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Building a new workstation. Any changes, recommendations?

post #1 of 22
12/30/05 at 2:58pm
Thread Starter 
Guru's,

I'm getting ready to build a new workstation that I'll be using for work (so, I won't likely OC it). Here's what I plan on ordering. What would you change or recommend? Also, what CPU cooling fans would you recommend?

Case
Coolermaster CM Stacker

PS
Coolermaster RealPower 550W

CPU's
Dual Opteron 254's

RAM
8GB PC3200 ECC

HD's
3 - 74GB WD Raptors in RAID 0

Video
Dual (SLI) XFX 7800GTX 256MB

CD/DVD
Lite-On DVD ROM
Lite-On CD-RW/DVD-RW

OS
WXP64
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post #2 of 22
12/30/05 at 3:31pm
What are you gonna need 8GB of RAM for?
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post #3 of 22
12/30/05 at 4:21pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jordan1
What are you gonna need 8GB of RAM for?
Part of my job is running large mathematical models that use gobs of RAM. I currently use 4GB. With dual procs and an extra 4GB, I'll be able to run two jobs at once (which will be a very nice advantage for me). It's also the reason I use a 64bit OS.

BTW, how do you like your 2005FP? That's the one I'm considering for this workstation. I've been watching Techbargains and Dell Outlet for a few weeks now and have'nt seen anything on this model. I may have to purchase a new one.
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post #4 of 22
12/30/05 at 5:27pm
The 2005FPW is great. I don't have any problems with it like pixel or light leakage. It offers a good amount of space to work with @ 1680x1050.

I have only heard good things about Lite-On drives and the WD Raptors.
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post #5 of 22
12/30/05 at 6:32pm
Change the Power supply to a PC Power and Cooling 510 or Seasonic 500. Cooler master power supplys are not that great from what I have heard.

Maybe swap out one of the raptors for a 500 gig hard drive instead, I reccomend seagate, since their harddrives have the best warranty in the industry, and they usually run quiet and cool.

I thought that Raid 0 was only 2 hdd anyways, so the third raptor really isn't worth it IMO.
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post #6 of 22
12/30/05 at 7:25pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by pyro_dragun
Change the Power supply to a PC Power and Cooling 510 or Seasonic 500. Cooler master power supplys are not that great from what I have heard.
Thanks, I'll check these out.

Quote:
Originally Posted by pyro_dragun
Maybe swap out one of the raptors for a 500 gig hard drive instead, I reccomend seagate, since their harddrives have the best warranty in the industry, and they usually run quiet and cool.

I thought that Raid 0 was only 2 hdd anyways, so the third raptor really isn't worth it IMO.
Actually RAID 0 will support many drives (not sure how many). Although you bring up a good point because I may need to add a RAID controller. I was thinking the on-board controller could support all 4 drives in RAID, but I'll have to check. It may be split to a 2+2 type configuration.
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post #7 of 22
12/30/05 at 7:36pm
You need a bunch of power for that rig considering it has dual 7800GTX and dual CPUs. Your Cooler Master PSU looks good considering it has three 12V rails that put out 43A, but people seem to have problems with it occasionally. You might want to check out the two PSUs below. If I was building that rig I would go for the OCZ 600W just so I would not have to worry about power issues.

OCZ PowerStream 520W
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817711002

OCZ PowerStream 600W
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817711001

or the PC 510 that Pyro mentioned.
http://www.pcpowercooling.com/produc...view=techspecs
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post #8 of 22
12/30/05 at 9:26pm
Thread Starter 
Good info on the power supplies, thanks!

BTW, I did some checking on the MB that I plan on getting (Tyan K8WE - S2895) and since it supports RAID 5, it will support 3-drives in RAID 0.

Do you guys have any recomendations on heatsinks/cpu fans?
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post #9 of 22
12/30/05 at 9:29pm
Lose the Dual GTX cards...waste of money...stick with Dual 7800 GTs if you are concerned about the costs because the gain in performance going from GT to GTX is not worth the difference in price...

