Work development rig - Looking for opinions.

[OBWANDO]

Started doing some research for a work rig, and figured I'd get some more feedback and thoughts for a non-gaming machine. I'm still doing my research, but this may help shave some time off before reading every review of every chipset to get myself back "up to speed" on things.

For those who think that a dev machine needs to be some slow rig, try waiting 10-20 minutes between builds on a "corporate PC (I5-8gb-single HDD)" - and please, no debate on whos app takes whatever time to compile.

There are multiple projects (8) which can be built in parallel, and most dev is in ASM/C/C++/c#. Using VS2005/2010 (migration).

Graphics card should be half decent to take advantage of WPF in vs2010 for vizs, but not some uber game card that does 1 billion FPS. I'm not railing bugs, just stepping through them.

Major thing is that it must be quiet when tucked under a desk. Big 200 fans at lower speeds do a great job versus the 80-120 fans that move air, and sound like a small turbo spooled up.

1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
Development / VMs / Debugging possibly with 3D apps from time to time.

2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
~$1700, yes

3) Which country do you live in? If the U.S, please tell us the state and city if possible.
Florida, Jacksonville

4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, etc. The word "Everything" is not a valid answer. Please list out all the parts you'll need.
-Case - Smaller quiet case with no "bling" lights - Corsair 600T, maybe cut the LEDs in the fans.
-MOBO - Intel DX79SI
-CPU - 3930K for multicore building of packages in parallel.
-CPU cooler - I've seen a few places where the NH-D14 works well, but unsure on this one. Or alternatively the Corsair H100 but both of them would be for making sure it was rock solid stable at say 4 Ghz. For stock or lower, both would be overkill.
-GPU - Ti 560
-PSU - 800 Watt, whothehellknows PS - possibly Corsair TX850
-SSD - Revodrive 3 x2 240GB - (critical part)
-COOLING - not completely sure here, but it must be QUIET!

5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.
RAM = 2x 8GB Patriot Sector 5 (4x 4GB modules - PC3-10666/1333Mhz - PGV38G1333ELK) - Had it already, but could get higher if it really made that much of a difference.

6) Will you be overclocking?
Slightly, but most likely not going to push over 4Ghz. Stability is crucial.

7) What is the max resolution of your monitor? What size is it?
Dual 24" 1920x1080 at work or Dual 30" Dell 2560x1600 at home - Possibly considering the 28" monitors (2560x1440) for the real estate to replace the work ones.
Either way I'd like to make sure both ports are Dual-link DVI (from what I remember, this rules ATI out, or did at one point unless they finally took care of this oversight)

8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
Now

9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? USB 3.0? SATA 6Gb/s? eSATA? Onboard video (as a backup or main GPU)? UEFI? etc.
USB 3.0 (and on the case)

Nice to have:
SATA 6GB
ESATA
UEFI
1394/Firewire for possible Kernel Debugging (never know when I might need to) (on case be nice as well)

Dont need/care:
Crossfire/SLI
Onboard video

10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If yes, what OS? Is it 32bit or 64bit?
Yes, Win 7 x64 Pro

11) What do you need for a case?
Smaller, quiet, yet keeps board/cpu/mem/vid cool. Prefer to have USB 3.0 on the case. Nice to have 1394 (but not essential). No need for lights or anything fancy, black is best as it will be out of sight.

Since i'm looking to boot off of a Revodrive, the sata doesnt matter as much. If I decide to add 3 or 5 hard drives for larger storage (remember this is a work rig on a network), I have a raid card that pushes decent numbers on my other VM box (Perc-5i with 256meg pins 5/6 cut for SMB compatibility and reflashed to LSI) since Intel raids LOVE to rebuild themselves when nothing happens (unless they fixed that from the X58 boards).

I wouldnt mind pushing the CPU to 3.6, or a little more, but stability is the big thing, and it will most likely be sitting idle a bit of the time, except when I am building, of which I may do 10 builds a day (some incremental, some full, depends if VS is being stupid or not), so cutting this down is a big factor to me as its lost productivity time. Thus... overclocking is not critical.

So basically its CPU, Memory and Disk critical, and must be very quiet.

Thanks, and look forward to the feedback.

