psuedo, Both of those procs (Xeon and Opteron) are the retail versions I priced. I would go with their stock hsf's at least at first and see how they run before spending money on a premium hsf like a Thermalright XP90; they might work out ok. For a case, get something like a large mid/small full tower case like the SX840 or SX1040 type cases that give plenty or room. For a psu, a TrueControl 550 or the larger Fortron Source or OCZ or PC Power & Cooling psu's would be a good choice.
0
Geeky1University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
edited February 2005
Mudd... the Xeons don't need ECC/REG ram with an i875 chipset (post #24) Using regular unbuffered, non-ECC RAM is most of what makes the Xeon so much cheaper than the Opteron right now.
My dual xeon was in a differnat chipset geeky and what made the price acceptable was I could use the ecc/reg ddr on hand. Not the same for most individuals. For most that chipset would be a HUGE advantage!
I sold the dual xeon I had for basicaly a sideways dance into a dual opteron but I play in the used market.
And neither of you have any experience with this board or this chipset so **** off.
Hi sweetheart,
That was quite the witty comeback. Hope you didnt overtask yourself thinking up that response.
And unlike me.... you have no experience with any new dualie chipset period sunshine.
And you're ragging on me?? Oooops... Your bad.....
So your up the legendary polluted river without a proper means of propulsion again. Too bad. No paddles to lend ya this time so hold on tight !
Read a few more reviews and read some more posts I guess. It's all you can do without real life experience. Without real life experiance to back the post up your just ...... guessing again. ooooops. Your bad again...
Please towel yourself off and wipe your mouth before posting again honey.
You seem to be frothing and....... it doesn't become you at all.
Love Ya Man !!
Have a GREAT DAY!!!!!
Tex
If you come up with any more witty comebacks after a few hours to think about it please post back and I will be more then cheerful to answer your questions again.
Mudd... the Xeons don't need ECC/REG ram with an i875 chipset (post #24) Using regular unbuffered, non-ECC RAM is most of what makes the Xeon so much cheaper than the Opteron right now.
That's true, Geeky, but I'm a believer in Reg/ECC in a dually for added stability. I run Reg/ECC in both my MPX dullies because of that, even though 1 of them has only a single 512 MB stick in it. Seeing that his Dad is planning on doing the CAD work with it, I think going with the Reg/ECC is the ticket. But you are right in pointing out that he can use regular unbuffered ram and save a few bucks.
BTW, those sticks of ddr I priced out are 1 GB sticks, giving him 2 gigs for the machine.
Here's how it works:
* Select any AMD 64 CPU and Mushkin Enhanced Memory and click "Buy this Combo"
* Be sure to also download the Mushkin rebate form. (Click here)
anyway i was just looking around and saw this MSI K8T Master2 on ebay for $160 $175 inc shipping although it does only have 4 hours left you can also get a pair of 242's for $300 here on ebay and finally a new matrox PARHELIA 512. Those prices were just off ebay so sorry is i have just posted stuff you have already seen. From PERSONAL experience of a BRAND NEW power supply i am very impressed with the Tagan 480W power supply. Prices were correct at time of pricing, could have gone up on ebay!
That's true, Geeky, but I'm a believer in Reg/ECC in a dually for added stability.
*shrugs* I have never, ever, ever had stability issues with my Xeon or dual Athlon systems, both of which run regular RAM. The memory controller on the K7D just died, and the windows install on the Xeon is currently hosed (thanks to creative's MP3 player driver) but neither computer has ever had stability issues in general. I've never had either one blue screen due to hardware, and I've only had the Xeon system blue screen on me in the last week- due to the MP3 driver. We run regular non-ecc unbuffered RAM in the CAD machines at work and we've never had a problem with them.
Geeky it depends so much on the chipset. With the MPX they limit ya to two slots only with no reg ddr and I had no probs with any really GOOD ddr for example mis matched mushkin, corsair, crusial and samsung worked perfect. Any generic crap ram gave errors.
No matter what combo of mismatched 4 sticks of reg ddr every mpx board worked fine. Over at 2cpu.com the horror stories are famous for those with probs with non reg DDR even really good ddr that all went away with reg ddr on the mpx chipset especially.