I would just get a single GT actually...

Windows XP 64 bit?? Are you sure?? Did you make sure you can find drivers that will support all the hardware that you will be using? I had SEVERE problems with XP-64 driver support and gave up on it. I dont think Microsoft supports the OS yet...

Please make sure...
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post #10 of 22
12/30/05 at 11:32pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by gsferrari
Lose the Dual GTX cards...waste of money...stick with Dual 7800 GTs if you are concerned about the costs because the gain in performance going from GT to GTX is not worth the difference in price...

I would just get a single GT actually...

Windows XP 64 bit?? Are you sure?? Did you make sure you can find drivers that will support all the hardware that you will be using? I had SEVERE problems with XP-64 driver support and gave up on it. I dont think Microsoft supports the OS yet...

Please make sure...
Makes sense, I could always start out with one card and add another later. Good point.

XP64, yes. It's certainly not mature yet, but it's great for what I need. I currently dual boot XP Pro and XP64 on my Sager laptop. You're right about the limited drivers, but it works well enough for me. I'm not a Microsoft fan, but XP64 runs well. I chose the components for this system based off of one that I could purchase (for about $800 more) and it comes with XP64. I plan on dual booting this one to, but I intend XP64 to be the primary OS and use XP Pro for non-work related activities to keep things seperate. I believe MS does support the XP64 now because you can purchase it with new systems from Dell, HP, etc. (and I think you can get it off the shelf).
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post #11 of 22
12/31/05 at 2:53am
I just bought Xp-64 from a buddy at MS for $15.00 and the box says "NOT SUPPORTED" so clearly things must have changed very recently. They say they support it? Wow...I didnt see that coming so soon because they need to get ALL the hardware vendors on board before they can do that.

To the best of my knowledge...that has not happened. So is MS writing drivers for every hardware vendor product out there? Hmmm...
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post #12 of 22
12/31/05 at 4:41am
Quote:
Originally Posted by gsferrari
I just bought Xp-64 from a buddy at MS for $15.00 and the box says "NOT SUPPORTED" so clearly things must have changed very recently. They say they support it? Wow...I didnt see that coming so soon because they need to get ALL the hardware vendors on board before they can do that.
Speculation of course, but I think that just means you bought a pirated copy -- or something illegitimate. (Perhaps some weird OEM?)
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post #13 of 22
12/31/05 at 5:04am
Quote:
Originally Posted by 6DOF
Makes sense, I could always start out with one card and add another later. Good point.
Just my 2 cents, but if you are going to do SLI buy two cards do it now because by the time you decide to upgrade a new generation of GPUs will be available and will probably be faster and more cost effective upgrades than buying a additional card. You can play any game available today with a 7800 GT or GTX on high settings. I would just get a cheap 7800 GT like GS mentioned and upgrade to the new generation GPU when they come out.
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post #14 of 22
12/31/05 at 5:07am
Probably better (if you can get them - they are brand new) to get dual 148gb Raptors and Raid them. They have a higher cache 16mb and have had their controllers redesigned, though they remain untested yet for proof of ability. And as far as warranty, raptors have the same 5 year warranty - not really thinking the Seagate is a better choice, though 500gb could be good if you are tossing about some huge files.

Second the opinion on the PC P&C PS.

I'd bump the 7800's down to dual GT's, and use the saved $ to bump the display up to a 2405. If you are crunching models there is no underestimating some good screen real estate

$.02
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post #15 of 22
12/31/05 at 1:16pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by ZGold550
Speculation of course, but I think that just means you bought a pirated copy -- or something illegitimate. (Perhaps some weird OEM?)
Straight from Microsoft through the employee discount program. The ones ive seen on newegg are also the same. I dont know...I still have it and I plan to use it - but the lack of drivers sucked. Forget about getting the video cards to work properly. Not to mention sound...heck EVERYTHING...