 

[Dangman]

You won't be able to reuse that RAM since it's rated at 1.65V: Intel recommends 1.5V RAM to ensure longevity, stability, and reliability of the CPU. So you're looking at new RAM:
$105 - G.SKILL Ripjaws Series F3-10666CL9D-16GBXL 2 x 8GB DDR3 1333 RAM ($15 off w/ promo code EMCNGJD39, ends 3/22"

However if you're willing to take a risk, reuse that Patriot RAM and see if it can be run at 1.5V rather than the 1.65V.

Case wise, if you're looking for quiet cases, these are the cases you should be looking at:
$120 - Fractal Design Define R3 Arctic White ATX Case
$125 - Fractal Design Define R3 Black Pearl ATX Case
$120 - Fractal Design Define R3 Silver Arrow ATX Case
$140 - Antec P280 ATX Case
$140 - Corsair Obsidian Series 550D ATX Case
$160 - Silverstone RV02B-W ATX case
$178 - Silverstone RV02B-EW ATX case
$230 - Silverstone FT02B ATX Case

Motherboard wise, that Intel mobo doesn't seem particularly stable. I'd spend the extra cash for the bit more stable Asus Sabertooth:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131801

CPU cooler wise, avoid self-contained water cooling kits like the Corsair Hydro series or the Antec Kuler series as the pump that comes with those kits are actually fairly noisy. It's only when you use regular water pumps that you get the low noise associated with water cooling. That NH-D14 would work well but you have to buy a seperate 2011 bracket for it.

PSU wise, you don't need a 850W PSU for that setup. You'll be just fine with a 650W PSU or 750W PSU if you want a little overkill. But a 850W PSU is pretty much overkill:
$90 - Corsair 650TX V2 650W PSU
$105 - Corsair 750TX V2 750W PSU

If you want modular cables and very low noise, I recommend this PSU:
$150 - Seasonic X750 Gold 750W Modular PSU

 

[Jaxon_s]

I'm sure the OP is already aware of this, but no matter what kind of memory you end up getting, you should be sure to populate at least four slots to take advantage of the four memory controllers on the 3930K, thereby getting the largest possible memory bandwidth.

 

[lightp2]

Dear OBWANDO,

The critical points of your particular situation are many, one example is following,

1. Under normal circumstances of your parallel compilation, how much memory are you using?
2. For example, 8GB i5 desktop, how much is still free when compiling?
2.1 For example, if 500MB only is free, then
2.2 temporary upgrade RAM to 16GB, then check how much is free when parallel compile (10-20 minutes projects as written in your post)
2.3 Under scenario 2.2, if you have large amount of RAM free, say total 16GB, you use 7GB, then you can use RAM Disk software, create 4GB RAM Disk, create symlink between your build folder and this RAM DISK.
2.4 If 16GB is still not enough (very rare unless you have a humongous pile of cross compilation with massive dependency very where), then 32GB option (more expansive)
2.5 The primary objective of point 2.3 is to move I/O to RAM Disk. Compilation creates a lot of of I/O. SSD is good, RAM Disk is even better. There's 37GB/sec of RAM bandwidth for Quad-Channel LGA2011 DDR1600. Since bandwidth is abundance, RAM disk is good.

I read and pickup example information from the Internet.

The guy in the following link has similar problem. He reduces his compile time from 15minutes down to 5+ minutes after making multiple adjustments. He parallel build 100 projects.

http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/arik/archive/2011/05/17/speed-up-visual-studio-builds.aspx

 

[OBWANDO]

Thank you for the responses.

I will look into the items posted, it is very much appreciated. I was a little weary about the self contained units as I've read that they die here and there.

@ danny - The PSU at 850 was only if I planned to add more hardware in the future tbh. The differential between 750-850 made sense in the event I either add quite a few more drives, or more video cards, but outside of that, I agree with you regarding the 650 being adequate.
As for memory, I'll just get new memory, it doesn't cost very much. I'll try to find that ripjaw memory in 4GB chips (x4) because 32 gig will be overkill for whatever I may do, even fully loaded.

@Jaxon - I am aware of it, and looking forward to the memory boost.

