Modern motherboard for original PCI HD Core and Process cards

[Raoul23]

Originally Posted by sean shannon

Yes, that is the one! Works well for PTHD PCI cards. You will notice that it does not have a firewire port, so I added a PCIe firewire card, and we're good! I put mine in a large rack case. Also, I added a video card because Win 7 needed it. It has been running smoothly the whole time.

What other parts did you buy coz if yours is working good id like to get the same components that you are using which i no will work

thanks for your help

[jawgster]

How about this one: Gigabyte GA-H67A-UD3H-B3, H67, onboard video, DVI & HDMI, SATA3, USB3.0, FW... 3 x PCI-X slots (adjacent)

I'm moving from G5 HD3 Accel PT HD 7.4 to PT 9 HD Win7 i7 2600K

Comments?

EDIT: Tried this and it doesn't work with HD cards - it won't boot up with them in any slot. Apparently, something to do with the mobo using PCI bridge chips and not having proper PCI native support.

[David Sandwisch]

Thanks everyone for all the outstanding ideas! I will be looking to build this over the summer and will be formulating my plan starting in June. You've given me a great head start and please keep the suggestions coming.

FYI, I don't need video out a firewire port since I will just use two monitors and have QT on the 2nd one. These days I would think everyone could just drop FW video and use computer monitors or projectors (essentially computer monitors) with HDMI or DVI.

Thanks,
David

[buschfsu]

i pickup up this sandybridge board ( w/ an i5 2500k)http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131711

hoping to run my hd2 rig with it. ill report back once its up and running
(unless someone knows it has issues before i start)

[buschfsu]

No go. Chipset heatsink is in the way of card #1

Still looking for a sandy bridge mobo help!!

[NAWAR]

Please brace yourselves.

Interesting enough i had built back in 2008 an XP system with Asus P5Q, with Nvidia 9600GT, Intel core2 quad, in an Antec Take4 rack case and a 550W power supply, 2x750GB SATA drives "1 Pro Tools dedicated" and 2 opticals, 2GIG of DDR2 RAM as the other 2GIG was DOA but i didn't bother replacing it ,
it was built at the time to work with my mix3 System. with 3 PCI card slots, the parts were compatible with the board perfectly.

It worked very well without any issues ever.

Then i upgraded to HD "standard PCI with a an Accel and a Process card"
they were housed in an external MAGMA 4 card chases and linked with the host card.
i installed Pro tools 8, and all associated plugins on the same system on a brand new 1TB SATA drive on a fresh install windows 7 32bit.
only problem i had was plugin compatibility until a patch was made to cover that, then it was the 2 updates up to Pro Tools 8.1.

Everything was working really well for a good 6 months apart from initially converting some MIX tracks to the new HD format. but i worked a way around it .

recently my Asus P5Q motherboard stopped finding my Hard drives,
i swapped locations, changed leads, nothing, removed all cards and optical drives, and still same error, then i tried defaulting the BIOS and resetting the CMOS, and still nothing changed apart from getting a DMI initializing ...

So then i tried fixing windows, but there were no errors, so system restored it , nothing changed.

i then did a search online and found out that this is a common issue with these boards and that's the first sign of it's life ending so short.

so i gave up and had to try and find another board that will fit the socket 775 CPU i have, and Gigbyte had the G41MT-S2P with new components that support that processor. only 1 PCI so i compromised since i use the host card.
so i bought it and got the new 4GIG DDR3 RAM with it.
i repaired the MBR and fixed the boot sector.
windows installed and booted ok finally and left a copy of my previous windows in oldwindows folder "lucky" so i copied what i needed back "session data and plugin data and stuff like that".

