Help me pick the right desktop
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@MattSpeller said:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/DELL-POWEREDGE-R510-2-X5660-24GB-RAM-H700-12-BAY-/171833967783?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item28021a44a7 - Edit: better deal on this one and it includes a not shitty RAID controller. It does not include drive caddies so keep that in mind.
Throw some more RAM at it and fill it full of cheap SATA drives in OBR10 - I'd suggest the cheapest 1TB drives (or whatever is cheapest $/GB) - the more drives you have running the faster your RAID10 will be.
Install VMWare or whatever other flavor of hypervisor floats your boat and you're off to the races. With the one I linked above you've got 12c 24t to work with - that'll easily do way more VM's than you'd need, your only limitation will be how much RAM you stuff in it.
Ahhh, I see where you're going with this. I should mention that:
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I work from home full time in a tiny apartment and don't have an ability to set up a rack or anything.
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I have the luxury of not needing much drive space or having a concern for redundancy at all. I use version control and any media files I deal with locally are testing images so I'm fine w/ 256GB total, comprised of a single drive or a Raid 0.
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If I do go the separate route I do have this T110 available to run VMs off of, which does fit in my closet ( where it lived before I ditched my Retina iMac a week or two ago ).
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I'll be developing/rendering off of a NetGear A6210 wifi adapter ( currently what the T110 is using ), and have no other choice but to go wireless w/ my 2 new puppies around. Do you think developing off of VMs served off of a separate box ( which can be hardwired to the router ) over wifi could introduce enough latency that the responsiveness might suffer? I'm already a stickler for instantaneousness, I'm not sure I could deal with that on every save, switch, test, repeat. The VMs won't be performing major workloads simultaneously with the exception of if I run the private betaware from home, in which case that'd be always on. So the 8t of the Xeon E3-1240 v2 might be ok.
I appreciate all of the help! This is very educational.
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@creayt Mmmmmm ok I'm with ya now.... hmmm.... let me chew on this for a few mins....
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@creayt Massive overkill commence: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/zYM9ZL
6c 12t (overclock this hard)
64gb RAM
2x 512ssd's raid0 (because you'll eventually want more space + they're cheap)
1x 3tb backup drive, omit if you want but backups can save you a ton of time and can be run when you're not using it for other stuff... my internal sysadmin won't let me build a system without a backup system/drive/array
watercooling to keep noise way down in apartment
noctua fans to replace cheap case fans to keep noise down
Asus GTX970 to keep noise down (this model cools passively without turning the fans on until you use it for something like rendering)
PC P&C expensive power supply because failure isn't an option when you use it to make your living. Also gold efficiency rating so it's quieter and pumps out less heat.
I contemplated a horizontal case or similar but you can really do whatever you want with that part of it. I put one in that was well reviewed but go pick one out that speaks to you.Run something like virtualbox and you can host as many VM's on this bad boy as you have RAM to allocate to them.
$2800USD
Next step up from here is going to a customized server. Buying something like the one I linked below on ebay and then pimping it out with cool stuff like the above parts. Only reason to look at this is because of RAM* - consumer ATX boards just do not support more than 64GB super reliably - (128GB in the next lineup coming in August).
*or dual CPU but if you end up needing more than the 6c12t monster can provide you REALLY need to think about going to a separate server for your VM's
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I looked between the Dell Percision T series and the HP z800 when getting my current workstation (24 cores). I end up getting the HP platform it was more flexible had way more SAS and SATA ports and better all around build quality.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
I looked between the Dell Percision T series and the HP z800 when getting my current workstation (24 cores). I end up getting the HP platform it was more flexible had way more SAS and SATA ports and better all around build quality.
I've always been a fan of those. They are really nice. We used older models of that series at the bank for monte carlo simulations with CUDA processing.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
I looked between the Dell Percision T series and the HP z800 when getting my current workstation (24 cores). I end up getting the HP platform it was more flexible had way more SAS and SATA ports and better all around build quality.
Thanks for the tip. It sounds like I'm better off performancewise ( given my lack of a need for mass storage at least ) w/ M2 and PCIe options.
What's your processor model if you don't mind my asking? How has having so many cores worked out for you? What do you do with that monster?
