Mega PC for work! i7 build maybe

[diduknowthat]

Why do you have a blu-ray drive? I doubt the programs you use are on blu-ray. And would overclocking that machine be a good idea? You'd probably require stability over speed in your case. i would personally take a look at dual socket server boards and 2 slower quad core CPUs.

 

[Drenlin]

Does this program do better with high clock speeds and fewer cores, or more cores at a lower clock speed? If the latter, you could probably get a dual socket Magny Cours system for under $3k. That's 24 cores, if you get 12-core models. Two Opteron 6168's should be in your budget. Better tech or not, there's no way 6-8 intel cores are going to outperform 24 amd cores. Maybe if you have dual 6-core xeons.

Only problem is finding them...scan, overclockers, and ebuyer don't stock them, and I don't know where to look.

 

[ghost]

Thanks for all the input. The blu ray drive was pretty cheap compared to the DVD drives so I thought why not.

Tlarkin how are ya, last time we spoke you helped me out with my dl360 servers. Still got that AK?

I was looking at getting a proper rack mount server but the cost is big. Was looking at the X5600 xeons but they come at a price. Also this computer will soly be making data files and nothing else. From experience with the older xeons and ran this application on several computers but found the beet one was the i7 4 core with ht @ 3.06ghz.

If you could get me 2 xeons with ht and a motherboard cheaper than the rig I posted earlier then I'll go for that. But I think that's asking for to much.

Edit: sorry for the typo's, it's a mission posting on an iPhone!

Cheers again,
Steve

 

[tlarkin]

Why do you have a blu-ray drive? I doubt the programs you use are on blu-ray. And would overclocking that machine be a good idea? You'd probably require stability over speed in your case. i would personally take a look at dual socket server boards and 2 slower quad core CPUs.

I concur. All my work horse computers at work are servers, with dual xeons. My main software server used for policy and packaged deployment and inventory is a dual 3.2Ghz quad-core Xeons with 24gigs of RAM. It handles 1000s of mysql requests at any given time, and then tons and tons of unicast network transfers to clients. 16gigs of RAM alone is dedicated to TomCat, as it has a web front end for everything.

I have nearly 10,000 clients checking in randomly every 30 minutes of the day checking for policy and updating inventory. Needless to say, it gets pounded sometimes. It never fails though, been running strong for 3 years straight now.

I would suggest you go for dual quad-core Xeons, some ECC RAM, and a RAID 5 HD set up. If you are truly going to be using this for number crunching applications, you want to stay away from consumer hardware and gaming hardware as those types of hardware perform well in difference environments.

 

[ghost]

Thanks for the input tlarkin. I have taken what you said onboard but were working on a budget and this computer is not going to have any network activity. Just data processing, then if it fails or blows up then it can be replaced. No files will be kept on the server either, I would love to get a dual xeon rack mount server but we don't want to spend 3,500 GBP on a computer that does one thing. Also in time if we did decide to get a proper server I might be allowed to have the i7 pc for my desktop

 

[tlarkin]

Thanks for the input tlarkin. I have taken what you said onboard but were working on a budget and this computer is not going to have any network activity. Just data processing, then if it fails or blows up then it can be replaced. No files will be kept on the server either, I would love to get a dual xeon rack mount server but we don't want to spend 3,500 GBP on a computer that does one thing. Also in time if we did decide to get a proper server I might be allowed to have the i7 pc for my desktop

well you can get dual xeons in desktops. Dell, Apple, Sun, all make dual xeon desktop units. However, gotta go with the budget, I feel ya on that one. Many times if we had just spent even $1,000 more we could have gotten 5x the technology, but I am not a bean counter. I am just an IT dude, that has to deal with what the bean counters give us budget wise.