I thought I'd start this thread for anyone building/interested in building a 64bit big memory setup to run VE3 and VI over LAN. I thought I could also share my experience in case it helps make any decisions.
My Setup:
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Tyan Tempest i5400pw motherboard
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2 Xeon E5420 Quad CPUs (8 cores in total)
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32GB RAM from 16 sticks of 2GB FB DIMM RAM
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Vista 64 Business Edition
Problems I've encountered, and solutions
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Audio glitches while streaming. Solved by using a 3rd party GB-LAN PCI card (Netgear 311), instead of the onboard Intel PRO 1000 ethernet adapters, which created severe latency problems (diagnosed by the DPC Latency Checker tool), even after updating drivers.
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PCI slot not working. The i5400pw has only one PCI slot and any attempt to use it caused resource conflicts. Solved by updating the BIOS with a USB flash drive.
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Computer crashes once an hour. As revealed by HWMonitor, those 16 sticks of hot RAM were overheating to 120C and causing a freeze up every hour or so. Solved by installing 4 x Corsair Dominator AirFlow fans - quite cheap and you mount them over the RAM. Dramatically reduced average temperatures by 50C down to 70C, and no more crashes.
Conclusions
If you are willing to do what I did - get a cheap LAN card, update the BIOS and install some RAM cooling fans it works very well indeed! If you want to spend more money for reliability, get a Mac PRO, and if you want to spend less money get a board with 8 RAM slots - 4GB RAM sticks will be cheaper soon, and until then 16GB is plenty really. I'm still only using 5GB of VI samples!
Any thoughts on your experiences or plans?