J

 

[Gordo74]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814125407

Ah, thanks Gordo, BUT - I had to rule out the "fat" heatsinks since I need to put a card in the adjacent x4 PCIe slot. Unless others have advised me in error, and an eSATA card such as:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6816129087

can also live in the 2nd PCIe (x4) slot? I will also have a Firewire card in the x1 slot -- so there is not much wiggle room.

Thanks for your input.
J

All the slots are universal.

 

[carpeperdiem]

All the slots are universal.

Yes, of course. But it appears that the heatsink for the GIGABYTE GV-N520SL-1GI GeForce GT 520 (Fermi) is quite wide (fat), and spills over into the space for the adjacent slot. So using this card would prevent me from putting anything into the next slot. Yes? I hope I'm wrong... Do you have this card installed in PCIe x16, and have another card in the adjacent slot (PCIe x4)?

Are there other GPUs that are silent or almost silent that are able to allow a card right next to it in the adjacent slot (that are known to work well with this mobo and chipset and macos 10.7.4)?

I hope I am explaining this correctly. Thanks for your input.

J

 

[genzai]

@carpeperdiem
Hey man, sorry i am late to the party. Hopefully you are still collecting parts. Here is my response to your original post:

1. Is there a reason everyone is going for the i7 2600k (as opposed to the 2700k)?

No reason. I have used both. they are basically the same CPU.

2. I need my machine to be as quiet as possible

That GPU is no bueno in that it blocks the next port. your best option for single slot silent GPU is still the gigabyte 8600GT. You will have to get it off ebay.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/GIGABYTE-GV-NX8 ... 661wt_1015

I have used these many times in silent audio machines, they are great.

Your only other single slot option (that i have found) is going to be this guy:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814121448
I have no experience with it but should work fine.

3.. Has anyone done a Jetway Q67 build directly to Lion?

Lion works great. There are many methods to get OS on the drive, and any should work.
I have up to HD4 working with this board in Lion without any issues - production level systems used day in and day out.

4. Onboard audio - to OPTICAL S/PDIF?

In fact the onboard audio DOES support SPDIF over optical. One of the outputs has a red laser. You just need a mini optical cable. This is the same as on macbook pros. However that said, the onboard audio works very poorly and unstably with voodoohda. If there is a better driver around for it you may be able to get it working. Otherwise i suggest getting a cheap USB audio with optical in/out. Many available, often for under $20 and they work fine in OS X.

5. eSATA & more internal sata ports.

get this:http://www.amazon.com/Best-Connectivity-Power-over-eSATA-PCI-Express-SD-PEX40031/dp/B003ULP9PW

used in many systems, great drivers, works perfect.

6. Firewire 800 card. Which one?

get this:http://www.nitroav.com/store/2-channel-nitroav-firewire-800-1394b-pci-express-x1-host-adapter.html

Its dual bus, so you can run both 400 and 800 without concern. Also many firewire cards have issues with this or that device, even with TI chipsets. I have had many issues with other cards, cheap and expensive alike. I have settled on these dual bus cards now, used them in many builds and they are hands down most compatible.

I am planning on getting an mSATA card, 120gb

Any msata SSD will work great for a system drive. And you can assign your libraries to larger internal drive.

On another note if you are attempting a silent system there are other issues as well. You need to replace the case fan with a silent one. You need to get a fanless power supply. These are expensive but worth it for getting the most silent system possible. You should also consider buying a corsair H-series cooler for the CPU along with another silent fan for the exhaust.

So my proposed slot use:

PCI1 Protools Core
PCI2 Protools Accel
PCI3 Protools Accel

ok

PCI4 sound card with s/pdif optical

dont do this, get a usb one. use this for another accel or more sata, etc

PCIe 2.0 x16 GPU
PCIe x4 eSATA card
PCIe x1 Firewire 800 card

ok

you can also use an mpci extender unit to get a usb3.0 mpci installed and use a front panel usb 3.0 panel. I did this in 3 jetway systems to add usb 3.0 support.