@lightP2 - First, thank you for the responses. I Understand that I will have 2-3 copies of Visual studio running with full debuggers up plus windbg plus 2-3 virtual machines running, with each VM holding 2GB, so that alone will prohibit 8GB right there. I do Usermode debugging, Service debugging and kernel mode debugging when I'm doing a full system flow verification. Not many people do this type of work, so the justification is there. In a normal scenario, your responses would be make sense, as most people will never use anything over 6, let alone 8. As I do a lot of kernel file system development, I am aware of the page banks and memory allocation in the Cc/Mm system, which is why I made sure I kept within the constraints of my possible scenarios.

I am not memory bound right now, I am processor and HDD bound primarily right now. The cost differential of 8 to 16 is pretty trivial, and with my VMs, its essential.

Moving IO to ramdisk is a good idea, however having excessive IO on the FS stack is never desireable. Take a look at how the current file system filter chain operates, and you will see that each object in the chain must answer each IOCTL issued (thats applicable, in this case the create calls primarily), which causes you to get a higher amount of CPU time. Granted its not a MAJOR amount of time, but you are trading one evil for another, and dont expect your task manager to show you the actual Kernel times. There are tools that will show you these things in a more accurate form. I'll do some performance profiling on a couple ramdisk products and see what the difference between raw memory and FSChain requests come out to. As long as the object is in a paged memory pointer, the memory manager will address it from the cache, however adding a ram disk would be taking a pointer, then pushing another pointer to a virtual disk which would be addressing back to the originating pointer of the page in memory. I'm not suggesting that a RAM disk is a bad choice, I'm saying that I'd like to do some performance profiling to see the real difference, there's a great chance ram will come out ahead at the cost of a little bit of CPU time after the other filters in the chain check out the calls, since there are a lot of short creates done, and that is the most expensive operation in the file system. Also, thank you for the link, I appreciate it.

 

[OBWANDO]

This would seem to be a good choice for memory:
Ripjaws X 4x4GB - 16GB total, cas 7

 

[Deleted member 88227]

This would seem to be a good choice for memory:
Ripjaws X 4x4GB - 16GB total, cas 7

Not really, that memory is over priced.

Don't forget to fold for Team 33 when you get everything done.

 

[Dangman]

As for memory, I'll just get new memory, it doesn't cost very much. I'll try to find that ripjaw memory in 4GB chips (x4) because 32 gig will be overkill for whatever I may do, even fully loaded.

While 32GB of RAM may be overkill, the 16GB RAM set I posted, with the $15 off promo, is actually a pretty decent deal in general for 16GB of RAM. As such, I'd still recommend it even if you're only gonna need 16GB of RAM. With the promo code, it comes out $90 shipped. The same 4x4GB sets would cost $84 shipped. So really not much savings there:
$42 - G.Skill Ripjaws Series F3-10666CL9D-8GBRL 2 x 4GB DDR3 1333 RAM

This would seem to be a good choice for memory:
Ripjaws X 4x4GB - 16GB total, cas 7

Not really: With Intel CPUs, they don't see a noticeable real world performance increase with RAM speeds higher than DDR3 1333 RAM and RAM latency lower than CAS 9.

 

[OBWANDO]

Thanks for the heads up with the cas 7 mem.. The only reason i didnt think the first memory posted was the best choice was because it was 2 pieces of 8gb, and i wanted to take advantage of the quad channel, and posted 4x4gb.

Your second link @ $42 looks like the best choice, and I'll nab 2 sets of those to fill all banks to get to 16GB .

@skillz - will do bud

 

[Dangman]

The only reason i didnt think the first memory posted was the best choice was because it was 2 pieces of 8gb, and i wanted to take advantage of the quad channel, and posted 4x4gb.

Quad-channel hasn't been shown to provide a noticeable performance increase with real world apps though

 

[OBWANDO]

I'm hoping that to be different with the type of environment I am utilizing, I'll do some benches with 2 sticks vs 4 sticks when i build it and report back.

I was wondering why you thought the Intel board was such a bad choice when the gang here gave it a silver nod here:
http://hardocp.com/article/2012/02/28/intel_dx79si_x79_lga2011_motherboard_review/

--Edit: Went with the Corsair 600T that was on sale $119 + free shipping - ($20 instant, $20 rebate) I have a HAF case with a pair of 200mm fans, and it is super quiet with quite a bit of airflow, so unless they made the fans out of crumpled aluminum foil, I'd expect similar noise output.

