Hi,
Am looking at the following spec for my next analysis PC and would be interested in comments/opinions from those in the know. Also about RAM; do people see speed of RAM (as long as you have about 6-8GB) as more important than the total amount of RAM? I hear different things.
I mainly use EnCase, NetAnalysis and HstEx, X-Ways Forensics, FTK 1.x and may go back to using FTK 2 and 3 (when it is released).
Thanks.
Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™i7 Processor Extreme Edition i7-975 (3.33GHz) 6.4GTs/8MB Cache
Memory (RAM) 6GB CORSAIR DOMINATOR DDR3 1866MHz (9-9-9-24)
Motherboard GIGABYTE GA-EX58-UD3RDDR3, 2-Way SLI & CrossFireX
Operating System WINDOWS 7 ULTIMATE 64-BIT
Hard Disk 120GB OCZ VERTEX SERIES SATA II 2.5" SSD (upto 250MB/sR | 180MB/sW)
CD/DVD Drive 8x BLU-RAY RE-WRITER DRIVE, 16x DVD ±R/±RW
Graphics Card 512MB ATI RADEON™ HD 4670 PCI EXPRESS
Network Facilities ONBOARD 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT
Memory Card Reader INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (READS XD, MS, CF, SD, etc)
Case COOLERMASTER SILEO 500 QUIET MID TOWER CASE
Power Supply & Case Cooling 700W Quiet Quad Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan
Processor Cooling INTEL CORE i7 STANDARD CPU COOLER
Good question, I'll keep an eye out for any useful updates for the recommended hardware page.
Interested to hear what people make of the RAM issue, I've always assumed speed to be of secondary importance to overall size.
Jamie
Speed of RAM becomes important for me, when I attempt to run a couple of VM instances.
If you're going to run FTK2, double the RAM as a minimum. In fact, get 24GB if you can, or at least a mobo that supports it. I looked at the mobo you listed, and it only appears to have 4 RAM slots. You're going to want something with 6 RAM slots, like the ASUS P6T Deluxe V2.
Also, if you're doing any serious amount of work, or working on multiple systems/drives simultaneously, you're going to want a serious RAID solution as well. I did a fair bit of research on this, and settled on this
Adaptec 2244300-R PCI-Express x8 SATA / SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) 5805 SGL Controller Card
Your case choice is also kinda sub-par. You want to have a major capacity for internal drives, and good cooling for those drives. The coolermaster chassis you chose only has space for 4 internal drives. I particularly like the mounting and cooling systems that Antec use in the P183, but if you want the most options for drives and cooling, look at the Antec Twelve Hundred or Antec Nine Hundred cases. There's a similar case to the 900 from LianLi, but I can't recall what it's called.
If you're going to run FTK2, double the RAM as a minimum. In fact, get 24GB if you can, or at least a mobo that supports it. I looked at the mobo you listed, and it only appears to have 4 RAM slots. You're going to want something with 6 RAM slots, like the ASUS P6T Deluxe V2.
Also, if you're doing any serious amount of work, or working on multiple systems/drives simultaneously, you're going to want a serious RAID solution as well. I did a fair bit of research on this, and settled on this
Adaptec 2244300-R PCI-Express x8 SATA / SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) 5805 SGL Controller Card
Your case choice is also kinda sub-par. You want to have a major capacity for internal drives, and good cooling for those drives. The coolermaster chassis you chose only has space for 4 internal drives. I particularly like the mounting and cooling systems that Antec use in the P183, but if you want the most options for drives and cooling, look at the Antec Twelve Hundred or Antec Nine Hundred cases. There's a similar case to the 900 from LianLi, but I can't recall what it's called.
Many thanks Patrick. I'm wary of speccing my box for one product (FTK), but certainly take on baord your point about a motherboard with enough RAM slots should I want to expand at a future point. Regards storage drives I was intending for an external RAID solution connected via e-SATA (it's relatively cost-efective) and also wanted as small a PC chassis as possible (due to the space I have available) hence the case I selected. What type/speed of RAM do you prefer?
Apparently the new version of FTK2 (2.2.1 I think) runs much better on non-server spec machines p
By the time you get an external raid solution, you may as well have gotten a slightly larger box and raided internally. Also, unless you get a serious external RAID solution, it's likely going to be slower than a decent internal one.
But in response to your question about RAM, basically you're looking for gaming grade RAM. Low latency. 12GB would be what you're aiming for if you're running FTK2 with the oracle DB locally.
Greetings,
One nice thing about an external RAID is that it *is* external. You can put an entire case on one external RAID. When you're not using it, remove and secure it and hook up another external RAID for your next case. This can save enormous amounts of time in setting up, moving, and archiving cases.
-David
This is kind of a no-brainer these days, but make sure you're using a 64bit operating system if you have all that extra ram. Accessdata flat-out told me they couldn't assist me with 2.X problems because it wasn't running on a 64bit operating system.