[cms]

It looks like I will be close to building a new computer. With what I have saved and a month or so I'm going to have a budget of no more than 2k. I already have a decent desktop but Ive maxed out everything to meet minimum requirements of various games... Additionally as Im already working with Matlab, Autodesk, Solidworks, ProE, Lua scripting ect..., I would much render models on my own computer than renting CPU clusters. Its time for a new computer.

What I have now:
Pentium 4 HT 2.8ghz
2gb ddr2 ram <300mhz
(2) 1TB HD 7200k
ATI 5770 1gb OC

______________

What I think I will get (so far):

A dual 1366 socket Overclocking motherboard.
http://www.evga.com/...Series%20Family

A core i7 930(ish) Xeon equivalent:
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16819117234

(3) sets of low voltage yet tight ram:
http://www.newegg.co...1-321-_-Product

And maybe a nice Antec PSU (probably something in the 700-1000w range)

Would then build a Custom Plexiglas case for 200$ and use the peripherals of my old computer.


I would then do a mild overclock to about 4ghz, and test the waters after that.

_________


The SR2 was the only board could find that was both a server board and contained Overclocking Controls... The best of both the Professional and Gaming worlds. (atm at least)

I think this would be good because I have room to upgrade. Its going to be years until games will utilize the Max 24 (atmit) logical cores that the SR2 motherboard can address. Additionally 48GB of max ram cant be bad either.

No graphics card has yet to max out a PCI express x16(Pciexpress2.0 8x) throughput, which the SR-2 has 7 of.

It sounds pretty future proof (5 or so years) to me.

This post has been edited by Brain?!: 14 June 2010 - 11:43 AM
Reason for edit: YOUR PICTURE WAS TOO BIG, MR. NASA INTERN

[MajorLag]

I don't know where to begin...

[ibfreeekout]

MajorLag, on 12 June 2010 - 01:10 AM, said:

I don't know where to begin...

^this.

Also, what is the purpose of having 24 logical cores? Hell, having 12 doesn't make sense right now. Most games and applications are just now starting to use quad cores to their potential. I think part of that 2K can be spent in a much better way than on a motherboard that can support 48 GB of RAM, 7 PCIe cards, and 2 i7 CPUs. That's just my opinion though. I wasn't in NASA or any of those other things except of IB and AP so I'm far more inferior than you are.

[SniperX]

MajorLag, on 12 June 2010 - 01:10 AM, said:

I don't know where to begin...

Don't worry bro, he was in NASA, and everyone at NASA knows you gotta have atleast 24GB of RAM to Gaym

This post has been edited by SniperX: 12 June 2010 - 10:23 AM

[cms]

ibfreeekout, on 12 June 2010 - 11:01 AM, said:

^this.

Also, what is the purpose of having 24 logical cores? Hell, having 12 doesn't make sense right now. Most games and applications are just now starting to use quad cores to their potential. I think part of that 2K can be spent in a much better way than on a motherboard that can support 48 GB of RAM, 7 PCIe cards, and 2 i7 CPUs. That's just my opinion though. I wasn't in NASA or any of those other things except of IB and AP so I'm far more inferior than you are.

The parts that I plan to buy are just for future compatibility.

Other than the SR2 board, Its going to be a 12gb ddr3 - i7 930 - ATI 5770 equivalent.

I agree that even 12 logical cores is not "logical" Atm, thus Im settling with 8 logical cores via 1 cpu.

The price-tag is going to be somewhere about 1.4k range. Im willing to pay twice as much money for the SR2 board which will be able to keep up with the gaming market. I can even buy another CPU and double its power when that time comes and hexa-core CPU's dont cost 1.5k by themselves.

SniperX, on 12 June 2010 - 11:23 AM, said:

Don't worry bro, he was in NASA, and everyone at NASA knows you gotta have atleast 24GB of RAM to Gaym

Well at Nasa, an accurate pressure simulation of a rocket flying at a given mach takes as much as a week to process, - using a cluster that has epically far more ram than 24gb. (x20,000)

This post has been edited by cms: 12 June 2010 - 11:44 AM

[ninjafish]

cms, on 12 June 2010 - 12:41 PM, said:

Well at Nasa, an accurate pressure simulation of a rocket flying at a given mach takes as much as a week to process, - using a cluster that has epically far more ram than 24gb. (x20,000)

I'm pretty sure this post will get you arrested for treason.

