Appearance of Death Star II

[BoredSysAdmin]

Thanks Bored. Again this is a very helpful forum. That link says page can not be found for some reason. You have already helped a great deal.

try this one:
https://www.qnap.com/en-us/product/model.php?II=258
Or simply google for TS-231P model

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

Actually, depending on the application, on an i7 using two DIMMs, one on each memory channel, might provide noticeably better overall system performance. With only one DIMM you are leaving fully 50% of the i7's memory bandwidth idle. That would bother me just for emotional reasons, if nothing else.

I also agree with BSA regarding SSDs. Even if you don't need the performance of an NVMe SSD, the MTBF of an SSD so far exceeds HDDs that it is meaningful in any system.

Plus SSDs typically die gradually, if you installed SSD drivers, you'd get warning signs long before.
Not to mention, 850pro in home/smb enviroment would likely to outlast even me

 

[j_garcia]

This does me think of this:

I wasn't such a big fan of blue harvest. It was OK, but was pretty much like Space Balls lol. bleep bloop bleep

 

[TLS Guy]

Plus SSDs typically die gradually, if you installed SSD drivers, you'd get warning signs long before.
Not to mention, 850pro in home/smb enviroment would likely to outlast even me

I have researched the RAM issue further. I had thought that 16 Gig of RAM would be plenty for this unit.

The max load I have been able to put on the RAM is 19%. According to a study done on Tom's hardware using the two channels would speed up the processor at most 5%. Since I seem to be using just 2 to 3 percent of the CPU power, I think I'm good. So it does not need more RAM

One of the important precepts of a DAW is to have the whole system over built, so that nothing ever comes close to breaking a sweat.

This unit is working really well. I'm getting rapidly more confident with it. It sounds marvelous. In the world of classical recording and production WavLab combined with RME is considered a match made in Heaven. I certainly concur.

Now to the important unresolved issue backup.

I will be candid. I had never considered using a NAS device as a backup tool. That was stupid, as it has everything to recommend it. That seems the correct approach to my problem.

I have looked at the two and favor the TS-251 over the cheaper TS-231P.

For starters I don't like the way the hard drives install in the TS-231P. You do not use screws but press fit them into some type of spring loaded device in the bay. To me it sounds mechanically very nasty indeed.

In third party reviews the TS-251 seems to earn the top marks.

User reviews of the TS-251 seem more positive also.

The biggest complaint is poor and wrong or at least misleading installation instructions.

Hopefully this will not turn the project into a cluster you know what.

So I will need a couple of 3 to 4 TB hard drives. It seems form the reviews these units meed more RAM installed and the unit can handle up to 8 Gig.

It says you can configure it to make one drive mirror the other as RAID 1. If a drive fails an alarm goes off.

This unit can download to the cloud also as an extra level of security. In that case it would not matter how long it took, as the computer would not be involved in the download.

I'm pretty sure I will need my son's help getting this configured correctly.

Anyhow thanks for steering me in this direction. The plan seems to make sense to me.

If you have further suggestions please post or PM me.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

If you want a product which will likely be supported a bit longer, you may want to consider TS-253B model for latest platform and features.
I'd also recommend to opt instead for 8tb drives since one of drives will lost to data safety.
You'd never have too much backup space, specially with storing uncompressed audio

 

[TLS Guy]

If you want a product which will likely be supported a bit longer, you may want to consider TS-253B model for latest platform and features.
I'd also recommend to opt instead for 8tb drives since one of drives will lost to data safety.
You'd never have too much backup space, specially with storing uncompressed audio

That doubles the cost and a bit more. I will have to think about that. It probably would be a good idea to go with 8 TB drives.

What information do you have to suggest the TS-251 will not be supported for long, and what long term support will it need?

 

[Irvrobinson]

I have researched the RAM issue further. I had thought that 16 Gig of RAM would be plenty for this unit.

The max load I have been able to put on the RAM is 19%. According to a study done on Tom's hardware using the two channels would speed up the processor at most 5%. Since I seem to be using just 2 to 3 percent of the CPU power, I think I'm good. So it does not need more RAM.

By "max load" I assume you mean the memory utilization percent in Windows. That is an area utilization, not a bandwidth utilization. So of 16GB of DRAM, the OS is using about 3GB for user and kernel purposes, and 13GB is not utilized when you looked at the statistic.

The second memory channel improves latency to DRAM. In other words, when the CPU is busy, in your case 2-3% of the time apparently, it gets more efficient (meaning it processes more instructions per second) with the second memory channel.

What study did Tom's Hardware do that compared using one or two memory channels on an i7? I'm pretty confident that when the processor is busy using two memory channels rather one provides a substantial improvement in CPU performance, not 5%. Can you post a link to the Tom's Hardware article?