I am planning on a 4 SSD RAID-0 (raid built at OS level, yes?) for my sample library

no offense but this seems absurd to me. Modern mechanical drives work perfectly fine for very heavy sample loads. In the studio we use an iscsi setup to run multiple systems off one array; any given system is thus limited to ~90MB/s and we have never had issues. 90MB is a ton of bandwidth for audio and if you do a raid0 stripe of a modern mechanical drives not only will you get a much bigger storage array but you will be topping 200MB/s, way more than you will need. Dont do the SSD array its a waste of resources. (not to mention dont forget PT10 loads the entire session in to RAM! You should be using 8GB sticks, 4 of them, which looks like you have spec'd out)


Hope that helps,
g\

 

[carpeperdiem]

HI genzai,

Thanks for your very comprehensive reply. The community here has been so giving. I hope to give back as I get my head around this.

your best option for single slot silent GPU is still the gigabyte 8600GT. You will have to get it off ebay.
Your only other single slot option (that i have found) is going to be this guy:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814121448
I have no experience with it but should work fine.

Yes, I identified the ASUS GeForce GT 430 (Fermi) - also stumbled into this... any opinion on this one? ASUS 8400GS-1GD3-SL NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS 1024MB DDR3
http://www.microcenter.com/single_produ ... id=0383922

I can pick this up tomorrow.

i suggest getting a cheap USB audio with optical in/out. Many available, often for under $20 and they work fine in OS X.

Noted. Is there anything that I should look for when choosing peripherals? Will most USB devices with mac 10.7 drivers be sufficient? When installing a USB device driver, do I have to watch out for specific things?

6. Firewire 800 card...
get this:http://www.nitroav.com/store/2-channel-nitroav-firewire-800-1394b-pci-express-x1-host-adapter.html

Oy. I already ordered what appears to be an OOB PnP solution favored by many...
viewtopic.php?f=22&t=45039
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6815124072

TI XIO2213 chipset, I don't really plan on dragging fw400 and fw800 at the same time, so dual busses is not worth paying for. Is this a bad choice for audio rigs? Should I cancel the newegg order and not even try to make the Syba card work?

5. eSATA & more internal sata ports.
get this:http://www.amazon.com/Best-Connectivity-Power-over-eSATA-PCI-Express-SD-PEX40031/dp/B003ULP9PW
used in many systems, great drivers, works perfect.

I don't think this card will get me enough ports... please see below...

I am planning on a 4 SSD RAID-0 (raid built at OS level, yes?) for my sample library
no offense but this seems absurd to me. Modern mechanical drives work perfectly fine for very heavy sample loads.

Ah, no offense taken, but for some sample libraries and apps, an ssd RAID-0 sample library will out-perform mechanical drives by factor of 20 or more...

http://community.vsl.co.at/forums/p/31659/201243.aspx
http://community.vsl.co.at/forums/p/30671/196143.aspx

VERY OT for this forum, but basically, putting certain sample libraries on SSD (and then raiding them) allow smaller buffer sizes for the sample playback app (such as Vienna Instruments Pro) - thus permitting less ram used -- BUT WE HAVE 32GB! - yes, and some orchestral templates want 15-20GB or more! I raided my sample library pre-ssd, and I will raid them when I go SSD. The raid/no-raid is debatable -- but many will agree that SSD for the sample library can boost performance by 20x or more.

SO I need more SATAIII internals. and I have not yet ordered a card. I found this:
http://www.provantage.com/startech-pexs ... TR92FW.htm
also on newegg for about $20 more: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6816129087

How will I know if a card like this will work on this mobo?

For anyone wondering why i need more SATA:

Jetway mobo has:
3x SATA 3Gb/s
2x SATA 6Gb/s
1x mSATA 3Gb/s

mSATA slot will be the 120gb ssd system drive. iTunes and iPhoto and media libraries will live on a separate mechanical drive (and iTunes library size doesn't really matter anymore since I've been using iTunes Match -- but that's OT)

6gb sata for 2 recording drives (one is essentially a backup)
3gb sata: 1 optical, 1 "data" and library drive, 1 backup drive (2Tb).

I am still short... I will use (raid or otherwise) 3x 256gb SSD for my library (really need a terrabyte, but 700 is gonna have to do for now) - and another 2tb for disc images and backups.

I will use external eSATA for yet another backup that will rotate out to the safe and archives.