This post has been edited by ninjafish: 13 June 2010 - 01:08 AM

[cms]

ninjafish, on 13 June 2010 - 02:07 AM, said:

I'm pretty sure this post will get you arrested for treason.

http://www.nas.nasa....columbia_3.html
http://en.wikipedia....sa-columbia.jpg

WIKIPEDIA, on 13 June 2010 - 02:07 AM, said:

This file is in the public domain because it was created by NASA. NASA copyright policy states that "NASA material is not protected by copyright unless noted". (See Template:PD-USGov, NASA copyright policy page or JPL Image Use Policy.)

Im good, I had to take a 3 hour "non disclosure of sensitive data" lecture...

Additionally, I had to sign an acknowledgment of at least 20 years of jail time if I do.

That x20,000 is just an arbitrary number I dont know how much ram Columbia has...

________Update* I just found out..__________

http://www.nas.nasa....s/columbia.html

9TB of ram...... Holy sh*t

This post has been edited by cms: 13 June 2010 - 02:11 AM

[Thunderg0d]

Now the other question you didn't ask yourself: How long do you plan to keep this PC before upgrading again?

If the case is "I want to upgrade in less than 2 years as shit get's crazy with these multicore PCs", I would say drop down to a single proc board. Saves you a butt-ton of money, electricity (as even idle you're talking a doubling of power consumption for obvious reasons), and headaches.

I know my organization I work with has a cluster running with over 6 TB of RAM to cache a full DB and temp DB space into RAM so that query times dropped from 40 mins (On previous operations) to around 2 on really big tables.

However, look at the needs of your personal space. I would suggest getting some Solid State drives over the 2nd Proc/Dual proc board. The amount you'd spend on that changed into SSDs would be a bigger performance boost to the overall system. It's funny how you are so concerned about Processing/RAM reqs but are not addressing the true system bottleneck.

If you need any recommendations, let me know and I'll post some up. It sounds like money is not really a major concern for you, but I typically like to build the best performance/cost spent.

[cms]

Thunderg0d, on 13 June 2010 - 01:36 PM, said:

However, look at the needs of your personal space. I would suggest getting some Solid State drives over the 2nd Proc/Dual proc board. The amount you'd spend on that changed into SSDs would be a bigger performance boost to the overall system. It's funny how you are so concerned about Processing/RAM reqs but are not addressing the true system bottleneck.

Harddrives are not bottlenecks.

The only thing solid state disks are good for are random access times. Of course your programs and OS will launch faster, however when it comes to overall speed, its the ram and processors.

I barely ever use a page/swap file in my systems, additionally I know how to manage ntfs partitions so that windows 7 boots in about 15 seconds on a 5400rpm hard drive. Solid states currently are not cost effective by my tastes, I would go with a HD raid array instead and be much happier.

In a gaming sense, your going to get the same fps regardless of an hd or an ssd.

Im planning to run my two 1tb drives in raid 0

____________

Thunderg0d, on 13 June 2010 - 01:36 PM, said:

If the case is "I want to upgrade in less than 2 years as shit get's crazy with these multicore PCs", I would say drop down to a single proc board. Saves you a butt-ton of money, electricity (as even idle you're talking a doubling of power consumption for obvious reasons), and headaches.

Intel xeons are server processors, they are designed to cut power to cores when idling. They actually draw 24w each (at idle) as opposed to a intel i7 930 which draws 130w.

4 cores (i7) for 130w nonscaling ____--VS--____ 8 cores (2x xeons) for a max of 160w that can drop to about 50w at idle.

http://techreport.co...ussions.x/13036

Your going to be more power efficient with xeons - sorry to burst your bubble.

____________

Thunderg0d, on 13 June 2010 - 01:36 PM, said:

Now the other question you didn't ask yourself: How long do you plan to keep this PC before upgrading again?

Are you sure I didn't ask myself?

The trick is to be able to upgrade without restarting from scratch. I plan to buy one cheap xeon and only populate one side of the motherboard. Probably over the next 2-3 years I will buy 2 hexacores when the price drops into $500 range. Im not sure about ram, but having 12gb already should be fine & Ill still have 6 empty ram slots to use.

___________

Thunderg0d, on 13 June 2010 - 01:36 PM, said:

If you need any recommendations, let me know and I'll post some up... I typically like to build the best performance/cost spent.

Are you sure you know what your talking about?

This post has been edited by cms: 13 June 2010 - 07:44 PM

[ibfreeekout]

cms, on 13 June 2010 - 08:32 PM, said:

Harddrives are not bottlenecks.

This is the biggest pile of bullshit I have ever read. I had 1 (count it, ONE) 500 GB Western Digital Green drive in my computer. It runs anywhere from 5400 RPM to 7200 RPM. That thing was THE single largest bottleneck for any application I needed to use. After adding in two 250 GB drives that run at a constant 7200 RPM, I am now able to run all of my programs that I need without the large bottlenecks because those drives are only doing one thing at a time, instead of needing to do other tasks as well.

cms, on 13 June 2010 - 08:32 PM, said:

Are you sure you know what your talking about?

