Wish list for X58A-UD3R Media NAS. Need advice on graphics

[Mongo]

Guyz,

I'm assembling my wish list for a purchase I'll be pulling the trigger on in a few weeks if not sooner.

The mission for this Hackintosh is to replace my Media NAS which is currently, believe it or not, 6 x 2TB JBOD of mostly Western Digital Green drives in external enclosures strung with Firewire 400 off a G4 PPC Mac Mini now running Leopard. It has been working OK enough to accumulate 6-7TB in content until it recently started bogging down on I/O for unknown reasons.

My new NAS server will be a tower with lotsa SATA ports and room for more JBOD hard drives (no RAID, thankkew.) I will also enjoy having more powerful desktop for media encoding. I'm likely to add a card or two to get more Firewire, SATA and maybe USB ports. If I can mount those drives internally I'll have less of a need for external ports.

I will connect it it to the HDTV with HDMI and will want the power to drive lotsa pixels in eventually 2-3 screens. For now I have a 1920x1200 display and plan to add another of the same or higher resolution up to the 2560x1660 Dell UltraSharp U3011. What I don't necessarily need is the GPU oomph to put out a killer frame rate for FPS games. I don't play those. I might enjoy Flight Simulator.

I'm sensitive about noise and power use. This will be at my home computer play desk which is next to the TV and home theater. (It is good to be owning the house.)

Reading experiences here so far on my list is:

• GIGABYTE GA-X58A-UD3R LGA 1366 Intel X58 Motherboard (the step-up -7 board has an extra NIC port but no PCI slot. I can't see using a second port and I want to be able to add I/O cards.)[/*:m:fpnjwvuh]
• Intel Core i7-960 Bloomfield 3.2GHz 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Desktop Processor BX80601960 (looks to me like good price vs. performance)[/*:m:fpnjwvuh]
• CORSAIR XMS3 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Triple Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model TR3X6G1333C9 (or 3 x 4 GB Corsair RAM if the mood strikes) [/*:m:fpnjwvuh]
• Western Digital Caviar Black WD2002FAEX 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive(which will be upgraded to SSD when the costs drop anon)[/*:m:fpnjwvuh]
• Antec EarthWatts EA650 650W Continuous Power ATX12V Ver.2.2 / EPS12V version 2.91 SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC "compatible with Core i7/Core i5" Power Supply[/*:m:fpnjwvuh]
• Case to be determined. I have an new unused Antec Solo case that I'll use for a start.[/*:m:fpnjwvuh]

What I'm lost about is an appropriate video card. I don't see the compelling arguments of even ATI vs. NVdia. Apparently the Gigabyte board supports NVIDIA 3-Way SLI and ATI CrossFireX. Does either ATI or NVidia work better with Snow Leopard?

It's not entirely out of possibility that I'd add second video card if it'll fit.

I'm only looking at which card has the ports that will do HDMI plus a couple of monitors, with dual link DVI being available so this one:

• GIGABYTE Ultra Durable VGA Series GV-R685OC-1GD Radeon HD 6850 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card with Eyefinity[/*:m:fpnjwvuh]

has HDMI + 3 DVI ports? Do I want 2GB of VRAM to drive all those pixels?
I suppose I can get by with one or two less expensive ones?

Any advice will be welcomed!

 

[SMHI]

The difference I can se between GA-X58A-UD3R and UD7 is one USB header and one extra RJ45: http://www.gigabyte.com/products/compar ... =3449,3527:

MEMORY: Its better to go for 1600 MHz memory. Its the same price as 1333 MHz.

PSU: A silent PSU is Nexus NX-5000. I have one and it is silent. Not 100% but I just hear the low sound of moving air. No fan noice. If the case is under a table it is hard to hear it. And that comes from me that a silent system is a system I cant hear. Thumbs up by Silentpcreview.com. They have a better model, NX-6000, that is according to Nexus page, more silent then NX-5000.

Here are a review and their are power supplys that are more silent: http://www.technic3d.com/article-1043,4 ... .htm#start

 

[minhi]

you need keep in mind that MACOSX does not support SLI video cards, and having two active cards is a bear to get working, so you need to decide how many screens you really want to drive.

There is success of getting the Radeon 5770 cards going with dual-dvi + DP w/ converter, for 3 total.

Also keep in mind a lot of these cards you can't use all the ports at once, e.g. if you use the HDMI you can't use a DVI, so if you have a 4 port card you may only be able to use 3 of those ports.

The CPU looks awfully high for your requirements, i'd think about an 1156 and even an i5 or i3 if you don't need the juice, but it's only about $100 there. I don't see a need to jump to a 1366 in your case unless it's a port or slot requirement.