PC for Printing and RAID Storage?

[Little City Signs]

I'm doing some research on what kind of system I would want for a RIP computer that would be doing printing.

I've been putting off setting up a RAID system for our client files for far long and would like to do this at the same time.

Would a Phenom x3 or x4 Work? It would be doing all our RIP/Printing and RAID storage (with up to 3 other PC's accessing all our client files)

Obviously 2 new computers is the better way to go but just is not an option.

We have some slower systems but I'm affraid that if I set them up to do the RAID system it will slow the whole digital side of the shop down.

Any advice experience or opinions are greatly appriciated!

Cheers
T

 

[choucove]

If you are having a computer host all your design artwork that several people will be working from continuously, it can require a pretty fast and capable computer to keep from having issues with slow loading, saving, or accessing files (moving or copying.) Digital printing is about the same thing, where you want plenty of horsepower especially for larger prints or if you are running more than one digital printer. I'm really not the expert, but in my testing I found that for a digital printer workstation, a more powerful processor and lots of ram was more important really than data speed from hard drives. On the other side, having a file server generally means less processor speed required, but a strong data speed from hard drives and still plenty of ram. This means if you're going to build a system that is going to do both, you will need the system to be very well rounded for it all.

Anymore, for the price, if you are building a rip computer you can do a quad core system for a very decent price that will have plenty of power for your needs. Depending upon how much you are really wanting to spend and what you really are needing, a Phenom x4 can do the trick, but you may even look at a dual processor system with two quad-core processors. I actually just purchased a system to run two quad-core Opterons for this very same goal. We still are planning on putting in a separate computer for a file server at that office as well, but for now this will do the job and do it well.

There are quite a few very skilled system builders on this forum with a LOT of hands on experience working on building systems for printing workstations!

 

[Little City Signs]

I'm managed to get a decent system together for under 1400 bucks to the door. It includes a Phenom x4 9850 4gig of DDR2-800 on a Nforce 570 mobo with a radeon HD 3850 512mb gfx card.

Would this be able to handle RIP and Printing and still have the other 2or3 users connected on the network to save and open client files without disturbing the printing aspect of the computer too much?

From what I've heard the RIP software can't use all 4 cores anyway which means there would be 2 sitting idle(ish).

(I was thinking of going with a RAID 5 setup) But am open to suggestions.

 

[SignBurst PCs]

This should be able to "haul the mail", but I would like to see some RAID in the drives. I like RAID 10 (vs RAID 5) due to the low price of storage. RAID10 rebuilds without as much of a performance hit as RAID 5. If you dont want to go through all the guesswork, we offer a RIP variation of our Inferno (see website).

 

[flyinhawaiian968]

Raid 0+1 for redundancy and speed! Gonna try this within the next few weeks on a C2D and 3 500gb drives-that is, if I ever get a chance to breathe!!! Stupid Fridays and the 20 jobs that I'm behind on!!!!!

Back to finishing my lunch and getting a few more jobs out...
Chris

 

[Little City Signs]

So the scratch disk is another separate hard drive just for working within photoshop?

 

[SignBurst PCs]

That is correct. It doesn't perform a function unless you are designing in Photoshop or Illustrator.

 

[Little City Signs]

Well those systems seem like the best you can buy!

Though I wouldn't need that much power just yet. Perhaps in the future I'll be in contact with you.

We need something that will get us by. We need the computer to be networked and accessable for 2 or 3 other design stations (cut vinyl within signlab 6) without slowing the station to do RIP/Print and RAID storrage. I'll have to read more about RAID 10, I dout it but I hope that the motherboard that I'm looking at will support RAID 10. Seems the way to go.

Though my question was if the system I described would be able to handle my described work load.

 

[SignBurst PCs]

Like I said before, it "should" be able to. I would tend to lean toward some sort of RAID to improve the disk access times if you are going to be file sharing and performing RIP and print tasks.

IMHO, you may be better off purchasing an inexpensive NAS device (most are RAID capable) for file storage though, but that is just a suggestion.