Seems even dependent on not just a MB series but even a EXACT MB and memory combo. They didnt all behave the same even with identical MB and ram???
Not argueing but for about the same price you can kill all your problems in advance with reg ddr.
Again some chipsets handle it much differant then others.
But if the MB takes reg ddr I vote to just get it and flush the problems goodbye. Not worth the potential hassle.
Ok guys, this has just changed dramatically. My dad didn't tell me how hardcore he wanted this system, and he just told me he thought he was crazy when he asked to do it for under 2k. Hes telling me now he wants to run Fluent (A CFD program) and that he wants around 12 gig ram So basically my budget restrictions just went out the window, so lets go for some power. I don't know if its even going to be possible to run that much ram on a board, or what to do if you couldn't, this is completely uncharted waters for me. Now this makes me think that I'm going to have to switch OS's too and go unix because that seems to be the norm for this type of computer.
So there goes our budget restrictions, just go nuts. Def RAID, reg mem, processors don't have to be highest of the high, but at least midrange. Time for me to do some big time digging around.
many boards have four memory slots. Some have 6 or 8. Fior 12gb ram figure six sticks of 2gb ddr.
Price that out for him for starters. Thats probably 1200 bucks at the least maybe way way more... I buy used crap on ebay. Do that before you price anything else. We were trying to stay under 1300 or 1400 before total. Now we got that in ddr easy.
Whats his price limit and we can back into the rest the numbers?
I mean does he want a 5 or 6 grand top of the line box or what?
Well cheapest I see right now (quick looks during commercials) is like 500 a stick for 2 gb so 8 gb on most boards looking at around 2000. 6 sticks around 3000
/me shudders
Told him that, that got him thinking, hes reconsidering what he wants now considering the storebought version of what he wanted is like 8500 bucks, minus a bit for building your own=still a crapload.
excellant point geeky. And a server OS to use that much Ram boosts the price that much more out of site with only ram and OS before we even get back to the original dual cpu setup.
And I agree with prime that if your getting to this point really getting a server Like a dell or soemthing maybe a better way to go if he is stuck on 12gb
I think realisticaly a nice dual cpu rig with 4gb ram is what we need to focus on. Whats his current rig anyway?
I think realisticaly a nice dual cpu rig with 4gb ram is what we need to focus on. Whats his current rig anyway?
Tex
His current rig is a Toshiba lappy with a 2.4 P4, 512 MB ram. It was fine for learning, but he has surpassed its capabilities.
I think he is pretty much set on doing a CAD workstation now and has realized he doesn't really want to spend the money to do a station that can do CFD, but you never know. Right now I think you are right and a nice 4GB station will do just fine. Get some nice processors, Ram, and Vid card and that should be good. If he really wants a CFD system, I'm not going to be building it from the looks of things.
After messing with Dell and HP workstations, a 4GB station is right around 5500 dollars (w/o monitor). We'll use that as my budget then so I guess I'm going to keep it under that and beat them out. I'll have to see what my dads dell discount is though.
Check the dell refurb section. I have bought 4 or 5 of their dual cpu rack servers in the last 12 months and they all looked brand new. Come with the same Dell warranty as a new one also.
I have done a lot of dual cpu boxs..... but for buisness you don't roll your own you buy a real server and Dell's refurbs are often GREAT deals.
When you get a firm budget to compare to we can spec out a serious dualie if you want to build it. And if you don't feel comfortable doing a dual cpu rig I'll build it up and do the OS and everything for ya for a very small price and I have built tons of these.
His current rig is a Toshiba lappy with a 2.4 P4, 512 MB ram. It was fine for learning, but he has surpassed its capabilities.
I think he is pretty much set on doing a CAD workstation now and has realized he doesn't really want to spend the money to do a station that can do CFD, but you never know. Right now I think you are right and a nice 4GB station will do just fine. Get some nice processors, Ram, and Vid card and that should be good. If he really wants a CFD system, I'm not going to be building it from the looks of things.
IMO you don't need all that to run Fluent it'll run fine on what he has so far.