Maybe you should ask yourself this very same thing.......

[Brain?!]

cms, on 13 June 2010 - 08:32 PM, said:

Harddrives are not bottlenecks.

[MajorLag]

cms, on 13 June 2010 - 08:32 PM, said:

...

I think I'm gunna get bruises from all the facepalming...

This post has been edited by MajorLag: 13 June 2010 - 08:44 PM

[cms]

If you guys dont know what RAID is then your idiots.

I would take a HD RAID over an SSD any day.

Your cost-preformance-size ratio is much better with hardrives.

Fuck SSD's

Spoiler

If you guys dont know what RAID is then you're idiots.

I would take a HD RAID over an SSD any day.

Your cost-performance-size ratio is much better with harddrives.

Fuck SSD's

Kept the old for the sake of the humor

This post has been edited by cms: 13 June 2010 - 10:31 PM

[cms]

SniperX, on 14 June 2010 - 01:22 PM, said:

Yea bro, cuz if I load a 1tb database on a 5400 RPM drive vs a Solid State, there is no difference.




also NASA.

Because everyone has a 1TB database they load in to ram. (However NASA DOES)

Im sure you also have $4000 to buy that 1tb solid state drive. ( I know I do)

For $4000 you can destroy a solid state disk with a Harddrive RAID system of the same price.

Harddrives win, flat out.

_________________
Lets look at this closely:

If a 1tb ssd cost $4000
and a 1tb HD cost $100

If your loading a 1tb database then its going to be sequential access.

1tb SSD sequential read speed 1.4gb/s
1tb HD sequential read speed .05gb/s

for $4000 you can could build a 40hd raid 2 system

40drives x .05gb/s = 2.0gb/s and the system is 40x redundant (or 40TB of 1x Redundancy!)(unlike ssd = oops I should have backed up my ssd on an hd)


Lets look at this in a time spectrum.
1tb transfer

it will take an ssd 23 mins (1000gb/1.4gb/60secs)to load a 1tb database.
it will take a HD raid of the same price 8.3 FUCKING MINS!(1000gb/2.0gb/60secs).

Here at NASA we only use Hardrives in our servers; that is the reason why.

And yes Im fucking mad, I spent an hour spelling that out for you.

Go Play your 6gb games. 1TB databases are beyond your level. You can either go cheap and fast (hd raid) or fast and expensive (ssd)

I have money because I save money.

This post has been edited by cms: 14 June 2010 - 06:20 PM

[SniperX]

cms, on 14 June 2010 - 03:08 PM, said:

I have money because I save money.

Shalom brother, glad to see we have another Jew to bolster our financial ranks.

Also, fine, I'll just run 4 ssd disks for the same price and match your 40 drive machine.

This post has been edited by SniperX: 14 June 2010 - 02:19 PM

[Portman]

cms, on 14 June 2010 - 02:08 PM, said:

If a 1tb ssd cost $4000
and a 1tb HD cost $100

So you compare HDD in raid-0... to a SSD not in raid...

[cms]

Portman, on 14 June 2010 - 04:46 PM, said:

So you compare HDD in raid-0... to a SSD not in raid...

One ssd is mainly multiple 2-4gb memory clusters wired in something similar to raid 0 (or 2), hence why the bigger the ssd memory the faster it goes. (which such ratio is the opposite in single hd's)

Even with ssd's in raid, you get the same effect as one single ssd.

A single 1tb SSD has a sequential read of about 1.4gb/s
A single 60gb SSD has a sequential read of 200mb/s

Long story short, SSD's dont benefit from raid as effectively as HD's do

________________________

Eventually though, I do see SSD's surpassing HD's, though this wont happen for a while. (I will bet about 7 years) Both SSD's and HD's are evolving and getting faster and bigger, However SSD's are evolving at a greater pace.

My main con about an SSD is that unlike HD's, if something corrupts, the data is gone forever. (though this would be good if you were trying to erase data) In harddrives, data survives about 16 overwrites. (at least from what I learned 6 years ago, it might be a larger number now)

This post has been edited by cms: 14 June 2010 - 05:38 PM

[Portman]

I'm talking cost effectiveness of RAID

3x 80gb intel x25-m raid 0 yield ~750mb/s. I assume 20x(1.6TB/4,000$) will yield greater than 2gb/s

This post has been edited by Portman: 14 June 2010 - 06:28 PM

[Thunderg0d]

cms, on 13 June 2010 - 08:32 PM, said:

Are you sure you know what your talking about?

