Hey All,

I'm trying to find a motherboard, or pre-built solution for running vista 64 (yea yea i know) that has Penryn support, current PCI express for a decent video card, and allows 16 gb of ram. I can only find solutions of 8 gb or less.

I'm going to be setting up a weird external SATA array system and need to be able to have and completly access 16 gigs or more of ram.

Does anybody know of any company's that build systems like this, or can suggest a motherboard that supports these specs?

Thanks in advance.

I think your out of luck man.

curious though, why do you want 16gb of ram anyway?

Mainstream motherboards only support 4 RAM slots at the moment, which, with RAM densities leading to only 2GB per stick, we are stuck with 8GB total.

Some weird external SATA array? Do you mind elaborating on that one??

I would say any of these http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 27%3A11340 should do the trick, given your sole requirement of 16+gb of ram.

Whats your budget? The ram alone will be be between 4000-6000 from a quick look at prices I saw.

I think elpresidente is right when he directed you to the server boards man. THe only way you are going to get that much RAM on a single board is to get a server board but then you're probably going to have to get fully buffered RAM which is more expensive and slightly slower because of the extra checks is has to perform.....not to mention the cost as the next guy pointed out. You could always build two 'regular' systems for the cost of this one uber system you're thinking about and then have them pool their resources....of course that would take a server OS on each I would think and some know how too......which I don't know much about so I will stop right about here.

Let's face it. You're gonna need to buy a real server if you NEED that much memory. The desktop market just cannot support that amount of memory, and frankly, wouldn't do too well with that much.

If, as I suspect, you're doing video conversion, photo-editing with hundreds of layers, 2/3d animation, etc. professionally you're gonna need a $10,000+ system to handle everything you need. That includes the entire workstation, all the ram you need, workstation graphics card(s), monitors, etc., as well as all the professional support/installation you'll need.

If, on the other hand, you're gonna just be experimenting with some stuff in your home, you'd be better suited saving your time/money and making a more down to earth system.

Regardless, if you need/want anymore help from the community here, I for one, need some more information about your intended usage scenario. If you don't mind me asking: Why exactly do you NEED 16+ GB of ram? Why the E-Sata? Could you do with buying a high-powered workstation from a big-name OEM like HP or Dell?

Definitely need some help here...

Thanks for the responses.

The system is a DAW. I'm running some incredibly heavy streaming samples, and need the lowest latency possible, thus the Esata array. It will solely host the audio library's split on at least 5 drives. The striping and bandwidth of the sata array, 300 megabytes per second i believe is what i'm looking for there.

That only resolves half the problem. Every sample from every patch buffers a small amount in the local memory. So If I'm loading an incredibly heavy project, 2 gigs disappears instantly. So it's a 2 part trick, I need harddrives that can stream the samples that aren't resident in memory fast, and I need insane amounts of memory to load the patches.

Yea I'm aware of the price point, and expecting to pay around 13k.

The apple systems can support the ram, but personally and unfortunatly I'd rather stay on windows, for many reasons. Most foremost leopard doesn't support Cubase.

Thanks so much for everyone's insite, looking forward to more of it.

Cheers

In that case, you may want to look into a high-powered multi-processor server/workstation, probably even rack mounted. Since you're dealing with lots of audio equipment, I'm sure you've got a rack to put it in. You'd be able to have SAS drives, rotating at 10k rpm, and not have to have an external array. You'd also be able to put as much ram as you need, as some boards can handle up to 128GB of ram (FB-dimms, of course).

Regardless of whether you want a rackmount or a free-standing unit, I recommend leaving the construction, configuration, and warranty to the professionals. Contact some people at HP, Dell, or Supermicro and they'll be able to help you configure a system that will fit your needs exactly. You'll be able to call them (hp, for example has 24/7 sales reps) and get a quote for a computer that will suit you quite nicely.

Good luck and happy hunting. I'm sure you're gonna have some really nice hardware by the time you're done.

[Edit]
Unfortunately, contrary to your name, this machine will be quite loud.

Sorry, just noticed your name...
[/Edit]

Have you heard of anyone successfully running Cubase on a system with 8GB of RAM? If so, then that might keep you from shelling out a lot of cashola, even though you are willing to pay it.

From the Steinburg Cubase site:

Random Access Memory

For Steinberg applications, nothing less than 512 MB RAM will do. However, all up-and-running applications and the operating system access the main memory at the same time, so installing more RAM is highly advisable. You may find that even sizable main memory acreage of 1 GB won’t suffice to deliver satisfactory system performance for larger projects. The reason for this is that VST instruments and audio projects load audio samples into the main memory and read them there. If you have don’t have much RAM installed, less material can be buffered there, and more data must be handled via the slower hard disks. This means access takes longer. Under normal conditions, Windows 2000 and Windows XP can use up to 2 GB RAM and Mac OS X, Windows XP x64 and Windows Vista 64 can address up to 4 GB in connection with Steinberg’s current Cubase/Nuendo versions. More RAM definitely does good things for your system’s overall performance.

Not saying it cannot be pulled off, but with a machine like this, you really should consult an OEM (but please not Alienware, their WSs rip you off more than you can imagine).
Dell offers pretty customizable rigs at your price point.