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

Mark, I'll leave it up to you to decide if you need to go with higher capacity on storage or not.
Irv mentioned that 19% memory utilization seems improbable and he's likely to be right. 19 per cent would be the bare bone os usage. With several chrome tabs open and several files/modules running in daw software, I highly suspect that your using easily closer to 10gb or likely higher.
As for Nas model and long term support, qnap may add a killer feature later on which would require newer hardware. I know they have had done it before with containers not available for older Nas models.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

What study did Tom's Hardware do that compared using one or two memory channels on an i7? I'm pretty confident that when the processor is busy using two memory channels rather one provides a substantial improvement in CPU performance, not 5%. Can you post a link to the Tom's Hardware article?

Couldn't find one from Tom, this one is fairly in-depth.
https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/1349-ram-how-dual-channel-works-vs-single-channel/
The answer - it depends on application from 1-5% difference, to 20% difference. I tend to always recommend, if you want 16gb, go with 2x8gb dimms.
For regular home user 16gb today is plenty, but your workstation is not typical home machine and I have no idea on memory usage of your software.

 

[TLS Guy]

Couldn't find one from Tom, this one is fairly in-depth.
https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/1349-ram-how-dual-channel-works-vs-single-channel/
The answer - it depends on application from 1-5% difference, to 20% difference. I tend to always recommend, if you want 16gb, go with 2x8gb dimms.
For regular home user 16gb today is plenty, but your workstation is not typical home machine and I have no idea on memory usage of your software.

Funny I just found the article you linked also.

I found this one as well.

Anyhow, I don't think that putting in two rather than one stick will make a noticeable difference.
The machine is working fast and can covert and rewrite a file in seconds, and that is a file over 2 hours.

Task manager shows only 19 % of the memory being used streaming and recording to Wavlab via loopback and playing back via the RME Total mix. This includes full metering. It is using 3% of CPU capacity.

At the moment I have all my audio files on the external drive. There is just over 400 Gig of data in my audio files. I'm downloading that to one drive as a protection against drive failure.

I'm having reservations about the NAS solution.

What I need is is a mirrored drive on immediate hand, so if a drive goes down right before someone comes here to edit or master, then I have another drive to go to right away until I replace the defective drive.

I don't see why mirroring a couple of drives with RAID would not do that.

 

[slipperybidness]

Funny I just found the article you linked also.

I found this one as well.

Anyhow, I don't think that putting in two rather than one stick will make a noticeable difference.
The machine is working fast and can covert and rewrite a file in seconds, and that is a file over 2 hours.

Task manager shows only 19 % of the memory being used streaming and recording to Wavlab via loopback and playing back via the RME Total mix. This includes full metering. It is using 3% of CPU capacity.

At the moment I have all my audio files on the external drive. There is just over 400 Gig of data in my audio files. I'm downloading that to one drive as a protection against drive failure.

I'm having reservations about the NAS solution.

What I need is is a mirrored drive on immediate hand, so if a drive goes down right before someone comes here to edit or master, then I have another drive to go to right away until I replace the defective drive.

I don't see why mirroring a couple of drives with RAID would not do that.

I'm certain that BSA has more experience than me with RAID and mirrrored drives, etc. But, let me give you my experience and the "gotcha" with a mirrored setup.

If you have a MECHANICAL failure with a mirrored setup, then you simply make the swap and you are good to go. However, if you get a CORRUPT file or file structure, particularly if you get a corrupt file for the OS, then that corruption also gets copied over to the mirrored drive......and you are hosed! I learned that one the hard way.

From my experience, the only thing worse than catastrophic failure is a false sense of security (that leads to catastrophic failure).

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

I'm certain that BSA has more experience than me with RAID and mirrrored drives, etc. But, let me give you my experience and the "gotcha" with a mirrored setup.

If you have a MECHANICAL failure with a mirrored setup, then you simply make the swap and you are good to go. However, if you get a CORRUPT file or file structure, particularly if you get a corrupt file for the OS, then that corruption also gets copied over to the mirrored drive......and you are hosed! I learned that one the hard way.

From my experience, the only thing worse than catastrophic failure is a false sense of security (that leads to catastrophic failure).

I guess my suggestion wasn't fully explained. let me correct that. I suggest raid-1 on nas AND using backup software which is included with nas. Backup software will keep older version of data and allow you to do restore of data before corruption occurred. This is also why I suggest larger drivers to have space for more older versions to be available.

 

[slipperybidness]

I guess my suggestion wasn't fully explained. let me correct that. I suggest raid-1 on nas AND using backup software which is included with nas. Backup software will keep older version of data and allow you to do restore of data before corruption occurred. This is also why I suggest larger drivers to have space for more older versions to be available.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Probably 10 years ago, I got my intro to mirrored drives at work. It was set up that way when I got here and I was told that "it is insurance for failures". Yeah, doesn't do squat when the drive gets corrupted!

