OT : new workstation - need some advise

[Gijs]

I am about to build a new system and am thinking of the following: (price)

Asus p5k motherboard (89)
q6600 (199)
GeiL 4 x 2GB cl5 5 5 15 DDR2 800 (179)
MSI NX8800GT - 1024 mb (259)
LianLi Case p7a plus II (79)
WD raptor SATA 150GB - 10k rpm (169)
Samsung spinpoint t166 500GB (79)
Silencer 610 EPS12V Retail (129)
xp 64 oem (149)
+ some small stuff

all in all a system that will be about 1400 euro (including tax)

a few questions: can it be overclocked? if so to what extent?
did I choose bad components?

other option: 8 core macpro: about double the price and speed...with the added bonus of being able to run mac os. maybe not that bad of a choice, given the fact that rhino is in development for osx.

[dalomar_cg]

Re: OT : new workstation - need some advise

Case is good (love my lian-li)...Memory I would think that you could get faster than ddr 800, but I haven't been keeping up on hardware recently, so I could be off on that one. Raptors are good (I have them in a stripped RAID array on my machine...no problems)...The grafix card is good, although I heard that the 9800 are supposed to be really good and not to expensive. I don't know about the availablity of them though (ie when they are coming out). I don't know anything about the motherboard, but I would try to get something that has 2 proc sockets...even if you only use 1 it would be nice to have it for later. Keep in mind that most dual proc boards have a certain number of slots of memory per processor, so if you aren't using a second you will be limited with the amount of memory you could use (but on a dual proc board thats still going to be alot). Those are my thoughts...I'd take them with a grain of salt as I haven't been on the ball hardware wise since I built my machine last year.

[Gijs]

Re: OT : new workstation - need some advise

wouldn't that require to go for xeon processors? that is probably another price class for both main board and processors and memory, no?

[Micha_cg]

Re: OT : new workstation - need some advise

P5K and Q6600 works great here at 3.4GHz (three slaves) and silent cooled a lowest speed per Zalman air cooler CNPS9700. Try to get a silent power supply - you will be happy, that you bought it, if the nights are to long.

For overclocking settings look here:
http://asgvis.com/index.php?option=c...&topic=1870.15

I wouldn't invest in Xeons, because you get more speed for your money if you build some simple additional slaves with the cheap garphiccards and 2GB RAM (slaves needs very less RAM most).
Or are dual mainboards available for Q6600?

[Gijs]

Re: OT : new workstation - need some advise

what power supply would you recommend?

I see you chose asus p5k as well.. do you have that for your main workstation as well? the pc builder application mentions that putting in 4 strips of memory will slow down the memory down to DDR 667. Do you have experience with that?

3.4Ghz...wow that's what I call overclocking! that will give an amazing bang for the buck.

thanks

[dalomar_cg]

Re: OT : new workstation - need some advise

not necessarily... there are a few boards out there that support dual duos or something. Mine personally is a dual Opteron board (not that you'd really want that now though).

Essentially, just give yourself some options...even if you have to kick in an extra hundred for a baseline xeon and a dual proc board, you'll be better served if a year down the road you want to kick your machine into over drive . The last thing you want is to build a machine, and then realize that you might need more and its a whole lot to get it. (I built my machine about a month before the quads came out...I was practically kicking myself).

[Micha_cg]

Re: OT : new workstation - need some advise

what power supply would you recommend?

I see you chose asus p5k as well.. do you have that for your main workstation as well? the pc builder application mentions that putting in 4 strips of memory will slow down the memory down to DDR 667. Do you have experience with that?

3.4Ghz...wow that's what I call overclocking! that will give an amazing bang for the buck.

thanks

I use one without name from www.silentpcfactory.de at my main computer. This, my favourit modell, isn't on the list now, but I will get three for my slaves in a few days. I bought the 350W models, but I'm not happy, because if the CPUs need power, than the fan is loud. So, the dealer tell me, he can sell me my good old model that I bought some months befor - a very silent 500W device for 79,- €.
350W should be enough, because my overclocked machines needs approx. 200W only, but I have the feeling, 350W devices need more cooling than 500W. So I change back the 350W modell and will get my good old model again.

My experience with the 500W model is, that a slow 14cm fan can be very silent and a little bit air flow is good for cooling the housing (my housings are all open at one side) and the power supply.

My main machine is a p5b and an older Q6600, overclocked at 3GHz only, because more isn't possible by the old CPU stepping. I build the three slaves in december and don't changed the main computer, so the slaves are faster than the main machine. The main machine will get a new board, if I get oct cores or dual Q6600.
The current Q6600 are very nice - less hot and better for overclocking. I don't know how fast my RAMs are, I bought DDR 800.

Also important for silence is the mechanical conection of the HDDs to the housing - I use rubber bands.

An other thought to Xeons - a Xeon with a low CPU speed will slow down the usage of single core software like Rhino or other. So it could be, that a Q6600@3.4GHz create a render mesh faster than a Xeon with eight 2GHz CPUs. Or I'm wrong? It's a speculation only.