Just take the new budget and build him a screamming 3d machine with room to grow!
Just messed around at the Egg and fixed up a quick workstation class machine and this is what I came up with:
mobo - Iwill DK8X - $445.00
Procs - Opteron 250 X 2 - $720.00 X 2=$1440
case - Lian Li PC75 full tower - $185.00
psu - OCZ Powerstream 600 - $205.00
ram - Corsair 1 GB ValueSelect X 4 - $255.12 X 4=$1020.48
DVD burner - Silver NEC - $62.99
RAID drives - WD 74 GB Raptors X 4 - $175.00 X 4=$700.00
backup drive - Hitachi 400 GB ide drive - $329.00
floppy drive - $10.00 (I subbed a more expensive beige drive for a silver, which wasn't in stock)
sound - SB Audigy2 ZS Platiunum - $169.99
OS - Windows XP Pro - $147.95
video - XFX GeForce 6800 Ultra - $490.00 (sub in whatever workstation card you like if this doesn't suit you)
Total - $5205.41
Shipping - $93.71 (to louisiana, sub your state in)
Grand total - $5299.12
Of course you would most probably want to change some things around, but this at least gives an idea of what you can build with your much expanded budget.
skip the raided raptors. Dump that cost and thats a pretty killer rig for the price considering its 250 opterons.
The price goes way down with slower ones and he still gains compared to what he was using. A pair of 244 opterons for CAd kicks booty compared to the laptop.
I can not even imagine using a laptop for CAD stuff. Not just the disk/cpu sucky speed but the piss ant monitor. get the BIGGEST monitor you can buy. Save money in lots of other areas but get the BIGGEST monitor you can afford. Used is fine. 21 inch is a given. Bigger is even better..... LCD is not required at all. I have all 20 and 21" monitors and it pains me to even use a 17" anymore. I actually offer to bring my own to work if needed.
On that budget I would build myself a nice CAD performer that would laff at CFD's.
Athlon 64 4000+ 939 - $640 <personally I can't see buying anything but 939
Mushkin Hi Perf LII V2 Dual Pack pc-3200 (512 x 2) $223 x 2 (if compat) - $446 < I know it's only 2gb
Abit AN8 1k fsb - $149 <939 not teh dualie
3dlabs Wildcat Realizm 800 PCI-E x16 $2195 <dualie gpu
Samsung 213t lcd - $859
yeah I'd do a raptor for the OS but that's it and maybe raid large drives for storage and backup.
so you see where I'm going with this? ...dual monitor maybe but I don't see utilizing dual cpu's when you've got dual gpu's!
Now newegg doesn't have the parhelia I like so the realizm can do for now.
I'll edit this later so take it with a grain of salt. I know you want a dualie but if I wanted hardcore CAD this is basically the route I'd take for now.
edit:\ oh yeah did I mention the rebate on amd/mushkin stuff? lol Yesterday the fx-55 was mislabled @ $750
I would just substitute a Tyan Thunder K8W with bios version 2.03 Beta for the Iwill board above. That is if he needs it NOW versus 6 months from now after the bugs are dead with the new nVidia chips.
Flint (proud owner of a ROCKIN' dually based on a K8W!)
Yeah, I looked for the Tyan board at the Egg, but they didn't have it in stock, so I used the Iwill. I just tried to put together a system from just 1 site. The Tyan would have been my first choice too.
And Tex, I just included the RAID Raptors to show what he could do and not necessarily be the way to go. I've never built a machine in this performance class and it looked to be a fun excercise. If you dump the Raptors, you end up with a lot more money to buy a nice monitor or 2, since that vid card will do 2 monitors.
What would you replace the Raptors with? Does CAD not need that much Hard disk I/O?
Not especially the paging should be minimal with enough ram.
like I said though ...raptors for the os and 7200/300gb wd's for the raid ...not that raid is at all necessary or that size hard disk just depends on how much data he wants to store and backup. Question is how much is enough? Only he can determine that I'm sure.
The biggest benefit will be in floating points.
Comments
I sold the dual xeon I had for basicaly a sideways dance into a dual opteron but I play in the used market.