IT is not my gig, but I'm often forced into solving computer problems at work.

 

[Irvrobinson]

Funny I just found the article you linked also.

I found this one as well.

As much as I find it difficult to believe, there is no other explanation: the applications demonstrating minimal improvement from two memory channels have working sets that are very efficient with the i7's 8MB cache. I would not have guessed it. Of course, I spend my professional life in the Xeon world with thousands of highly active software threads doing millions of I/Os per second, and I worry if six memory channels per socket is enough. That probably clouds my perspective.

Looking at my MacBook Pro with an i7 (the dual-core, four thread laptop version) with 16GB of memory, running MS Office and Safari, OS-X is using about 7GB of DRAM, but that includes 3GB that OS-X uses as a file cache. It also explains why my circa-2011 home system (iMac-27, i5-3.1GHz, four core, 12GB DRAM, HDD) still works well enough I can't get myself to replace it.

About 15 years ago a senior engineer on my staff submitted a request for two additional DIMMs for his laptop. I asked why he needed the additional memory, and his response was that there were two unused DIMM slots in the machine. The reasoning was so blatantly obvious to me that I approved the expense. I understood his thought process completely.

 

[Alex2507]

I know that about half you guys posting here are from outer space.

I'm going back to living in trees and eating bananas with my feet.

 

[TLS Guy]

Good evening from Apostle Islands in Lake Superior.

We left Benedict this morning and stopped at the "Chatter Box Cafe" in Remer MN for s greaser. We caught the 2:45 PM ferry from Bayfield Wisconsin to Madeline Island. It was a perfect evening and sunset.

The good news is that all my Wav. files are now uploaded to One Drive.

As far as the RAM is concerned my sons tell me that one or two sticks of RAM make no significant difference.

My second son aces all of is as he designs advanced chips. So one stick it will be.

As far as disc back up, I'm not overly concerned on Windows 10. On that unit I go to less then handful of websites.

I think a pair of drives mirrored plus One Drive will do the trick.

 

[Irvrobinson]

My second son aces all of is as he designs advanced chips. So one stick it will be.

Not exactly.

 

[Bookmark]

"Normal use CPU temp is dead steady at 61 C. Under max stress it slowly rises to 72 C. On stopping stress it goes back to 61 C. Even at maximal stress you don't hear a sound."

I hope that is made a mistake with C Celsius and F Fahrenheit. 60/70c for your CPU is not good long term and it would have me troubled about the rest of the temps in the case. My 5 year old I7 PC is still 20-30c, same as the new Ryzen system, across the board, stressed they might rise to high 30s for the cpu and a bit more for the GPU. 60c is a recommended max for CPUs not a minimum. Hard drives really should not exceed 30c for any lengthy period.

Quiet is one thing, heat stress is just asking for failures.

https://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html Nice bit of free software to display all the values and temp in a system .

 

[TLS Guy]

"Normal use CPU temp is dead steady at 61 C. Under max stress it slowly rises to 72 C. On stopping stress it goes back to 61 C. Even at maximal stress you don't hear a sound."

I hope that is made a mistake with C Celsius and F Fahrenheit. 60/70c for your CPU is not good long term and it would have me troubled about the rest of the temps in the case. My 5 year old I7 PC is still 20-30c, same as the new Ryzen system, across the board, stressed they might rise to high 30s for the cpu and a bit more for the GPU. 60c is a recommended max for CPUs not a minimum. Hard drives really should not exceed 30c for any lengthy period.

Quiet is one thing, heat stress is just asking for failures.

https://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html Nice bit of free software to display all the values and temp in a system .

According to the Intel spec sheet for that processor the normal temp range is 50 to 70 degrees C. Maximum operating temperature is 100 degrees C. In normal use the temp is right in the middle of the spec range at 60 degrees C.

The case remains totally cool and to the touch would seem to remain at ambient temperature.

If there was a problem the fan speed would increase, but it does not under current conditions of use.

The later generation i7s are designed for a higher temperature range than previous versions.

 

[panteragstk]

According to the Intel spec sheet for that processor the normal temp range is 50 to 70 degrees C. Maximum operating temperature is 100 degrees C. In normal use the temp is right in the middle of the spec range at 60 degrees C.

The case remains totally cool and to the touch would seem to remain at ambient temperature.

If there was a problem the fan speed would increase, but it does not under current conditions of use.

The later generation i7s are designed for a higher temperature range than previous versions.

You're not wrong obviously, but a modestly priced cooler that makes little to no noise can help with piece of mind. I'm still leery if my CPU's get over 70c even though the spec is much higher. Theoretically if the CPU runs cooler it "should" last longer.

If you feel like a bit of research check this site for recommendations. They have a huge comparison chart with delta over ambient associated with noise level. This link if for the top 5 in cooling as well as db level.