Broski, I've been doing this shit plenty long and yes I do know what I'm talking about from actually using this shit...not just working for a company that uses shit.

Yes cost effective for space, a 1 TB drive (Samsung Spinpoint F3 would be a good choice there BTW..though I still feel iffy on reliability of a Samsung) is cost effective, but you want your programs to run faster, you need to feed it data faster. Putting your OS and all read-only data points on a SSD can be a huge performance boost.

I'm not saying replace all your HDDs to SSD for multi-TB storage. You could run 1, 120-500 GB (Depending what you need/want) SSD that'll rape a Raid 0 HDD layout typically. Eventually, you could upgrade to a Raid 0 solution for OS at a later date too. However, still run Raid 0,1, or 5 (Depends the flavor you desire) of 1 TB Drives to supplement.

The $200-300 drives (Yeah I agree it's expensive, but honestly I still believe the performance for the value is there, ecspecially in a situation of loading larger programs like you mention...maybe you like waiting for programs to load up, but when you see a 60 mb Adobe file load instantly...you pretty much shit your pants and want 12 of these things).

I speak from experience here in that I run a 60 GB of one of the original Indellix chips as an OS drive, with 3 160 GB Seagate 7200.11s in Raid 5. It was a huge, noticable difference even compared to the Raid 5 drives running the OS (or even the Raid 0). The newer drives have gotten faster via learning better internal raids, new controllers (Like the Sandfoot one looks pretty beefy), and better memory probably being used compared to what I got running.

It's obviously your call on what you want...but don't discount SSD performance. I still think a lot of the C2D E8X00 and early C2Q systems would see a modest performance boost just by dropping this in those systems.

[cms]

Portman, on 14 June 2010 - 07:24 PM, said:

I'm talking cost effectiveness of RAID

3x 80gb intel x25-m raid 0 yield ~750mb/s. I assume 20x(1.6TB/4,000$) will yield greater than 2gb/s

True.
Though if I were to put the HD raid (which was raid 5(or 2) in the example) into Raid 0 - just to keep things even...

It would be 40TB of hd raid storage at 2gb/s for the same price.

_____ this leads to another thought.

Why the fuck did we develop SATA III which is 6gb/s.

________

Thunderg0d, on 14 June 2010 - 07:32 PM, said:

But don't discount SSD performance. I still think a lot of the C2D E8X00 and early C2Q systems would see a modest performance boost just by dropping this in those systems.

Very true.

I will probably spend 150$ on one 60gb SSD for the OS (which will speed up boot and load times), and then map a 3TB 4 Hd Raid storage ($200) to the C:/program files/... (probably relocate my user folders to that directory as well.)

thus kinda getting the best of both worlds with a SSD/HD hybrid. Fast access time where you need it, and cheap storage of comparable speeds.

Thunderg0d, on 14 June 2010 - 07:32 PM, said:

Broski, I've been doing this shit plenty long and yes I do know what I'm talking about from actually using this shit...not just working for a company that uses shit.

Yes cost effective for space, a 1 TB drive (Samsung Spinpoint F3 would be a good choice there BTW..though I still feel iffy on reliability of a Samsung) is cost effective, but you want your programs to run faster, you need to feed it data faster. Putting your OS and all read-only data points on a SSD can be a huge performance boost.

I'm not saying replace all your HDDs to SSD for multi-TB storage. You could run 1, 120-500 GB (Depending what you need/want) SSD that'll rape a Raid 0 HDD layout typically. Eventually, you could upgrade to a Raid 0 solution for OS at a later date too. However, still run Raid 0,1, or 5 (Depends the flavor you desire) of 1 TB Drives to supplement.

The $200-300 drives (Yeah I agree it's expensive, but honestly I still believe the performance for the value is there, ecspecially in a situation of loading larger programs like you mention...maybe you like waiting for programs to load up, but when you see a 60 mb Adobe file load instantly...you pretty much shit your pants and want 12 of these things).

I speak from experience here in that I run a 60 GB of one of the original Indellix chips as an OS drive, with 3 160 GB Seagate 7200.11s in Raid 5. It was a huge, noticable difference even compared to the Raid 5 drives running the OS (or even the Raid 0). The newer drives have gotten faster via learning better internal raids, new controllers (Like the Sandfoot one looks pretty beefy), and better memory probably being used compared to what I got running.

It's obviously your call on what you want...but don't discount SSD performance. I still think a lot of the C2D E8X00 and early C2Q systems would see a modest performance boost just by dropping this in those systems.

I underestimated your knowledge, good, you do know what your talking about.

This post has been edited by cms: 14 June 2010 - 06:47 PM