I know this is way OT, but the need for 11 or 12 SATA ports is real, and I just wanted to paint the picture.

SO I NEED a solid SATA/eSATA card. What do we think of the StarTech PEXSAT34? How do i know if a card like this can/will work on the Jetway?

You should also consider buying a corsair H-series cooler

Hmm... for a wanna-be-silent machine, liquid cooled? OK, I have had liquid colled in my G5 for many years (I was one of the lucky ones with a knock on wood it-just-works system) - but some reviews of liquid cooled say the pump is not silent -- if not overclocking, couldn't a passive (or very quiet) cooler get the job done? Just asking/

Thanks to all for input. I'm discovering so much every hour!

My UniBeast is made and I only need a few more parts for Stage I

Thanks again for jumping in on this and all your comments.

J

 

[genzai]

Here ye Here ye,
Jetway has released an updated NAF board with Q77 chipset and improved (much better compatibility) features!
http://www.jetwaycomputer.com/NAF93.html

highlights include:
-onboard USB 3.0 that should work as soon as IVB macs hit the scene.
-Fintek I/O controller that should give better istat/fakeSMC support
-Realtek audio!! should finally be able to get onboard audio working with AppleHDA.
-Appears to be an improved SATA configuration with full 4+2 and msata slot.

Looking forward to using this board in the future with a 3770K
g\

 

[jimdrake]

Here ye Here ye,
Jetway has released an updated NAF board with Q77 chipset and improved (much better compatibility) features!
http://www.jetwaycomputer.com/NAF93.html

very interesting!

highlights include:
-onboard USB 3.0 that should work as soon as IVB macs hit the scene.
-Fintek I/O controller that should give better istat/fakeSMC support

very interested to learn why a fintek is better?

-Realtek audio!! should finally be able to get onboard audio working with AppleHDA.

It mentions there is an audio header on the board, maybe it has spdif?

Hopefully the minijacks would have optical in and out?

-Appears to be an improved SATA configuration with full 4+2 and msata slot.

does it seem though that you can't use the msata and mpcie at the same time?

 

[carpeperdiem]

hey guys --
my build is almost there... solved video, firewire issues, and Lion is running perfectly for me! My case is almost silent. Using EVGA GT520 GPU (DVI) w/ Nvidia drivers from Multibeast. OS 10.7.4 (clean install, used UniBeast)

But I only get stuttered looped playback (of the first 50 ms or so) and distorted audio from protools -- it's unusable at this point.

I have PTHD2 in PCI slots 1 and 2 (starting from the GPU, then PCIe x4, the PCIe x1, then HD core, then HD accel) correct slot order? Flex cable is FROM port A of Accel TO port B of core. DigiTest says the cards pass. I have a 192 hooked up to thhe core card.

I installed and updated PT10HD to 10.2
I Did NOT install any avid hardware drivers -- I let ProTools do this with the install (as the installer readme says to do).

I noticed that MultiBeast popped up after every driver install --such as iLok or even ProTools -- I didn't do anything with MultiBeast here... should I have?

Is there a "final step" to getting PTHD working that I must have obviously overlooked? Is there a kext or driver that I failed to deal with?

The audio playback sounds like a 100ms sample, distorted, looping error... something is very wrong! But all other aspects of the rig are freaking amazing.

Help. please? What could the last step be to get audio to pass? PS -- haven't even thought of MIDI yet...

Thanks!!!

J

PS -- could this be related to not doing the DSDT and using EasyBeast? It appears that ALL other aspects of the macOS are working, networking, drives. etc...

UPDATE: I removed the Accel card -- tested with only core card. No Go. Same results. I also ran Digitest on just the HD core. Pass on all tests.

 

[genzai]

hey guys --
The audio playback sounds like a 100ms sample, distorted, looping error... something is very wrong! But all other aspects of the rig are freaking amazing.

This is a common issue. play "musical slots" (as in musical chairs) until you find a slot combo that works. once you get it working the issue never re-occurs.

In all my systems i put core in first PCI (as in one closest to the PCIe slots) and then acell cards in each of the others (1,2 or 3 acell all worked fine for me) but i also occupy all the PCIe slots (even the mPCI) so that may make a difference. anyway its an easy thing to fix if you just move stuff around until it works.

g\