For the HDDs...get the 16MB Cache Maxtors. Forget about RAID...pointless
2 x 300GB Maxtor 16MB Cache drives should be more than enough for now.
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post #16 of 22
12/31/05 at 1:50pm
If you want a good PSU, listen to me bud. PC Power is cooling is the answer, but not the model they said. Go for the 850 (which I have) or the 1000. I have two 510s as well (on in my wife's DIY rig which is not currently SLI) and one sitting in my closet with the rest of my nasty sexual proclivities collecting dust.
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post #17 of 22
12/31/05 at 3:24pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by ckaplan
Just my 2 cents, but if you are going to do SLI buy two cards do it now because by the time you decide to upgrade a new generation of GPUs will be available and will probably be faster and more cost effective upgrades than buying a additional card. You can play any game available today with a 7800 GT or GTX on high settings. I would just get a cheap 7800 GT like GS mentioned and upgrade to the new generation GPU when they come out.
I'm now considering just one 7800GT, as you and GS have suggested. At first I started out with 2 (SLI) quadro cards then switched to 2 - 7800 (gaming) cards because I don't really need the workstation class cards for this box. You guys are saving me even more money by suggesting one 7800 (thanks). If this card doesn't work out well, I can always upgrade to a quadro.

BTW, since the NV 6800 series came out, I haven't seen a big improvement in performance vs. the quadro for the programs that I use, except for the (very) top of the line quadro's. Before the 6800 there was typically a 1.5-2X improvement.
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post #18 of 22
12/31/05 at 3:30pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Anemone
Probably better (if you can get them - they are brand new) to get dual 148gb Raptors and Raid them. They have a higher cache 16mb and have had their controllers redesigned, though they remain untested yet for proof of ability. And as far as warranty, raptors have the same 5 year warranty - not really thinking the Seagate is a better choice, though 500gb could be good if you are tossing about some huge files.
Interesting. I didn't know these were out.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Anemone
Second the opinion on the PC P&C PS.
This brand is also recommended by Tyan for use with this board.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Anemone
I'd bump the 7800's down to dual GT's, and use the saved $ to bump the display up to a 2405. If you are crunching models there is no underestimating some good screen real estate

$.02
GT's again, good to hear. A 2405 sure would be nice, but the 2005 is all I really need. I might consider one if I could get a really good deal on it.
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post #19 of 22
12/31/05 at 3:43pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by gsferrari
Straight from Microsoft through the employee discount program. The ones ive seen on newegg are also the same. I dont know...I still have it and I plan to use it - but the lack of drivers sucked. Forget about getting the video cards to work properly. Not to mention sound...heck EVERYTHING...


For the HDDs...get the 16MB Cache Maxtors. Forget about RAID...pointless
2 x 300GB Maxtor 16MB Cache drives should be more than enough for now.
I'd have to agree with you if I was just concerned about virtural memory performance. Putting the swap file on a seperate drive is likely better then having on a RAID setup with the OS and programs on the same. I think that's the better way to go. However, with a lot of I/O, RAID has a lot to offer, especially considering the HD's are the bottleneck. I've done some benchmarking with the software that I use and it showed that 3 drives in RAID 0 offer the most bang for the buck. Of course there's no redundancy with RAID 0, but I run automated backups to an external drive regularly. Also, 100GB would be plenty of space for me. I move my project files to an external drive or DVD upon completion to clear space and keep organized. 600GB would be a lot of space for me. Are you suggesting the higher density disk for the improved performance (due to the density)?

I haven't seen much of an improvement (if any at all) going from 8MB cache to 16MB cache. Am I wrong here? I currently have 2 300GB drives, one with 8MB and one with 16MB. I'm pretty sure they're both Maxtor. Maybe I'll benchmark them.
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post #20 of 22
12/31/05 at 3:44pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by DarthBeavis
If you want a good PSU, listen to me bud. PC Power is cooling is the answer, but not the model they said. Go for the 850 (which I have) or the 1000. I have two 510s as well (on in my wife's DIY rig which is not currently SLI) and one sitting in my closet with the rest of my nasty sexual proclivities collecting dust.
Yep, saw the 850 and am considering it. However it costs considerably more than the ~600 watt PS's.
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