Tex
Hi sweetheart,
That was quite the witty comeback. Hope you didnt overtask yourself thinking up that response.
And unlike me.... you have no experience with any new dualie chipset period sunshine.
And you're ragging on me?? Oooops... Your bad.....
So your up the legendary polluted river without a proper means of propulsion again. Too bad. No paddles to lend ya this time so hold on tight !
Read a few more reviews and read some more posts I guess. It's all you can do without real life experience. Without real life experiance to back the post up your just ...... guessing again. ooooops. Your bad again...
Please towel yourself off and wipe your mouth before posting again honey.
You seem to be frothing and....... it doesn't become you at all.
Love Ya Man !!
Have a GREAT DAY!!!!!
Tex
If you come up with any more witty comebacks after a few hours to think about it please post back and I will be more then cheerful to answer your questions again.
have a most BLESSED day !!!!
That's true, Geeky, but I'm a believer in Reg/ECC in a dually for added stability. I run Reg/ECC in both my MPX dullies because of that, even though 1 of them has only a single 512 MB stick in it. Seeing that his Dad is planning on doing the CAD work with it, I think going with the Reg/ECC is the ticket. But you are right in pointing out that he can use regular unbuffered ram and save a few bucks.
BTW, those sticks of ddr I priced out are 1 GB sticks, giving him 2 gigs for the machine.
http://www.newegg.com/promo/amdmushkin/
Here's how it works:
* Select any AMD 64 CPU and Mushkin Enhanced Memory and click "Buy this Combo"
* Be sure to also download the Mushkin rebate form. (Click here)
anyway i was just looking around and saw this MSI K8T Master2 on ebay for $160 $175 inc shipping although it does only have 4 hours left you can also get a pair of 242's for $300 here on ebay and finally a new matrox PARHELIA 512. Those prices were just off ebay so sorry is i have just posted stuff you have already seen. From PERSONAL experience of a BRAND NEW power supply i am very impressed with the Tagan 480W power supply. Prices were correct at time of pricing, could have gone up on ebay!
You could use some fresh air.
*shrugs* I have never, ever, ever had stability issues with my Xeon or dual Athlon systems, both of which run regular RAM. The memory controller on the K7D just died, and the windows install on the Xeon is currently hosed (thanks to creative's MP3 player driver) but neither computer has ever had stability issues in general. I've never had either one blue screen due to hardware, and I've only had the Xeon system blue screen on me in the last week- due to the MP3 driver. We run regular non-ecc unbuffered RAM in the CAD machines at work and we've never had a problem with them.
No matter what combo of mismatched 4 sticks of reg ddr every mpx board worked fine. Over at 2cpu.com the horror stories are famous for those with probs with non reg DDR even really good ddr that all went away with reg ddr on the mpx chipset especially.
Seems even dependent on not just a MB series but even a EXACT MB and memory combo. They didnt all behave the same even with identical MB and ram???
Not argueing but for about the same price you can kill all your problems in advance with reg ddr.
Again some chipsets handle it much differant then others.
But if the MB takes reg ddr I vote to just get it and flush the problems goodbye. Not worth the potential hassle.
Cheers !
Tex
So there goes our budget restrictions, just go nuts. Def RAID, reg mem, processors don't have to be highest of the high, but at least midrange. Time for me to do some big time digging around.
many boards have four memory slots. Some have 6 or 8. Fior 12gb ram figure six sticks of 2gb ddr.
Price that out for him for starters. Thats probably 1200 bucks at the least maybe way way more... I buy used crap on ebay. Do that before you price anything else. We were trying to stay under 1300 or 1400 before total. Now we got that in ddr easy.
Whats his price limit and we can back into the rest the numbers?
I mean does he want a 5 or 6 grand top of the line box or what?
Tex
/me shudders
Told him that, that got him thinking, hes reconsidering what he wants now considering the storebought version of what he wanted is like 8500 bucks, minus a bit for building your own=still a crapload.
Still, no matter what, 12gb of ram is gonna cost over five figures - he has to realize that there's just no way around it.
And I agree with prime that if your getting to this point really getting a server Like a dell or soemthing maybe a better way to go if he is stuck on 12gb
I think realisticaly a nice dual cpu rig with 4gb ram is what we need to focus on. Whats his current rig anyway?