Installed all drivers and then PT 8 and then all the way to 8.1

at that point it was some 7 days of trying and then 7 hours straight trying to install it all. so i left it for the next day.

next morning i had a client coming to record, so i started testing.
found out that there was no host card present and non of the HD cards showed up, i was almost in tears lol , all was installed and secured well, and i though the host card had died or the actual Chases.

got the laptop Host card out and plugged into a laptop, it started installing the cards, so i realized it wasn't the cards or the Magma :)

i focused back on the motherboard and noticed when i was pulling the card out that it had some slack in it as it was a shorted board ... hmmmmm
i put a small but sorta thick plastic ruler behind it and pushed the card in, and i noticed it looking deeper in than before ... ok . good.
boot magma and PC, and Voalla , the cards installed all good.

then i opened a session had only recently worked on , and almost immediately it started to error out , 601, 603, CPU overload ...ETC

i tried every trick i could find here and elsewhere, change amount of processors, and increase the buffer, nothing worked.

started a new session, no tracks , no plugins. 3 seconds playback and stops with a CPU overload error.

tried using the original AGP, and even upgrading the driver to the Nvidia 9600GT that were just 2 days old. but nothing changed.

i disabled just about anything in the background , and nothing changed.

so ....

i told the client that the session will be canceled until i sort this out.

I have pulled the computer apart so many times "carefully" and i have tried to get back the old board but this time it will boot and then somewhat overheat quickly and turn off.

i secured the CPU and fan, but that doesn't seem to be it.

I guess after all of this and almost 2 weeks out. i have to work out a full upgrade if i have to with a modest board that will support the cards.

sorry for the rant, but i also heard some horror stories from such events.
and now i have to decide on a new board.
but the chipset choice somehow seems to be a known issue.

so here is my question. trying to find a PCI board now days is somewhat hard "specially to get 3 PCI slots".
so here is one i found local to my area "Australia" ,
any thoughts if this will be worth it ?

"Asus P8H61-PROV3 v3 Intel Mainboard (B3 Stepping) - 2x DDR3, 6x Sata, Gigabit Lan, L1155 - Intel® H61(B3) Express Chipset"

i'll be using an I3 for now until i get a full blown system built as a main with an I7.
here is a link to what's available to me for now "http://www.centrecom.com.au/catalog/...ath=62&sort=2a"

i appreciate any help i can get , i have now 3 clients waiting,
PS " my backup PC died the week before when my little one accidentally decided to see if it was water proof "

Thanks everyone.

[Bob Nagy]

As I've mentioned previously in various threads, the old requirement that all PCI slots be contiguous is no longer necessary. It's also possible to overcome the physical impediment of a heatsink that's too high. Anybody who wants to know more may contact me directly for more info. My email address is in my public profile.

[Silverglade]

GIGABYTE GA-P55-UD3L

This looks like a good option. can anyone confirm that my Core/Process cards will work in these slots??

Stuck on a turnkey xw8400 but looking to move forward.

[Silverglade]

Originally Posted by deafguy

Hey David,

I'm using this one : GIGABYTE GA-P55-UD3L
Not easily available, found mine on ebay, have seen a few others.
On the plus side, it has 4 PCI slots and 3 PCIe, Sata and supports an Intel I7.
On the minus side, the MB requires a bit of modification to get the PCI cards to fit. (Dremel tool to the rescue) Also, no USB3 and no on-board Firewire.

I've added a FW card to the system, only good for transferring files, can't run a session off it yet. I'll continue to trouble shoot that.

For now, my HD3 Accel lives on, running great PT9 HD on Win 7.
I'll likely add a fourth Accel card.

I do miss my Mac but getting this rig operational has been worthwhile.

good luck

Did you have to dremel your motherboard or you core/process card.

[VooD]

If you want a modern motherboard (1155 socket) for PCI Protools you need they to include Q67, Q65, B65 or C20x chipsets. They are the only one with REAL pci support, all others have pcie to pci bridges which makes Protools cards not to work.

So far these are the only motherboards suitables for such task:

Possible Protools HD PCI candidates:

Gigabyte GA-Q67M-D2H-B3: 2 pci slots, Core i7 CPU's: $150
Asus P8Q67-M DO REV 3.0: 2 pci slots, Core i7 CPU's: $150
Supermicro X9SCA: 3 pci slots, Xeon CPU's (might work with normal i7) : $195
ASUS P8B-C/4L: 5 pci slots, Xeon CPU's (might work with normal i7): $200

All of them have native pci support, but it's not clear wether the Supermicro X9SCA and ASUS P8B-C/4L are using B3 revisions (bugfree) chipsets. On the other hand Gigabyte is known for it's almost out of the box OS X compability. So for a HD2 system, it may be the best option.