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sroylance · Sun Apr 30, 2006 8:04 am

I just moved into a new group at work, mostly supporting linux compute clusters for scientists in biology and medicine. My boss asked me to send him specs on a machine and I'm going to try to get away with the following:
http://secure.newegg.com/NewVersion/wis ... er=3223203

It's a beefy box for a desktop. My main goal is to have something that can handle multiple virtual machines so I can run XP as my desktop but have access to linux and solaris as well. I'm sure the tyan board is going to be solid, but I have a few concerns:
Is 550W going to be enough?
Will it be too difficult to fit in the case (it lists 12x13 as the max mobo size even though it's a mid-tower)
Is 64 bit XP ready for prime-time? I'm going to need it in order to address the 8GB.

titan · Sun Apr 30, 2006 8:41 am

The board will fit in the case, so you don't have to worry about that. The power supply you selected is recommended by Tyan, so you're good to go there.

The only thing I would swap out is the memory. Go for Crucial instead. I can't find Crucial memory that's registered on NewEgg.com, however. Didn't AMD change the memory requirments anyway, as in, it doesn't need to be registered?

thecoldanddarkone · Sun Apr 30, 2006 9:18 am

I think, it still has to be reg. on multiprocessor systems. (not dual core single processors though)

Check out the expansions slots. It says two pci x slots, not pci express.

how about this board
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813151153

thecoldanddarkone · Sun Apr 30, 2006 9:43 am

I looked at the drivers for the motherboard that I posted, it does seem to have xp 64 bit drivers even 64 bit chipset drivers.

monitors?

titan · Sun Apr 30, 2006 10:13 am

Good eye, cold. I didn't even bother looking for that.

I got to thinking, all that power and a weak video card...how are you going to drive that 30" widescreen Dell monitor? You should go for a 7800 class video card. If you can convince the guys to let you have that monitor.

Sun Apr 30, 2006 11:12 am

If it is just a sysadmin machine, can't you just connect to other *nix machines on the network via something like Exceed or VNC? Do you really need to run all those VMs? And do you really need that powerful of a machine other than the fact that you have the money to burn and you want to spend it?

080119-deactivated · Sun Apr 30, 2006 11:35 am

I dont know about WinXP 64 :roll:

. I actually dont hear anymore about it, and I guess the release of Vista is a long time to go :roll:

. But at least the 64 bit drivers arent beta anymore... So you might try it :wink:

.

My Johnson · Sun Apr 30, 2006 11:42 am

I was wondering if he was building a box for gaming, minus the video card, myself.

I know you would want dual CPUs, but shouldn't a dual core suffice? why registered ECC RAM? (probably makes no difference, but thought I would ask)

If I was a sys admin, I'd want dual core, fast drives, semi-cool looking case and peripherals, but mostly as many flat panel monitors that I could fit on my desk. I'd just client on it mostly and remotely access all my servers.

sroylance · Sun Apr 30, 2006 1:07 pm

I definitely need to re-asses the board, I forgot server boards don't always have AGP/PCI-e.

The vid card:
I don't expect to do much 3d, outside of aero glass/XGL eye candy. I expect this will do fine running the 2 LCD's at 1280x1024.

My general motivation:
This may be over-specced, but we are tight on space and I want to cram as much into one chassis as possible. In the past I've ended up with mulptiple machine under my desk, and I don't really have room for that. I do occasionally perform tasks that can use that amount of horsepower. working on a 4GB network trace in ethereal comes to mind.

Sun Apr 30, 2006 2:58 pm

sroylance wrote:
My general motivation:
This may be over-specced, but we are tight on space and I want to cram as much into one chassis as possible. In the past I've ended up with mulptiple machine under my desk, and I don't really have room for that. I do occasionally perform tasks that can use that amount of horsepower. working on a 4GB network trace in ethereal comes to mind.

If you are just admin-ing the machines, why would you need the nodes yourself? So I would say you just need to get a decently fast dual core machine (no need for physical sockets), and if you do need some VM's, just load up on RAM and be done with it?