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@MattSpeller said:
@creayt Massive overkill commence: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/zYM9ZL
Excellent options and a ton of stuff I'm going to look into! Thank you very much.
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@MattSpeller said:
@creayt Massive overkill commence: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/zYM9ZL
So it looks like to do dual M2s on these mobos you have to use a PCIe add-in card for the 2nd. So to get a RAID out of that would you need to do a software one in Windows? Is there a better option?
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I think I've found my case...
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@creayt said:
I think I've found my case...
Love the look...care to supply the name or a link to it?
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@technobabble said:
Love the look...care to supply the name or a link to it?
Antec S10. I think it's only a month or two old, but presuming I can remove that Antec logo it'll be the first DIY computer case I've ever seen that's actually sexy.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129224
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I've always used Antec cases for my builds, but this is the nicest one yet!
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@creayt said:
So it looks like to do dual M2s on these mobos you have to use a PCIe add-in card for the 2nd. So to get a RAID out of that would you need to do a software one in Windows? Is there a better option?
Yeah I wouldn't spend that kinda cash on a PC right before the launch of a new chipset and CPU's - new mobos should have better support for M2 and SATAe
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@MattSpeller said:
@creayt Massive overkill commence: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/zYM9ZL
6c 12t (overclock this hard)Though I have no expertise w/ OC-ing at all, and it's been probably 7-8 years since I assembled a rig myself, the T5810 has arrived and its performance is very disappointing, on top of that the SSDs are plain jane and generic looking SATA. So it's going back to Dell and I'm going to get savvy on self-assembly and go your suggested route.
I think I'm going to wait for the new processors in August, and spend the time up until then learning how to do all of this stuff again.
In the meanwhile, does anyone know how I can tell ahead of time what graphics cards will be compatible w/ my T110.2? It has a Thermaltake Tr/2 600W power supply, but none of the modernish cards I tried would boot. The pre-boot screen would sit and hold a solid underscore on a black screen or flash the underscore.
Thanks!
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@creayt said:
I'm going to get savvy on self-assembly and go your suggested route.
You won't regret it, and if you need any help I'd be happy to lend a hand. OC'ing is dead simple compared to the old days.
In the meanwhile, does anyone know how I can tell ahead of time what graphics cards will be compatible w/ my T110.2?
That's super strange, it should work a treat with any PCI-e gfx card. Perhaps a setting in the bios is doing something dumb? Are these known good cards?
Edit: Do these cards (5750?) require extra power connectors or do they pull it all from the PCIe slot?
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@MattSpeller said:
You won't regret it, and if you need any help I'd be happy to lend a hand. OC'ing is dead simple compared to the old days.
I might just take you up on that, thanks.
That's super strange, it should work a treat with any PCI-e gfx card. Perhaps a setting in the bios is doing something dumb? Are these known good cards?
Edit: Do these cards (5750?) require extra power connectors or do they pull it all from the PCIe slot?
They all required the extra connector ( including the 5750 ), but I plug that in and it seems fine and the fans spin ( and of course it works on the 5750 ). The cards that failed were semi-mainstream seeming ones from BestBuy or NewEgg. I'll pull out the Quadro from the Precision and see if it boots later tonight.
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@creayt said:
In the meanwhile, does anyone know how I can tell ahead of time what graphics cards will be compatible w/ my T110.2? It has a Thermaltake Tr/2 600W power supply, but none of the modernish cards I tried would boot. The pre-boot screen would sit and hold a solid underscore on a black screen or flash the underscore.
Thanks!
Might be to low of wattage for modern mid to highend cards. Also Possible there is a whitelist only for the Dell, though I would hope not. Lenovo and others have been known to whitelist only hardware.
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Tried the NVidia Quadro, which doesn't have a separate power connector. Same issue, solid black underscore before any boot options or screen and it never gets past it.
If it's a wattage issue, would upgrading my power supply help? @thecreativeone91 @MattSpeller
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@creayt poke around in the bios to see if there's any options related to video. Also check and see if it has the most recent bios. Sounds like a compat issue
Edit: 600w PSU shouldn't have any issues running even a greedy gfx card + all the other bits.
Edit2: http://www.extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp
