Hey hey,
here I am again! First of all, thanks a lot for the help, you guys are great!
I've forwarded your configuration to the software technical support, and I got this answer:
> CPU- 2x Intel Xeon x5560 (quad core, 2.8GHz)
Up to know not everything is multithreaded. So I would prefer a new Core i 7 intel processor. These have only 4 cores instead of the 8 cores you have in your configuration, but they have the advantage that as soon as you don't use all core the speed of the used cores is increased.
Furthermore we have some problem with the multithreading within Imaris for the moment. We will solve these problems this year. But I would nevertheless go for a Core i 7.
You're good with those CPU's, actually. The current Xeon 55xx line, including those, is the server/workstation version of the Core i7. It has everything the i7 has, including the Turbo Boost function that he described, and hyper threading. A single i7 has 4 cores and 8 threads, while the dual Xeon setup has 8 cores and 16 threads, which will be awesome once the multithreading bugs are worked out. What Windows will see is 16 different processors. The task manager will look something like the pic below. Cool huh?
> RAM- 6x Corsair 4GB server memory
The RAM that you need is depending of the size of the data you want to analyse. So a rule of thumb is to have the 10-fold amount of RAM the datasize you want to analyse.
So in your case you could analyse data up to 2.4 GB. If this is sufficient for you the RAM is ok!
Sounds good. Just so you know, as long as it's registered ECC RAM, that mobo will support double what that setup has if you need to upgrade later.
> GPU- XFX GeForce GTX 285: This is a very good graphic board. A bit noisy but I'm using it also without problems.
Good that it works. Again, just so you know, the 4870 x2 you requested is available in some places and is more powerful than the 285. No major retailers have it though. Newegg does have the 48
50 x2 in stock, however, if that will work. It's not on the "tested" list but I'm pretty sure they use the same core. Might be worth asking about...?
> Hard Drives- 4x Samsung Spinpoint F3 500GB . It is always good to put the temp files of Imaris on one or more separate hard disks that are quite fast. So it would be good to have one or more harddisks with 10000 rpm or at least fast read and write access. They do not need to be big. So 160 GB is sufficient. These disks should be only used for the temp files of Imaris and nothing else. The more disks you have and the more speed they have the quicker the calculations are done within Imaris. These disks I would put inside the PC. Then you can have one big harddisk for the system and the data storage or two smaller ones e.g. one for the system and one for the data (as you want). So it is not necessary to have the external disks only if you want to have them to transfer the data.
so CPU has to be changed, RAM is fine as my files are 2.0GB top, I'm a bit puzzled about the hard drives... any more suggestions?
The Samsungs I listed have great performance both for the price and in general. This chart compares it to other common drives using Passmark benchmarking software:
http://www.harddrivebenchmark.net/hdd_lookup.php?cpu=SAMSUNG+HD502HJ
For reference, the three "WDC" drives in spots 8,9, and 10 are all $250-$300 Western Digital "VelociRaptor" 10k RPM drives. They're 5-6 times the price for less storage and performance. The drive in the #3 spot is the $90 1TB version of it:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152185&Tpk=HD103SJ
If I'm understanding this right, the external hard drives are only for transferring data, and more internal drives is better?
If so, then I would go with as many of the 500GB drives I posted as you think you'll need/use. Same for the externals. If you want a 1TB for an externals or the primary OS drive, use the one I posted above.
Also, do any of these need to be in a RAID array? It's common for mission-critical systems but you might need an extra controller for this setup.
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