Tex
His current rig is a Toshiba lappy with a 2.4 P4, 512 MB ram. It was fine for learning, but he has surpassed its capabilities.
I think he is pretty much set on doing a CAD workstation now and has realized he doesn't really want to spend the money to do a station that can do CFD, but you never know. Right now I think you are right and a nice 4GB station will do just fine. Get some nice processors, Ram, and Vid card and that should be good. If he really wants a CFD system, I'm not going to be building it from the looks of things.
I have done a lot of dual cpu boxs..... but for buisness you don't roll your own you buy a real server and Dell's refurbs are often GREAT deals.
When you get a firm budget to compare to we can spec out a serious dualie if you want to build it. And if you don't feel comfortable doing a dual cpu rig I'll build it up and do the OS and everything for ya for a very small price and I have built tons of these.
Let me know if I can help.
Tex
Just take the new budget and build him a screamming 3d machine with room to grow!
Does he really need a dualie?
mobo - Iwill DK8X - $445.00
Procs - Opteron 250 X 2 - $720.00 X 2=$1440
case - Lian Li PC75 full tower - $185.00
psu - OCZ Powerstream 600 - $205.00
ram - Corsair 1 GB ValueSelect X 4 - $255.12 X 4=$1020.48
DVD burner - Silver NEC - $62.99
RAID drives - WD 74 GB Raptors X 4 - $175.00 X 4=$700.00
backup drive - Hitachi 400 GB ide drive - $329.00
floppy drive - $10.00 (I subbed a more expensive beige drive for a silver, which wasn't in stock)
sound - SB Audigy2 ZS Platiunum - $169.99
OS - Windows XP Pro - $147.95
video - XFX GeForce 6800 Ultra - $490.00 (sub in whatever workstation card you like if this doesn't suit you)
Total - $5205.41
Shipping - $93.71 (to louisiana, sub your state in)
Grand total - $5299.12
Of course you would most probably want to change some things around, but this at least gives an idea of what you can build with your much expanded budget.
The price goes way down with slower ones and he still gains compared to what he was using. A pair of 244 opterons for CAd kicks booty compared to the laptop.
I can not even imagine using a laptop for CAD stuff. Not just the disk/cpu sucky speed but the piss ant monitor. get the BIGGEST monitor you can buy. Save money in lots of other areas but get the BIGGEST monitor you can afford. Used is fine. 21 inch is a given. Bigger is even better..... LCD is not required at all. I have all 20 and 21" monitors and it pains me to even use a 17" anymore. I actually offer to bring my own to work if needed.
Tex
Athlon 64 4000+ 939 - $640 <personally I can't see buying anything but 939
Mushkin Hi Perf LII V2 Dual Pack pc-3200 (512 x 2) $223 x 2 (if compat) - $446 < I know it's only 2gb
Abit AN8 1k fsb - $149 <939 not teh dualie
3dlabs Wildcat Realizm 800 PCI-E x16 $2195 <dualie gpu
Samsung 213t lcd - $859
yeah I'd do a raptor for the OS but that's it and maybe raid large drives for storage and backup.
so you see where I'm going with this? ...dual monitor maybe but I don't see utilizing dual cpu's when you've got dual gpu's!
Now newegg doesn't have the parhelia I like so the realizm can do for now.
I'll edit this later so take it with a grain of salt. I know you want a dualie but if I wanted hardcore CAD this is basically the route I'd take for now.
edit:\ oh yeah did I mention the rebate on amd/mushkin stuff? lol Yesterday the fx-55 was mislabled @ $750
Flint (proud owner of a ROCKIN' dually based on a K8W!)
And Tex, I just included the RAID Raptors to show what he could do and not necessarily be the way to go. I've never built a machine in this performance class and it looked to be a fun excercise.
like I said though ...raptors for the os and 7200/300gb wd's for the raid ...not that raid is at all necessary or that size hard disk just depends on how much data he wants to store and backup. Question is how much is enough? Only he can determine that I'm sure.
The biggest benefit will be in floating points.