Which cloud instance is comparable to this build?

[Gagnon]

I ended up purchasing a custom built system, specs below. I was wondering which of these Amazon EC2 instances it would more closely parallel. I realize this is not Apples to Apples, but wanted to know where the strengths / weaknesses were in buying iron vs. renting virtual.

Here are the two servers I often use at AWS:

High-Memory Double Extra Large Instance
34.2 GB of memory
13 EC2 Compute Units (4 virtual cores with 3.25 EC2 Compute Units each)
850 GB of instance storage
64-bit platform
I/O Performance: High
API name: m2.2xlarge

High-Memory Quadruple Extra Large Instance
68.4 GB of memory
26 EC2 Compute Units (8 virtual cores with 3.25 EC2 Compute Units each)
1690 GB of instance storage
64-bit platform
I/O Performance: High
API name: m2.4xlarge

One EC2 Compute Unit provides the equivalent CPU capacity of a 1.0-1.2 GHz 2007 Opteron or 2007 Xeon processor. This is also the equivalent to an early-2006 1.7 GHz Xeon processor referenced in our original documentation. Over time, we may add or substitute measures that go into the definition of an EC2 Compute Unit, if we find metrics that will give you a clearer picture of compute capacity.

Here's the system I purchased:

1 x Case NZXT Phantom Full Tower Gaming Case - White
1 x Processor Intel® Core™ i7 3960X Processor (6x 3.30GHz/15MB L3 Cache)
1 x Processor Cooling Asetek 550LC Liquid CPU Cooling System (Intel) - ARC Dual Silent High Perfornamce Fan Upgrade (Push-Pull Airflow)
1 x Memory 64 GB [8 GB x8] DDR3-1600 Memory Module - Corsair or Major Brand
1 x Video Card AMD Radeon HD 7970 - 3GB - CrossFire Mode (Dual Cards)
1 x Motherboard ASUS Sabertooth X79 -- 4x SATA 6GB/s, 4x USB 3.0
1 x Power Supply 1350 Watt - Thermaltake Toughpower-1350M - Free Upgrade to 1500 Watt Toughpower-1500M ($40 Savings)
1 x Primary Hard Drive 240 GB Kingston HyperX SSD - Dual 240GB Drives (480GB Capacity) - RAID 0 High Performance
1 x Data Hard Drive 600 GB WD Velociraptor HARD DRIVE -- 32M Cache, 10000 RPM, 6.0Gb/s - Dual 600GB Drives (600GB Capacity) - RAID 1 Data Security
1 x Optical Drive [12X Blu-Ray] Pioneer BLU-RAY Re-Writer, DVD±R/±RW Burner Combo Drive - Black
1 x Network Card Killer 2100 Gaming Network Card
1 x Operating System Microsoft Windows 7 Professional + Office Starter 2010 (Includes basic versions of Word and Excel) - 64-bit

I think in the long run I will see better performance from this system since my work has mostly been CPU bound at Amazon - more cores that are much slower are good for citrix or multi-process environments, fewer cores that are much faster are better for fewer thread analytics processing.