I am curious if the NH-D14 will fit on the Sabertooth X79 board. I found the version for the 2011 from amazon at a decent price Here

Grabbed the seasonic at newegg as a deal for $109 here: Seasonic 750w

 

[OBWANDO]

Any thoughts on the Rampage vs the Sabertooth boards?

 

[Dangman]

I was wondering why you thought the Intel board was such a bad choice when the gang here gave it a silver nod here:
http://hardocp.com/article/2012/02/28/intel_dx79si_x79_lga2011_motherboard_review/

Newegg User reviews to be honest. Up to you man.

I am curious if the NH-D14 will fit on the Sabertooth X79 board. I found the version for the 2011 from amazon at a decent price Here

According to Noctua, that HSF fits the Sabertooth X79 just fine:
http://www.noctua.at/main.php?show=compatibility_gen&products_id=41&lng=en#Asus

Any thoughts on the Rampage vs the Sabertooth boards?

Rampage is overpriced.

 

[OBWANDO]

Thanks, and I sincerely appreciate the feedback.

 

[OBWANDO]

After doing some research, be very careful with the Revodrive 3 2X cards. Seems they aren't friendly with a lot of X79 boards. I settled with a pair of Samsung 830s, which should do well on the 6gig ports.

 

[Dangman]

Never did trust OCZ SSDs anyway.

 

[OBWANDO]

So the rig is built (waiting for my GTX 680, so my 570 will do for now).

The dual 830s on the Intel 6Gig channel is stupid fast (and happy it is). ATTO is reporting lower 700s on writes and right at the 1000s for reads starting at 8k. HD Tune is showing 951 min / 997 max, pretty flat.

System is nice and quiet, and with those rates, I may consider another 16 gigs for $85 and just have it do my code runs in a ramdrive with elongated deferred writes .

I still need to OC it some as I'm not taking advantage of the NH-D14 yet.

But for the price difference, I think I'll leave the Revodrive in its beta stages as the performance I paid $260 for two 120gig 830s versus $600 for 240gigs of unstable product that they cant validate on their own forums.

Thanks to everyone in here for the good feedback on parts, I appreciate it.

On a side note, it OC's to 4.7ghz easily at 1.35 VCore, 1.3 VTT. Ran IBT about 40 times, CPU never made it over 74c, idles around 52, rest of the board hovers in the upper 30s, lower 40s, and still super quiet under load.

 

[Spudsdude]

Sounds like a good rig, very cool. I like the idea of the Dual 830's, that's some speed right there!

You mentioned your primary purpose was not gaming, and yet are talking about a GTX 680 ? Is there something in VS that's taking advantage of that, or just one of the "because" parts.

 

[OBWANDO]

Actually, I wound up taking my old I7-950 with x58 with a pair of Intel SSDs and taking that to work. I put a 260 in it as I had a spare one. My 570 went into VM rig (which I do a lot of 3D game testing, so it gets used), and the 680 went into my home rig.

To answer your question, VS2010 takes advantage of some DX9 calls, but at work im stuck with 2003 which im not going to comment on, as I primarily use 2005 since statically linking an app in 2008/2010 can double the size due to all of the security bloat. Literally my app went from 2 megs to 4.4, and that was after trimming and optimizing all the options to get everything out I possibly could (there are lots of complaining threads on the net about that topic, not really relevant in this portion of the forums).

I left the dual 930s on the Intel channel, but might test it on my Areca 1222 Raid controller since I have 3 channels open (2 for raid 0 and a hot spare for the five drives in Raid 5).

I can say it was a world of difference using my own rig as I gained quite a bit of productivity time, and home rig is good for awhile, as I usually upgrade every 2 years.

I am looking forward to running my tools on this 3930, it threads out like madness, and when its producing a package, it maxes out the disk and cpu to 100% for quite a bit (compression, crc calcs, indexing and reorganizing about 20-30 gigs of data into about 50,000 objects, then consolidating them into 2gb containers).