Multi-monitor may be a consideration, so down spec the machine and you get money for like 2x 2405's.

bwoodring · Sun Apr 30, 2006 3:18 pm

I am of two minds. On one hand, it's only a few thousand dollars, so what the hell. On the other hand, I am an MIS manager at a large corporation, and if one of my employees came to me with that machine spec, I'd laugh my ass off. WTF are you doing even building a computer for a corporate environment? 8 gigs on ram in a desktop? Are you running the Exchange server in the background?

So if you can get it, and nobody cares, then what the hell. But if I were your boss, I'd remember this when you are up for a promotion. It's a silly, unprofessional request, and you're basically flusing the company's money down the toilet. You can easily run half a dozen VM's on a machine with half that much horsepower.

Sun Apr 30, 2006 3:27 pm

bwoodring wrote:
You can easily run half a dozen VM's on a machine with half that much horsepower.

Well, if the VM's are doing something meaningful then you do need the RAM, but you don't need that much CPU I suppose.

Sun Apr 30, 2006 3:54 pm

Flying Fox wrote:
Multi-monitor may be a consideration, so down spec the machine and you get money for like 2x 2405's.

How about 4x 2001FP's, instead?

Sun Apr 30, 2006 4:47 pm

$115½ MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum Socket-939 NForce4 Ultra motherboard
· It has the most PCI slots (4) of any PCI-Express socket-939 motherboard & has dual 1000bT on-board NICs
$632 AMD Athlon64 X2 4800+ Toledo 2.4GHz, 2x 1MB level 2 cache, 64-bit dual-core socket-939 processor w/ HSF
· Plenty of processing power without totally breaking the bank
$373½-55MIR 4ea 1GB Patriot PDC2G3200LLK, 2-3-2-5-1T, unbuffered DDR400 SDRAM
· Cheap and fast
$123½ MSI NX7600GS-T2D256E GeForce 7600GS 256MB dual-DVI PCI-Express X16 primary graphics card
· Dual DVI FTW!
$ 57 Chaintech GeForce FX5200 128MB DVI+VGA PCI secondary graphics card
· For monitors #3&4
$280 150GB Western Digital WD1500ADFD Raptor 10krpm SATA hard-drive
· Fastest drive available
$110 250GB Seagate ST3300822AS Barracuda 7200.9 7.2krpm SATA hard-drive
· Cheap storage
$ 45 Samsung SH-S162L DVD burner with lightscribe
· Does everything
$ 25 Mitsumi FA404M 3½" floppy drive w/ flash card readers
· Flexible
$149 Antec P180B ATX case
· Expensive, but solid
$125-10MIR SeaSonic S12-500 ATX power supply
· Quiet
$164 CVT Avant Stellar PS/2 keyboard
· Expensive, but clicky!
$ 45 Logitech MX400 5-button USB mouse
· Laser tracking and still has the back button
$ 68 Logitech Z-3e speakers
· Decent sound
$1485+tax 4ea Dell UltraSharp 2001FP 1600x1200 DVI/VGA/S-Video/Composite LCD monitors
· 7.7MP desktop FTW!
or $876+tax 4ea Dell UltraSharp 1907FP 1280x1024 DVI/VGA LCD monitors
· 5.2MP for less cash
$329+shipping ViewSonic quad VESA LCD monitor stand
· Conserving physical desktop space

Shintai · Mon May 01, 2006 3:51 am

All that required to run SSH or RDP? :P

sircharles32 · Mon May 01, 2006 5:21 am

Has Creative fixed the driver issues with their "Live!" line of sound cards and SMP systems? The last time I tried to run a Sound BLaster Live! Value in a dual cpu system, and it gave me "issues", the official word from Creative Labs was that only their Audigy (and higher) line of cards supported SMP systems. Just a thought.

sroylance · Mon May 01, 2006 6:18 am

Let's assume for the sake of this thread that I can present a solid business justification for a 4-core 8-GB desktop machine.

sircharles32 wrote:
Has Creative fixed the driver issues with their "Live!" line of sound cards and SMP systems? The last time I tried to run a Sound BLaster Live! Value in a dual cpu system, and it gave me "issues", the official word from Creative Labs was that only their Audigy (and higher) line of cards supported SMP systems. Just a thought.

I'm hoping that this is an old enough card that the driver is built into windows.

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