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Cutter's Chrome Machine
...that even a geek can afford: pretty far under $30,000.00

Before I start, This is not technically a certified system, (This is after all the Geek pages) for a list of  my certified systems based on the XW8000 go to my chrome page.

So now Chrome....

Lets start off with the body (chassis). I have always liked BoomRack cases, They are a little more expensive, but they are built like tanks. Definitely the Nikon of cases, you can't drop off your roof or anything but it puts up with a lot of studio abuse without turning into something ugly. Secondly, I really like their optional SCA arrays. you can fit two sets of five disk arrays into them which could save a bit of money on external storage chassis. Thirdly and most importantly, they have excellent cooling. Sure they are a bit noisy (nothing like the big supermicro cases at least) but I think it's worth it for added stability especially with west coast or mountainous climates. On a side note, this is a hard lesson I'm starting to learn. A couple of years back I was heavy into Athlons, what I didn't realize is how they would react in the hot summer or high altitude climates. My hell in this situation is one you dear readers do not what to know.

The Motherboard

Yes I know, it's not certified, but I'm confident its going to work. The Tyan Thunder I7505 is for all at least visual intents and purposes remarkably similar to the XW8000 motherboard. Strikingly so, the only real difference I can really see is the bios. Anyway, it has lots on onboard goodies like Firewire, USB2.0, gigabit Ethernet, non Creative Labs audio (God I hate them)/ The only thin lacking is serial ATA, but you don't need it for Chrome so it's a moot point. In summery, 533FSB, 4 gigs of ram, PCI-x and 8x AGP.

The CPUs

We are going with Xeon processors of course, but how fast and what kind do you ask? Well Pinnacle ships it's certified systems with 2.6 GHz. I on the other hand am going to recommend the latest and greatest 3.06 GHZ road hog. I know very few of you think you need it, but Chrome does a heck of a lot of background rendering. Of course you can be rendering while you work, but I still believe the faster the better, get that pesky rendering out of the way. So 3.06 it is until the P5's come out.

The RAM

Unfortunately it's got to be DDR 266. I don't see an Intel Xeon chipset on the way that's going to allow us DDR400 or a 800FSB right away so we are a bit stuck with the slower ram. Still not all is harsh news, I will be using CAS2 ram as well as filling it with 2 GB, so far the maximum I'm willing to try. I don't think we are going to see any hard core difference until Chrome goes to XP.

Storage Controller

For the SCSI card I'm going with the Adaptec 39320D-R. This gives dual external ports which come into play because I'm going for external storage. If we where to go for the optional chassis storage we'd go for the other model. Anyway, the Adaptec have proven themselves to be a bit more stable over the AttoUL4D (which is actually faster), but for editing stability is king. Still on a decent stripe we are way overdoing any bandwidth concerns for the T3K.

Storage

Storage is a tricky question when it comes to the Targa and Chrome. There are all sorts of different editors out there who have many varied storage needs. Am I doing long form / short form? do I need four layers of uncompressed? etc. All my Chrome systems are generally custom tailored to my clients needs. For this one we'll shoot for middle ground. Fast enough to do HD later on, because that will be the next step, but not so huge to burn a hole in your wallet. For this kind of stripe I use CI Designs CI 9000 cases. They are dual channel U320 ready, very well ventilated (So keep the clean will you) so they stay nice a cool. Very good monitoring and come in tower or rackmount flavors. Best of all it is a tremendous value. In such a chassis, As usual I will be using Seagate Cheetah 15k's. Why mess around, they have the lowest D.O.A rate in the industry, and if they do go down they have a relatively painless RMA process. Five year warranties and fast, fast, fast, On a 8x36 GB stripe I'll push out 370 to 400 GB's a second sustained. That'll give you some bandwidth to play around with.

For your system drive I think an 18.4 GB cheetah 15k SCSI drive will do.  This will leave enough room for a dual boot system as well as extra storage for graphics, project files, EDL's and other miscellaneous files.  Plus it's really fast so your applications will run smoother and more stably.  I'm going to add on more of the 36GB 10K variety internally for doing MPEG exports and audio. You don't need the blazing speed for this purpose and they're a bit cheaper.

Pioneer A06

The Chrome Board set

Well the Targa 3000 once again we meet. This squirrelly little bastard has been one of the great hardships of my professional career. I was one of the first to get the old boy working back when it was first released. As far as I know I did the first successful demo, as far as I know. Using speed razor no less. I did however cheat a little bit I won't go into that one though. Anyway, the Targa 3K has always been the most powerful super cool hot rod card in the industry. Immensely powerful, so much so that no machine has been fast enough to run stablely. That is until now. The Liquid software holds it back just enough to keep it from crashing, but adds the K2 daughter board to give you realtime 3D and super cool color correction. Oh Targa, your finally done with your adolescence, Today you are a piece of art.

The Graphics Card

I'll be using the NVIDIA quadra4 380XGL. I'm really liking this card. It's not the highest end card or have the most memory, but for video/compositing purposes it does the job just fine. It's got 64 megs of ram, can do great openGL and direct show stuff. The Nvidia drivers don't piss me off at all (Unlike freakin ATI drivers), AGP 8x and 2048x1536 per display. Not too shabby especially when the card costs under $300.

Now the piece d resistance...

The Liquid Software

How cool is it?  It's very cool, Once again I would like to direct to my article @DV411.com. Suffice it to say, the software keeps the Targa3K in check while allowing you to use not only uncompressed YUV, RGBA, and MPEG2 I-frame , but will allow you to edit with all three at the same time, on the same timeline. Add that with unlimited layers and background rendering, well now your editing. Plus there is more to come. The T3K has lots more to offer, Pinnacle is just trying to keep things stable rather than trying to impress. In the coming year we can expect realtime MPEG2 IBP output,  improved DV support, as well as the usual tool upgrades, interface stuff etc.

The BOB

Least we forget. Here I'm showing you the everything Pro Digital/Analog BOB. There are other less expensive flavors you can get, but I want to show you this one. This BOB really does have everything.

The Jog Shuttle

You know what, Might as well add the jog/shuttle. It's a nice one very sturdy highly programmable. I do however wish they had the little finger notch thingie on the top like Sony or JL Cooper ones. But what are you going to do. It does the job admirable and it's got that weight we all know and love. Hey, I'll even through in the color keyboard for free.

The Conclusion

What can I say, I love the chrome. This system right here, with everything; storage, bob, shuttle etc.. is going to cost around $28K to $29K right now (07/29/03) But you know how prices can change almost hourly. Especially on things like CPU's and ram. I Love it, I love it, and I know you will too.

This is also the perfect opportunity to tell you existing Targa 3000 owners the is a very special upgrade price of $5000 until September 30. After that the price doubles.

We aim to please and we will try our very best to get you what you need in the budget that you have.

Until next time... 

That's me: "Touched by a virus, but still standing"

Geeks-in-Residence Pages: Ultimate Machines Geeks Can Afford Created: May 2002  --  Last Updated: July 30, 2004 page views